#if we inherited a big amount of money and one of us was in worse financial situation then that person would get slightly more

[penny-anna]

i bought a flat this week.

was off work sick last thursday/friday with what turned out to be the beginnings of a bad cold but at the time i was just like 'oh no why am i so tired is this the return of the Mystery Fatigue'

let's backtrack for a second!! back when i had the offer accepted on my flat my solicitor suggested october 6th as a move in date and i was like sure that works (this was around the beginning of september). then i didn't hear anything from them for many days and then i started getting major dry eye problems that became all consuming so i didn't get around to chasing them.

anyway!! tuesday last week i get an email from my solicitor like 'hi are you still able to complete friday' and i did not have the headspace to deal with it so i didn't reply

Wednesday my solicitor calls like 'hi. we need to know if you want to complete friday'. i'm like 'actually i'm really not feeling well this week, could we postpone'. she calls back a few minutes later like 'they cannot postone'. at this point i'm still thinking that if i get a decent night's sleep i'll feel better so i tell her i'll deal with it in the morning.

Thursday i feel spectacularly worse. have to get up to go to an appointment with my optometrist. almost start crying in their office bcos i'm just so exhausted. (he seemed weirdly unfazed by this?? looking back i wonder if he thought my eyes were hurting or something and didn't realise that i was holding back tears gfhglj) call out sick from work.

plan is to take a nap and then look at the documents my solicitor sent over but she calls me again like 'hi. sorry to bother you i know you're sick but can we complete today' so i'm like ah shit ig we're doing this now. please walk me through exactly what you need me to do here. 'we just need you to send us the money'. yeah i can do that. i've never made a payment this big before tho.

(i'm buying w money inherited from my mother so even for a flat purchase it's an unusually large amount of money)

'oh yeah you won't be able to that online. *pause* are you well enough to go to the bank?' i am tired enough that going to the bank will suck but not so sick i cannot go to the bank.

i had gone fully back to bed. spurred on by sudden wave of adrenaline, get out of bed and dressed and get the bus into town to the bank.

my bank closes at 3pm weekdays and by the time i get that it's about 1:45. explain the situation. turns out that to make a payment this big you need a sit-down meeting with a member of staff and they are booked solid till 3. 'can you come back tomorrow at 9:30 when we open' *dying inside* yes. i can come back tomorrow at 9:30.

go home. remember that i'd told my manager that i'd call her at 9 to let her know if i'm going to be working (i will defo not be working & she knows this) which will be tricky if i have to leave at 9 to go to the bank. have a pretty interminable IM conversation via microsoft teams about this wherein i suggest i message her first thing and call a bit later and she isn't going for it. eventually agree to call at 9 just so i can end the conversation and go to sleep.

Friday morning end up calling my manager from the bus. get to bank. whole thing takes a full 30 minutes so yeah i can see why they couldn't fit me in thursday afternoon ghfdljkfhdj. i'm so so tired. they have to go over a whole fraud prevention statement with you. 'you should be aware that scammers can pretend to be your solicitor'. me, exhausted: okay what if just this one time. a scammer is pretending to be my solicitor.

make the payment. go home to sleep finally.

later in the afternoon get another call from the solicitor. 'hi we have the keys you can come get them whenever'. oh yeah i'd been so caught up in trying to get them the money i'd kinda forgotten about. actually getting the flat.

(side note at no point was i planning to move in on 'moving day', an advantage of being a first time buyer is that i don't have to & i want to redecorate the place which is easier while it's empty)

initially say i'll come in next week but then realise that ideally next week i'll be back at work (i am not but anyway) so i might as well go now. it's pushing 4pm so will need to head out ASAP.

eyes are very dry and itchy from sleeping all day but fortunately i just (on a recommendation from my optometrist) bought a thing called a facial sauna which is a very weird contraption but does work extremely quickly.

pack my eye drops and also a peanut butter sandwich to eat in my new flat (why not) and go get the keys.

arrive at the flat. on inspection realise that the envelope i've been given seems to contain the most random assortment of loose keys. eventually identify an actual set of keys.

put my key in the lock of the flat door. abruptly hear a cat meowing, somewhere very close by.

previous owner had cats (plural) (i know this bcos i saw them when i was viewing the place). have a sudden moment of panic that i've somehow wildly misunderstood the whole situation and that she and her cats are still in residence.

look down. there is a very large, very fluffy white cat standing next to me, looking up at me as if expecting to be let in.

'you can't come in. this is my house.'

make my first mistake: think that if i open the door i will be able to prevent the cat from entering.

cat goes straight on into my flat.

i'm now pursuing the cat from room to room saying 'hey! hey you can't be in here! this is my house!'. the cat doesn't give a shit for obvious reasons (it is a cat)

i might have considered just shooing the cat outside and shutting the door but have arrived at an IMO not unreasonable concern. cat seemed very determined to enter this flat in particular and is now roaming around as if looking for something. previous owner had multiple cats and moved out AFAIK today. i have heard stories about people accidentally leaving cats behind when they move.

at this point it's 4:55 on a Friday. call my solicitor and explain the situation. ask if she could pass on a message to the seller's solicitor. unfortunately they have already closed for the week so it will have to wait till Monday but she will do her best.

decide the next course of action is to see if the cat has any ID. the cat is wearing a harness & collar so might have a tag with an address. make my second mistake: pick the cat up.

the cat does not have any ID on the harness. the cat does NOT like being picked up. cat gets very squirmy and then begins scratching me. cat manages to break my skin through a hoodie.

i put the cat down. the cat hisses at me. this is very rude considering that it is in my house.

head across the landing to see if the people opposite are missing a cat or, failing that, know their neighbours well enough to recognise the cat. there's no answer.

however!! i hear a voice down in the stairwell that sounds like it could be someone calling out a cat's name. 'hi!! is someone down there looking for a cat?' no answer.

look down the stairwell. on the ground floor there is a very large fluffy brown cat wearing a harness. !!!!! that is my cat's friend!

retrieve the cat from my flat (fortunately it just follows me out) and head downstairs. am met partway up by the cat's owner.

'oh thank god is this your cat'. it is her cat. apparently she had opened her front door to let them out into the garden and it had wandered off. 'i just moved in today it came into my flat'.

she is very apologetic. cat is unrepetent.

go back inside. call my solicitor's office. 'hi was it you i spoke to just now about the cat' (I told 2 people about the cat) 'no i just answered the phone because it was ringing. what cat.' 'can you tell *solicitor's name* that i have found the cat's owner. she will know what you mean'.

problem solved!! time to eat my peanut butter sandwich. :)

#long post

[seafoamreadings]

planetary money

mercury and jupiter are the most commonly understood types. but all the planets can impact you financially or represent a financial gift or mode of operating.

the sun - actual gold. the vitality one experiences when one has plenty of resources at one's disposal, whether those are money, friends, time, or just a full refrigerator.

the moon - actual silver. the need one has for material resources and money, the way it can keep us healthy and happy, the way it can connect us to other people. the way we are nourished by food and goods, which we must buy with money, or barter for.

mercury - the exchange of money. the way it flows. really the current of the currency. mercury shares etymology with words like merchant, market, and mercantile.

venus - this is the attraction of money, the sparkle that people love about gold, the thing that convinces people to pay for your product or service.

mars - the lust for money, which can be dangerous, and its pursuit too. the hustle, for better or worse. at best it is good old fashioned hard work, at worst it is extreme devastating greed or miserliness.

ceres - the fruits of your labor, the way you reap what you sow. the harvest, literally and metaphorically.

jupiter - accumulated wealth, abundance of resources - money, time, food, helpful people, etc - the savings in your bank account, the nest egg, the big profit. jupiter does best when this is handled both wisely AND generously.

saturn - often associated with deprivation and scarcity, poverty, but can also if well-placed and well-aspected be wise frugality, talent with a budget, stretching a small amount to live a better life or better provide for others, and also inheritances, wills, trust funds, etc.

uranus - unexpected money. a lottery winning, a wild gift, finding a suitcase full of money buried in your yard...? nothing easy, nothing normal, nothing you worked much for.

neptune - this spiritual planet ALMOST transcends money, but it is also the soul of money, the spirit of how we can use resources to bolster each other and the world rather than to tear it down for greed's sake. neptune is the anti-greed. but it can also be deception or confusion about money, so be careful.

pluto - wealth that lasts. wealth that is impervious to inflation and the whims of humankind. huge inheritances. the bounty put forth by the earth itself. the metals and gemstones and minerals out of the dirt.

any thoughts? :)

#astrology #money

[ayuuria]

Yashahime Translation: Animedia Magazine March 2021 Issue

Please do not repost this translation without my consent! This includes screenshots of any type and amount. If you wish to share this translation, simply link to this post.

For more information regarding the use of my translations, click here.

Tis the Season of Love ♪,

Get That Person’s Heart! (let’s get it)

The flower blooming Spring is the season of (new) meetings. Look around for an instant and before you know it, the distance between “that person” and “that person” has gotten smaller. Will love be born from there? Picking up the relationship that people are curious about.

Even though they’re at the height of adolescence, the three Yashahimes slay demons all the time. Within that, recently there’s a gentleman that has quickly approached Towa. His name is Riku. He seems to be known among demons and is a suspicious unidentifiable person, but his manners are exceptional in any case! Whether it’s because Towa let’s her guard down at his friendly attitude, they seem to enjoy their conversations whenever they meet. It seems Riku has a motive but putting that aside, it appears that he’s taken a liking to Towa herself. While still not knowing whether he’s a friend or enemy, at some point, a relationship that’s not quite love (?) has sprouted between them. This time, we had Matsumoto Sara, the voice actress for Towa, talk about Riku and, going with the theme of Spring, had her choose flower images for the Yashahimes and Riku based on “Flower Language”.

The handsome young man with an ulterior motive, Riku

Self-proclaimed “pirate come ashore”. A young man of many mysteries who covets the rainbow pearls the three Yashahimes possess. He also knows a lot about the circumstances surrounding the birth of Towa and the others.

The honest girl who is still inexperienced in love, Towa

Sesshōmaru’s daughter and Setsuna’s elder twin sister. She treasures Setsuna, who was raised separately from her, more than anyone else. On the night of the new moon, she loses her demonic powers and her hair turns black.

Setsuna

Towa’s younger twin sister. Due to having her sleep stolen by the Dream Butterfly, she is unable to sleep. While she does not have any memories of her early childhood, she has gradually become able to let her guard down around Towa.

Spring Breeze Interview, The Voice Actress for Higurashi Towa: Matsumoto Sara

Moroha

Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter. Separated from her parents soon after being born, she was raised by the wolf demon tribe. When she puts rouge on her lips, she becomes “Beniyasha, the Destroyer of Lands” and goes on a rampage.

— With the development thus far, which episode left a big impression on you?

What left the biggest impression on me was episode 14 which was the episode that showed the truth behind the forest fire that separated Towa and Setsuna. I always to keep an objective point of view while acting but at that time, I was truly angry from the bottom of my heart. Whether for better or for worse, Towa’s emotions came into me.

Also, the depiction of Towa and Setsuna when they were born in episode 15 left an impression on me as well. Since it’s Sesshōmaru, I thought he would be rough with the babies but surprisingly, he firmly and carefully held them, so I was relieved (laughs).

— Being Towa’s father, what do you think of Sesshōmaru’s actions?

Without really saying too much, even though there are not enough words, I end up just suddenly saying what I’m really curious about. However, I think Sesshōmaru himself acts on his intentions while not caring about what others around him think. I also didn’t know what the future development was, so as the role of the daughter I thought “Please give more hints”.

— How did you feel seeing the figure of Towa fighting up to this point?

When Towa’s life completely changed by jumping from the modern era to the feudal era, I worried if Towa would be able to cope but I was surprised at how adaptable she was. There’s the fact that she’s still in puberty so her sensitivity is like a sponge, or rather her ability to absorb things is amazing, I think. Also, having Setsuna nearby is big. There may be times where she’s uneasy but her strong sense of duty and justice to “protect Setsuna” is what I feel drives her. She’s the type to immediately take action if there’s something she has to do, so I think her current environment is a good fit.

— Alright then, what are some highlights going forward?

There’s an episode where you will learn Setsuna’s childhood and how she lived after she was separated from Towa. In episode 13, it talked about how Monk Miroku sealed Setsuna’s demonic powers, so this flashback episode of the past will connect to that. After episode 20, the fragments scattered throughout the story thus far will gradually come together as one, so there’s a lot of information packed in that you can’t miss. I think viewers have been in suspense following the mystery (of the story) so please look forward to the final stage of the development.

Will the Scheming Man’s Approach Work on the Dense Princess!?

Towa & Riku Affinity Investigation

I’m weak against boys like Riku, so if someone continuously came to me saying “I’m interested in you”, it would make my heart beat fast (laughs). Riku moves understanding that mentality and I think he’s good at setting up the mood when approaching Towa. I think right now based on where he stands, he makes spur of the moment decisions on how to act. He’s mysterious but he smiles periodically and even though he’s vague, he has a maternal appeal… He’s a very charming and sly character (Matsumoto)

By the way! If Riku were in the modern era, what sort of occupation would he be suitable for?

He’s a sweet talker, so the first thing that comes to mind is a swindler (laughs). There was a scene where he showed a magic technique so I think work in the entertainment field would also fit Riku. He also seems suitable to be an actor. He’s got natural talent and can turn into any person. Then conversely, I think strict jobs would also suit him. If he were a schoolteacher, I have a feeling he would be popular with the students. (Matsumoto)

The Part of Riku that Makes One Swoon: He completely reeks of danger.

Riku’s mysteriousness is appealing. He also met Kagome before she gave birth to Moroha, but he looked the same as he does now.

The Part of Towa that Makes One Swoon: She tries her hardest and is pure cuteness!

Losing her demonic powers on the “Night of the New Moon”, Towa becomes worried about Setsuna. Different from usual, she shows the weak side of a regular girl.

Try! Heart Pounding Flower & Date Plan

What flower comes to mind for Towa, Setsuna, Moroha, and Riku?

Setsuna is the Evening Primrose

Setsuna is an evening primrose which in flower language means “Silent Affection”. The evening primrose goes unnoticed and quietly blooms at night. Having her sleep stolen by the Dream Butterfly, I think it overlaps with the figure of Setsuna being the only one awake after everyone else has fallen asleep for the night. (Matsumoto)

Towa is the Lily

Towa is a lily which in flower language means “Pure”. While watching reality change before her eyes, I think the word “pure” fits Towa perfectly as she acts with a pure sense of justice and duty. That sense of not being tainted by anything is also like a lily. (Matsumoto)

Moroha is the Statice

Moroha is a statice which in flower language means “Endless Memories”. Born as Inuyasha and Kagome’s child, I think Moroha’s existence is blessed. The things Moroha inherited from her parents are within her as “endless memories”. That’s what I imagined. (Matsumoto)

Riku is the Anemone

Riku is a purple anemone which in flower language means “I will believe in you as I wait”. Riku will affectionately call Zero “Elder Sister” (translators: I believe the context is the same word that maiko (apprentice Geisha) use to address their superiors (full-fledged Geishas)) and he seems to have strong feelings for Kirinmaru in his own way, so I matched (the flower) to that image. (Matsumoto)

If you were to gift Towa, Setsuna, Moroha, and Riku flowers?

I think a small bouquet would suit Towa and Riku and they would genuinely be delighted. I think Towa would give you a wink as a thank you. I want to give Setsuna a large bouquet. She would probably turn her face away slightly, embarrassed. Instead of a bouquet for Moroha, I want to take her to a flower field myself. I think she would enjoy the scenery while saying “This won’t make any money.” (Matsumoto)

If you were to take Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha out in the Spring?

My impression is that the warm spring weather would suit the three of them. If in the feudal era, I think they would enjoy cherry blossom viewing. Ideally, it would be great if their parents were there with them too. If in the modern era, I’d have to say I want them to do some kind of team activity. I want to see something like Towa dressing up Setsuna, going shopping together, and eating delicious food. (Matsumoto)

I want their (the three Yashahimes) hearts to become closer while loving the cherry blossoms!

Illustration Description

Whether it was to let Towa know that there was a butterfly on her shoulder, Riku amiably calls out to her. It feels as though Towa’s encounter with Riku wasn’t all bad?

#hanyou no yashahime #yashahime: princess half-demon #translation #Yashahime

[hufflepuffhermione]

I’m on a Dad Josh kick - let’s go with 37. “Welcome to fatherhood.” if you feel like it? Thank you!

More fluffy future fic for you, because I also cannot get enough of Dad Josh.

Thanksgiving 2010

Josh closes the door behind him, pausing for a brief minute to ensure there’s no crying. He’s finally managed to get Noah down for a nap in the Pack’N’Play they’ve set up in what used to be Liz’s bedroom. He had refused to go down that morning for a pre-Thanksgiving nap, but by the time Abbey was starting to clear away the plates, it was clear that he was not going to last much longer.

That didn’t mean he went down without a fight, however.

Josh takes a deep breath when he puts his ear to the door one last time and hears silence. At all of seventeen months, Noah has definitely inherited his father’s stubborn streak. But if he’s down, he’ll get a good two hours of sleep and then they’ll have to fight him to step again that night.

Such are the joys of having a toddler. He wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Still, Josh thought he knew exhaustion. He’d certainly had his share of sleepless nights and had kept going for years on the few hours of sleep he could manage to snatch. But fatherhood is a different kind of tiring, and he isn’t as young as he used to be. He hasn’t slept through a whole night in three weeks.

That isn’t Noah’s fault, though. That’s the fault of the little bundle currently in the arms of the former President of the United States.

“She’s a good sleeper, this one,” Jed says, looking up at Josh as he enters the living room. Donna and Abbey and Zoey are all in the kitchen, and Charlie is somewhere with their six-month old, also trying to induce a nap.

Josh chuckles and takes a seat on the couch next to Jed. “Only during the day. At night, she’s wide awake for every feeding and hates to go back down again.”

“Welcome to fatherhood. Still, a nicer reason for sleepless nights than being stuck in the situation room, huh?”

“Infinitesimally better,” Josh replies, reaching out to stroke his daughter’s light hair. He hopes she’ll look just like Donna.

Jed smirks. “You do know, Josh, that while the word ‘infinite’ refers to a limitless amount, the word ‘infinitesimal’ actually indicates a very small number, so what you’re telling me is that it’s only barely better to wake up to your daughter crying than to troop movements in Kazakhstan?”

“See, sir, I don’t dread going into the Oval Office anymore because I know President Santos won’t lecture me on vocabulary.”

“Nonsense, you miss me in there,” Jed scoffs. “Will I ever convince you to call me Jed, though?

“Not a chance.”

His face softens as he asks the question he’s been waiting to ask this whole time. “You’re really stepping down at the end of the term?”

Josh bites his lip and nods. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He clears his throat. “Um… quite a few reasons. You know as well as anybody that working in the White House can burn you out, and very rarely does a Chief of Staff last longer than a term. Leo was unique.” It still makes his heart clench to think about Leo, and it’s not lost on him that the length of Leo’s tenure was not disconnected from his death. “And I’ve been in there for almost twelve years, give or take a few. I love the work, and I know it’s the most important work I’ll ever do, but… there are more important things in my life now.” He looks down to smile at his daughter. “And several doctors, including your wife, have told me I’d benefit from a lower-stress lifestyle. I want to be around to see my kids grow up, sir, and there are some potential obstacles to that but I’m doing all that I can to stay healthy and be around for them.”

“Those are all excellent reasons, Josh.”

“Do you know, it’s interesting, this summer when I was debating whether or not I’d stay on if we got another term… something you said came to me.”

Jed nods. “What did I say?”

“It was during the whole debacle with the Surgeon General, and Ellie made a comment to a reporter, and you didn’t fire the Surgeon General because of it and…” Josh shakes his head and smiles. “I didn’t think it was the right move, because it would look like you did it because Ellie wanted you to.”

