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quicksilversquared · 3 years

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The Wavering Peahen: Chapter 7

When Nathalie started feeling oddly ill again, both she and Gabriel were worried that the Peacock Miraculous might somehow (impossibly) be to blame again.

So naturally, they pick someone else to be the Peacock for a bit. You know, as a test subject. Except the new Peacock… doesn’t exactly know that.

links in the reblog

Marinette was really glad that the picnic broke up as soon as the ambulance vanished around the corner, because she couldn't get home fast enough.

Was the pin real? It had to be, since otherwise Tikki wouldn't have sensed it. But why on earth would Hawkmoth think that giving Lila a Miraculous would be a good idea?

And how did Lila's strange illness fit into it all?

"I suppose she could just be sick and that part could have nothing to do with Hawkmoth at all," Marinette told Tikki as she dug the Miracle Box out from under her bed. She had to talk to Wayzz right now and see if he could shed any insight on the absolutely astronomical levels of crazy that the past half-hour had been. "But she's been sick for most of the time that Pavona was out and about. Why would Hawkmoth let someone who was sick fight alongside him? If I were him, I would want someone healthy out with me. Whenever I'm sick, I don't do as good of a job fighting. Sneezing and coughing just throws me off and leaves me open to attacks. I mean, maybe he doesn't have any other choice, depending on what happened to Mayura, but still."

"Normally I would say that it's probably just a coincidence, but the Peacock's energy seems off again." Tikki was frowning. "I would have thought that Hawkmoth would have fixed the Miraculous once he got his hands on Master Fu's translations, and it certainly seemed like that was the case when Mayura started coming out to battles all the time. I might be wrong, since I'm not the expert, but my guess is that Lila got sick because of the Miraculous."

"I'd just ask- what was it, Duusu? But honestly, if his energy is off, I don't want to charge in headfirst. If I get sick like Lila, then I won't be able to fight as Ladybug." Marinette glanced over the box, then tapped the section for the Turtle. "So I want to talk to Wayzz first. He was the one who was always with Master Fu, so maybe they talked about whatever was going on with the Peacock." There was also the issue of whether it would even be safe to pull Duusu out when she wasn't transformed. If he felt any loyalty to his previous holders- which he might, after being with them for what was really a decent amount of time- then she might be running the risk of him seeing her identity and then escaping and bringing it back to Hawkmoth.

She wanted to believe that that wouldn't happen. That Duusu would be excited about being saved. But she had heard stories about kwamis getting attached to terrible holders before, when their viewpoint got warped around so that they thought their villainous holder was in the right, and as one-half of Paris's superhero team she just couldn't take any chances.

"Hopefully Wayzz and Master Fu discussed the Peacock," Tikki said as Marinette pulled the Turtle out. "If they didn't, we're going to be going in blind."

"Not completely blind. Wayzz is sensitive to what's going on with the other Miraculous and the auras around them. It should help." A green light flashed across the room, and Marinette grinned as Wayzz showed up. "Hey, buddy!"

"Marinette! I sensed a disturbance- a change in the aura around the Peacock- wait! It's close- very close- it's inactive!" Wayzz spun around in a wild circle, then made a beeline to the pile of fabric that was Lila's scarf, digging through it until the Peacock pin was exposed. "You have it! It's here! It's broken, but it's here! Duusu has been saved!"

"So it is broken again," Marinette confirmed. "How would it have gotten like that again? Are the Miraculous really so easy to damage?"

Wayzz shook his head, one paw stroking the Peacock pin as he talked. "Not at all! It's just that when it was fixed last time, it was not fixed correctly. Master Fu saw to that. When he was writing down the translation for that particular spell, he deliberately wrote down one step incorrectly. The spell would appear to fix the Miraculous, and then gradually wear off as time goes by. He did that just in case he lost the translation or it was stolen from him, since he knew that it would make things very difficult for you if the Peacock was fixed for good." Wayzz sighed. "I believe that he thought that the 'repair' would wear off a whole lot sooner, but those sorts of things are hard to control. I suppose it did end up doing what it was meant to, though."

"Eventually, yeah." Marinette grinned, then sobered a little. "Though I honestly would have preferred that it take out Mayura instead of Pavona. Then we would have at least gotten an insight to who Hawkmoth might be. With Lila, though, I just know that the only reason she's connected is because she doesn't like Ladybug."

There was a chance, of course- probably (hopefully) a really good chance- that Duusu would be willing to help and give them clues towards Hawkmoth's (and Mayura's) identity, but clues could only go so far. There were millions of people in Paris and the chance that she and Chat Noir would actually put together the supervillains' identities with only a few clues was pretty low. They could call up the police to help, of course, but even the police didn't know everyone in the city.

"I wonder how much manipulation went into getting Lila to go along with Hawkmoth," Wayzz commented. He raised an eyebrow at Marinette's dubious look. "...if any?"

Marinette shook her head. "I doubt that there was any manipulation. He probably offered up the Miraculous and she took it right away. And I'm definitely not going to let Lila get away with that. She's old enough to know that she shouldn't be working with a supervillain."

"I think even a little kid knows not to work with a supervillain!" Tikki agreed emphatically. "Remember that little kid that got akumatized a month after the attacks started and was super upset about it? He couldn't have been more than six or seven, but he knew that working with a supervillain was a bad thing and wouldn't calm down until you convinced him that being akumatized didn't count as working with Hawkmoth."

Marinette nodded. That had been pretty heartbreaking, actually, and she and Chat Noir had ended up running a whole publicity campaign affirming that akumas weren't responsible for their actions and that they were victims, not villains. No one chose to be akumatized, they had said- which wasn't strictly true, presumably Mayura had allowed herself to get akumatized to create Scarlet Moth and Marinette wouldn't be surprised if Lila had willingly and eagerly accepted a corrupted butterfly (or five) as well- and people shouldn't beat themselves up over it. People should try to avoid getting akumatized or causing akumatizations, of course, but they weren't the villains. Hawkmoth (and Mayura and Pavona, of course, but they hadn't been around at that time) was.

Of course, that was entirely beside the point at the moment. Lila hadn't been akumatized this time around, she had accepted a Miraculous from a supervillain willingly. That was different.

"I can probably say that a classmate of Lila's found the pin on her and alerted me at once," Marinette decided after a moment's pause. "So that's how we found it, and that's how we establish the first connection. Then we add on that the Miraculous has been broken and her symptoms are consistent with the use of a broken Miraculous, so we're positive that it wasn't planted. Or wait, no- I shouldn't mention planting at all, that would be dumb of me. I can just say that that's, uh..."

"Extra confirmation that she was indeed the one holding the Peacock most recently," Wayzz suggested. "Or that that makes it undeniable that she was Pavona, that way you're not suggesting that there was any uncertainty about Pavona's identity once the Peacock came to light."