“And what did I tell you?”

“That when I had a daughter, I’d discover there are worse reasons in the world to do something.” Josh lets himself chuckle. “When Donna and I found we were having a daughter, well… that’s the moment I knew that even if we won, I wasn’t going to go back for a second term.”

Jed looks down at the infant in his arms, who has just opened her eyes. “I think she appreciates that,” he says. His arms are starting to feel weak—while the reduced stress has certainly kept his health in check, he’s still prone to weakness—and so he shifts the baby into Josh’s arms. “I’ve kept her away from you long enough.”

“She’s named after you, you know.”

“Josie?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Josh says. He meets his daughter’s bright blue eyes and can’t chase the feeling of being mesmerized.

“I had my suspicions.”

“Well, Donna’s father is Joseph, so it’s partially for him. And for Josiah, of course. And it sounds a little like Joanie—my sister,” his voice tightens imperceptibly, “but it’s still something all her own.”

Jed reaches out to put a hand on Josh’s arm. “It’s lovely.”

“I can’t get enough of her. I mean, I felt the same with Noah, but I wasn’t sure with the second if I would… but it really doesn’t go away,” Josh whispers reverently as Josie closes her eyes again. “I want to be here for all her moments. I missed Noah’s first steps because I was in the situation room. I don’t want to… I mean, I know they won’t remember it, but I will, and now that Noah is going to start remembering things… I want to be a part of his life. I want to be a part of Josie’s life. I don’t want to be absent because I’m too busy with work.”

“Admirable. What next for you, then? I find it hard to imagine you tolerating unemployment well.”

Josh shakes his head. “No, I don’t do boredom. I’ve got a couple offers from universities—I might teach a few courses at Georgetown—and I could always do consulting. And I may have reached the peak of my career, but Donna certainly hasn’t hit hers. I’ve got big plans for her. When Haake out in the Wisconsin 2nd retires, which is still a little ways off but he’s in his seventies and I know he’s starting to think about it, I want her to run for his seat.”

“Donna in Congress? Well that’s an idea. You’d move to Wisconsin?”

“Part-time, probably. I could consult from anywhere and frankly, make a lot more money doing that than drawing a government salary. But I don’t imagine we’ll ever fully leave DC.” He lets out a sigh. “But Haake’s got another three or four terms left in him, so we’ve got a while before that happens. For now, she’s staying on with Mrs. Santos but I know the President is hoping to poach her and bring her to the West Wing.” He looks down at Josie and chuckles again. “Your mama’s really quite in demand, isn’t she?”

Jed loves the scene in front of him; while years ago he might not have been able to imagine Josh as a father, now he can’t imagine the younger man as anything but. “You’re really at peace with leaving. I never thought you’d get out of politics willingly—I figured they’d have to drag you out by your ankles.”

“I’m not getting out of politics, just… taking a backseat,” Josh says. “I’ve got other plans, too; there’s a Senate seat in California opening up in the midterms and I want it to be Sam’s.” He quiets, blinking reflectively. “How do you do it, sir? Leave the White House?”

Jed pats Josh’s knee and stands up slowly. “As long as you keep calling me sir, I feel like I never left,” he jokes. “You see the bigger picture. Realize there’s more to life.”

Josh leans into the back of the couch and shifts Josie so that she’s on his chest and shoulder. “You couldn’t have convinced me of that five years ago, but…there certainly is.”

“I’m proud of you, Josh,” Jed says, and Josh doesn’t think he’s ever received a better compliment. “Now, I think we’ve gone too long without bothering our wives, and I’ve found some room within me to consume some pie.”

Josh leans his head back and smiles. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

He closes his eyes, enjoying the feeling of his daughter resting on his chest, and lets his breaths align with hers, until Donna comes into the living room to announce dessert and finds her husband and daughter asleep in the living room.

“Fatherhood takes it out of you, doesn’t it?” she says softly to wake him.

He opens his eyes and sits up, smiling. “Never a more worthwhile endeavor.”

#jessbakescakes #josh lyman #josh x donna #the west wing #tww fic #alli's writings #i almost didn't put donna in this lol but i figured she should make an appearance #she's important #but anyway dad josh has my heart #and this kind of got away from me #but it fits into my headcanon future with all the other fics i've been writing lately #and like... if a fic isn't three times the length it's supposed to be it wouldn't be my writing right?

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

merry christmas, ya filthy animal

Hi guys! This is my contribution for @hockeynetwork holiday gift exchange, it’s 2.5k of sweet Tito fluff for @dreamypeaches and I hope you all like it. As always, I read all the tags and love love hearing your feedback, so hop into my inbox and reblog if you like it! 

word count: 2.5k+

Everyone has a favorite movie. Some go for a childhood classic like Cinderella, some find an indie documentary from a film class in college, some inherit their parents’ love for the Princess Bride or Casablanca. Not you. For you, there was no movie that could hold a candle to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. You had watched it for the first time maybe around 7 or 8 years old, and had been hooked ever since, and even Donald Trump’s five-second cameo couldn’t taint the love you had for it. But your favorite part, other than the large cheese pizza and stretch limousine, was the end. The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, Kevin and his mom finally reuniting after she moved heaven and earth to get back to her son by Christmas. 

It wasn’t your first Christmas in New York City, but it was the first one where it really felt like it was your city, like you belonged to it. And it was your first Christmas with Tito. You had started dating earlier in the year, just as the team was starting to make the big push for playoffs and two months or so before he left to Montréal for the summer. It was strange while he was there, not just because he was hundreds of miles away and in a whole different country, but because the two of you had only been exclusive for a few months and were set to be separated for three. You flew up for Canada Day and met his parents, and he came back for a week in August, but the interim was filled with more FaceTime calls and lonely nights than either of you would care to admit. 

But summer was long over, the leaves had fallen from all the London planes, and the temperature had started to drop below freezing even in the day. The cold weather wasn’t always great; you didn’t love having to scrape the ice off of your windshield or trudge through the slush when it was too early for the snow to stick to the ground, but you wouldn’t change it for the world. One thing that winter changed was date plans. Unless you hit it at just the right time, coffee in the morning was more prone to freeze your fingers off than warm you up, having dinner outside — normally one of your favorite things to do together — was all-but banned after November, and you could only walk around Central Park so many times. And it wasn’t for lack of trying; you knew for a fact that Anthony had spent hours on plane rides trying to figure out what was open, flipping in between Google and the weather app. He was making an effort, though, and that’s what mattered. 

Which is why you weren’t particularly surprised when he showed up at your apartment door on Christmas Eve, twelve hours after he asked you if you had plans that night. You didn’t and it wasn’t a game day, so he told you to dress warm and be ready by 8. You were waiting by the door five minutes early. He greeted you with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, closing the door behind you. “Did you already eat? I know it’s pretty late already but I think I saw a few food trucks by where we’re going if you’re still hungry.”

You nodded your head. “Anthony. It’s 8 at night. ‘Course I’ve already eaten.”

He ducked his head in embarrassment, the slightest pink appearing on his cheeks. “Should have figured.”

“It’s fine,” you said, slipping your hand into his and smiling. “You going to tell me where we’re going, though?”

“Wouldn’t be a surprise if I did,” he said. 

You should have known by the duffel bag in the backseat what his plans were, but some thirty minutes later and he was pulling into a parking lot off of West 49th, shouldering the bag and looking over to you with a grin. “What’s a Christmas in New York without ice skating at Rockefeller Center?” 

You rolled your eyes, trying desperately to keep in a laugh. “You don’t think it’s a bit unfair? You’re paid buckets of money to balance on knife shoes and the last time I went ice skating was,” you tried to remember, “two years ago? Three?” 

Tito shrugged, taking your hand as you walked out the door of the parking lot. “What’s life without a little risk?” Whether the Harry Potter quote was intentional or not, you weren’t sure. 

“Fair,” you conceded. “You’ll have to look out for me, though.” He promised he would, handing his card over to the cashier, who in turn passed you your skates. Anthony led you over to a bench, grabbing a bag of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor before sitting down. You ate a few before tying your skates, swinging one up on his thigh for inspection. “Do these past muster, inspector?”

Anthony took one look at them before undoing your knot, adjusting your foot in his lap while rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “You didn’t tie them tight enough, you could break an ankle in these, babe, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?” You shook your head; he pulled you up to a standing position, leading you over to the gate to get onto the ice. “Don’t feel bad if you’ve got to hang onto the side for a little bit, it doesn’t look like the zamboni’s been over it in awhile so the ice is probably pretty chippy.”

Now it was your turn to roll your eyes. “I’m not completely hopeless, Anthony. I’m no professional,” you half-slipped while taking your first step onto the ice, clinging to the railing, “clearly, but I’m an adult and I can handle myself.” 

He held his hands up in surrender, gliding backwards on the ice before stopping. “I know you can.” The two of you skated for about an hour before taking a break, sipping cups of piping hot apple cider while sitting on a bench off to the side of the rink. “There’s always that one person who feels the need to go in the center and show off, huh?” Tito mused, glancing towards center ice, where a woman was indeed in the middle of a spin so quick and intricate you had no clue how she didn’t throw up from the sheer centrifugal force of it all. 

“Says the professional hockey player,” you quipped. 

“I’d go insane if I tried to do anything like that,” Anthony responded, drinking the last of his cider before dropping the cup into the recycling bin. “Just about the only thing hockey players and figure skaters have in common is our ability to skate in a straight line.”

You laughed, squeezing his arm. “Have a little more faith in yourself than that, Anthony.” 

“Mhm,” he said, noncommittally like he didn’t quite believe you. “You ready to get going, or do you think you’ve got more in you?” 

You looked down at your watch; it was 9:30; the rink didn’t close for another hour and plenty of people were still milling about. “I think I’ve got a little gas left in the tank.” 

Sounds good,” he said, taking your hand and doing an extremely admirable job of not laughing at your attempts to hobble over to the ice on your skates. “One of these days I’m going to get you to go backwards,” he said as he stepped on, gliding back easily before coming to a quick stop. 

“I’ve just stopped having to hold onto your hands like a five-year-old, Beau,” you said, rolling your eyes as you took a moment to find your balance on the slippery ice. In your defense, he had been right about the lack of resurfacing on the ice; the skate attendant said the zamboni only came around once a day, shortly before opening, and the lack of smooth ice couldn’t have done you any favors. But you were determined to prove yourself, to show him and everyone else in Rockefeller Center that you were a fully grown and capable adult who could skate for a few feet without needing assistance. Which you did, for approximately two minutes, trailing ten or fifteen feet behind Anthony as he skated backwards, executing poorly-attempted jumps and spins for no reason other than your amusement. You were doing fine, until the toe pick of your skate caught in a chip in the ice and you tumbled down, down to the ice before Anthony could skate over and catch you,. Down, trying to break your fall with your hands. Pain radiated up your left wrist, the cold of the ice already beginning to melt into your jeans. 

“Oh my God,” Anthony said, kneeling in front of you as several passers-by looked over in concern. “You okay? That looked like a pretty bad fall.” 

You nodded, trying to push yourself up to a standing position, but the second you put pressure on your hand, you let out a sharp shriek. “Fuck,” you said, moving to rub your wrist. Not a good idea; the pain only got worse when you touched it. 

His brow only furrowed more. “If you put your wrist out to break the fall, you could have broken it or something. We should go to the hospital.”

You shook your head. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Tito,” you said as the two of you skated off the ice, your wrist hanging limply by your side as you bent down to try and untie the skate laces. He looked up at your face, seeing you biting your lip with tears pricking at the corner of your eyes as you tried to pull them. 

“Hurts to pull?” You knew it was no use trying to lie to him, so you nodded. He pushed the sleeve of your jacket up as gently as he could after untying your skates, handling your hand and wrist with as little pressure as he could. “Not exactly how I thought I’d be kneeling in front of you,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. You knew he had only said it to distract you, try to get your mind off of the inordinate amounts of pain you were in, but the words still made your heart skip a beat. His fingers moved feather-light over your skin, keeping an eye on your facial expressions as he felt. “Hurts to close your hand?” You tried; you nodded. “Hurts to turn your wrist?” A second nod. “Has it gotten worse or better since you fell?”

“Worse,” you managed to squeak out. 

He bit his tongue in concentration. “Shit. Yeah, we should go to the hospital.” You knew it was no use to argue, even as you weakly kept telling him it was probably just a sprain that would heal on its own as he herded you into the car, looking up the waiting times of Manhattan emergency rooms. “The ER wait at Lenox Hill is twenty minutes, it’s like two miles away,” he said, puting the car into reverse and backing out of the parking lot. Of course, two miles in New York City on Christmas Eve really meant fifteen minutes, and by the time he parked at the hospital and you were walking into the ER, it was just past 11. And of course, an ER wait time of “twenty minutes” the day before Christmas meant that, as a relatively low-priority case, you weren’t seen for well over forty. “I feel terrible about this,” Anthony said, slumping back in the chair to the side as you sat on the exam table. 

“Not your fault,” you said emphatically. “Could have happened to anyone. Literally anyone, Tito,” you looked over at him; he still looked guilty. “It could have just as easily been you, if you’d hit the chip at the wrong angle or there was some kind of slippery patch you weren’t expecting. And,” you added as he opened his mouth, “you were too far away to catch me.” Your expression softened. “I know you would have if you could have, but I’m sure it’s not hurt too bad and I don’t want you to keep beating yourself up over it. I’ll be okay.” 

The nurse practitioner chose that moment to poke her head through the curtain, calling your name. You nodded. She flipped open your chart. “I’m Emily, I’ll be taking care of you tonight. It says here you’ve got a wrist injury?” You nodded, explaining what had happened. She pulled a pair of gloves on, fingers moving over your wrist. “With what I’m seeing and how you’re rating your pain, I think we’re probably looking at a bad sprain or a break, but we’ll have to get an X-ray to confirm.” Fifteen minutes later, you were in and out of the radiology suite, and Emily was looking at the images on a tablet. She leaned over the table, pointing to the images on the screen. “Okay, so what you’ve got is called a Colles’ fracture, it’s a break in the radius and they’re actually super common, by far the most common type of wrist break we see. Yours isn’t too bad, so I’d say it can come off in six weeks or so.” She left for a minute to get the casting supplies. Ten minutes later, your entire lower arm was covered in cotton and fiberglass wrap tape. You wiggled your fingers towards your boyfriend. “I think purple’s really my color, don’t you?” you said, nodding towards your cast. 

You saw him crack a smile, his first since the accident. “It’s beautiful, babe.” Fifteen minutes and more than your fair share of paperwork later, you had handed over your insurance information and gotten the okay to leave, with strict instructions to keep the cast dry and call if you had any problems. 

“I think this definitely wins as the most interesting date I’ve ever been on,” you said as the two of you crossed the parking lot. 

“I’ll have you agree with you on that one,” Anthony replied. “I’m glad it wasn’t anything more serious, though. I would have felt even worse.”

You nodded. “You and me both.” Anthony looked down at his watch as he held your good hand, smiling when he saw the time. “What is it?” you asked curiously. 

“Guess there was too much going on in there to keep track of time. It’s 1:37 AM.” 

The painkillers they had given you had kept the pain in your wrist to a dull ache, but all was forgotten as you realized what it meant, what it being past midnight meant, and you couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across your face. “It’s Christmas?” you said, almost like a question. Nothing could extinguish your love for the holiday: not the freezing cold air nipping at your nose or the apple cider that was so hot it burnt your tongue or the fact that you went out for a night with your boyfriend and came back with a broken wrist. You had him, and that was enough. 

Tito laughed, leaning down to press a soft kiss against your lips as he unlocked the car. “Merry Christmas, baby.”

#hockey imagines #anthony beauvillier #nhl imagine #hockey writing #hockey imagine #hockey #nhl imagines #nhl writing #nhl #anthony beauvillier the business major

[theoppositequeens]

we wear red (so they don’t see us bleed)

For @kanejweek Day 6: Duplicity (fake relationships, fool's gold)

Read it on Ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32048467

Pairing: Kaz/Inej

Rating: M (some mentions of past rape/non-con)

Title from Valerie Broussard's "Trouble"

we wear red (so they don’t see us bleed)

They stroll into the concert house in Belendt like they own it.

Him, in a perfectly fitting dark tuxedo, looking young and handsome and clever, white gloves covering his hands. Her, in a stunning form-fitting red dress, the hem sweeping by her black heels as she balances on them perfectly, her posture to die for.

They produce tickets – stolen of course – and are waved through into the event of the season, her arm carefully tucked into his elbow for support as they ascend the stairs. His walking stick only completes the image, and she wraps her black sash tighter around her shoulders. The air is undeniably chilly with the first autumn winds, and he smiles crookedly down at her when she takes his arm again.

Such a beautiful couple, a lady murmurs to her companion. Look how considerate he is of her.

Yes, her friend in an ugly green dress agrees. I wonder if they are married, or only courting? He is easy on the eyes...

Her companion elbows her sharply, cutting off a dreamy sigh as their fat and wealthy husbands draw closer again.

I wonder who he is? a merchant asks his business partner quietly. He looks wealthy. New money?

The business partner inspects the young couple carefully. They do radiate wealth and money – the perfectly tailored clothes, the casually expensive ear-rings dangling from her earlobes, the way they walk. Confidently, like everyone here is beneath them.

As he watches, the young man leans closer, whispers in his lady's ear, and she nods her head lightly. The swing of her dress does not reveal the myriad of weapons concealed on her person. To any unsuspecting viewer, they do not seem to wear less articles of clothing than weapons on their person.

The young couple continues up to their box – an exclusive one – and a young lady sighs in envy as the man bows to the lady, gesturing for her to enter first, holding the door and then her hand to help her step delicately over the threshold.

Inej Ghafa smiles wickedly up at Kaz Brekker in the relative privacy of the box.

"Think they bought it, so far?"

"You should have a career in acting, Inej, treasure of my heart," Kaz answers drily, but Inej can see the approval in his eyes. Yes, the crowd bought it.

They settle into their seats, Kaz again holding out his hand and Inej hovering hers on top, not quite touching his white glove, to give the appearance of him helping her sit down. She knows he doesn't like to be touched, but a certain amount is needed for this cover. She saw the sweat beading on his neck when she had her arm in the crook of his elbow, and she knows this is not easy for him. Guilt floods her, as she recalls the lovely feeling of him so close, almost pressed into her side, warm body next to hers. How he felt safe, sturdy, his usual cologne a reassurance that this was Kaz, that she was hanging on his arm of her own free will.

She feels bad that it was certainly not a pleasant experience for him. She doesn't understand what his problem with touch is, but she has been with him long enough to know that he has one. Sometimes, she wishes to know if he lets her touch him more than others, if she is the only one who sees his bare hands – and chest – sometimes. If she is special.

Then she shakes the thought away, crushes those feelings for the unfeeling Bastard of the Barrel. Kaz will never want her, and Kaz will never be what she needs, no matter how her subconscious makes her dream of him at night.

Instead, she will enjoy the now, the touches and nearness brought on by this job.

"Part two," Kaz says, and they scoot closer as the lights dim, twisting near to each other and their faces are so close, Inej can feel his warm breath on her skin. She hopes hers doesn't smell. In the dim light, to any onlooker, they might be kissing. Instead, Kaz is barely even touching her over the dress on her hips, his eyes closed and his forehead tense. Inej wishes touching her wasn't so repulsive, such a chore for him. He might be the only man she would trust enough to actually allow him to.

Then the box goes relatively dark, the lights focusing on the orchestra, and they right themselves to listen to the music. It is a beautiful piece they start with, lilting and longing and soft, and Inej wishes she was here to enjoy the music with the man beside her. She isn't, this is a job, but she can pretend for a few minutes, Kaz's sharp features in profile from the corner of her eye.

During the intermission they play the charming couple again, mingling.

We're from Ketterdam, yes. We have an accent? Oh, how charming, did you hear that, darling? He thinks we have an accent.

– just came into some holdings near to Belendt, inherited, you see, but my main business is in Ketterdam. We might use the manor here as a vacation house, right, my treasure? Oh, I'm in jurda trade, very profitable nowadays...

Kaz's hand is resting very lightly on her back the whole time, and he throws around those charming fake smiles at both her and the people they talk to. Inej can see the toll it is taking on him though, and he slumps into his seat when they return to their box. She lets him breathe, gather himself, and when the orchestra has begun again, they slip out of their box like giggling teenagers planning to get away with something.

They are planning to get away with stealing, but the crowds don't need to know that. All they will remember is a charming young couple, clearly in love. Not potential suspects.

They continue up the stairs, to the closed museum on the top floor, circling the whole concert house. It houses a lot of antique music instruments, as well as some contemporary expensive ones that the music school in Belendt stores here. That is what they are after: an expensive violin that a client has requested. It's worth thousands of kruge, and as they stumble through a maintenance door – unlocked, as the janitors here tend to cut corners, like they suspected even if Kaz has his picks packed – Inej rights herself and begins stripping off her dress. Kaz averts his eyes respectfully, even though he knows she is wearing skintight black clothing underneath. Instead, he unbuttons his own tuxedo and shirt, unwrapping the thin coiled climbing rope from around his torso, handing it with its hooks to Inej. The guns strapped to his chest gleam in the low light.

She passes him the dress and he swings it over his shoulder, following her through the dark museum to the right display. The locks are within Kaz's skillset, but first he unlocks the window with quick movements. Their first plan was for Inej to simply climb up the outside, but the locks on the windows are too difficult for her to crack. Entering as a janitor or staff member is practically impossible, they all know each other and have been working here for years, and university is not yet in session for music students to come here to admire the instruments. Instead, Inej will now climb down to deliver their cargo to their carriage, and climb back up while Kaz stands guard.

Inej watches as those white-clad fingers twist the lock-picks into the display's huge lock, and it clicks within seconds.

"Looks like they are compensating for something," Kaz says triumphantly, holding up the big but utterly simple lock as he opens the display and picks out the right violin. It has it's protective case beside it, and Kaz gently moves the instrument into it. Inej hopes the purple velvet will protect their cargo on her way down, and quickly fashions a sling from her black evening sash. They strap the violin to her back and she secures her ropes, disappearing down the building and into the night.

The quick trip down proves easy, and she hides their treasure in the carriage. Climbing back up is more challenging, the facade is relatively smooth, and Inej scratches her calf on a drainpipe, right beside the sheath of her tightly strapped knife. She swears quietly, and hoists herself through the window as Kaz begins to loosen the rope. They throw it in a half-full waste bin, and Inej pulls her dress back on, wrapping her sash about her. Kaz has already buttoned back up, and they exit the same maintenance door.

There are footsteps coming up the stairs.

For a second, Kaz looks panicked – the guard is early on his circuit – but his face smooths into a scheming face relatively quickly. Inej doesn't care to wait, he will not come up with a better plan in time, and so she acts.

Inej knows this, knows how to pretend. How to quickly bite her lips to make them seem kiss-swollen, how to guide Kaz's hand up into her hopelessly wind-ruffled hair, to make this seem like something else. She tugs him closer, sharply, wraps a slender leg up on his hip, barely touching, and leans her head back onto the wall, releasing a breathy fake moan into the air. She knows this kind of pretending too well, and as Kaz apologizes profoundly to the guard - so distracted by my beautiful lady here, needed some privacy, you understand, nervous and embarrassed laugh – she feels herself retreating. Kaz's body is still close, but now it feels more like a threat than safety. A thousand fake moans ring through her head, the way they covered up her noises of pain. It was fake it or cry, and crying led to worse things. Inej has lost sense of the conversation and the world around her completely.

The guard leaves, and Kaz turns to her, sees the way her eyes are glassy, the way her body is tense and he doesn't touch. Instead, he calls her name lowly, a dozen times before it registers. The men never called her Inej. She was always lynx or whore or little Suli girl.

She blinks, regains control of her body and follows him down the stairs to their box. He doesn't ask her if she is alright, only keeps a respectful distance as they sit down and Inej fixes her hair.

They listen to the last of the performance in silence, as Inej desperately tries to calm her racing heart. She is safe. This is Kaz after all. He does not want her like that.

When it is time to leave, Kaz offers his arm warily. As Inej makes to grab it, resolutely, he says,

"Can you do this?"

There is no bite to his words, only a neutral question, and when Inej answers, "Yes," she is so thankful he doesn't question her. She does not truly know if she will make it out the door without a panic attack.

They exit the box, strut down the stairs arm in arm, and Inej is pleased the long dress covers the blood running down her shin. Kaz nods at a few of the wealthier merchants and helps Inej into her coat by the wardrobe. The tap of his cane on the marble floor leads the way out of the concert house.

The young beautiful couple is never seen in Belendt again.

#kanej week 2021 #kanej week #kanejweek2021 #kanej #Kaz Brekker #inej ghafa #kaz x inej #fake relationship #pre-canon #pre six of crows #six of crows duology

[lovelivingmydreams]

A story by heroes and Villains

Season 2: Secrets revealed Logan Anker: Old wounds and worries

Master list book 1

The wounds of the past can hurt. Not just you but your surroundings. No wonder we keep those secret to protect them... or is it ourselves we are protecting mort that way?

Waiting until the end of patrol was torture.

Logan didn’t like talking about the past. At all. He had trouble talking about Hannah and Caleb in any capacity to Virgil, or Patton, or Thomas or even Picani. And the Collector… Logan wanted to forget about him. But he couldn’t. If he was honest, that man showed up in his nightmares to this day. And he likely would keep showing up until he was behind bars. Patton and Thomas did their best to comfort him. A gesture he appreciated even though it wasn’t very effective. Finally Prince arrived. The young hero took in the atmosphere in the room and was clearly annoyed. “Listen, I promise I was safe. But I could’ve been in the middle of talking someone out of making a bad decision at the time. You can’t just shout in my ear out of nowhere. That was dangerous and frankly, I expect you to be more levelheaded BS. Anny other night and Logan would have insisted Prince gave him a detailed debrief on what exactly was so important that he couldn’t even let them know he was okay. But today… “That isn’t what this is about Prince. Take a seat,” Thomas instructed. Giving Logan a moment more to collect his thoughts. “Ok…” Prince said as he sat down, Looking around confused. Logan took a last moment to calm himself before he started his story with an apology. “Prince. I must offer you my sincere apologies. I didn’t want to tell you this right away, and maybe I should have.” Had his decision really been about allowing Prince to live his dream before burdening him? Was withholding the truth for Prince’s benefit? Or his own? “You shouldn’t have gone out without knowing the risks… We talked a little about nemeses during your training.” Prince nodded. Clearly still confused. “Yeah, but I doubt I’ve done anything that warrants one yet. Those come later in a career unless…” Prince paused, frowning. “But you were a villain. Any nemeses you had would be heroes… Right?” Prince was a good student indeed. He’d realized that Logan was telling him he was about to inherit his mentor’s past. And he had a good point. A nemeses of Logan would be on the side of the heroes. “Technically, the collector isn’t my nemesis. At least not in the traditional sense,” he agreed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Ever since he stopped using his powers, high stress situations got him small headaches that got worse over time. “I’ll start from the beginning,” he said, thinking back to a time he’d erase from his life all together if he could. “I became a villain because I needed the money and fast. Plain and simple. Any legal means were insufficient, so I made a name for myself and eventually, when I said ‘give me 10.000 dollars or I destroy this building,’ people handed me the money because they knew I very easily could make good on my threats. I always picked an amount they could easily provide without harming the business or individual too much financially. One day I found myself running from the police force. I had misjudged the time it would take them to arrive,” he had gotten arrogant with success. “And I got helped by a stranger in a haphazardly put together disguise. When we lost them and caught our breath, he introduced himself as ‘the collector’. I fairly quickly understood him to be a fanboy of sorts. He was a big fan of my ‘work’, though he misunderstood the intention entirely. Not that I could get him to understand that.” Everything he said that didn’t fit Collector’s narrative was ignored or dismissed. “He thought I was taking the money as proof that I was superior or something like that. I didn’t listen too closely to his speech at the time. I was concerned with getting away. He said he wanted to help me. Gifted were still considered fairly new. Nowadays most people alive have lived most of their lives in a world with gifted.” The first super powered individuals had appeared around the time Logan was born. “But back then, most of the population still saw it as strange and there weren’t any real initiatives to help train the powers. So the gifted that were around often were untrained and had their powers act up without warning. Which could be quite destructive.” Logan recalled the park bench and every instance of loss of control after that, all the way up to a wine glass in a restaurant less than a year ago. He looked at his pupil to make sure he hadn’t lost his attention. The wide, attentive, green eyes and firm nod told him he still had an audience. “Anyway, the collector thought that people should respect and celebrate our existence. He compared the stigmas we faced to those of people of color, or the LGBTQ+ community, then still called the Gay or Queer community. He said it very nicely, it almost sounded reasonable, if you ignored the slight notes of supremacy. And if I had been trying to ‘stick it to the man’ as they say, I might have been tempted. But I just wanted…” to pay form my sisters treatment and my research for a cure. “I was selfish in my actions and therefore not interested in his big revolution, which turned out to be a good thing in some ways.” He didn’t want to even imagine the kind of person he’d be then. He wouldn’t have Patton that was for sure. And Virgil… No. He was glad Virgil was kept away from that madness. And he intended to keep it that way. “I told him I wasn’t interested in leading any resistance, thanked him for the assistance and left. Shortly after this, I encountered Manifestor for the first time. He blessed one of the people in the building with super speed.” Said gifted was now one of the heroes patrolling the city. He was actually one of the heroes who’s territory Prince shared. Thomas hadn’t gotten the hang of permanent and temporary power boosts yet at the time. It was always a game of chance. Thomas chuckled. “I remember. I was so pleased that it worked.” Pleased was one word for it. “You were insufferably delighted, even though I defeated your champion.” While he and StarBucker were amicable nowadays, at the time, Logan had been thoroughly annoyed at the inconvenience. But thinking back to Thomas’ triumphant smile he could not quite help his own amusement. “You did retreat though,” Thomas pointed out. “I stalled you long enough to make you give up that mark and head out. So it was a win for me.” Logan let out a sigh, he couldn’t argue with that, but they were getting of topic. “I saw the Collector a few more times after that, though I managed to avoid conversation. One day, during a stalemate with Manifestor, he asked me about him. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d been approached about his plans. He had actually advanced them. He was now not only collecting gifted, but also individuals worthy of a gift. Be it they joined him out of free will, or got persuaded through different means.” Blackmail, intimidation, manipulation. Those were the collector’s tools. “And he wanted me to ‘grant them that blessing’,” Thomas added uneasy. Logan patted his old friend on the back in support. A conversation with the collector had never been a fun experience for either of them. “Manifestor had enlisted the help of others to free some of his victims,” Logan continued. “The Collector claimed I was championing his cause. I assured Manifestor that I had no intention of assisting in his plans. That is about the time Manifestor started winning me over to redemption.” He thought back to those times with a bittersweet feeling. He’d been so excited by the idea. A nice place for him and Hannah to live. A good job that would let him take care of her and have her be proud of him. Things hadn’t gone quite how he’d wanted, but at the same time, one thing had gone better than he could ever have imagined. “Next time I spotted Collector, I told him in the plainest possible terms that I was not interested…” It should have been a firm ending to this story. Or so he had thought. That was naïve of him, he now knew that. Obsession and fanaticism don’t disappear just because one piece of that craziness did not cooperate. He’d been arrogant once again. Thinking too highly of himself. It took him a moment to continue. “He assured me I would be…” He suppressed a shiver as he recalled the polite, almost pleasant way he’d spoken. Sort of soothing. As if Logan had merely been a child afraid to go in the swimming pool and Collector was indulging him for the moment. “I haven’t seen him since, but that promise… I don’t know what exactly he has been up to in the past 14 years. But one can only imagine how someone like that matures... Or what he has planned for me when he finds me.” Or much more importantly, his loved ones. Thomas, Patton, Virgil, the Bullards who despite the current situation were still family to him, and Prince too if he was completely honest. There was no telling what Logan would do if any of them… Not now. “Prince, the collector will not consider you his enemy. But he is yours. Anyone who meets his criteria of ‘worthy’, is at risk. And he does not take no for an answer.” The words had barely settled in the room or Prince shot up panicked. “Phantom!” he exclaimed. “Phantom might be in danger! What if someone on the chief’s team passes on information to Him? Or what if he has connections to these crime organizations!? I’ve got to go out now and find him…” Prince was clearly about to head out again right away. Admirable, but not very prudent given the circumstances. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow you can try again. Even if you find him, you are not in the right state of mind to deliver this kind of news delicately.” Prince paused, clearly contemplating his words. Seeing, or feeling, an opening, Patton added his two cents. “You’ve done great today sport! You just go home and sleep on what you’ve learned. Tomorrow night there is another patrol and you might run into him then.” And to make the set complete, Thomas finished: “I’m glad you are so eager to meet this young hero Prince. Just know that there is no pressure. They’ve been evading unwanted contact for almost a year now. It is okay if you don’t find them right away. And we’ll give you the support you need.” Prince clearly did not like it but he conceded. “Can I ask a favor though? Can I bring him some of that dye and a modulator? I doubt he’ll have a very sophisticated disguise if he’s on his own. It could be a sign of comradery?” he explained awkwardly. Logan nodded. It made sense, and it wouldn’t take him long. He led Prince through a few doors to his lab. Once he got to his desk he put his family picture down. It was a digital picture frame that played an album of family pictures once the camera registered his face in front of the desk. Even if Prince didn’t look at it on purpose he might catch a glance of Virgil, Patton or him in passing. And Prince was a curious person. His territory included Logan’s new neighborhood, he might see Virgil on one of his runs while he was on patrol. Or see any of them in passing. For Prince’s safety and that of Logan’s family, he wouldn’t take risks. He handed Prince a black hairdye stick. Fitting for a gifted who relied on stealth. He picked up a dark purple modulator, the darkest color he had and plugged it in to program it. Prince clearly had an idea of how Phantom’s voice should sound. “Could you make it so it’s like, deepened by an octave and doubled? With an echo effect?” Logan nodded. It fit the moniker Phantom was given, that was for certain. “Thank you. This should help a lot,” Prince grinned as he took the modulator. “I shall be heading home now,” he bid before leaving the lab, followed by Logan who watched him get in the elevator to leave the facility. Logan let out a relieved sigh. “Come on. Let’s go home and see Virgil,” Patton said gently, knowing what Logan needed right now. Logan smiled gratefully and as they headed up, he handed Patton the keys. He didn’t feel clear of mind enough to handle driving tonight. He let Virgil know they were on their way so he would know to expect them. Otherwise he might think they were burglars.

When they got home they found Virgil on the couch with his headphones on. He looked up and smiled as he spotted them. “Welcome back. I gotta ask though. Who’s your fourth guy?” he asked playfully. Logan blinked confused. “What do you mean?” “For your poker nights,” Virgil joked. Patton giggled at Logan’s side, taking the lead. “No cardgames I’m afraid kiddo. We’ll tell you about the project once it’s finished. It’s all confidential for now I’m afraid,” he said. Virgil cocked his head and studied Patton for a moment, then he shrugged. “Okay, Keep your secrets,” he sighed as he stretched and got up. “Night Pat, night Lo,” he said casually as he headed to the door. Logan cringed a little at that. Lately his son, on occasion, used his surname. He was assured by Picani that this was in no way a reflection of Virgil’s affection for Logan as a father. He had no less than 3 fathers now. Him, Patton and an unknown biological father. To differentiate between the three he likely used surnames in his head. Which may slip out verbally on occasion. Even knowing that, it stung a little. “Goodnight Virgil, I love you,” Logan replied, trying not to show his inner discourse. Virgil paused in the door and looked back with a smile. “Love you to dad.” And just like that the tightening in his chest loosened. “Love you three kiddo!” Patton added. “Love ya Pat,” Virgil snickered before disappearing to his room. Logan kept staring at the door for a moment. Patton hugged him from the side. “What do you say I make us a nightcap before bed?” he suggested. Logan nodded. “That would be pleasant,” he told him.

The next morning, Logan woke up to hearing Virgil move about and singing to himself downstairs. That boy never sleeps in. He let out a yawn and stretched, feeling Patton curl into his chest. “Do you regret moving in with us yet?” he teased. “Never,” Patton muttered sleepily. “I smell bacon,” he hummed. “First awake makes breakfast in the weekend. It’s a tradition we have. He was ten the first time I found him trying to fix me breakfast in bed,” Logan recalled fondly. “He made a mess, but it was really sweet. He was following all my rules. He didn’t touch the knives or the stove without me there, which of course limited his options. I helped him make breakfast the that day. After that I made sure to lay some things ready for him on Friday and Saturday nights in case he tried again. Which he did.” “That is adorable,” Patton squealed with a kiss to Logan’s cheek. “Let’s see what our son has in store for us today,” Logan suggested as he got up. He waked to the closet to select some clothes for the day. He felt Patton’s eyes on his back and turned around. “Everything alright Patton?” Patton bit his lip. “It’s just… Our son. I really like the sound of that,” he explained. Logan nodded. “I do too.” Patton bit his lip. “I was thinking of maybe looking into… what it would take for me to adopt him? Make it official?” he suggested. Logan’s heart skipped a beat. Patton had mentioned adopting Virgil in a burst of emotion before. But it seemed like he meant it. He knew that it would mean the world to both him and Virgil to have Patton be an official part of their family. “That would be excellent Patton,” he told him sincerely. Patton’s face lit up at that. “Would you help me figure it out? I want to know what steps I have to take.” Logan walked back to the bed and sat himself next to Patton, taking hold of both his hands. “It would be my greatest pleasure,” he told him gently. Patton’s shoulders relaxed, his gaze still thoughtful, and then he let out a giggle. “May I inquire where your mind has taken you now?” Logan wondered fondly. “It’s just. Look at me being practical. You have rubbed off on me,” he scolded playfully. “Well if it helps, you have changed me too. For the better that is,” Logan assured him with a kiss to his forehead. “Now get downstairs before our breakfast gets cold.”