Marinette jabbed her finger at him. "Yes! I like that. Hang on, I'll write that down. Now, next question- how soon should Chat Noir and I tell Paris about Lila? Right away, or do you think we might be able to catch Hawkmoth off guard if we don't publicize that Lila's identity was discovered?"

Tikki perked up. "Ooh, the second one! I would talk to the police and the hospital right away, though," she added. "To make sure that no news stories run about Lila's collapse. Maybe it's not likely, I don't know, but just in case."

"They probably wouldn't release names for several days anyway, but that's a good idea. The police will understand why we don't want to risk tipping Hawkmoth off, in case he doesn't already know somehow." Marinette pulled out her phone, opening the secure messaging app that she and Chat Noir used and shooting her partner a message. She wanted to let him know what was going on as soon as possible. If they could both be there when Duusu came out, that would be great. As she sent it, another thought hit her. "Wayzz, will it be dangerous for us to pull Duusu out considering that his Miraculous is broken? Will it affect us like it affected Lila?"

Wayzz shook his head. "It shouldn't. Lila got to the stage that she's now at by repetitive use of the Miraculous. Heavy repetitive use, and recent, from what I'm sensing around Duusu's aura. Which is odd, considering that Hawkmoth hasn't been active today...or this week at all."

Marinette gasped, stabbing one finger into the air as a revelation hit her. "That's how Lila got the photos! Today she had pictures of herself with all sorts of famous people, including Ladybug," she added to Wayzz when he looked confused. "To make her stories seem more true. I figured that she had just been using Photoshop, but I bet all of those celebrities were actually sentimonsters plus a poster behind her."

"Somehow, I am not surprised." Wayzz let out a long sigh. "Fitting that that would be her downfall, really. She must have used the Peacock's powers a number of times in a very short timeframe to become as ill as she did at the end. You will simply be pulling Duusu out and not transforming or using his powers, which means that the broken magic from the Miraculous won't affect you at all."

"Good." Marinette let out a long breath- that was a load off of her shoulders- and then checked her phone as it buzzed. "Chat Noir is available now. I'm telling him to go to Master Fu's old parlor- Hawkmoth never found that, so it should be private and safe enough. We can pull Duusu out there, so both of us can talk to him at once." She slipped the Turtle bracelet onto her wrist. "Is there anything I should be bringing along other than the Miraculous, Wayzz?"

"Some fruit, if you have some to spare!" Wayzz told her. "Duusu loves fruit, and I'm sure that the lying girl didn't give him enough. She seems the sort to only give the bare minimum and then snap when asked for anything more, which- ironically- would have just sped up the rate at which she was affected by the Miraculous being broken. You don't have to take a ton, but a snack would be nice."

Marinette nodded, already headed for her trapdoor. "That's easy enough. We always have fruit sitting out for snacks. No one is going to think anything of it if an apple and a couple of bananas go missing, that's what they're there for."

It took almost no time at all to grab the fruit, gather up the pin (and the scarf) and then hightail her way over to Master Fu's old shop. Going in felt a little odd- she had to slip in a back window as Ladybug instead of going in the front door as Marinette, and the shop had a distinctly abandoned feel to it instead of feeling like a home- but it was the best place they had to work out of. Chat Noir was already there, waiting anxiously in what used to be the living room.

"What's going on?" Chat Noir wanted to know as soon as she came in. "You said it was urgent? There's not some sort of invisible akuma or something, is there?"

"No, no akuma," Ladybug told him, pulling a pillow and a box that sometimes served as a sort of table over next to him. "There was an, ah, incident at one of the local parks not very long ago. Lila Rossi- you know, the liar girl- she passed out and fainted. And when Marinette was checking her over, she found...this." Ladybug reached out, depositing the Peacock on their box-table. Chat Noir's eyes went wide. "And Tikki and Wayzz have confirmed that it's the real thing."

"No way! That's- but how was Lila- I mean, I guess it makes sense considering how Pavona acted, she always seemed to think that she was more of a threat than she actually was. But- wow." Chat Noir let out a long breath, still staring at the Peacock. "How lucky is it that she just happened to be sick and passed out right then? Now Hawkmoth is down an ally, and maybe we'll get some sort of lead."

"It's not entirely luck, really." Ladybug tapped the Miraculous. "You remember how we thought that it was broken before, right? And that Hawkmoth fixed it? Wayzz said that Master Fu didn't write down the correct translation of the spell. He altered one step so that it would look fixed and feel fixed for a short while and then wear off. So the Miraculous has been making Lila sick, and then she used it a bunch- that's what we're assuming, at least- to fake some photos with famous people, and that was enough to push her over the edge into- well, she hadn't woken up yet from what I heard, so who knows? Maybe she's in a coma."

"Oof, that's- well, honestly, that's well-deserved." Chat Noir let out another breath. "It's a good thing that we found that out with the supervillains, at least. Imagine if we had gotten the Peacock back somehow and tried to fix it ourselves! That could have been really dangerous."

"I wouldn't have done anything to it without consulting all of the kwamis first," Ladybug told him. "And then I would have made sure to have Wayzz keep an eye on it, since he's best with the auras. I wouldn't feel confident enough to fix a Miraculous myself without supervision to actually use it afterwards without triple- and quadruple-checking to make sure that things actually went the way they were meant to. And- and Master Fu would have known that."

Chat Noir nodded. "That makes me feel better. I'd be pretty lost if you got sick and then vanished off of the face of the earth."

"I'd stop way before getting to the coma stage, believe me. One cough, and that Miraculous would be retired to a corner until I could contact the Order." Ladybug took a deep breath, her eyes returning to the Miraculous. "I haven't talked to Duusu yet. I didn't think it would be safe to at home, and it made more sense than interviewing him by myself and then trying to remember everything to pass it along to you. Besides, if Duusu gives us a lead to who Hawkmoth is, we should both be here."

"Ooh, fingers crossed that we get a good lead." Chat Noir settled down, shifting anxiously on his heels. "Ready to talk to him now?"

Yeah." Ladybug gave herself a shake, then straightened and turned her attention fully to the Miraculous, focusing on pulling Duusu out without actually touching the Miraculous. It took a minute, but then the Miraculous lit up with blue light. It glowed for a long moment, and then a blue bubble popped free. It glowed brighter and brighter, and then burst. Duusu yawned widely, then blinked blearily over at them. After a moment, his eyes widened and he shot up in the air.

"Oh, thank goodness!" Duusu exclaimed. "I've been saved! You would not believe the terrible people that I've had to put up with, it was awful!"

As it turned out, Duusu was an absolute gold mine of information. Maybe he couldn't say the names of his former captors, but he could certainly talk and talk (and talk some more) on about them until there was absolutely no doubt in Ladybug and Chat Noir's minds about who Hawkmoth and Mayura were.

And then Duusu kept talking, on and on and on. He complained about Lila ("Such a little brat, and so full of herself!") and about Mayura ("I don't know why she's going after a married man, he's hardly a looker or kind or a good dad or anything, no redeeming qualities at all!") and about another, previous holder, who apparently had been kind, if perhaps a little manipulative sometimes, and who was currently in some sort of cursed coma related to her use of the Miraculous in Hawkmoth's sub-basement lair.

Ladybug had to roll her eyes at sub-basement lair. What kind of unnecessarily dramatic (and rich) villain needed two lairs in the same building? It was absolutely excessive and ridiculous.

"Okay, so Hawkmoth is Gabriel Agreste, Mayura is Nathalie Sancoeur, and Emilie Agreste isn't missing, but a former Peacock and is hidden under the house," Chat Noir summed up once Duusu finally stopped talking for a minute in favor of inhaling some of the fruit that Ladybug had brought along. Her partner looked more than a little shaken, his face so pale behind the mask that Ladybug was starting to wonder if she would have to call for another ambulance. "Uh, is there any way to- to get her out of the coma? To heal her, I mean?"

"Once my Miraculous is properly fixed, the energy that I sapped from my users should slowly return," Duusu told them. "Well, as long as the they have my Miraculous on them. It won't work without that contact. They might need a little medical attention and maybe a boost from a potion or two to get the process really going, but unless the damage runs deeper than I can sense, it should be a pretty straightforward process to fix everything!"

Ladybug nodded, part of her mind already combing through the potions and spells that she and Chat Noir had gone through together. There were a couple that might be of some use, though she would want to do a bit more digging through things and consulting with the kwamis before she gave anyone any potions.

There was also, of course, the question of how they were meant to heal Lila- and possibly Nathalie as well, depending on how she was doing- without running the risk of them taking the Miraculous and running with it. Handcuffs and 24-7 supervision could only go so far when magic was involved.

The other part of her mind was- well, it was mulling over the discovery of the supervillains' identities. After all, that was what she and Chat Noir had wanted to learn for months now.

She wasn't as surprised as she thought she would be, really.

Part of it was the fact that she had suspected Mr. Agreste before. He had had the Miracle Book and had a butterfly as his brand's logo. He had a motive with his missing wife. He had the money and job security needed to vanish for hours on end to somewhere secluded and safe to unleash his akumas on the world. And, to top it off, he wasn't a very nice person. It was pretty easy to imagine that he would think that the rules didn't apply to him and that causing other people suffering and fear and distress was just a minor inconvenience that could easily be ignored.

And then the other part... well, both she and Adrien had commented on how odd it was that Lila, Nathalie, and Mrs. Agreste had all come down with the same symptoms at separate times. Once Lila collapsed and Marinette found out that she had been Pavona and the Peacock Miraculous had been what had caused the odd illness, that oddness had been nagging her from the back of her mind, begging to be noticed.

Marinette hadn't paid it as much attention as she might have otherwise because there had been a lot going on that had also needed her attention, but if she had had a couple minutes to give it a proper think over, she probably would have come to the same conclusion that she had now. With that one piece of the puzzle it would have all snapped into place anyway, even without Duusu's helpful comments. He had just sped the process along and ensured that they were absolutely 100% positive about the supervillains' identities.

"I guess the most pressing question now- well, other than how to fix the Miraculous- is how to deal with defeating Hawkmoth and then approaching all of the stuff with Lila," Chat Noir said hesitantly after a few moments had passed. "Mr. Agreste is out of town at the moment, I've heard, though he's coming back- er, tomorrow, potentially? At least that's what I've heard."

Ladybug blinked at that, puzzled, before giving herself a shake to refocus. How and why Chat Noir knew Mr. Agreste's schedule off of the top of his head was anyone's guess, but it also wasn't immediately important. If she remembered, maybe she could ask him about it later. "I got to talk to Tikki and Wayzz about that before coming here, actually. We thought it would be a good idea to go to the police and catch them up on what is going on, and then they could restrict what information gets released so that we don't tip Hawkmoth off about Lila collapsing and us getting the Peacock back ahead of time."

"And should we tell them about who Hawkmoth and Mayura are, or just Lila's identity?"

Ladybug let out a long breath. Honestly, she wanted to talk to Tikki about that to really feel good about her decision. After all, she was just a teenager with experience fighting akumas and pretty much all she had talked about with Master Fu was in regard to their battles, not what she should do once they had figured out who Hawkmoth was. "I mean...maybe? I don't- I don't know if I want to risk them trying to take over now, but I'm coming up a bit blank on ideas."

"Right." Chat Noir leaned back on his pillow, clearly deep in thought. "Well, if we want to surprise Hawkmoth- Mr. Agreste- then we want to get him before he has the chance to find out about Lila. So I think we should find out when he's going to be back for sure, and catch him coming off of the plane."

"Hopefully Mrs. Rossi hasn't contacted him already." Presumably she wouldn't have- after all, with Lila likely in a coma, Mrs. Rossi was probably too overwhelmed to think of doing anything like contacting Lila's employer- but it never hurt to shut down those possibilities before their advantage could get spoiled.

...honestly, it was a bit questionable as to if Mrs. Rossi knew about Lila's modeling at all. Somehow Ladybug doubted it.

Chat Noir frowned. "I hadn't considered that. But assuming that she hasn't yet, maybe we could ask the police to ask her not to spread any news about Lila? Then Mr. Agreste would come back unprepared, and we could catch him and Na- er, Mayura at the airport. If he tries transforming there, everyone will see him and he'll know it."

"If he knows that we already know, it might not matter," Ladybug pointed out, but she could see his point. "I think that's a good idea."

"If it helps, Mrs. Rossi doesn't know about Lila's modeling!" Duusu chirped helpfully, finally emerging from the slowly shrinking pile of fruit. "It was all a secret! I'm not sure if she would have allowed it or not if she had known, but Lila didn't really tell her mom anything. She can't stop it if she doesn't know about it, right?"

"I feel like Lila took that approach with most things," Ladybug sighed. She looked over at Chat Noir. "I feel like we probably thought about everything. Ready to go talk to the police?"

"In a minute?" Chat Noir had curled up on himself, his eyes on Duusu. "I'm just... I know we have to work fast, but everything is still sinking in. I just can't believe that everything is coming together and finishing so quickly."

Ladybug nodded, re-settling on her cushion. Honestly, they could use a few extra minutes before they headed out, just to decide what they wanted to say. "I know what you mean. I never imagined that we would learn Hawkmoth's identity this way. It feels really strange to be planning his defeat instead of just beating him during a battle."

"Mm-hmm." Chat Noir had a rather funny look on his face. "...yeah. But I- I'm glad that we did find out this way, instead of during a battle. Now we can, uh, prepare."