Breakfast was pleasant. Virgil rolled his eyes and teased them with how ‘cute’ they were being this morning. Logan responded by giving Patton an extra kiss to his cheek. And then Thomas picked Virgil up for their trip to the zoo. Logan and Patton distracted themselves by preparing classes for the next week, answering email and spending some quality time together. Logan had told Thomas that he could tell Virgil about his teenage years. If the topic of parents and siblings came up, he could mention what he knew. Logan knew that he was risking moving up his time table. But part of him hoped he’d be forced to tell Virgil everything tonight. He should have told him long ago. But he kept finding excuses to postpone. He had still not decided whether he’d talk about BrainStorm or not. “I’m home!” Virgil called all of a sudden. Logan glanced up from his book. Time had flown by. Patton was almost done with diner after which they had to leave for Prince’s next patrol. Logan was torn on that subject too. On one hand he knew the young hero wouldn’t need constant supervision for much longer. But on the other, he’d worry about Prince the whole evening if he didn’t personally keep an eye on him. “Dad!” Virgil grinned brightly as he gave him a hug. Effectively ending his inner turmoil. “Virgil? Not that I do not appreciate you seem excited to see me. But is there a particular reason?” he wondered. Virgil let go and stepped back. Logan absentmindedly took note of the fact that the height difference between them was almost gone. Would he outgrow him? Caleb had been a little taller than him. “Uncle Thomas told me about your teen years. I didn’t know you were on the debate team!” he grinned excitedly. Logan was a little flattered that this little bit of information seemed to mean so much to his son. “Well, yes. It was a bit of a hobby of mine, as well as an attempt to get better at socializing,” he confessed. Virgil’s eyes sparked at that. “You were a socially awkward nerd,” he chuckled. Logan frowned at that. “Hey, that’s a complement. I’m a socially awkward artsy kid. Sounds like I’m your son after all,” he chuckled happily. “Speaking off. Uncle Thomas told me you wrote poetry back in the day.” “Really?” Patton exclaimed from the kitchen. Logan was flushing bright red. “I… Experimenting with different forms of self-expression is a natural part of discovering one’s identity as a teenager. It was a phase. I would like to forget about it,” he said stiffly. “Aw, but poetry is so romantic,” Patton pouted. Logan made a mental note of that. Just because he didn’t write anymore didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy reading it from time to time. There was something soothing in the format and he knew of a few poems Patton may enjoy. As far as Virgil was concerned though, poetry was firmly in his past. “That’s too bad. I thought I could maybe make a project around your old work for art class,” Virgil said disappointedly. Oh, that was not fair. “I’ll see if I still have one of my old notebooks,” he allowed. “Just ask my consent before you pick one.” And before he knew it he was once again hugged tightly by his son. “Thanks dad. You won’t regret it. I promise.” Virgil’s excitement was worth any embarrassment that his pubescent ramblings may cause. During dinner Virgil told them about the trip to the zoo and the many sketches he’d made. He also informed them that his session with Picani had gone well. After dinner Virgil bid both of them goodnight in case he’d be asleep when they got back from the university. Patton was smiling the whole way there. “What is on your mind?” Logan wondered. “Did you ever write something for a crush?” Patton asked giddily. He had sort of expected this. “I… Didn’t really have a romantic interest in high school. Thomas was the only person my age I got close to. I was… Well you know what I was going through back then. Between my mother and school… All I had on romance was rather resentful or, once Hannah introduced Caleb to me, from the eye of an observer. Perhaps I can find one of the latter. It might be nice for Virgil to use something inspired by his parents as a base for whatever project he is working on,” he mused. “That sounds like a lovely idea,” Patton agreed.

Half an hour later, Logan was pacing the floor. Prince should’ve called in ten minutes ago. He might just be late, but… Then a beep announced that Prince’s communicator went active. Logan rushed to the comstation. “DreamPrince you are late. What is yours status?” Had he ran into trouble? Was he hiding? Or had he simply forgotten about his com until now? “I am currently debriefing Phantom. I’ll let you know when I’m done here. Tell chief I’ll stop by with a package,” he informed them swiftly. “Radio silence until further notice.” And just like that, the line went silent once again. “He has him…” Logan muttered. Almost in disbelieve. “Oh thank goodness,” Thomas breathed in relief. They’d all be worried about the child out on their own. But it seemed like they were quite a few steps ahead of Collector. An advantage they sorely needed.

Hero au

@cirishere​ @hestianerd1​ @moonlightshow00​ @naturallyunstablegamer​ @alias290​ @meowthefluffy​ @frida0043​ @angelic-cali​ @selenechris​ @theblackveilinreverse​

#sanders sides #ts sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #heroau

[extremelyblackandwhite]

i wanna know what love is - 22

Pairing: rockstar! sebastian stan x writer!reader

Warnings: sexual themes

A/N: happy easter and happy passover. to celebrate i’m posting two chapters today. let me know what you think lovelies . enjoy xx 💕💕

Last Chapter // Next Chapter

    - I know you and my brother were smoking outside. - Y/N said as he closed the door to their room. He froze in place, would she be mad at him? In his defence, he would’ve done everything to leave that situation which was even worse when they got back. Y/N’s mother managed to diffuse it out for his luck, but he was 100% sure her grandfather did not like him. 

   - Bunny, I can explain. - he was ready to weave an apology, but instead of seeing a very mad Y/N, she just placed her hands on his shoulders, head slightly tilted to the side. - Are you not mad?

   - No, I think it was best for you. 

   - I don’t think your grandfather enjoys my presence. - he grabbed her hands in his, caressing her palm with his thumb. 

   - My grandfather doesn’t like anyone. Why do you think I don’t come here a lot? - she got out of her shoes, leading him to her very small bed. Sebastian was not very upset by the size of the bed, the smaller the bed, the more cuddles he could get and he always adored cuddling, specially if he got to sleep with her in his arms. - I’m sorry about him. He can be a very traditional man. Everyone in his family has gone to really good universities. 

   - I can see. - he remembered seeing memorabilia from various ivy leagues from Brown to Darmouth. - If you don’t mind me asking, how come your family is this wealthy? I thought your great grandfather wrote for the New Yorker?

   - My great grandfather married a girl from the Dumas’ family. She had made quite a fortune by herself and then inherited half her parents’ state which was an obnoxious amount of money and property. Since she married into my family, our last name prevailed and we climbed up to America’s elite. - she had little memories of her great grandfather but he’d always tell her and Theo when they were younger about how much he loved his wife despite it all, so Y/N knew the whole story by heart. - Then my grandfather started a printing company which is doing pretty well by itself. And I’m not wealthy, my parents are. 

   - Aren’t the Dumas’ family related to Hermes? - Y/N nodded. - Are you an Hermes’ heir?

   - If everyone dies including the present Dumas’ family and then all my relatives, yes. - she laughed.

They ended up spending the whole night talk and eventually fell off asleep still on their clothes. Sebastian envied the lifestyle she’d left behind but at the same time had to give her kudos for deciding to accept no money from no one and making something of herself without nepotism. 

They got woken up by a knock on her door. Y/N raised her head and sleepingly walked to the door, opening it slightly and silently to see her mother already dressed and in a very colourful polka dotted apron.

   - It’s cooking time, c’mon Y/N. - she didn’t even gave her time to complain about it, as she dragged her down the stairs and into the kitchen, offering her a cooking apron and telling her to start cutting carrots. - So Sebastian, how serious is it?

   - It’s recent, mum. - she continued to peel and cut some carrots. 

   - I think he’s a very nice young man. - Y/N was not expecting that. Not from her mother who publicly disliked every single person their children had been romantically linked to. - He makes you smile and me and your father had never seen you like that. 

   - Does dad like him too? - her mother nodded and Y/N felt her heart swell up. Her parents did not just like anyone and it was fairly important they liked him, specially when her grandfather disliked him so badly. - So the Vanderbilts are coming for dinner?

   - They’re business partners with your grandfather. It’s not like we can argue with him, you know that. 

Sebastian had drifted off to sleep after she left but woke up with another knock on the door. This house was much too polite for him, specially when he grew up with his mother opening the door wide open at very ... unfortunate times. He deeply missed it, nevertheless. 

He mumbled something and the door opened to see Theseus peaking him. He lifted his arm to show him a pack of cigarettes and Sebastian understood the message, getting up from bed and following him back to Y/N’s balcony. He had to admit, Y/N must had a pretty good view growing up. 

   - I think I’ll just make you some company. - he replied sitting on one of the white wooden chairs. - Tom Vanderbilt is coming today, isn’t he?

   - I wouldn’t worry. He mostly talks to my dad and granddad, he knows Y/N hates his guts. So, you and Y/N, anything serious? 

   - She’s a lovely girl.

   - Not the question. - he stubbed onto his cigarette. - My father is probably gonna ask you that sometime, you should train your answer.

   - She’s the only person who thinks I’m a good person. - he shrugged. - She’s also very feisty. 

They remained there for quite a while and Theo even offered Sebastian some of his suits so he could wear them to lunch, which he gladly took. He didn’t want to offend her grandfather anymore than what his existence had. Sebastian and Theo went down the stairs, one going into the living room while Sebastian went to the kitchen where Y/N was helping her mother ice the champagne. She was wearing a pink dress, a very flowy one that looked like she had been taken off a Disney movie.

   - Nice suit, darling. - her mother said, walking over to him and fixing his shoulders. - Doesn’t Sebastian look nice, honey?

   - Whose suit is that? - she asked and he gave her his typical smirk. - You look very dashing. 

   - Only for you. 

   - You two should go to the living room, great some people. - her mother suggested, sending them on their merry way into the living room which was packed full of people. Y/N was never a fan of big lunches, she always find it upsetting to have to pretend to be happy to see people she didn’t really enjoy. Sadly, since she wasn’t around much she was the talk of the town.

   - Y/N, dear, you must come and see Tom. - her grandfather came into her eyesight. 

   - I’m sure Sebastian would love to meet him too. - he would definitely not, but she knew what he was playing at and if she brought Sebastian, his expectations would be brought down. The old man took the couple by the fireplace where Tom and his father were standing. 

   - Don, you’ve meet my granddaughter before. - he introduced her to Tom’s father. He was a very pudgy man with a love for old scotch. Y/N had met him a few times during her grandfather’s meetings and back when she was dating Tom. 

   - Y/N, you grow more beautiful every time I see you. - he shock her hand, a weird smile on his face. - You sure have been missed at our dinner table.

   - And this is Sebastian Stan, he’s Y/N’s guest. - he introduced Sebastian who shock both men’s hands.

   - Guests don’t kiss, grandpa. He’s my partner. - Sebastian had to hold in a laugh as she said that with the most polite yet sharp tone, making the three men stop drinking to stare at both of them. - I’ve heard you got a spot in my grandfather’s business, Thomas. Congratulations. 

   - Thank you, Y/N. I see you’ve done pretty well by yourself. You’re an intern, aren’t you? - Sebastian disliked him even more due to that comment. 

   - You two must come fishing with us later. - Mr.Vanderbilt added. - It’s always good to have two more in the bunch.

   - I don’t think Sebastian ...

   - We would love to go, Mr. Vanderbilt. - Sebastian interrupted her, putting his arm around her waist. - Wouldn’t we, bunny?

   - Yes. - she had a confused look on her face. They excused themselves from the group and walked over to a quiet location. - What the fuck, Sebastian!

   - What? I love fishing. 

   - For girls maybe, not for actual fish. - she rolled her eyes. - You just doomed us to an afternoon of disappointment.

   - C’mon. - he hugged her, placing a kiss on top of her head. - He was being arrogant. 

   - I don’t need you to defend my honour. 

   - I know you don’t, but I still will.

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan one shot #sebastian stan long shot #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan/reader #bucky fanfic #bucky imagine #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes

[untilmynextstory]

Chapter Six: The Separation of Crows

WORD COUNT - 4K

AUTHOR NOTE: So Alma’s is going to be going through it. So please be patient while she works out all the trauma she has endured. 

FIVE YEARS LATER

For the first time in years, Alma is going to fully acknowledge her ex-husband. Since their divorce things had been rocky between them. They never had fully recovered from the events that took place that led to their divorce. 

They are civil when it comes to anything regarding Nathan. 99.9 % of their conversations revolve around their son. Outside of the first year of the divorce and working out the distance, they had been able to work out a schedule that didn’t hurt Nathan’s relationship with his father. Jax got their son for the summer and every holiday and Nathan stayed with her for the school year. 

Alma can say she is proud that she and Jax have managed to co-parent as well as they have. She had thought it would be harder. She expected so much resistance. Yet, Jax has been over generous through the years and she knows he is overcompensating for the guilt he still feels. 

She feels bad that she and Jax have turned into strangers. 

She knows exactly when it happened. 

Wendy had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. After getting the paternity test, it turned out Jax was not the father. She had been happy for Jax if that made any sense. She knows that he thought it could be the start in mending things. Instead it just brought up old wounds as it didn’t change that he had slept with another woman, one of many, who could've been pregnant with his child. That had thrown Alma down a spiral she had managed to avoid and after that short and clipped phone call. She had a night out in the town where she met Vitaly Petrova. The man that would become her husband. 

She knows the only reason Jax came to the wedding was because of Nathan. He would have his boy for a month while she and Vitaly went on their honeymoon. Since her wedding night, any type of thread they had on a relationship evaporated. Jax created a bigger distance she couldn’t even begin to build a bridge too. She knows she is at fault considering what exactly conspired between the two on her wedding night. 

She knows he is going to have questions. It’s been 2 years since she has been back to Charming. She only made a trip to Opie’s homecoming party. When Nathan comes to stay with his dad, she and Jax always meet halfway. 

She knows Nathan is going to be mad, but she is doing what is best for him. That is her job as her mother. What hurts is having to follow the familiar route to hers and Jax’s first home. Nathan had mentioned in passing that Jax found the second house too big - too empty. The house is for Nathan when he is older and wants to come back to Charming. 

Nothing really has changed except for the vines that are overtaking the exterior. She finds Jax outside restoring a bike. He looks shocked to see her as Nathan isn’t due to visit until June for the summer. It’s May. 

Alma makes note in the changes of her ex-husband though. He had chopped off all his hair. He has a close cropped shave and it seems he has added at least 15 pounds in muscles since the last time she saw him. 

He doesn’t show any reaction to her showing up unannounced. He never shows any reaction towards her anymore. His eyes scan her car before her appearance. She isn’t all dolled up as she usually is. Her now blonde hair is in a sloppy bun and she is wearing a simple red summer dress. 

“Hey, Jax,” she greets. 

He doesn’t say anything as he begins wiping his hands off with a rag. 

“Everything okay with Nathan?” He asks. 

“Yeah. Everything is fine.”

Jax raises his eyebrow. “If it were, you wouldn't be here in Charming unannounced.”

“I wanted to talk about changing Nathan’s visiting schedule.”

Jax nods his head. “You and the Russian going on vacation?” That was another thing. Jax never referred to Vitaly by his name. Just the Russian. She knows Jax hates her husband for many reasons and now she is potentially creating another one. 

“Actually, I was thinking Nathan should start high school in Charming. I want him to come back living here.”

“What?” Her ex-husband replies visibly confused. 

“I think with high school, it may be best for him to be with you. I know the visitation...it’s hard for you.”

Jax sighs. “He wanted to be with you, Al. It’s hard, but it’s not like I don’t see him. We talk almost every day.”

“I just want to do this for you.”

Jax stares at her directly in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Alma hides the panic. She has gotten good at lying in the past three years. She knows she is risking a lot by not hiding her eyes with sunglasses, but it would put Jax on even more of an alert. 

“Everything is okay, Jax.” She assures him. 

Jax doesn’t press. He folds his arms across his chest. “I mean it’s not like I am going to have a problem with my son wanting to live with me.”

Alma smiles and some tension leaves her body. “I already completed the paperwork and I enrolled him at Aquinas Academy.”

“That Catholic school in Stockton? That place is expensive as shit.” Jax exclaims. 

“We always planned to send the kids there Jax. Did you forget I went there? We get a discount.”

A fond smile comes across his face. “Trust me, darlin’, I did not forget you in that skirt they passed as a uniform.” 

Alma rolls her eyes, but she can’t help the smile that comes across her face. It’s nice to be talking to Jax like this without any tension. Although it makes the heartache worse because she misses him. She never stopped despite all the heartache he put her through. She knows that makes her stupid. 

“I already ordered him a couple uniforms too.”

“Jesus, Al, let me pay for something. I know the Russian has money, but Christ, Nathan is my son.” Jax says with more bite than intended. 

“I didn’t use any of his money, Jax. I never do with things for Nathan and I’m sure you know that considering you make it a point to send child support checks I never ask for.” Alma constantly rolls her eyes at the money Jax sends her on a monthly basis. Of course it all goes directly to Nathan, but she knows the excessive amount Jax puts in is for her as well. With the money, she has been teaching Nathan about budgeting and she makes sure he isn’t always buying outlandish things. “Besides, I have my own money.”

Jax lips tug up. “How is your shop? Mom liked the nails you sent in for her to try.”

A bright smile comes over her face any time anyone asks about her nail salon. Two years ago she started Picassos. She started a small online shop for press or glue on nails and after getting the necessary paperwork and certifications, she was able to open her own salon and it has done exceptionally well. In fact, her online store constantly keeps her busy. 

“It’s going so well. I’m thinking of expanding.”

“Yeah. Have any spaces picked out?”

A blush taints her cheeks for some reason. “I’m actually thinking of opening a spot here. I am supposed to meet with Hale about potential spaces especially since Nathan will be here now.”

Jax presses his lips together. She can tell he is thinking hard. He is trying to understand what is going on around him. He closes the distance between them. His hand comes up and grips her chin forcing her to look at him. She hates how a simple touch from him causes goosebumps to erupt across her flesh. 

“I know I was shit husband -”

“You weren’t,” she interrupts foolishly. Sure, at the end he was, but in the beginning, she can’t find herself tainting the image of the man she had hopelessly been in love with.  

A strained smile reaches Jax’s lip. “...still despite what happened between us. You can still come to me if you need my help.”

“Jax, I’m fine. Everything is okay.” She places her hand over his and squeezes it before removing his hand from her face. “I’ll see you next month.”

She doesn’t let Jax get another word back in as she rushes back to her car. 

.

.

.

Alma had to plan it meticulously. Vitaly is always busiest it seems between May and until the end of June. It’s then he makes his visits to other states or countries for things. Then in July, he would spoil her with a trip someplace. She knows this summer will not be an easy one. Most importantly, she feels bad for having to deceive her son. 

She looks at her oldest, as he gets older, she thought he would take after his father more. She had been surprised how much he resembles her physically. From the brown hair and she even finds some of her mannerisms in him. However, his eyes are his father’s eyes. Those blue orbs are a carbon copy of his father’s and he also seems to have inherited his father’s brain when it comes to things that aren’t particularly suited for the interests of 14 year olds. She has gotten too many phone calls about her son setting up candy stores trying to make a buck at school. 

Despite his lukewarm relationship with Vitaly, she knows Nathan does enjoy spending time learning the business side of the wine industry. Nathan has expressed an interest in going to school for business. She had been pleasantly surprised that her son showed an interest in college. She had been convinced her son would move back to Charming at 18 and join the club. Although she might be changing the course of his life by moving him to Charming. 

“What do you mean I’m moving with Dad?” Nathan asks as he packed what he believed to be his summer bag to his father’s. He only brings simple things like a book, movies, and games. Maybe a sweatshirt he is particularly fond of.  Usually the first day he is back in Charming, his dad takes him shopping for new clothes and things he needs if he outgrown some things. It also helped that he didn’t need to lug around a suitcase and deal with unpacking. 

“I enrolled you at Aquinas Academy for high school. So now for holidays you’ll come here. I thought it might be best for you to spend your teenage years with your dad.”

“And I don’t get a say in this?” Nathan asks. 

“If you really hate Charming that much, you can come back here of course. I think it would be best. I mean I got you for all these years. I think you and your dad would love this.”

“Does Vitaly know?”

“It doesn’t matter. When it comes to you, the final decision is between me and your father.” His mother deflects. 

Nathan straightens his back. He doesn’t like that answer. The thing was being young Nathan didn’t see the warning signs, or maybe Vitaly was good at hiding them. He can also say he had come to a point where he hated his father for the pain he inflicted on his mother. Vitaly didn’t seem to be wrong for his mother. He was spoiling his mother with gifts and seemed like he wanted to form a friendship with him. Now, he thinks Vitaly just knew how to prey on his mother. She was emotionally vulnerable and he dove like a crow. 

He thinks it was almost a year into his mother's marriage something felt off between his mom and Vitaly. 

The problem is he never sees anything. Sure, there are some raised voices and he does check his mom over for marks, but there is no evidence. 

There are times when he wants to mention something to his dad. He just is scared of his dad’s reaction and what could happen to his mom. His dad doesn’t like Vitaly as is and he knows his dad might do something reckless. Knows the club could get into trouble if his dad did do something. 

Although his main concern is his mother, he has researched a little on domestic violence and he needs to be sure she is safe. 

“Mom, I can’t leave you alone.” Nathan settles on. 

“I won’t be. I have the salon keeping me busy.” She answers. 