"Exactly!" Ladybug smiled over at him. There was a fair amount of trepidation creeping in- now that the shock was starting to recede, there were a whole lot of possible problems and things to consider that were threatening to overwhelm her. The takedown wouldn't be terribly complicated, but how they wanted to deal with the fallout, and getting Duusu help, and what should or shouldn't become public, and- and-

But that could all wait. Right now, there was finally- finally- an end to all of the endless battles in sight, and she wanted to focus on that.

Gabriel Agreste was pleasantly surprised when he woke up on the last day of his business trip to a continued lack of news about any sort of superhero-supervillain activity in Paris.

If he was being entirely honest, he hadn't been completely positive that Lila would follow his instructions to not go out with the Peacock, even with his threats. Her ego was big enough to fill a mansion, and she had proven time and time again during her time as Pavona that she thought that her strategic planning was eons better than anyone else's, even though that was nowhere close to being true. He had had to whack her and her ego back down to make her into an even remotely competent partner, and he had worried that she would just bounce back and act out again without him there to issue corrections immediately.

Perhaps he would have had a more restful week had he collected the Miraculous from her before heading out on his trip and simply returned it afterwards, but his worries about if Lila would disregard his orders hadn't really surfaced until it was far too late to do anything about it.

"I do wonder how we should approach using the- the bird," Gabriel murmured to Nathalie, letting his voice drop into a whisper so that none of the other passengers in first class would overhear. "Like how much longer we should allow the girl to use it. We're not going to get any closer to the jewels with her assistance, but you seem to be feeling better now that you've had a break from using the pe- using the bird."

"I'm inclined to believe that my illness was a coincidence, given the fact that Ms. Rossi has not complained about feeling sick despite the rigorous pace you've set," Nathalie told him. "And I've been thinking about my return as well, and came up with a potential approach. If you bring her back out onto the battlefield for a couple of fights- let me finish, Gabriel, do not interrupt- and then reclaim the- the bird. I will use it and look just like her, atrocious outfit and all, and then we can take them off guard. They will be expecting a weak opponent and an easy monster and instead, come face-to-face with- well, me."

Gabriel hmmmed, stroking his chin. "Ah, yes. I like that idea. You might have to tr- to use her form before," he added, glancing around to make sure that no one was listening in. Thankfully, it seemed as though everyone in the rows around them either had headphones on or was asleep. "To get used to the difference in height and the, ah, outfit." He had to shudder at the thought. Pavona's outfit was one of the most garish and tasteless things that he had ever seen. Frankly, it was a bit concerning that Lila was spending so much time around fashion and had still managed to come up with that. "Speaking of Ms. Rossi and her health, I think it might be prudent to call her up for a shoot before you return, just so that we can see her in person and ensure that she isn't hiding an illness."

Nathalie tapped at her tablet. "Of course, sir. How soon should the shoot be?"

"After several attacks. She has gotten some time off from them, after all." Gabriel tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair, a sharp staccato as he thought. "Let's allow for three or four in quick succession. That way, if she has any symptoms, they should be at a detectable level."

"A solid plan, sir."

Gabriel only nodded in acknowledgement.

The remainder of their flight passed quickly. Gabriel sipped away at the wine that he had bought earlier in the flight- enough to take the edge off of the mind-numbing dullness of travel, not so much that he would appear remotely incapacitated once he had to get off the plane- and sketched while Nathalie took advantage of the airplane Wi-Fi to take care of her emails and plan out both his and Adrien's schedules for the next two weeks.

It wouldn't do to return behind schedule, after all. There was a lot of work that went into running a company like Gabriel, and it was getting harder and harder to fit everything in around their increased number of akumatizations without anyone noticing. Every spare minute had to used wisely.

Hopefully everything would be sorted out soon. With Nathalie's suggested plan, Gabriel figured that they should have the Miraculous in their hands by the end of the following week. Then they would have Emilie back, so there would be no need to continue the time-consuming akuma attacks, and she would be able to help both him and Nathalie with their work. They could get caught up, and then Gabriel would be able to expand several of the fashion lines and use his extra time to continue growing the business into a few new countries.

Emilie would probably insist on them going to a few of Adrien's fencing tournaments or basketball games or something, but Gabriel could always bring along his tablet so that he could continue working and wouldn't be wasting so much time on such frivolities.

"We got an email from Adrien's school yesterday afternoon," Nathalie commented as the plane started its descent, swiping at something on her tablet and then setting it aside as the announcement to put electronics away came over the intercom. "I hadn't looked at it before, since it wasn't marked as urgent, but it sounds like there was some sort of incident during one of their class outings. It doesn't go into details, but I suppose we should ask Adrien about it."

"I imagine that it's just some schoolyard drama, but yes, I suppose." There was, of course, the off chance that something moderately interesting had happened, but based on prior emails the school had sent out, it was far more likely that someone had tripped and scraped their knee and then someone else had felt faint at the sight of the blood or something ridiculous like that. "I do wish that the school was a bit more discriminating about what they bother parents about. If I wanted to know about every inconsequential detail about what is going on at school, I would ask Adrien."

Nathalie nodded. "Precisely. I suppose that they had to deal with complaints from overly-involved parents who wanted to know every detail about what their kids were doing and that's why they felt the need to send something out- and for something that didn't even happen on school grounds or during school hours, either."

"Ridiculous."

Nathalie nodded, and they fell silent as the plane finished its descent and landed. As soon as they were stopped at the gate, Nathalie was up and pulling their carry-ons down from overhead. They were almost the first people off, striding up the jetway towards the airport. It would mean a longer wait for their luggage, but Gabriel much preferred that over sitting in the plane for any longer.

"Do you think that you'll be checking in on Ms. Rossi tonight?" Nathalie asked. "To update her on the plan?"

Gabriel shook his head. "No, for several reasons. Since she's Adrien's classmate, she's likely to be aware that I was gone as well, and she's likely find out that I returned today. That's the problem with us including her at all. She's too high-maintenance and spoiled. I worry that if I tell her that I'm going to be taking the pin back ahead of time, she'll try to stab me in the back and run off with it. I'll give the attacks a break for another day or two, then do an attack and visit her afterwards. I think that would be best."

"And then when you want to take the pin back, just do it the day of," Nathalie agreed as they stepped into the airport. "Wise choice. I'm looking forward to not having to deal with her anymore. Or, well, not having to deal with her on that side of our lives. I suppose she still serves a purpose as a spy at the school."

Gabriel sighed. Honestly, he would rather not have to deal with such an unpleasant child, but she was a mildly useful tool. "Yes, at least for a while longer. As soon as we get-" he lowered his voice "-the Miraculous, then we can drop her like a hot potato. She's a pain in the rear at photoshoots, she's been holding up the entire proce-"

He never got to finish his sentence. Out of nowhere, Nathalie got sent flying as a black pole slammed into her back, and Gabriel found himself hog-tied and dragged sideways abruptly, with no chance to defend himself. His face hit the floor with a smack and his nose started stinging as he was yanked across the cheap airport carpet, fibers and dirt and stray tiny stones scraping across his skin. The sensation- along with the tearing noise that was almost definitely coming from either his jacket or his pants or both- was a distant concern, though, behind the absolute panic that was welling up in Gabriel. He thrashed frantically, trying to catch sight of who had roped him, but there were too many people around. There were shouts of surprise and panic from the crowds as people started running away, tripping over luggage and other people as they did.

Gabriel was yanked across another few meters of carpet before coming to an abrupt stop, still face-down on the carpet. There was something uncomfortably sticky across his cheek, and now-

Now there was definitely a foot pressing down on his back, holding him down. It didn't feel that big, so Gabriel tried to thrash.

The foot pressed down harder, clearly stronger than its small size indicated.

"Look at what came off!" a male voice called, and Gabriel twisted his head just enough to see Carapace straightening up, a scrap of fabric in hand. Just a little further back- where smooth floor switched to rough carpet- Gabriel's red and white-striped clip-on ascot lay on the floor, having apparently popped off-

-wait. Carapace?

No. No no no no no no no-

"One butterfly-themed brooch!" Carapace announced, waving the scrap of cloth around. "That was easy!"

"Nice!" a female voice cheered, and Gabriel's eyes shot over to where Rena Rouge and Chat Noir were handcuffing Nathalie, who... well, it looked like she might have been thrown into the coffee shop area when she was initially hit by what must have been Chat Noir's baton. "No last-ditch transformation attempts!"

"What-" Gabriel croaked, his mind spinning as he tried to piece together what was going on. It sounded like they knew that he was Hawkmoth and Nathalie was Mayura, but how was that even possible? They had been careful! They had made sure to not go in and out of the mansion from as Hawkmoth and Mayura- well, at least not from any visible entrances or ones that could be connected to the mansion- and they had never been unmasked in front of anyone. They made to detransform in hidden spots that didn't have any cameras, if they decided to detransform somewhere that wasn't in the mansion. "No, I'd like that back, it- it has a picture of my wife in it, it's very special to me-"

Carapace snorted. "Yeah, I bet it's special to you, Mr. Supervillain."

"Welcome back to Paris," Ladybug said cheerfully from where she stood on top of him, her friendly smile a little too wide, a little too toothy, just on the edge of dangerous. "By the way, you're under arrest."

Paris flew into an uproar as soon as the news of Hawkmoth's defeat reached the public, shock and joy filling the streets. The police wasted no time in releasing the official story that Ladybug and Chat Noir had fed them, which was that a classmate found the Peacock Miraculous on the civilian Pavona while administering first aid following Pavona's collapse. She had grabbed it to give to Ladybug and from there, the superheroes had been able to piece together the clues that led them to Mr. Agreste and Ms. Sancoeur.

Hawkmoth and Mayura's identities had been known as soon as the arrest was made, of course. People in the airport had seen the superheroes making an arrest and waving a pin around, and it was easy enough to put two and two together. The police had initially declined to confirm the reason for the arrest, but it hadn't been long before it was obvious that no one was buying it.

The public then turned to the next question: Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth and Nathalie Sancoeur was Mayura, but who was Pavona? Perhaps she hadn't been on the battlefield as much as Hawkmoth or Mayura, or for as long, and really she had been more or a minor annoyance for the superheroes (and a source of amusement for the rest of Paris, who rather enjoyed seeing the supervillain constantly getting beaten up), but she had joined the supervillains and needed to face the consequences.

This time, the police declined to release any names right away. They might have confirmed- with Duusu's help and with the recording of Hawkmoth recruiting Lila that they had found at the Agreste mansion- that Lila's participation was 100% voluntary, but since Lila was underage, they wanted to be more careful.

Needless to say, the superheroes were not thrilled about that, particularly once Lila's estranged father appeared and looked like he might be moving to use his connections- connections that did exist, unlike the ones that Lila claimed- to keep Lila's involvement on the down-low. She would still go to jail- no connections could make the evidence go away- but no one would know. Everyone in her class- in the whole school, really- would remember her as the super-cool, super-nice student who was going to save the world, only to be suddenly felled by an illness and then vanish.

Lila didn't deserve that. She had been a supervillain by choice, and that made her fake everyday-superhero persona an insult to everyone who actually dedicated their lives to helping others.

And so the superheroes tipped the scales, so to speak. All it took was them mentioning in the ex-supervillains' hearing range why Lila had taken ill so suddenly and intensely that she had collapsed and spilled the beans. Gabriel Agreste had been so thoroughly infuriated about the fact that Lila had gotten sick from her own entirely selfish use of the Miraculous instead of just by using the Peacock for his cause that he had told reporters who Pavona had been himself during a press conference several weeks after his arrest.

Once upon a time Adrien might have felt a little bad about manipulating his father to do his dirty work for him, but not anymore. After all, Lila deserved to be exposed, and Mr. Agreste really couldn't get in any more trouble than he was already in.

Besides, Mr. Agreste had made Adrien put up with Lila during photoshoots and study sessions that Adrien had objected to, so if he looked at it that way, his father owed it to him to ensure that Adrien wouldn't have to listen to his classmates gushing about and worrying over Lila for who-knew-how-long going forward.

As was to be expected, the truthfulness of the story was questioned when it first broke, but it didn't take people long to figure out that there was no point in Mr. Agreste lying. In fact, since his identity had been figured out due to Pavona's collapse, he was bound to be pretty motivated to take her down with him.

Besides, Lila had, in fact, passed out at a park and was still in the hospital. All of the details fit, and Paris was convinced.

After that, it wasn't long before the police confirmed Pavona's identity. Lila's father had raged, but at that point, there was no point in denying it any longer. Everyone knew the truth, and it wasn't long before all of Lila's other lies came to light, too.

Lila's reputation was in the trash and- well, no one could say that it wasn't very well deserved.

"Well, at least one good thing came out of Lila being here," Adrien commented as he and Marinette watched the latest news coverage on the upcoming supervillain trials in her family's apartment. Ever since they revealed their identities to each other, they had been practically attached at the hip as Adrien came to terms with his father's betrayal and anxiously waited for news about his mother's condition. It had been hard at first, but now that Mrs. Agreste was definitely on the mend- as the only non-villainous Peacock holder, it had been a unanimous decision to let her use the Miraculous to heal first while they figured out security measures for healing Lila and possibly Nathalie- he had been much more cheerful. "After all, she sort of caused Hawkmoth's downfall, even if it was sort of indirectly and very much by accident."

Marinette giggled, curling closer to his side. "Ooh, imagine her face when she realizes that. She joined Hawkmoth to try to cause my downfall, and it completely backfired on her."

"D'you think it would be rude if we sent her a thank-you card as superheroes once she finally gets healed?" Adrien mused, and then immediately shook his head. "No, never mind, that would be rubbing it in. Not a very good look for superheroes."