Nathan wants to scream and shout, but he doesn’t. He is a teeanger and he needs to be smart about this. Just maybe his mom does have a plan if she is sending him back to Charming. It doesn’t ease his worries though. 

“You’re gonna come to visit at least on the first day of school?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

.

.

.

Alma didn’t think it would be this hard. It’s always hard when her baby leaves for the summer. She misses him terribly and Nathan’s absence is always felt. Now though she can’t stop crying as she holds him to send him off with his father. 

“Christ, Mom,” Nathan says as she smothers him in kisses as she has to stand on her tippy toes a bit.

She can hear Jax chuckle in the background. 

She pulls back, “I’m just going to miss you so much.”

“I can see that.” 

“Oh stop,” Alma says. 

“I’m just going to be with Dad. It’s not like I’m moving to another country.”

Alma gives her son another hug. “I’ll miss you, baby.”

Nathan’s arms wrap around her tightly and they hold each other. Her baby is growing up. “I’ll miss you too, Mom.”

Alma pulls back and watches as Nathan makes his way to Jax’s truck. Jax is leaning against his grill with a somber expression. He walks over to her, “You sure about this?”

“Yeah. I’ll be in town for a couple weeks in August to see him start school.” She tells him. She wraps her arms around herself. “Just take care of him, Jax. He’s the only thing I have left.”

Jax nods his head. His eyes scan her over, “I’ll see you in August.”

.

.

The ride to Charming was quiet. Jax expected it to be considering how Alma clearly was distraught with Nathan moving in with him. Jax reminds himself that Alma wanted this and he was happy to have his son full time. Yet, since she popped up unexpectedly last month, he felt something was off. He was missing something from this. Sure, he had his suspicions. He made the mistakes once of making an offhand comment to Clay about it. The guys would usually ignore his comments about the Russian and write it off as jealousy. Yet, Clay had looked at him and made the pointed reminder that Alma wasn’t his wife or old lady. Her marriage wasn’t his business. Also if he did something the blow back wouldn’t not only hurt Alma and Nathan, but the club would suffer. 

Sometimes, Jax wanted to ask Nathan if he had worries or issues with Vitaly. He just didn’t want to put his son in that position. If there was a truth to any suspicions of wrongdoing, Jax would murder Vitaly without any hesitation. 

He just doesn’t know how to handle the fact he pushed Alma into this situation. He fucked up and she landed into this assholes lap. 

“We’re going to Grandma’s?” Nathan asks when they don’t take the turn to the house. 

“Her grandbaby is moving back to Charming. She made a whole spread for you.” Jax informs him. 

Gemma had been ecstatic when he told her Alma was sending Nathan to move in with him permanently. Since Alma married the Russian, their relationship had turned frosty. He knows his mom thought a reconciliation would happen and he thinks it's safe to say they were both blindsided when she announced she was getting married. 

His mother didn’t like the Russian either, but for other reasons. Jax thinks he is the only one that believes Alma’s marriage isn’t what it seems. He thinks it may be time to talk to Opie because he might get clarity from him, but even then it doesn’t change the fact Alma isn’t his old lady or wife. 

“You think she’ll be nicer to mom now?” 

Jax raises an eyebrow. “Who knows with your grandmother. How’s Ann doing?”

Nathan shrugs his shoulders. “Somewhere with her boyfriend. I don’t know. She and mom don’t talk much anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“Everytime they would talk, Ann would say something bad about you and praise Vitaly. It would lead to arguments. So mom stopped checking in unless she felt I needed to talk to her, which I don't.” 

Jax snorts. “Unbelievable. How is the Russian?” He asks with clear distaste.

Nathan shrugs his shoulders. “On a business trip, I guess.” Nathan taps his fingers against his knees. “I just wish my mom wasn’t going to be alone in the house.”

“You worried for her.”

“It’s just been me and her, ya know. After Ben and Kaylee...I always worry.” Nathan reveals. 

Jax fights the ball in his throat at the mention of his two youngest. His chest still tightens thinking about them and what their futures could’ve been.

“She and the Russian don’t want kids?” He asks. He tries not to think about Alma sharing a bed with that man, but he has been mentally preparing for the pregnancy announcement any day now. 

“Vitaly doesn’t like kids.”

“What!” Jax exclaims, shocked. 

“That’s what he told me.”

“What? When?” Jax inquires. 

“It was a little bit after when they got married. One of the workers at the winery had a baby. He told me I didn’t need to worry about getting another sibling. He wasn’t fond of kids, especially babies.”

“Your mom knows this?”

Nathan furrows his brow. “I would imagine. It’s not like I really want to talk about mom’s sex life, Dad. Gross.”

“How do you think you got here?”

Nathan’s nose scrunches up. “Disgusting.”

“Speaking of sex, don’t think you are living with me you can be sneaking girls over. Your mom will kill me if you get a girl pregnant.” Jax warns. “You do know how to use a condom?”

“Ugh, yes, Dad. Mom showed me.”

“When?”

“Dad, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Well you are getting a refresher and I’ll take you shopping, or did your mom already take you?”

Nathan’s cheeks are red at this point. “No, Mom said she’ll save the shopping for you.”

“Look at that, your mom thinks of everything.” Jax says as he pulls into Gemma’s driveway. He turns the truck off. “I’ll give you a few minutes to call your mom and tell her that you're here, alright.”

Nathan nods his head and Jax slips out of the truck. He walks into his mother’s house. He almost jumps as the door is swung open. His mother is on the opposite side of him. She looks behind him. “Where is my grandson?”

“Calling Alma real quick to tell her we made it.” He answers as he walks into the house. 

“Well?” Gemma presses. 

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you excited? You’ve been mopey since Alma gave you the good news. It’s about time she came to her senses about the boy needing to be with his father.” Gemma adds. 

“Ma,” Jax warns. 

Gemma presses her lips together. “You should be happy.”

“I am.”

“She’s not your concern anymore, Jax.”

“She is still family, Ma.” Jax answers. “She’s the mother of my children. She is always going to be a concern.”

...

Alma has been nervous for this day. She is in the sitting living room by the tall windows as she looks out into their backyard. Vitaly is returning from his business trip. She can hear his footsteps approaching. She watches as he waves off his security to give them privacy. 

Vitaly is a handsome man. Tall and lean, his dirty blonde hair is slicked back and parted on the side, and it seems in the month he has grown out a mustache. When they first met, she wasn’t really impressed with him. Or at the time, he shared some similarities with her ex husband with the long hair and baggy shirts and jeans. But Vitaly’s sense of style has matured to silk buttons up and slacks. Expensive shoes and diamond jewelry. Despite having a legitimate winery with vast distribution, he has ties to the Russian Mafia. His uncle is Viktor Putlova, the head of the Mafia. 

Alma had been hesitant to be involved with someone in the Life again, but she was swept up by Vitaly. Also it helped that the Sons rarely do business dealings with the Russians. 

She took the risk. 

“Hey, baby,” he greets and gives her a kiss before sitting next to her. 

“How was the trip?”

“Too long. Just wanted to come home,” he tells her as he puts an arm around her shoulder. 

“Nathan already gone?”

Alma swallows the ball in her throat. “Yeah. Dropped him off last night.”

“When is he coming back?”

“He...uh...he is going to be actually staying in Charming. He is going to live with Jax.” She informs him. 

Vitaly freezes. “When was this decided?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And you are only telling me now?”

Alma doesn’t say anything. 

“Answer me.” Vitaly barks. 

“He is starting high school. I thought it was best he was with his dad. They both miss each other.” Alma rushes out. 

“You couldn’t tell me this over the phone. You went behind my back.” Vitaly points out. “When did you tell, Jax?”

“May.”

“Over the phone.” Vitaly inquires.

Alma shakes her head. 

Even though she is prepared for it, it still manages to take her by surprise when Vitaly grabs her by her throat. He squeezes hard as he chokes her. She begins to feel light headed and white spots are forming in her eyes. 

She coughs as he throws her to the floor. 

“Jesus, fuck, Alma!” Vitaly shouts. “Get to the fucking room.” She can hear him unbuckling his belt. 

She used to think she was in love with Vitaly. Maybe a part of her was, but all she knows that her heart was already broken once so it can’t be broken again.

.

.

.

.

TWO YEARS AGO - The Wedding

Alma never imagined getting married again. In fact, she thought she was done with marriage. She had no desire in making vows with another man. Yet, look at her now. She is only in her peach colored robe and the fancy lingerie set she bought for her soon to be husband. She had just finished her makeup when she began to feel overwhelmed. 

Her mom sensed that she needed some space. She didn’t remember feeling nervous when she married Jax, but then again she already had a kid. Marriage paled in comparison to that. 

She is just worried she is making a mistake. Her choices affect her son. She and Vitaly could be together without the attachment of marriage. She wonders if it is normal to feel scared. She knows she sure as hell doesn't feel happy at the moment. 

Thinking on it, Alma didn’t have much say in the wedding planning. Her mom had taken over everything for her. 

A knock comes at the door. 

“One minute.” She replies. 

It’s quiet, but the knock comes again. She sighs and storms to the door. “I said one -” Her voice dies as she finds Jax on the other side of the door. 

He rushes into the room. Alma closes the door. She knows the only reason he is here is because of Nathan. Immediately after the wedding festivities Jax is going to take Nathan while they are on their honeymoon. 

She doesn’t get to question him as to why he is here because he beats her to it. 

“Please do not do this,” he pleads. 

Alma rolls her eyes. She walks back over to her vanity. “You did this. You ended us.”

“Alma, please, I’m sorry...there has to be something -”

“You’ve done enough.” She informs him bluntly. 

It goes quiet in the dressing room. Alma busies herself by playing with random items on her vanity, but it doesn’t conceal that her hands are shaking. 

She hears Jax footsteps behind her before his chest is against her back. Alma freezes. She turns immediately to slap him for even crossing that physical boundary. 

Yet as soon as she turns, Jax hoists her up on the vanity and immediately spreads her legs to stand between them. His movements were rough and desperate as he immediately removed her robe leaving her in her peach colored lingerie. 

His fingers wrapped around her throat and he moved her closer as he applied the smallest of pressure and pressed his lips against hers. 

She was distracted by Jax kissing hers that she jumps slightly in surprise when she feels his fingers move her panties to the side and tease her opening. He didn’t thrust them inside of her, but kept circling them making her buck her hips up on the counter. 

“Jax,” she moans. 

She hears him unzipping his pants and her panties are pushed to the side again and he slams himself inside of her. 

Alma screams are muffled as Jax moves the hand around her neck to cover her mouth. Her walls constrict around him as her body gets adjusted to him. She hates to even admit that she missed this side of Jax. She missed him. 

Jax moves his hand back to her throat as he presses another rough kiss to her mouth. He pulls all the way out before snapping his hips back up into hers. Alma bites her lip to stifle her moans as each thrust is harder than before. 

She knows what Jax is doing. She shouldn’t be letting him do this. She shouldn’t be doing this at all. But she tightens around him. 

Jax releases a broken moan, “Christ, you feel so fucking perfect.”

Jax lifts her leg and he hits her G-Spot repeatedly. It triggers her orgasm unexpectedly. Her body quivers and a lewd moan leaves Jax mouth as he releases. She can feel him coating her walls. He trails kisses across her collarbone and throat before he meets her lips. 

She can feel the tears building in her eyes. She thinks she truly hates Jax and herself at this moment. Jax pulls back when he feels the first drop of liquid against his cheeks. 

Alma winces as he pulls out of her. She ignores his cum dripping out of her and staining her panties. She is lucky she brought another set of lingerie as she couldn’t decide. 

“I hate you.” She tells him. She doesn’t glance at him as he cleans up. She has barely tied her robe back together and Jax has just buckled his belt when the door slams open revealing her mother. 

Ann doesn’t say anything as she glares at Jax, who walks out without a glance back. 

Alma turns as she looks for the other set of lingerie. 

“Is it out of your system?” Ann asks. 

Alma nods her head.

#the unknown #soa #soa fanfiction #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #jax teller #jax teller x oc

[youngbugandtonystank]

Please write an irondad post about how peter feels about tony!! I feel like the directors make peter’s view of tony more subtle than Tony’s view of peter and it’d be awesome if you could decode it! ;0

Hi!

God, Tom’s words really got me♥

I’m going to use the movies and novelizations for this, especially the Homecoming novelization since I think no one talks about it and I want to point out certain things.

Ok, check this out:

Tony’s POV:

Peter's voice was as exuberant and light as ever, something Tony both secretly admired and feared.  This battle would be no place for someone as green and unbroken as Peter Parker.

Tony smiled as Peter stood tall in the center.

"Yeah, that makes sense"  Peter said, and Tony's heart broke. Even hanging off the side of a spaceship hurtling into space, seconds from dying, Peter Parker was still just open and trusting as he'd always been.

--

Peter’s POV:

"What if she’s expecting someone like Tony Stark? I mean, imagine how disappointed she’d be when she sees me."

dorks.

I just wanted to be like you.

And I wanted you to be better.

You know that feeling you get when you admire someone and at the same time, you feel like you can actually understand them? Yeah, this is them. They work like a mirror. This is how Peter feels, just like Tony sees himself in the kid, Peter identifies himself in Tony. Peter and Tony both react the same way when it comes to their relationship. They both think the other is ‘better’ and at the same time, they can understand each other pretty well.

Tony’s POV:

At the same time, Tony knew there was nothing he could do to keep Peter away. Just like Tony, Peter had a code. 

Peter’s POV:

Of course, Mr. Stark hadn't believed him. He'd seen right through him.

Peter has stated before that Tony made him feel okay and normal, something he never thought he’d feel again. He knows that if he gets Tony’s approval then he gets to feel that normalcy again. He feels understood.

It was probably the only place in the city where I fit in. You had your overachievers, genius-level-yet-stressed-out-obsessive-compulsives, inventors of the Next Big Thing, all with at least one overblowing backpack, all wiling in to forge new ground and show the world that nerds really would inherit the earth. I was surrounded by students showing off their newest advances in AI technology, “rebels” furiously hacking their way to exposing corruption online, friends discussing string theory, and the probabilities of Stephen Hawking’s multiverse.

This is how Peter thinks of himself, he thinks his school is probably the only place he fits in. I think I mentioned this before in my homecoming analysis but Peter’s need to be an Avenger is because 1. he truly wants to make a difference, 2.he’s bored, he’s a genius kid and school is not doing enough for him anymore and 3. he feels like Tony is the only one that can understand him.

I don’t understand exactly why but some people think Peter is dumb. He can be clumsy sometimes but this kid is a genius and he understands the struggles of having a brain like his.

“Do geniuses know how normal things like backpacks even work?“

“Yes, we are familiar,“ Peter replied with a weak smile. If only she knew...

--

“Right as always,” Ms. Warren said, her praise causing Flash to stare daggers at me. Whatever.

--

“Yeah, my parents feel guilty working all the time, you guys would really get along, Peter” Her joke hit a little close to home, and I looked down a little.

--

He looked from the ship to the other kids on the bus to see if anyone else saw it. Nothing. Just him. As usual.

Peter not only wants the understanding that comes from Tony, but he also wants someone he can relate to. And I’m not talking about money or fame, I’m talking something deeper.

When they were on the plane, Peter criticized Tony’s choice of food as if telling him that what he was eating wasn’t enough to be considered ‘food’ and then proceeded to only have some juice and sleep the rest of the trip because he recklessly pulled an all-nighter. lmao irondad stans you guys are always accurate with your fics. 

Also, are you really going to tell me that this is not what a relationship between a father and a son look like?

"I really don't want to sound like my old man here. Look, kid, Just forget the flying man. Stay closer to the ground in Queens, build up your game helping the little people. You know, like the old lady who bought you that churro." That churro. Happy had told him everything. "Look, Tony—uh, Mr. Stark," I started. --

My suit agreed. "It does seem unwise. Trespassers are prosecuted. Or shot' "It's worse than that—if they find me in here, Mr. Stark is gonna kill me!" I started to panic. I had to get out of here! --

"Okay, sorry, Mr. Stark" I sighed. "I know you said to keep a low profile, but I gotta get out" I started banging on the door.

--

Tony Stark's words echoed in my head: Keep doing what you're doing, saving the little people.... Except these weren't just the little people"—they were my friends. As long as they were safe, everything would be okay. I didn't need to wait for that call to be an Avenger. I was already Spider-Man.

I just love how they unconsciously treated each other like family.

Peter, just like any other teenager, looks for validation from people he admires. In the Homecoming Novelization Peter congratulates himself every time he does something good and loves it when it comes from Tony for the same reasons I listed before.

Finally, we pulled up a safe distance from the apartment, so we didn’t attract too much attention. We sat in some seriously awkward silence for a moment before Mr. Stark finally said something.“Ya did good, kid,”

“I did good? I did good!“

“It’s yours,” Stark replied. “You earned it.” My heart was going a mile a minute. “Awesome!”

Look at them mirroring each other when it comes to them and how they feel.

Peter’s POV

“Yeah, and pretty soon it’s going to lead to a real job with him,” I said, trying to convince both him and myself.

Something really cute about them is that they both are exactly as you guys picture them in fanfics. They don’t say each other’s first name but think of each other that way.

Peter’s POV

“I thought I was gonna freeze up after Tony yelled out ‘Underoos.”

That churro. Happy had told him everything. "Look, Tony—uh, Mr. Stark," I started.

Tony’s POV

Tony had only continued onto the ship because he felt certain that he'd gotten Peter safely out of harm's way.

"Kid! Where'd you come from?" Iron Man asked, his voice sounding a little too relieved and grateful for his taste. 

They refuse to call each other by their names even if in IW they already had a more solid relationship than in HOCO, for them it’s ‘Kid’ and ‘Mr. Stark’. They even have other nicknames, as you already know but one of the cutest nicknames is ‘boss man’. Tom Holland calls RDJ that in real life and they used that nickname in the novelization.

When RDJ said this: 

The amount of betrayal Stark has had to deal with and what it's like to try and open up to someone new. The actor points out that Peter is young and that treachery comes with age. That his character is more willing to trust Peter because of his age. And how the relationship was established in the previous film when Tony shuts Peter down after he's been hurt. Not a move Tony would've done with most of the other Avengers, expecting them to push through just as he would.

He’s absolutely right, as you can see, they both banter but at the same time Tony opens up to Peter without hesitation.

trust

"So where are you?" I asked, looking around suspiciously. I half expected to see a drone In the sky spying on me. 

"India." came the response. "I thought I'd hit up a Hindu temple. Center myself. That sort of thing."

banter

 "Thank God this place has WI-Fi or you would have drowned."

 "I had a strategy." I did not have a strategy.

 'What, to die and fight him in the afterlife?"

Another example of them mirroring each other is in IW. It's been said in the novels that Tony making Peter an Avenger when did was something he considered a big choice and major sacrifice. He truly didn’t want him on the team, not because he thought Peter wasn’t capable, but because he wasn’t ready for Peter to be that. Meanwhile, Peter, who knows Tony is pretty much capable on his own, said he stuck himself to the side of the ship in IW because he thought about Tony. 

The same level of protectiveness, same thoughts.

Like a mirror.

.

Also how cute are Peter’s thoughts about Liz?

Liz walked by with the rest of the Homecoming committee, and the entire world seemed to melt away around her.

“It’s working for her.” I stared at her outfit and agreed that it was definitely working for her. OUR SPIDEY BOI IS FLIRTY AF

She was thinking of me. The warm fuzzies started.

Liz defending Peter from Flash?:

“I can’t believe we’re catering to him. We don’t need this dork.” Good. There was my opening to break it to them that—“As team captain, I disagree,” Liz cut in.

"No way!" he objected. "You can't just quit on us and then turn around and stroll up here and—"  "Flash. Liz cut him off, her voice leaving no doubt as to who the captain was.

Liz smiled at me as I took my seat. Don't blush. Don't blush. I blushed and gave a small smile back as I settled in next to Ned for the trip to Washington, DC.