"I think that there will be plenty of people reminding her of that without us chiming in." Onscreen, the news gave way to a commercial break and Marinette muted the TV so that they didn't have to listen before turning all of her attention to Adrien. "I'm glad that everything worked out in the end, at least. It'll be nice to have our class go back to normal."

"It will be," Adrien agreed. He smiled over at Marinette, reaching over to take her hands. "Though I wouldn't mind there being a few changes to our old normal, Buginette."

Marinette's answering smile was shy. "Oh? I don't suppose the changes that you're thinking of just have to do with the fact that we won't be skipping class all of the time to fight akumas?"

"That'll be a bonus, sure, but it wasn't what I was thinking of." Adrien flashed a smile at her before his eyes dropped down to their joined hands. "My Lady, I was wondering- well, you know that I like you and, uh, I was kind of maybe getting the impression that, uh..."

Marinette couldn't hold back her grin as her poor kitty floundered. She let him try to recover for another second or two, then leaned forward and cut him off with a kiss. Adrien startled, then immediately melted into the kiss, his smile so wide that she could feel it.

The last couple of weeks had been tough, what with Adrien's father getting arrested and then immediately having to deal with getting the Peacock fixed so that they could start healing Mrs. Agreste (and eventually Lila), but they were past the worst of it now. Now they could start moving on and settle in to a new normal.

And honestly, neither of them could wait.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #The Wavering Peahen #marinette dupain cheng

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kny111 · 4 years

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An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That's what's going to happen with a lockdown.

As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off. I understand the reasons for reopening the economy, but I've said before, if you don't solve the biology, the economy won't recover.

There are very few states that have demonstrated a sustained decline in numbers of new infections. Indeed, as of May 3rd the majority are still increasing and reopening. As a simple example of the USA trend, when you take out the data from New York and just look at the rest of the USA, daily case numbers are increasing. Bottom line: the only reason the total USA new case numbers look flat right now is because the New York City epidemic was so large and now it is being contained.

So throughout most of the country we are going to add fuel to the viral fire by reopening. It's going to happen if I like it or not, so my goal here is to try to guide you away from situations of high risk.

Where are people getting sick?

We know most people get infected in their own home. A household member contracts the virus in the community and brings it into the house where sustained contact between household members leads to infection.

But where are people contracting the infection in the community? I regularly hear people worrying about grocery stores, bike rides, inconsiderate runners who are not wearing masks.... are these places of concern? Well, not really. Let me explain.

In order to get infected you need to get exposed to an infectious dose of the virus; based on infectious dose studies with other coronaviruses, it appears that only small doses may be needed for infection to take hold. Some experts estimate that as few as 1000 SARS-CoV2 infectious viral particles are all that will be needed (ref 1, ref 2). Please note, this still needs to be determined experimentally, but we can use that number to demonstrate how infection can occur. Infection could occur, through 1000 infectious viral particles you receive in one breath or from one eye-rub, or 100 viral particles inhaled with each breath over 10 breaths, or 10 viral particles with 100 breaths. Each of these situations can lead to an infection.

How much Virus is released into the environment?

A Bathroom: Bathrooms have a lot of high touch surfaces, door handles, faucets, stall doors. So fomite transfer risk in this environment can be high. We still do not know whether a person releases infectious material in feces or just fragmented virus, but we do know that toilet flushing does aerosolize many droplets. Treat public bathrooms with extra caution (surface and air), until we know more about the risk.

A Cough: A single cough releases about 3,000 droplets and droplets travels at 50 miles per hour. Most droplets are large, and fall quickly (gravity), but many do stay in the air and can travel across a room in a few seconds.

A Sneeze: A single sneeze releases about 30,000 droplets, with droplets traveling at up to 200 miles per hour. Most droplets are small and travel great distances (easily across a room).

If a person is infected, the droplets in a single cough or sneeze may contain as many as 200,000,000 (two hundred million) virus particles which can all be dispersed into the environment around them.

A breath: A single breath releases 50 - 5000 droplets. Most of these droplets are low velocity and fall to the ground quickly. There are even fewer droplets released through nose-breathing. Importantly, due to the lack of exhalation force with a breath, viral particles from the lower respiratory areas are not expelled.

Unlike sneezing and coughing which release huge amounts of viral material, the respiratory droplets released from breathing only contain low levels of virus. We don't have a number for SARS-CoV2 yet, but we can use influenza as a guide. Studies have shown that a person infected with influenza can releases up to 33 infectious viral particles per minute. But I'm going to use 20 to keep the math simple.

Remember the formula: Successful Infection = Exposure to Virus x Time

If a person coughs or sneezes, those 200,000,000 viral particles go everywhere. Some virus hangs in the air, some falls into surfaces, most falls to the ground. So if you are face-to-face with a person, having a conversation, and that person sneezes or coughs straight at you, it's pretty easy to see how it is possible to inhale 1,000 virus particles and become infected.

But even if that cough or sneeze was not directed at you, some infected droplets--the smallest of small--can hang in the air for a few minutes, filling every corner of a modest sized room with infectious viral particles. All you have to do is enter that room within a few minutes of the cough/sneeze and take a few breaths and you have potentially received enough virus to establish an infection.

But with general breathing, 20 viral particles minute into the environment, even if every virus ended up in your lungs (which is very unlikely), you would need 1000 viral particles divided by 20 per minute = 50 minutes.

Speaking increases the release of respiratory droplets about 10 fold; ~200 virus particles per minute. Again, assuming every virus is inhaled, it would take ~5 minutes of speaking face-to-face to receive the required dose.

The exposure to virus x time formula is the basis of contact tracing. Anyone you spend greater than 10 minutes with in a face-to-face situation is potentially infected. Anyone who shares a space with you (say an office) for an extended period is potentially infected. This is also why it is critical for people who are symptomatic to stay home. Your sneezes and your coughs expel so much virus that you can infect a whole room of people.

What is the role of asymptomatic people in spreading the virus?

Symptomatic people are not the only way the virus is shed. We know that at least 44% of all infections--and the majority of community-acquired transmissions--occur from people without any symptoms (asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people). You can be shedding the virus into the environment for up to 5 days before symptoms begin.

Infectious people come in all ages, and they all shed different amounts of virus. The figure below shows that no matter your age (x-axis), you can have a little bit of virus or a lot of virus (y-axis). (ref)

The amount of virus released from an infected person changes over the course of infection and it is also different from person-to-person. Viral load generally builds up to the point where the person becomes symptomatic. So just prior to symptoms showing, you are releasing the most virus into the environment. Interestingly, the data shows that just 20% of infected people are responsible for 99% of viral load that could potentially be released into the environment (ref)

So now let’s get to the crux of it. Where are the personal dangers from reopening?

When you think of outbreak clusters, what are the big ones that come to mind? Most people would say cruise ships. But you would be wrong. Ship outbreaks, while concerning, don’t land in the top 50 outbreaks to date.

Ignoring the terrible outbreaks in nursing homes, we find that the biggest outbreaks are in prisons, religious ceremonies, and workplaces, such as meat packing facilities and call centers. Any environment that is enclosed, with poor air circulation and high density of people, spells trouble.

Some of the biggest super-spreading events are:

Meat packing: In meat processing plants, densely packed workers must communicate to one another amidst the deafening drum of industrial machinery and a cold-room virus-preserving environment. There are now outbreaks in 115 facilities across 23 states, 5000+ workers infected, with 20 dead. (ref)

Weddings, funerals, birthdays: 10% of early spreading events

Business networking: Face-to-face business networking like the Biogen Conference in Boston in late February.

As we move back to work, or go to a restaurant, let’s look at what can happen in those environments.

Restaurants: Some really great shoe-leather epidemiology demonstrated clearly the effect of a single asymptomatic carrier in a restaurant environment (see below). The infected person (A1) sat at a table and had dinner with 9 friends. Dinner took about 1 to 1.5 hours. During this meal, the asymptomatic carrier released low-levels of virus into the air from their breathing. Airflow (from the restaurant's various airflow vents) was from right to left. Approximately 50% of the people at the infected person's table became sick over the next 7 days. 75% of the people on the adjacent downwind table became infected. And even 2 of the 7 people on the upwind table were infected (believed to happen by turbulent airflow). No one at tables E or F became infected, they were out of the main airflow from the air conditioner on the right to the exhaust fan on the left of the room. (Ref)

Workplaces: Another great example is the outbreak in a call center (see below). A single infected employee came to work on the 11th floor of a building. That floor had 216 employees. Over the period of a week, 94 of those people became infected (43.5%: the blue chairs). 92 of those 94 people became sick (only 2 remained asymptomatic). Notice how one side of the office is primarily infected, while there are very few people infected on the other side. While exact number of people infected by respiratory droplets / respiratory exposure versus fomite transmission (door handles, shared water coolers, elevator buttons etc.) is unknown. It serves to highlight that being in an enclosed space, sharing the same air for a prolonged period increases your chances of exposure and infection. Another 3 people on other floors of the building were infected, but the authors were not able to trace the infection to the primary cluster on the 11th floor. Interestingly, even though there were considerable interaction between workers on different floors of the building in elevators and the lobby, the outbreak was mostly limited to a single floor (ref). This highlights the importance of exposure and time in the spreading of SARS-CoV2.

Choir: The community choir in Washington State. Even though people were aware of the virus and took steps to minimize transfer; e.g. they avoided the usual handshakes and hugs hello, people also brought their own music to avoid sharing, and socially distanced themselves during practice. They even went to the lengths to tell choir members prior to practice that anyone experiencing symptoms should stay home. A single asymptomatic carrier infected most of the people in attendance. The choir sang for 2 1/2 hours, inside an enclosed rehearsal hall which was roughly the size of a volleyball court.

Singing, to a greater degree than talking, aerosolizes respiratory droplets extraordinarily well. Deep-breathing while singing facilitated those respiratory droplets getting deep into the lungs. Two and half hours of exposure ensured that people were exposed to enough virus over a long enough period of time for infection to take place. Over a period of 4 days, 45 of the 60 choir members developed symptoms, 2 died. The youngest infected was 31, but they averaged 67 years old. (corrected link)

Indoor sports: While this may be uniquely Canadian, a super spreading event occurred during a curling event in Canada. A curling event with 72 attendees became another hotspot for transmission. Curling brings contestants and teammates in close contact in a cool indoor environment, with heavy breathing for an extended period. This tournament resulted in 24 of the 72 people becoming infected. (ref)

Birthday parties / funerals: Just to see how simple infection-chains can be, this is a real story from Chicago. The name is fake. Bob was infected but didn't know. Bob shared a takeout meal, served from common serving dishes, with 2 family members. The dinner lasted 3 hours. The next day, Bob attended a funeral, hugging family members and others in attendance to express condolences. Within 4 days, both family members who shared the meal are sick. A third family member, who hugged Bob at the funeral became sick. But Bob wasn't done. Bob attended a birthday party with 9 other people. They hugged and shared food at the 3 hour party. Seven of those people became ill.

But Bob’s transmission chain wasn’t done. Three of the people Bob infected at the birthday went to church, where they sang, passed the tithing dish etc. Members of that church became sick. In all, Bob was directly responsible for infecting 16 people between the ages of 5 and 86. Three of those 16 died.

The spread of the virus within the household and back out into the community through funerals, birthdays, and church gatherings is believed to be responsible for the broader transmission of COVID-19 in Chicago. (ref)

Sobering right?

Commonality of outbreaks

The reason to highlight these different outbreaks is to show you the commonality of outbreaks of COVID-19. All these infection events were indoors, with people closely-spaced, with lots of talking, singing, or yelling. The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, outbreaks spread from shopping appear to be responsible for a small percentage of traced infections. (Ref)

Importantly, of the countries performing contact tracing properly, only a single outbreak has been reported from an outdoor environment (less than 0.3% of traced infections). (ref)

So back to the original thought of my post.

Indoor spaces, with limited air exchange or recycled air and lots of people, are concerning from a transmission standpoint. We know that 60 people in a volleyball court-sized room (choir) results in massive infections. Same situation with the restaurant and the call center. Social distancing guidelines don't hold in indoor spaces where you spend a lot of time, as people on the opposite side of the room were infected.

The principle is viral exposure over an extended period of time. In all these cases, people were exposed to the virus in the air for a prolonged period (hours). Even if they were 50 feet away (choir or call center), even a low dose of the virus in the air reaching them, over a sustained period, was enough to cause infection and in some cases, death.

Social distancing rules are really to protect you with brief exposures or outdoor exposures. In these situations there is not enough time to achieve the infectious viral load when you are standing 6 feet apart or where wind and the infinite outdoor space for viral dilution reduces viral load. The effects of sunlight, heat, and humidity on viral survival, all serve to minimize the risk to everyone when outside.

When assessing the risk of infection (via respiration) at the grocery store or mall, you need to consider the volume of the air space (very large), the number of people (restricted), how long people are spending in the store (workers - all day; customers - an hour). Taken together, for a person shopping: the low density, high air volume of the store, along with the restricted time you spend in the store, means that the opportunity to receive an infectious dose is low. But, for the store worker, the extended time they spend in the store provides a greater opportunity to receive the infectious dose and therefore the job becomes more risky.

Basically, as the work closures are loosened, and we start to venture out more, possibly even resuming in-office activities, you need to look at your environment and make judgments. How many people are here, how much airflow is there around me, and how long will I be in this environment. If you are in an open floorplan office, you really need to critically assess the risk (volume, people, and airflow). If you are in a job that requires face-to-face talking or even worse, yelling, you need to assess the risk.