And Peter’s eternal beef with Betty either sharing Ned or with Spider-Man. I love for this friendship lmao

#irondad #spiderson #tony stark #peter parker #mcu #marvel #tom holland #rdj #endg #infinity war #homecoming

[theadrogna]

This comes under the heading of better late than never, and many apologies to @singledarkshade​ for the lateness of this response to the Dream Movie Challenge. So, we were given six actors from our favourite TV shows/movies, a wildcard actor, and a random item. We had use these actors and the object to create our own movie.

I give you a supernatural romantic comedy, starring Matt Ryan, Elizabeth Henstridge, April Bowlby, Taika Waititi, Ellen Page, and Woody Harrelson. With a special appearance by Merryl Streep.

Synopsis:

Max Webster is working as an investment banker in London, making huge amounts of money that support a lifestyle of clubs, bars and one night stands, until his boss and mentor commits fraud on a huge scale. Max is implicated, despite knowing nothing. He loses his job and not a single other bank in the city will touch him, meaning his career is effectively over and he’s rapidly going broke. Just when he thinks things can’t get worse, he is told that his sole relative, his estranged paternal grandmother has died and left him property in Brighton.

With nothing better to do and hopes that the property is worth something, Max heads to Brighton to tie up his grandmother’s affairs, dreading his time outside the capital and increasingly depressed about life. Upon arrival he meets Poppy Fletcher, his grandmother’s lawyer who was the one who contacted him about his grandmother’s death. 

Max discovers that his grandmother was the proud owner of the “Worst Wax Museum in Britain”: The House of Wax. Only a handful of the wax statues look like who they’re supposed to be and the rest are like someone sculpted celebrities that they’d never seen. The museum is barely making enough to keep it afloat. He begins to make plans to sell the museum and at least make enough to pay off his Grandmother’s debts. Enter Cooper Farnsworth, rich American businessman, on the run from the Mafia after a dodgy deal went wrong. He desperately needs to make money fast.

But Max finds out that his inheritance is rather unusual in a number of ways...

For starters, there aren’t many wax museums where Meryl Streep hands out advice and enjoys watching the footy on the night watchman’s TV when the punters have gone home for the night. But it isn’t just Meryl, all of the waxworks come to life thanks to an old book of magic that is powered by the signatures of the guests and the messages they leave. The less visitors there are, the less magic there is to keep the waxworks alive and things have been getting desperate lately until only a handful of the waxworks have the necessary magic to come to life.

The waxworks tell Max about how his grandmother desperately tried to bring in more people, but her failing health meant that everything fell apart. Max discovers how his grandmother loved the museum and also loved him, despite her outwardly cool demeanour. He had thought that she didn’t care that he left Brighton, but Amelia unearths the letters that his grandmother wanted to send but didn’t have an address to send them to.

Max realises that he can’t sell the wax museum after all, and he enlists Poppy’s help in finding a way to keep it going. In the process she also discovers the secret of the museum, and Max and Poppy discover that they’re falling for each other. Meanwhile Cooper is plotting to get Max out because the listed building is worth more than Max is aware, especially with some of the period features.

The finale has Cooper breaking into the museum to destroy the waxworks, but Steve, the night watchman sounds the alarm. Cooper accidentally starts a fire and there is a desperate fight to save everyone from melting. Max and Poppy rally everyone to deal with the fire, and Cooper is arrested for arson.

The publicity from the fire actually brings in more customers, Max updates the museum with new exhibits, deciding to focus more on local history and tell the stories of the people who live in Brighton. He’s cleared of any wrong doing at the bank and Poppy helps him sue for wrongful dismissal. He uses the payout to finance repairs to the museum and more and more waxworks come alive every night as the visitors pour in.

And Max never thinks about leaving again, because now he has a family, albeit one that includes Meryl Streep, Amelia Earhart and Margaret Thatcher but he doesn’t mind.

Max Webster (Matt Ryan): Max lost his parents when he was young and was raised by his paternal grandmother. The two did not get on and he left home as soon as he could for university and then the big city. He always had a love of risk taking and wanted to be rich, so he studied finance and got a job in banking. He spends his time closing deals in a highly stressful job during the day and then out on the town in the evening. He has very few friends, all of whom are from work, and he very rarely sleeps with the same woman twice. He has a very shallow outlook on life and everything is about money.

His life is changed by inheriting the House of Wax and discovering that his memories of his grandmother are flawed and desperately inaccurate. He deals with the unusual House of Wax that his grandmother created and his grief at her passing. He comes to realise that not everything in life is about the next deal or how much money can be made.

Poppy Fletcher (Elizabeth Henstridge): Poppy is a lawyer and is responsible for executing Max’s grandmother’s will. She’s the one who hand Max the keys to the House of Wax and sees the look of disappointment on his face. She is very efficient and competent, loves the town she lives in and knows everyone on her street. She mourns the loss of Max’s grandmother, and has no idea that she was anything but the eccentric, elderly owner of the House of Wax. She doesn’t like Max at first because of his attitude to his grandmother and his version of her doesn’t seem to be the same as the woman she knew.

She ends up spending a lot of time with Max as the property sale becomes more difficult and after a while, she realises that he’s not at all the image that he projects. She starts helping him to get back on his feet and renovate the museum. Then she discovers about the magic book and she realises that she can’t let Max deal with the situation on his own.

Florence Nightingale (April Bowlby): Florence doesn’t look like the picture that hangs next to her in the slightest. Even her period dress is somewhat suspect. She prefers to wear much more recent clothes and is doing online first aid courses at night. She’s slightly haughty and thinks she knows best.

She can see that Max is depressed and grieving when he arrives. She’s one of the driving forces behind getting Max to take better care of himself and to talk about how he feels. Once the museum is safe, she works at becoming qualified as a therapist and sees patients online, writing an agony aunt column for the local paper.

Amelia Earhart (Ellen Page): She likes to pretend that she’s actually the pilot that she was sculpted to be. She’s very much her own person though, feisty and fun loving. She has no idea how to fly a plane, but has a flight simulator that Max’s grandmother gave her and is a computer game ace. She has the high score and no one can beat her.

She is the first waxwork that Max discovers is alive and persuades him that he isn’t hallucinating. She takes him to see the others when she realises that he’s the grandson of the previous owner.

She ends the film playing games in esports tournaments and winning, much to the amusement and delight of her fellow waxworks.

Steve (Taika Waititi): The night watchman of the House of Wax. He’s always known as Steve and no one knows his full name. He never really seems to go home, he’s just there. Max is very confused by him at first, but eventually realises that he’s another waxwork. He was one of the first created and no one is ever sure who he was supposed to be, at the end of the film it’s discovered that he’s supposed to be Genghis Khan, but like most of the other waxworks he bears no resemblance to his original. He is quite protective of the museum though.

Cooper Farnsworth (Woody Harrelson): An American property developer who is interested in buying the House of Wax and turning it into flats. He moved to the UK, to get away from some people who didn’t like him much (actually he double crossed the Mafia). He gets increasingly desperate to buy the House of Wax when some of his former business partners catch up with him, threatening Max and Poppy if they don’t sell up, but he never finds out the real secret of the museum. He thinks he’s hallucinating when he sees the waxworks move and fight back during the finale. He’s dragged away shouting about moving statues and charged with arson.

Meryl Streep (herself): She is modelled after the three time Oscar winning actress and is the only waxwork who looks like she is supposed to. She’s something of a leader of the group, checking in with everyone to make sure that they’re doing okay. She’s concerned about the fading magic and trying to keep everyone’s spirits up. She offers very good advice to Max about how to run the museum, most of which Max ignores to begin with because he thinks he knows better. Later we see her taking on the museum accounts and running the financial side of the museum with Max listening carefully to her. He may have been a banker but those skills are very little use when it comes to book keeping.

Additional actors:

Arthur Darvill as David Bowie - Can actually sing, sounds nothing like David Bowie. Wants to be Major Tom and follows NASA on Twitter. Tom Ellis as Paul McCartney - Can also sing and taught himself to play the piano. Duets with Bowie to entertain the rest of the group. John Boyega as Frank Bruno - Hates punching people, is a total softy. Ryan Reynolds as Salvador Dali - He once tried painting and decided never to do so again. He prefers reading and writes poetry. Eccentric. Celia Imrie as Queen Victoria - Knows everything that there is about Queen Victoria. She misses Albert who hasn’t woken up for a while now due to lack of magic.

#RBACL QCC #Dream Movie Challenge

[frumiousreads]

Hello and welcome to A Murderess Affair. My name is Gabrielle, and this seems to be the month that we’re talking about murderous healthcare workers. 

Our story today takes us to Germany, where we talk about the deadly Gesche Gottfried. 

Gottfried was born on March 6 1785 to Johann Timm and Gesche Margarethe Timme. She had a twin brother Johann Timm Jr, and her parents always preferred him to her. Now, like many other serial killers, people like to look back at Gottfried’s childhood to try and see how it affected her as an adult. 

What’s interesting about Gottfried’s case in particular is that it seems like because of how she killed people, and just the general way her parents treated her, a lot of people have begun to believe that she had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. 

Basically, Munchausen’s by proxy is where a caregiver makes up or causes an illness/injury to someone under their care. 

Gottfried’s father was a tailor, and her mother worked as a sewer/seamstress. But, surprisingly enough, despite their supposedly low or poor class status, Gottfried and her parents arranged a marriage between herself and a wealthy man who made saddles in 1806, Johann Mittenberg.

And this marriage was not a happy one. Mittenberg seemed to like drinking, prostitutes, and dance halls more than he liked spending time with his wife. 

And sadly, by 1813, this marriage would be over. Gottfried became known as the “angel of Bremen”, as this beautiful blue eyed blonde haired 28 year old who doted on her sick husband despite all of his failures, nurturing him quite literally to his death. 

Gottfried was now a widow with 3 children, but she was also very, very good friends with one of her dead husband’s friends, Michael Christoph Gottfried. 

Now, Gottfried’s parents were not too happy with this interest she took. Apparently, Michael wasn’t a big fan of kids, and her parents were very, very vocal about their disapproval. They were the only obstacle in Gottfried’s marriage to Michael. At least, until first Gottfried’s mother, 3 and 6 year old daughters, father, and 6 year old son died within the span of May, June, and September of 1815. 

Childless, with no family to support her, the town’s sympathy was only growing. While this may look suspicious to us now, this was back in a time where epidemics routinely took the lives of many families who lived in unhygienic and crowded conditions. 

Honestly I think now more than any other time is when we can understand how quickly sickness spreads through a community. 

So no suspicions were raised, and now all barriers holding Gottfried back from marrying Michael were disposed of, and their relationship would continue. 

Until 1816, when Gottfried’s twin brother returned from a war that left him injured and with destroyed faculties. He’d fought in the war against Napoleon, and now that he was discharged he wanted to claim the inheritance his parents had left him. And, since he was the favored child, he was left significantly more. 

Gottfried couldn’t have that, and on Jun 1st, 1816, she cooked him a dinner of fish and arsenic. He died not too long after. 

Arsenic used to be so easily found. It was commonly sold at drug and corner stores as a form of rat poison, and was nearly tasteless. Gottfried’s go to for incorporating her poison was to use “mouse butter”, which was a mix of fat and arsenic that created a butter like substance often used to kill rodents and other pests.  

Now, not long after her brother’s death, Gottfried found out that she was pregnant. And with this revelation, her new lover Michael decided he was done with the relationship. Gottfried wasn’t having that, and began mixing this mouse butter into his meals. He didn’t die at first, but fell completely under her whims and was considered “invalid”. They were married so that she could continue to care for him, but ultimately he died in July 1817. The baby she was carrying would also turn out to be stillborn. 

After Michael’s death, Gottfried hit a dry spell where nobody close to her died. It wasn’t until 1823, when her funds began to run out, that she started resorting to her old methods. 

She was proposed to by her neighbor, a merchant named Paul Zimmerman, who proposed spring of that year.

It wasn’t long after that she made a trip to the pharmacy, where they were advertising their “mouse butter” on sale. To test it, and see if it was “the real thing”, she made a sandwich for her fiance, who began to get sick and continued to get worse until he died on June 1st, 1823. Luckily, he’d remembered to add her in his will before he died, so she ended up getting his assets. 

After his death, it seems that Gottfried started actively looking for more and more victims. 

When she ran out of funds,  she ended up selling the house to a wheel maker, Johann Rumpff, under the condition that she was allowed to stay on as a tenant. She soon became close to the family as they moved in, helping take care of the house and being referred to by the children as their “aunt”, and caring for them when their parents were busy. 

She even helped take care of Mrs. Rumpff, when she got sick, until she died on December 22nd, 1826. Yes, that “mouse butter” was coming in handy. 

Except, Johann Rumpff was suspicious. This only increased when one day he found strange white grains in a salad that Gottfried had served him. He refused to eat the salad, and a few days later noticed the same white grains, and this time he saved some and later gave them to a doctor. This doctor confirmed it was a “considerable amount of arsenic”, and she was arrested on March 6th, 1828.

Unfortunately, at that point she had claimed the lives of 2 others, and also had dosed her latest victim, Friedrich Kleine, to the point that even though she was caught Kleine still died. 

She was jailed for 3 years in a cellar under the town hall in Bremen. The judge, Franz Friedrich Droste, was reportedly fond of her and treated her with pity. 

Gottfried was found guilty of the murders of 16 people, although her own estimate was somewhere around 30. She was given a death sentence, and on April 21st, 1831 she was sent to Domhof Square. There was a scaffold covered in black and she was directed to the podium and sat on a stool. There, she was beheaded, and her body displayed on museum in Domhof. The reason? To raise money for an orphanage. 

Gottfried’s was the last public execution in Bremen, and her skeleton was last reported to be in the Department of Pathology of Bremen in 1912. 

One way that Gottfried is remembered in Bremen is at the central city square. There, you will see a “black stone” in the roadway, where the platform that Gottfried was beheaded once stood. 

To demonstrate their disgust towards Gottfried and  her cruelty, the city placed this black stone and encourage those who see to spit on it. Nowadays, people do it even though they may not necessarily know the story behind it. 

#true crime #tw murder #tw true crime #a murderess affair #history #women in history #history podcast #true crime podcast #serial killer #female serial killers

[krisroley]

February 9th, 2021

One Small Moment

Today I want to talk to some specific friends who I won't name, but I'm fairly sure that this will apply to way more of just them.

First things first, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by giving you a bunch of platitudes. In my experience, they're nothing but empty calories. Filler and no substance, they're designed to make the person giving them feel better, not the person who needs help. In some cases, people who need help end up feeling worse. I'm one of those people, so I absolutely understand the feeling. So, no bullshit from me. Cool? Moving on.

Let me describe my lack of bona fides right upfront. I'm a guy with a high school education and one year of college because I let my dick do the thinking up to the point that I ended up homeless and friendless. I tried to follow in my Dad's footsteps and join the military and washed right out after six months because I have a mouth bigger than my brain. I come from a family that describing as dysfunctional is exceedingly generous. My dad had anger issues, my mother was a narcissist manipulator, as is my brother. He's got a criminal record and is probably on his way back to prison for at least 12 years as I write this. I'm the voice of reason in my family, and as I have said repeatedly, this should scare the fuck out of you. I got married at 24, and I had three kids by the age of 30. I've been dirt poor most of that time. At this stage of my life, I believe that I am an undiagnosed case of autism from the 1970s because my kids--all of them--are on the spectrum. I didn't have a bad childhood if you looked at it from one angle, but I had a horrible one if you looked at it from the inside out. I inherited my Dad's anger issues and my mother's narcissism. I was a horrible husband for years until my wife walked out on me in 2005. It made me face myself in a way I had not seen before, and I couldn't take it. I had a nervous breakdown. My wife thought I was worth saving, and I am forever grateful for it. I promised I would work on my issues, and I have. Three times in my life, I thought I was at the end of my rope. Not from a thought of suicide ideation, just that there was nowhere else to turn. No one else to ask for help. No one else I could lean on. Just Roley.

That moment right there is the point. The entire lesson. One small moment when your brain says, "Well, you're really fucked now, aren't you?" There is only one answer to that question, and that answer is yes because if you answer no, you ain't there yet. Trust me on this. You have to answer yes. This is the moment where you're accountable to no one but you, and you cannot lie to yourself. You can TRY. It ain't gonna work. Not for long.

Let's not bullshit ourselves. There is a lot of work in repairing a life that you fucked up on your own. You climb up out of a hole for years before you ever see daylight. I was a shut-in for two years because I thought it better that the world forgets about me. I tried to make a living from home in 2006-2007, but this world we live in hadn't come to pass yet, and I was living a fantasy. It made me feel worse that I couldn't provide for my family, but I could barely function as a human at that point. So I decided to do the only work I was capable of: Working on myself. I read every self-help book and mental health book I could lay my hands on. I dug deep into myself to try to figure out why I was the person I was, how I became that way, and the answer was straightforward. First, I thought I was absolutely normal. My behavior, though abhorrent, was how I was raised. My parents treated each other and us kids horribly, but it wasn't physically abusive save for a couple of times I'll keep to myself. I grew up in the same environment I perpetuated. I was continuing a cycle. Secondly, to accept that fact and to change meant work I wasn't ready to take on. But human psychology is a lot like a car in that regard; you can do the work now, or you can do it later, but it's going to cost you a lot more. In my case, it almost cost me everything. It was the third of those three times that I faced myself in the mirror and heard that voice, and this was the time I said yes.

For two-thirds of my life, my story is a story of failure, of self-hatred, of being a bad example. But from the age of 35 to 50, it's a story of repair and redemption. I'll put my humble path to today up against anyone's and dare them to do the work I've done to heal myself and come out who I am today. I'm still married to the same woman for over 25 years now. I've got three amazing kids who I adore. Up until May of this year, I had what I consider to be a dream job until COVID ate it, but I'm still with the same company, and I'm going to bust whatever amount of ass it takes to get my job back or demonstrate the skills I learned there to someone else who's willing to take me. I have a sense of self-worth and purpose that I've never had before, and I'm not taking being a call center tech support agent for the rest of my life. It is a means to an end, and it is not my life's work. I know what that is. It's helping you in the best way I know how: By being not the example of how to fix it, but from showing you by my example, it CAN BE FIXED that you can go from being a person full of anger and self-loathing and cruel behavior to being a person of kindness and compassion and love for people. That you can go from being a person who has no prospects to a person who can go to a job every day that fulfills them personally and professionally. That you can go from being a person who hasn't got their shit together at all to a person that can get morning to night without falling apart at the seams. This is my road, and my lane, but it's big enough for you, and I want you on this road with me. Some of you are gifted and talented beyond description, but the world doesn't know it yet because you have these problems. I know. I get it. I also see who you are, and the world deserves to see you as well. I had no one else to turn to at that last moment, so I did what I had to do. Myself. I'm asking you to take a walk with me because I don't want you to have to do it on your own. I may not know your way home, but I can get you as far as Anchorhead. You can get transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.

I had to get one joke in there somehow.

Did Joe Know About This?

On the heels of the news of Joe Budden maybe-kinda-sorta-moving his show to Patreon (which is weird since it looks like it’s being hosted on Libsyn now), Spotify has announced plans for multiple business models for podcasts, possibly to include ad-supported subscriptions and a la carte options. These may be discussed at a live stream event later in February.

Asked if Spotify thought customers would be willing to pay for podcasts, Ek on the earnings call responded that he believed there were several new models that could be explored.

“I think we’re in the early days of seeing the long-term evolvement of how we can monetize audio on the internet. I’ve said this before, but I don’t believe that it’s a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “I believe, in fact, that we will have all business models, and that’s the future for all media companies — that you will have ad-supported subscriptions and à la carte sort of in the same space, of all media companies in the future.”

“And you should definitely expect Spotify to follow that strategy and that pattern,” Ek added, more definitively.

The answer seemed to indicate that Spotify is considering some of the ideas in that recent survey — of getting consumers to pay for some podcasts, instead of accessing them all for free or having them bundled into their music subscription.

I wonder if Budden was aware of this and balked. Would there be a revenue split between Spotify and the creators, and what’s the ratio? Now that I think of it, isn’t that what they’ve been crying about re: Apple?

For more than a year, Spotify has been making noise about Apple’s unchecked power over the App Store, and in March 2019, it filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission. Spotify claims Apple’s practice of taking 30 percent of an app’s revenue is unjustified, and says the company operates as a monopoly on iOS.

Suddenly, I find this Budden/Spotify deal more intriguing.

Wait, You Can Make Money Doing That?

Julie Miller from Vanity Fair writes about Hollywood coming over to the Pod Side for ‘fun and profit’:

…entertainment types began orbiting the audio space about two years ago in earnest, as the number of Americans listening to podcasts every month headed toward the 100 million it is today. It was also around 2018 that agencies like CAA began incorporating audio deals into their development packages. One insider estimates that many celebrities could get a six-figure guarantee per year, with the biggest actors receiving between $1 million and $3 million to launch an unscripted podcast. Scripted projects offer less up-front money but can be adapted into TV shows, films, books, and so on.

For the record, I am Steve Jobs, “Podcasts are Amateur Hour" Years Old. For years, podcasting was seen as less-than, so when I see stories like this, the little imp of the perverse in the back of my head tosses a bone at every true media elitist who, strangely, has a podcast now..

How About Not Doing That?

Chris Curran over at PES has a question about your thin mouth:

When I’m doing my fine-tuned editing on a podcast episode I use TwistedWave or Sound Forge because they allow me to VERY QUICKLY zoom in, highlight very small things like single mouthclicks, and delete them. 

When I try to make the same kind of edit in a DAW (Reaper and others) it takes forever. 

What say you?

For the most part, my workflow tends to remove mouth clicks, or at the very least minimize them. If they still show up through my noise gate, I highlight and remove them. I can’t say this happens often because I like to make sure I keep some water near me while I’m recording. The single biggest thing you can do to prevent mouth clicks is to keep hydrated. Remember, you can’t fix it in Post if it never happens in the first place.

Shot Of The Day

#Joe Budden #Spotify #Monetization #Podcasts #Hollywood #Vanity Fair #Julie Miller #Podcast Engineering School #Mouthclicks #PES

[lloydskywalkers]

exposure therapy

Prompt three for @ninjago-angst-week , this one’s “hunger” - I’m taking a kind of...loose interpretation of it, I guess?? Listen hunger can go for a lot of things and I’ve been wanting to write something about Lloyd and abandonment issues for forever so!! That’s what this is.

it’s also the longest prompt yet oops 

(Takes place between s7 and s8!)

Lloyd is about four years old the first time someone leaves him and doesn’t come back.

He says about because he doesn’t really remember it all too well – he’s listened to the others bicker enough to know that technically you don’t start forming concrete memories until like, age five or something, and any that you do form before that you probably forget by the time you’re old enough to care.

Lloyd remembers the sting, though. In his eyes, that is – the ache in his chest was a whole lot worse than a sting, but it’s not like he’s going to spend that much time trying to describe it when he’s trying to get over it. And he is – over it, that is. He’s over being left alone on the doorsteps of some dumb school as a kid because no one cared enough to take him in. He’s over being the kid without a family for years and years because his parents left him and didn’t come back, because his uncle didn’t care enough to visit him, because clearly there was something wrong with him—

No, that’s – no, he reminds himself. They were busy, that’s all. With way more important things than some snot-nosed little kid who was pretty much useless at the time, and even better at causing trouble.

There’s nothing wrong with Lloyd. He’s over it, has been, and will continue to be, because someone in the mess that’s the family line of the First Master needs to have themselves together.

And if it does sting, sometimes, when he thinks about doorsteps and windows and how stupid he felt when he realized no one was coming back—

Well. It’s not worse than what the others have to deal with, is it? Lloyd should be thankful that’s all he’s been dealt.

(That and the whole, like, green-ninja-savior-of-the-world stuff, of course, but that’s — kinda whatever, at the moment. No one’s asked him to fight an ungodly being anytime recently, and Lloyd isn’t gonna complain.)

__ __ __ __

The thing about carefully constructing nice little (enormous) walls in your head to block out all the messy stuff is that, eventually, you’re going to have a few cracks in them to patch up. And while Lloyd’s dealt with those cracks before, he kind of wasn’t…really expecting this one.

“Oh,” he says, and he’s proud of how his voice doesn’t waver. Twice proud, really, because it’s been threatening to crack a lot lately, and that’s not just from emotion. “Yeah. That does make sense, I guess.”

Kai nods. “I mean, I don’t like the idea of us all splitting up, but it’s the best way to cover ground.”

“Additionally, this is a rare time in which Ninjago is not facing any immediate threat,” Zane chimes in. “If danger does occur, we should have plenty of time to regroup.”

Nya taps her foot. “I don’t like it,” she mutters. “And I don’t like leaving Ninjago City on its own.”

Especially with someone running around with my Samurai X armor on, is her unspoken complaint.

“We’re wasting time just sitting around like this,” Cole retorts. “The sooner we get out looking, the sooner we find Sensei, and the sooner we can come back.”

Lloyd looks down. The pain in Cole’s voice is obvious, and Lloyd knows he misses Sensei Wu. Lloyd misses him, too, but Cole’s always had a close sort of relationship with him.

Lloyd takes a breath. He’s leader now, right? Time to act like it.

“I can stay behind in the city,” he says, even as his brain gives him a nice little Lloyd what the heck warning. “That way I can keep an eye out for trouble, and listen for any tips on Sensei.”

Kai immediately looks concerned. Nya’s eyes spear into him. “You’re alright with that?”

Lloyd shrugs. “Finding Sensei’s first priority,” he says. “But someone’s gotta make sure the country doesn’t burn down.” He flashes Kai a smile. “Seriously, I’m taking the easy job from you guys. I’ll be fine.”

“Pixal can watch out for him on comms, as well,” Zane says, slowly. “That way you won’t be entirely on your own.” Kai nods at that, and Nya relaxes a bit.

Lloyd sours. He’s not a child anymore — they can stop treating him like one. They just made him leader, didn’t they?

A small part of him (a large part), though, has to admit that the thought of Pixal being with him brings no small amount of relief.

“Alright,” Lloyd says, trying to sound authoritative. “That’s it, then. We’ll split out at the end of the week. And we will find Sensei.”

“Fingers crossed,” Jay murmurs.

No one looks particularly excited about the plan, but they’re at least eager to start moving. Lloyd, for his part, takes the building amount of dread at the thought of watching them all leave, shoves it in a corner, and locks the door on it.

It’s not like they’re leaving-leaving. They’re coming right back, obviously. Lloyd is just – being paranoid, that’s all. His team is strong, and Kai definitely isn’t gonna go down to some low-level crooks while traveling the countryside.

(They aren’t like – her, either.)

And speaking of his family — Lloyd finds himself wondering, later, when exactly he started calling Wu sensei in his head, instead of uncle.

He thinks it might have been after Morro. That was around the time he started to feel like he didn’t have the right.

__ __ __ __

He says goodbye to the others at the end of the week. Jay and Cole are going together, and so are Kai and Zane.

He and Nya will be on their own.

No one is super excited about that development, either, but it makes sense. The guys are taking the more dangerous areas, so they’ll need backup. He and Nya can handle themselves just fine on their own – Lloyd isn’t even leaving the city. He’s got it easy.

Besides, the guys are used to working in groups. He and Nya are more experienced with functioning on their own. They’ve had to be, that’s all. They’re more familiar with fighting while knowing there’s no one watching your back.

They close up the monastery for now, everything in neat boxes and beds made indefinitely. They don’t pack much – either from convenience or hope that they won’t be away long, no one’s really sure. They say goodbye and make promises to check in as often as possible. Kai hugs Lloyd extra tight, his spiky hair ticking the top of Lloyd’s forehead as he’s crushed against him. Lloyd doesn’t mind, not even when he’s pretty sure Cole almost cracks a rib with his.

And then they leave, all trailing off in different directions, leaving Lloyd standing alone on the edge of the floating island, wind whipping cold through his hair, the monastery eerily silent behind him.

And it’s…

…he’s fine with it.

Like — there’s this weird sort of ache in his chest, kind of like he forgot to eat this morning, so he’s all empty and yearning inside, but that’s – that’s fine.

Perfectly fine.

__ __ __ __

It occurs to him, after he has what’s definitely not a breakdown that definitely does not last long at all, that he’s volunteered to look after Ninjago City, and Ninjago City is a considerable amount of distance from the Airjitzu Temple.

It hits him immediately after that moving to Ninjago City requires somewhere to live. He probably…should have thought of that before everyone left. Maybe he should call—

No. Lloyd shakes himself. He’s leader now. He can’t keep relying on the others for everything. He can find an apartment or something all by himself — how hard can it be, right? The guys found one for all of them back when they were a bunch of half-trained ninja and Lloyd still came up to about Kai’s knee. This is one apartment, for one person. And Lloyd’s got money — he thinks. Somewhere.

…maybe.

Stupid sensei creeds of peace and their obsession with not owning anything material—

Okay fine, so Lloyd’s got zip-zero-nada in the way of family inheritance, but his mother, who took off last week — yeah, she’s leaving too, big surprise —

Lloyd shoves down the spark of bitterness. Misako has better things to do than babysitting him, like finding Sensei Wu. And she did send him money, so he doesn’t even know why he’s feeling all empty about it. She’s made sure he’s not gonna starve and she sent him the name of a housing agent, Lloyd can’t ask for much more.

Maybe a nice landlord, but that’s about it.

__ __ __ __

On the list of bright sides to look at: finding an apartment isn’t as mind-numbingly difficult as he’d thought it’d be. He didn’t name drop or anything, but he did kinda have to fill out his full name on the application, so maybe that’s why. Either way, it wasn’t as bad as he’d worked it up to be, so that’s nice.

On the not so bright side — standing in the middle of his brand-new and also completely-empty apartment, it occurs to him that he should probably have asked for like, curtains, at the least. Or a table. How much do beds cost?

On the whole, though, it’s not a bad place. Really. Like – okay, he does need to get a bed and stuff in here, but – the walls are a nice color, and it’s got a little kitchenette off to the side, and the shower works, and the windows provide both a nice view and an easy way to slip outside to the rooftops. His neighbor is also pretty nice, in the way that he doesn’t hate Lloyd’s guts on sight, so that’s cool.

(Look, the way his life goes, guts-hating is just something you prepare for.)

His landlord is actually a landlady, and she’s mean, the kind of mean that makes Lloyd think of one of his Darkley’s teachers. But she’s got about eight cats that roam about the apartment at will, and she lets Lloyd bring in the stragglers he finds late at night on patrol and adopts them sometimes, so Lloyd could honestly care less if she actually was a teacher at Darkley’s. He gets to pet cats! On a daily basis!

(And maybe cry into the fatter one’s fur at two in the morning when he stumbles in from patrol sometimes but nobody needs to know that part.)

It’s like he’s off to college, he tells himself as he stares at the ceiling trying to fall asleep, in the apartment that’s completely empty except for him. If college was a full-time job that included regularly getting shot at by criminals and the police on the occasional bad night, of course, and if he’d actually finished high school, which he’s pretty sure you have to do if you want to get into college…he thinks. School is not a strong point for Lloyd, considering about eighty percent of his education came from Jay, Nya and Zane trying to stuff advanced algebra down his brain.

Either way, the analogy holds. Lloyd can just pretend he’s off to college, and before he knows it he’ll be back home and everyone else will be too. They’ll all come back.

They will.

__ __ __ __

He likes to think he has reason for being scared about it all the time, even though he’s the green ninja and team leader now so he shouldn’t be scared, much less of something this stupid, but it just. It blends together, sometimes. Whether he’s watching through cage bars or lingering after a funeral, held on the edge of a plane or standing on the deck of the Bounty while war rages below.

People leave. That’s life, that’s all.

That doesn’t mean Lloyd has to like it, but he does have to live with it. And he’s gotten really, really good at that.

__ __ __ __

He starts a growing list of bright sides to focus on, in what’s totally not a desperate attempt to keep up the optimism angle. His first attempts are decorating his apartment, which is actually kinda fun. He scrounges up a couch somehow and sinks entirely too much of his budget on little house plants and cool wall prints he finds in the market, and he probably didn’t need the little dragon lamp, but Mystake pawned it off on him when he stopped in for tea one day, so he starts basing the general aesthetic around that. See, bright sides.

Another one of these bright sides is that Ninjago City starts putting in sky trams the week he moves in to his apartment.

He’s a little wary, at first. Sky trams are like subways but in the sky, which means a whole lot more trouble if someone decides to hijack a subway and hold it hostage, or something. But then he pulls himself up on the roof, clambers over onto a station, takes a few tentative steps out over the thick steel cables, and — oh yeah, he gets it now. Lloyd’s never been scared of heights, and dangling this high above the city, skipping over traffic jams and cutting his patrol time in half, is something he can definitely get used to.

He gets in a whole lot of trouble the first few days for scaring the operators half to death, but all in all — worth it. Once the trams start running he trades the cables for the top of the cars, letting them steer him wherever they want in the city. It’s got a pretty great view of the sunset, which he’s been missing since leaving the Airjitzu temple, and the others are gonna love it when they come back.

Because they are coming back.

Lloyd’s just dangling one leg over the edge of the sky tram, considering dangling the other so he can drum them both on the side of the empty car, when his phone blares loudly and nearly sends all of him off the sky tram side.

“Hello?” he manages, clinging to the side of the sky tram with one hand, holding the phone to his ear with the other.

“Lloyd!” Kai’s voice is loud and cheerful over the phone, and Lloyd winces at the volume. “Hey bud, how’s it goin’? I didn’t catch you in the middle of anything, did I?”

Lloyd watches where his feet dangle over open air, the city far down below. “Nah,” he says, and carefully pulls himself back up. “Just finishing up patrol. How — how are you doing? Is everything okay?”

“Oh yeah, we’re good,” Kai assures him. “Just stuck between towns for the night, Zane didn’t wanna drive anymore.”

“Good for him,” Lloyd says. He bites his lip. “So uh, any luck?”

Kai sighs heavily over the phone. “Not yet,” he says. His voice picks up in determination. “But we’re still looking. We’ll find him, okay? No one’s giving up yet.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd exhales what might be a laugh. “I know.” He glances toward the horizon, the setting sun leaving white spots in his vision. “How’s it been, though, for you? Where all have you guys gone so far?”

“Oh man, we’ve been everywhere—“

Lloyd leans back on the roof of the sky tram as Kai fills him in on their ongoings. He closes his eyes, letting the conversation wash over him, Zane’s voice occasionally interjecting a point as Kai argues back.

Lloyd swallows. Kai’s voice is warm and familiar, and he feels a sudden ache of homesickness so bad that tears almost prick at his eyes.

Get it together, he thinks frantically, swiping at his left eye. It hasn’t even been a month yet.

“Lloyd?” Kai’s voice has turned uncertain. “You okay?”

Lloyd startles up, shaking his head. “Yeah, yeah I’m good,” he says, quickly. “Just a little tired. My uh, my landlady has a bunch of cats? And I stayed up late chasing one down last night.”

Kai snorts loudly. “I feel like you’re gonna have a lot of stories about cats when we get back,” he sighs, and the hollow part in Lloyd’s chest warms at the fond note in his voice.

“Or a couple cats.”

“Yeah, sure, good luck with that.” Lloyd can hear the grin in Kai’s voice. “Aw — shoot, I gotta go, but I’ll check back in, okay? In the meantime, take care of yourself before the cats, Master Lloyd.”

Lloyd rolls his eyes. “Will do, mom.”

“And that’s enough snark from you this evening, young man.”

Lloyd tells Kai goodbye on a laugh, and waits for him to end the call first. The evening grows unusually quiet without Kai’s voice to fill the silence, and Lloyd bites his lip.

Master Lloyd, he thinks absently, swinging his leg out over the edge as he watches the lights of the city turn on down below. He snorts without humor.

What does it say, he wonders, that they make him master, then immediately decide to jet off all over the country before he can actually lead them?

Probably something bad, Lloyd thinks to himself. He shakes his head, stifling a yawn. He’s too tired to even imagine what the others’ answers to that question would be. It’s not like they’re here to voice them, anyways, and Lloyd would probably get them wrong.

__ __ __ __

Kai’s text comes in clockwork as promised, reminding him to eat and take care of himself and eat, please, something other than just junk food. Nya’s follows almost immediately after, reminding him to do laundry and take care and take a shower, I know you’ve been skipping—

Normally Lloyd might have some snappy remark to send back about mother hens. This time he ends up staring at the texts until his eyes water, the empty ache in his chest growing tight. Half of him is considering blocking off his schedule so he can video call them for a couple hours, like they used to pester him with when he was off being the Golden Ninja around Ninjago, when his dad was still—

Right. Anyways. The team stays solid on their promise to keep in touch, and two hours later he gets a text from Jay. It’s a slightly blurry picture of him throwing the camera the peace sign as Cole struggles with camping gear, with a quick “hope you’re doing alright!” that follows after.

Lloyd laughs at the expression on Cole’s face, then spends the next two hours trying not to cry into his pillow, because yes, he’s that pathetic.

He wants to go home.

But see – it’s stupid, ‘cause he can’t. He can’t go home, because there is no home to go home to. His home ran off all over Ninjago and sure, while he can call them, he can’t go home to them because there isn’t – a home that’s home because they’re all there anymore.

“I mean, that probably doesn’t make any sense to you,” he finishes, ducking his head. “But that’s like…where I’m at.”

“No, I believe I understand.” Pixal’s voice is soft over his car’s radio. “Your home is people, and they’re out of reach from you. You could run to them, but there’s no guarantee they will stay.”

“Yeah, that’s — that’s exactly it,” Lloyd blinks.

Pixal makes a quiet noise. “My home is a person as well, Lloyd,” she admits. Her voice turns rueful. “But I cannot go anywhere. Not really.”

“Oh.” Lloyd’s stomach twists. Geez, he’s here feeling sorry for himself when Pixal doesn’t even have a body. Why doesn’t she have a body? They should get on that—

“Don’t worry yourself about it,” Pixal says gently. “I am fine. And our people will return, we just have to be patient. It’s only been a month.”

“Just a month?” Lloyd glances at his phone, checking the tiny digital calendar. His eyes catch the date ahead and his stomach turns. Oh. He hadn’t known that date was — that soon.

He quickly thinks of something else.

“Hey,” Lloyd says, breaking the silence. “What if I like – what if we snatched some old robot model from Mr. Borg for the day, and we checked out that new market downtown?”

Pixal is quiet for a beat, and the silence sounds almost guilty. “That wouldn’t — I’m afraid that’s not quite possible at the moment.”

“Oh.” It’s Lloyd’s turn to fall quiet for a moment. Then—

“Okay, but what if I brought you with me as a radio? I can just lug it around the whole time, and you can look at – aw, shoot, you gotta be able to see too – what if I brought you as like, my phone or something, like a laptop and I just have Skype running the whole time—“

Pixal sighs. “The radio will work just fine.” Her voice is more amused than exasperated, and Lloyd feels a wild surge of relief that he didn’t just drive her away, too.

__ __ __ __

Look, he knows he didn’t drive them away. Okay? He gets that they needed to split up. And he’s used to it. People leave all the time, and he should just be glad this isn’t one of the permanent ones. Because he’s had a lot of people leave him for really, really long times, too. He’s used to it.

The only problem there is that if he is, in fact, used to it, he should be desensitized to it, and not – feel as much, about it.

It’s not even like they leave him, really. It’s Lloyd. Lloyd is the one complicating things or driving people away or failing one too many times or just – sending them to Cursed Realms and losing them in a time stream because he couldn’t—

It’s Lloyd. He can’t go blaming them for his own issues.

Besides, it’s not like this time is – it’s not the same. Again, the ninja aren’t leaving-leaving him. They’re splitting up for a mission, they’ll be back.

This isn’t like with Zane. They’ll be back, on their own this time. Lloyd won’t have to wear them down, or lure them to a tournament, or anything. This is different.

It’s different, he tells himself fiercely, staring up at the cracked ceiling of his apartment, the ceiling fan drifting in slow, dizzy circles. This is different.

__ __ __ __

On Lloyd’s list of Things He’s Never Going To Voice Out Loud, To Any Sane Person: sometimes he feels like Morro’s still in his head.

Like – it’s trauma, he gets that. It’s bad memories and flashbacks and whatever acronym Zane keeps throwing at him that Lloyd can’t remember.

But sometimes the voice is just – it’s Morro’s grating timbre pitch for pitch, all mocking and bitter and sneaking up on him at the worst of times. Like right now, when it’s been two weeks since he last heard from anyone, and the silence in his apartment is getting too loud.

It’s you, the voice’ll say. That’s why they left. They grew tired of you. You drove them away.

Shut up, Lloyd thinks.

You’re not useful to them anymore, you know that, right? You couldn’t even save your own uncle, much less lead anyone. Why would they keep you around after that?

Shut up! Lloyd thunks his head against the wall, eyes squeezing shut tight. A throbbing pain echoes from the impact, and he winces.

Oops, he thinks, staring dully at the dent in the bathroom wall. Of all the things to get charged extra rent for.

Lloyd shakes his head, as if to shake off the thoughts as well. His wet hair swings out as he does, sending little droplets all over the bathroom mirror. Lloyd makes a face. As if he needed more evidence that his hair is getting too long.

And it is, really. His usual haircut’s almost entirely grown out, shiny blond locks long enough that they can form wavy little curls now. Lloyd brushes one from his face as he digs through the cluttered drawer of his bathroom vanity for scissors. It’s taking him a minute, because it’s a bit of a mess, but he’s not going to just admit that, not when Pixal’s been hounding him about cleaning your bathroom a lot lately.

It’s not like she has to live here, Lloyd grumbles to himself. He snatches the scissors from the bottom of the drawer, running a hand through the tangles in his hair and preparing to cut it back into the more familiar style—

Lloyd’s hand suddenly hesitates, his fingers stilling on the scissors.

It’s his father’s style. He’s known that. But looking in the mirror right now, at the sharper edge of his cheekbones and the dark red of his eyes, he realizes that he’s starting to match a little too—

Lloyd swallows. And there’s a reminder. He’d almost forgotten, that the date’s coming up. He isn’t gonna call it an anniversary, because that makes it sound like a celebration, and it’s definitely not, it’s just…an unfortunate date, in Lloyd’s history.

At any rate, he won’t match his dad. Not when his dad’s dead.

And who killed him, I wonder.

Lloyd chucks the scissors back in the drawer so hard he’s pretty sure he hears them break. He slams the drawer shut, exhaling shakily.

You know what, he’s kind of liking the feel of longer hair right now. It looks okay, he thinks. It looks like — well, Lloyd, he guesses.

__ __ __ __

His bathroom is a mess, though. Lloyd should probably clean it. He should probably call the others, too , just because — well, he needs to — he’s leader, so—

He needs an excuse.

Lloyd sighs, toeing the bathroom door shut. Aw, whatever. He can clean it tomorrow.

__ __ __ __

With the benefit of hindsight, Lloyd should probably retract his earlier claim that he’s used to fighting on his own enough not to screw up.

Probably because he screws up.

It’s not even his fault, really. How was he supposed to know that the rumors about the local biker gang getting more aggressive were under-exaggerated? They’re bikers, Lloyd can explode stuff with his hands, it should’ve been an easy fight.

And it was, right up until the part where the biker with the red mask whipped a gun out and shot him through the leg.

Jerk move, Lloyd thinks hazily, half-hopping through his apartment door, trying to stop at least some blood from getting all over the floor. Real jerk move.

He didn’t even catch the guy, either, which makes this whole thing so much worse, he thinks darkly to himself, as he stumbles his way to the bathroom. He probably should’ve just sucked it up and checked himself into the hospital, but Lloyd hates the hospital, and it’s really not that bad. He’s got plenty of medical supplies he stuffed in the sink cabinet of the bathroom, so he can just — patch it up with that real quick, then sleep it off.

You can’t sleep off a gunshot wound, Zane’s voice echoes in his head, and Lloyd blocks it out, carefully lowering himself down to the floor so he can—

His leg suddenly shifts wrong, and it flares in an agony so fiery that Lloyd’s vision goes white for a beat, a high-pitched keening echoing like a bomb’s been set off in his face, except it’s not his face it’s his leg, FSM that hurts, that hurts—

Lloyd braces himself on his forearms, drawing in strained breaths through his nose. It’ll stop hurting in a minute, he knows it will. He just has to give it time. But in the meantime, it’d be really nice — if he could just be sure — it’d be nice to ask Zane, you know, or have like, Nya here, or Kai, or—

The pain in his leg is finally starting to subside, but Lloyd’s still swallowing a sob. He wants his family here. He wants them here now, right now, so they can make it better—

His leg throbs again, and anger lights in his gut. No, you know what? He doesn’t want to see them. He doesn’t want them to come back, because he’s angry at them — he’s angry, they left him here alone and they should feel bad about it, should feel bad that Lloyd’s here all alone with his stupid leg bleeding everywhere, should feel bad when Lloyd doesn’t even wanna see them because he wants them to feel how he feels, all torn up and scared and dumb and miserable—

Lloyd exhales on a gasp, and the dam breaks.

He’s being an idiot, he tells himself fiercely, through hot tears. That’s something nine-year-old brat-from-hell Lloyd would think. Of course he wants them back. It’s not their fault Sensei went missing. None of this is their fault, Lloyd would give his right arm to have them back right now, if he could.

It’s not their fault Lloyd is—

Fine.

He’s fine.

Mostly.

__ __ __ __

Patching his leg is easy, once he manages to stop crying and choke the painkiller down.

Lloyd scrubs at his eyes, sniffling miserably. His nose is horribly stuffed and his head feels like it’s about to explode, but the awful need to sob is finally ebbing into residual shudders that leave Lloyd wrung out, miserable, and just – exhausted, he’s exhausted, that’s the word. Tired. He’s tired of getting up and feeling miserable every day, he’s tired of feeling sorry for himself, he’s tired of missing everyone, and he’s really, stupid tired of bikers that get lucky hits in when he’s got his guard down.

He stares at the dirty floor through grainy eyes. There’s blood all over the linoleum tile, and an old stain right by his foot that looks a lot like dried blood. It probably is blood, he thinks. And now he’s just adding more. Gross.

That’s…probably unsanitary.

On second thought, Pixal has a point. Lloyd does need to clean the bathroom already.

__ __ __ __

Several hours later finds Lloyd on one knee — the other is sprawled out awkwardly as it occasionally sparks green, which he’s ignoring right now — the sleeves of his too-large hoodie pulled up and his hair pushed back by the hideous purple-blue tye-die headband that’d been on sale at the checkout counter when he’d picked up groceries a while back.

He’s hauled the radio into the bathroom, and it’s playing some new synth-pop music that echoes weirdly off the tiles. He thinks he might like the music — that or he’s just been listening to it for too long.

His nose wrinkles as he strains further over the shower floor, scrubbing harder at a particularly stubborn stain. He’s really gotta start taking better care of this place, he thinks.

His leg twinges, and he winces, closing his eyes and taking a breath.

He should…probably start taking better care of himself, while he’s at it. He’s been doing a pretty sucky job, apparently.

Lloyd just wasn’t meant to live alone, he decides dully. It doesn’t suit him.

__ __ __ __

By the fifth day out Lloyd’s leg is starting to heal up pretty nicely. There’s a very large part of him that suspects the unusually quick healing time has something to do with the vivid green that’s bleeding into his irises, growing by the day. He’s not sure where suddenly having green eyes gets off equating to accelerated powers, but he can walk to the grocery store before he starves, so he’ll take it.

He buys himself enough to last a few weeks, which ends up being one grocery bag too many, so climbing the stairs to his apartment is a pain, especially when Minerva, the fat cat, runs between his feet and almost trips him back down the stairs. He finally manages to reach his floor and shakes the key from his jacket, balances the grocery bags in one hand, and keys the door open.

And promptly has a heart attack.

“Hey, about time!” Kai says brightly — Kai says brightly, where he’s sprawled across his cheap sofa, in his apartment.

Why is he in his apartment? Lloyd blinks once, hard. Still there. Is he hallucinating—?

“Need help with those?”

Nya is suddenly in his apartment too, grabbing a grocery bag from him and setting it over by the kitchenette.

“Sorry we didn’t warn you,” Cole says, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, and — FSM, are they all here? “Pixal told us where you lived, so we’d all planned to meet here, and I guess we…kinda all…forgot to tell you.”

“We all assumed the other group would,” Zane says, spearing Cole with a look. “Our apologies for barging in.”

“It’s a great apartment, though!” Jay exclaims, where he’s bent over his book case. “I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be into the whole interior design thing, but this is pretty nice.”

“Admit it, you were betting he’d moved into another volcano,” Kai snorts.  “Seriously though, green machine, how many plants do you need—“

“Leave him alone, I like the plants, I think they’re a nice touch—“

“Lloyd?” Nya’s voice is suddenly quiet. “Are you alright? I really am sorry we didn’t call first.”

Lloyd just stares at her with the same blank look he’s been staring at them all with for the last few minutes, still frozen in place. Is this what shock feels like? a part of him wonders.

“You’re here,” he says, blankly. “You’re all — here?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jay says, as if it’s obvious. “We said we were gonna check in, right? You didn’t get hit in the head while we were gone, did you?”

Nya whacks him on the shoulder. “Of course we’re here,” she says. “Your apartment is super easy to break into, you know. Gotta get a better lock.”

“Oh,” Lloyd says, weakly. “Um. Yeah. I — sorry, I just…wasn’t expecting, I guess. You guys to come now, that is.”

The mood suddenly shifts, and Lloyd’s not sure to what, but they don’t look as bright and happy anymore. Kai lifts a shoulder, then drops it, suddenly looking a little unsure. “I guess we should’ve checked, about the date,” he admits. “But we, uh, we just wanted to be here, for you.”

Lloyd blinks rapidly. “You wanted – why?”

Kai looks at Cole, chewing on the inside of his cheek briefly. “Well it’s…the day your dad got banished, isn’t it?”

The breath rushes from Lloyd’s lungs like a freight train, and oh. Oh. They remembered. They remembered, all by themselves, and they came back without him even asking, and—

“Oh,” Lloyd says, quietly.

Kai looks stricken. “Oh no,” he says. “You’re not going to cry. Lloyd, please, every time you go off I go off, so don’t — oh Lloyd, no.”

He tries, okay? He tries to stop it. But the cracks in his walls have turned to cracks in a dam, and the dam’s gotten a lot higher than he realized, and the cracks are suddenly big and torn and gaping—

Lloyd opens his mouth to reply and ends up hiccuping out a sob instead. “I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I just—“ he wipes fiercely at his eyes. “I really missed you guys, and that’s — that’s really nice of you, and—“

“FSM, Kai, suck it up.” Cole’s eyes are sympathetic, and suddenly Lloyd is in a very warm and very tight embrace. “This isn’t about you.”

“That’s not what I—!”

Kai cuts his own self off and joins the hug, and then Nya’s there, and a couple more arms that are Zane and Jay and Lloyd’s kind of suffocating a bit because the AC still isn’t on yet, but—

They came back.

Oh wow, Lloyd really wasn’t fine about that, was he.

__ __ __ __

They all stay in Lloyd’s apartment that night, which is a horrible decision, because he’s got one bed and one couch that shouldn’t really be called a couch, and there’s no room at all, but it’s free, Jay argues, so they can suck it up for the night.

They do, and Zane makes dinner with the few edible items Lloyd has and it actually tastes good,  Cole gets music on and Jay’s chattering with Nya and Kai’s hounding him about his hair, and it’s the loudest Lloyd’s apartment has been in months.

His landlady’s gonna give him heck about it, but Lloyd can’t find it in himself to care. He spends that night on his terrible sofa, crammed up between Nya and Kai with his cheek smushed into Kai’s shoulder, listening to Cole snore a room over, and it’s easier to fall into a sleepy lull than it’s ever been here.

“Hey,” Nya whispers to him, after Kai’s breathing evens out. “I really missed you, by the way.”

Lloyd rubs at his eye, yawning. “I missed you too,” he murmurs. “I mean, it hasn’t been awful, but—“

“Being alone sucks,” Nya finishes. “A lot. I miss everyone.”

Lloyd is quiet. “I do too,” he finally whispers.

“It’s too quiet,” Nya continues. “I keep having to blare music so I don’t lose it.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Lloyd whispers. “Hey, have you heard, uh — it’s that weird sort of synth music—“

“The only thing they play on the hits channel now?”

“Yeah, that one. It’s not half bad.”

“Please tell me that’s not what you’ve been listening too, Lloyd. I thought you had taste—“

Lloyd stuffs down a giggle, burying his head into the couch. He knows it’s not gonna last much longer, and soon they’ll be off again, but—

They’ll be back. And for now, with them here—

That aching hunger in his chest doesn’t feel as much like starving.

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lloyd garmadon #ninjago-angst-week #kai smith #nya smith #u know what they're all here but its mostly lloyd #i have a lot of feelings about this alright #that and emotions about moving into apartments #my fic

[socialistsquirrel]

I’m 23, I’ve just become a homeowner, here’s how I did it

I guess you’re expecting this to be like every other article on young homeowners (I am so young, I don’t even appear on statistics that break home ownership down by age), that tells a story of how a young adult worked their socks off to buy a house at a stupidly young age, but manages to ignore all the factors that were out of their direct control that contributed to them being able to do it.  This is not going to be that. 1. There’s two of us. People are settling down at older and older ages, making buying a house a bit trickier. I was lucky that I found someone at my age that I did want to make that massive commitment with, most people in their early 20s don’t quite have that luxury. Technically, if I was on my own, I would have manged to buy something, but it wouldn’t be a nice 3 bedroom semi in an nice quiet cul-de-sack, it would have been a small 1-2 bedroom flat, likely in a worse area.  2. We both have full-time jobs.  Although neither of our jobs have the best pay in the world, we do have two full-time incomes from stable permanent jobs. More and more young people are working in the gig economy that doesn’t give that guaranteed income, making them a massive risk to mortgage lenders even if they do usually earn enough to be able to pay their mortgage.  3. We live in a cheap area. Although we have moved from an even cheaper area to where we are now, for the sake of halving the commute, house prices are still reasonable. Thank you North East of England! I remember after we’d had our offer accepted, my little brother had shown his southern university friends the house I was buying and asked them to guess how much they thought it was worth. One of them said in her area she would guess it would be three times what was paid, but guessed in the north east it would be cheaper. Her guess was still nearly double the asking price. A lot of young people do not have the benefit of living in a cheap region and moving away from friends, family and their support network for the sake of being able to buy really is not the best option for them. 4. My partner lived at home. Until about a year before we bought our house, my partner lived at home. He didn’t go to university, so he had about 6 years of working full-time and barely paying any board to his parents. Although his salary isn’t the highest, his living costs were incredibly low, allowing him to save at least 60% of his salary each month. 5. My parents saved for me. Although my parents didn’t give me a big lump of money when we started looking for a house to put towards a deposit, since I was born, my parents put £20 a month a way for me. My grandparents put away a similar amount, so when I turned 18 I had a good amount of savings. Part of it was used to live on at university, but a mixture of my parents contributing to my living costs, going to university in a cheap city and a scholarship I qualified for, all meant I didn’t have to dig into it too much. Then, towards the end of university, a relative died and I received some inheritance which partly replenished the savings I had spent at university.  6. Deposit contributions. Although between us we did have enough for a 10% deposit for house in our budget (based on what the bank would lend us), we got and additional £5,000 from my partner’s parents, £10,000 from my grandparents and my parents and his grandparents gave us another few thousand to pay for any work that needed doing. This meant our budget increased by that much, making a big difference to the type of houses we could afford and the option of taking on a house which wasn’t perfect because we knew we’d have the cash to sort things out. I can’t remember seeing any story of a young person buying their first home not ticking any of these boxes. It might be as simple as they lived with their parents until they moved into their new home, thus not paying extortionate private rents and making it much easy to save. It is not to belittle their achievement, but even that would be a luxury to many young people.  If you are young, don’t have family to help you out financially (e.g. deposit contributions, subsiding you while you save), and/or don’t live in a cheap area, and/or have to do it on your own, getting on the housing ladder is very very difficult.  I would much rather not be a novelty, I would much rather other people my age were able to buy their first home in their early 20s if they wanted to, but in order for that to happen, house prices need to come under control. 

#housing #Housing bubble #affordable housing #housing crisis #uk politics

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MICROSOFT IS THIS SUMMER

Anything that gets you those 10,000 users is ipso facto good. We had a page in our site trying to talk merchants out of doing real time authorizations. If you want to beat those eminent enough to delegate, one way to do really big things seems to be a large tumor. One reason so many good ideas come from them, even if few do per capita. In the US it's a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. Or it could be because it's clearer in the sciences whether theories are true or false, and this is responsible for a lot of people correctly or not as a credential in its own right. It's this end that gives rise to phrases like those who can't do, teach. A quarter of their life. If you want to figure out what we're getting wrong is to look at what used to be limited to those who could get them published.

But in fact there will be a lot of the most powerful people in the future will find ridiculous. That's made harder by the fact that the best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas. But I don't think I'm imagining it. The reason the expected value is so high is web services. Then all you have to declare variables before using them, for example. Once someone is good at it than something very interesting with someone who's good at it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas. Their previous business experience consisted of making blue boxes to hack into the phone system, a business with the rare distinction of being both illegal and unprofitable.

But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be stolen—they're still just beginning to realize how much deeper bloggers can dig than journalists, how much more interesting a democratic news site can be than a front page controlled by editors, and how much funnier a bunch of consequences. Perhaps, if design and research seems to be vanishingly rare in the arts, but I think this time I'll wait till I'm sure they work before writing about them. In a world of small companies, performance is all anyone cares about. If you're designing a chair, that's what you're designing for, and there's something very pleasing about small things. But in the US at least they don't have a big enough sample size to care what's true on average, tend to be the mistaken one. This book had better command respect, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but it felt like it at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. However many Google does, Microsoft should do ten times as many. Everyone values safety too much, both the obscure and the eminent. The eminent, on the other hand, are weighed down by their eminence.

But in retrospect you're probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who's good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn't. If a self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. Real startups prefer to work in this field at all. It's merely the adjective form of I don't like the idea of going on the medical equivalent of what lawyers call a fishing expedition, where you raise a million dollars each to move, a lot of graduate programs. If I'd spent a whole morning sitting on a sofa watching TV, I'd have noticed very quickly. Hollywood got the most traffic. We now think of it before? The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be true. Marble, for example. I should do. Well, that is all too obvious.

This is a problem for founders, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress. If they don't need you, it tends to push the others to do better. Perhaps, if design and research converge, the best research is also good design, and in some ways a worse kind of hard. Research doesn't have to be a good angel investor is simply to be a better way to block the transmission of power between generations: to encourage the trend toward an economy made of more, smaller units. Like the amount you invest, this can vary a lot. Why look under rocks as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak must have had to work in fields with corrupt tests. The alternative approach might be called the Hail Mary strategy. But so do people who inherit money, and the people would be dispersed. But he didn't qualify it at all. We'll have to.

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