If you are sitting in a well ventilated space, with few people, the risk is low.

If I am outside, and I walk past someone, remember it is “dose and time” needed for infection. You would have to be in their airstream for 5+ minutes for a chance of infection. While joggers may be releasing more virus due to deep breathing, remember the exposure time is also less due to their speed. Please do maintain physical distance, but the risk of infection in these scenarios are low. Here is a great article in Vox that discusses the low risk of running and cycling in detail.

While I have focused on respiratory exposure here, please don't forget surfaces. Those infected respiratory droplets land somewhere. Wash your hands often and stop touching your face!

For The Full article with the helpful illustrations and charts visit: The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them by Erin Bromage

#covid19 #covid_19 #coronavirus #pandemic #virology #tips #health #wellness #public health #news #information #resources #signal boost ok #info #science #science communication

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magicoldcottage · 4 years

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What every witch really needs to know

In this guide I hope to give you some simple practical advise on the vivid-19 virus, coupled with some traditional healer witch ideas at the bottom. Please bare with me as there is a large amount of important information to get through first.

DON’T PANIC

If caught the virus is no worse than standard influenza. 81% of people have little to no symptoms. 14% develop bad symptoms and will be bed bound. Only a tiny 5% have a serious reaction.

So in short it is most likely that it will cause a couple of bad days but then you’ll soon be back on your feet with no ill effects.

So why all the fuss?

Simply because it is far more contagious, so you stand a far greater risk of catching it.

Most viruses become contagious at the point you show symptoms. If you are laying in a bed and feeling rotten you are not likely to spread it to anyone else. This virus however is highly contagious before you show any symptoms. The press is talking about a 14day incubation period however some are as long as 28day. You feel reasonably fine carry on about your normal daily routines but are merrily spreading the virus about to others without knowing it. Some who show very little in the way of symptoms have happily spread the virus for weeks without knowing it. These people have been named “Super Spreaders”.

It’s all about the money

The main fear isn’t the risk to life it’s the risk to the economy. Imagine you run a business that needs to make 1000 sales a month to stay a float. If one person in your business contracts the virus and spreads it, suddenly you could find yourself out of business. Multiply this across a whole city and you can imagine the impact. The impact also ripples out to other countries. For example most of the world is dependent on cheap parts from China including the big names like Apple and google. With lots of business shut to prevent the spread, these parts have now dried up.

Prevention tips

Like most viruses Covid-19 is spread by inhaling droplets after someone coughs or sneezes. It can also be passed by touching something that is infected and then touching your mouth, nose or food. Wearing a N95 rated mask prevents inhalation but thin masks have little no effect. It won’t however protect you from someone sneezing in your face as it could infect you through your eyes (Yuck) . So the best option is to avoid unnecessary contact with people.

Steer Clear of people

Most of us witches are solitary creatures. We naturally stay away from crowds so we are already avoiding contact which is the best form of prevention.

Shopping : Do your shopping if you can at a 24hour shop outside the normal hours. You’ll get the place to yourself and avoid queues.

Events : Sporting events and concerts. For now I would avoid them if you can. If you can’t try to place yourselves at the back of the crowd, so that nobody is behind you.

Don’t be afraid to move : If you are sat near someone who is coughing or sneezing. Move away and find somewhere else to sit.

Try not to touch : While in public avoid touching handrails, handles and buttons. In most cities these are horrid things normally but they are great for spreading viruses. The virus can remain active on a handrail for over 24 hours. On things like escalators instead of grabbing the handle lean on it with your arm, this will keep you safe and avoid skin contact.

Wash, wash and wash again.

Some viruses can live for as long as 7 days on a hard surface but most become safer after 48 hours.

You can not catch a virus through your skin, but if you touch a surface that is infected and then touch your eyes or mouth you can contract it.

Hand gel : Keep an antiviral hand gel in your pocket, use it when ever you touch a surface.

Washing : When you get back wash your hands properly and your face.

How do I know if I’ve been infected?

Answer you don’t…. During the incubation period you might have a dry cough or sneeze occasionally but otherwise you are likely to feel fine. So if you develop a cough for the sake of others buy some pocket tissues and use them, then bin it straight away. Then either wash your hands or use the gel. This will prevent you from possibly infecting other.

I have a temperature!

After the initial period the first real sign of problems is a temperature.

DO NOT GO TO A HOSPITAL, DOCTORS or MEDICAL CENTRE !!!!!!!

Instead call them. You will be assessed over the phone and treatment will be provided if needed. In china a large number of the initial people to be infected were medical staff, taking out your local hospital and spreading the virus to others who are already ill, simply will not help anyone.

Self quarantine

This simply means staying at home and warning others to stay away. Quarantine is simply the best way to beat this.

Will I end up in hospital

The virus attacks the lungs, so is especially bad for those with existing medical conditions that could have weakened them already. These 5% of patients are likely to end up in hospital so that additional oxygen can be supplied.

The healing part

In an ideal world everyone would have access to free medical care but sadly we don’t live in that world yet. The following section is aimed at those who need traditional alternative remedies to help them support conventional medicine. Please note that it doesn’t replace the advice above.

My Magic Clean 2000

The following can be used as an alternative for cleaning hands and surfaces.

You will need:

70ml rubbing alcohol

30ml Distilled water

2 tea bags

1 lemon (optional)

(Note you can multiply this up to make larger batches)

Method:

Heat the water and add the tea bags. Allow to cool an remove the bags and simply stir in the rubbing alcohol and lemon juice.

Use this preparation as you would a hand gel but it can also be used to clean down surfaces. Please don’t drink it.

The tea is high in Tannins these are the common name for tannic acid and are an antiseptic with broad-spectrum antibacterial and with antiviral features.

The lemon juice changes the PH of the preparation and contains Citric acid which also aid to kill viruses.

Homemade Face Mask

DON’T. Put simply 90% of the face masks you see people on the news wearing (Including some of the surgical types) will do nothing to prevent the virus. Only a full N95 rated mask is effective but these feel a little like breathing through a coat and can be distressing.

Wearing a mask simply makes people feel safer and lulls them into a false sense of security, as I say above avoiding people and good hygiene is the best option, not relying on a mask. Masks never sit well and adjusting them will bring your hands into contact with your face and remove the reason for them being there. If you need more evidence look at china, everyone has been wearing up-to 5 a day and yet it has still spread like wildfire (Granted a lot of the masks available there are not real or are being worn wrongly (lots are upside down))

To break a fever

A fever is natural, it is one of your bodies tools to help fight an infection but it can be uncomfortable. Any temperature over 38.5 degrees Celsius is considered a Fever.

Elderflower tonic

This induces sweating that helps to break the fever and reduces mucus.

Method:

Mix two tablespoons of Elderflower in a cup with boiling water and let it sit for 15 minutes. Strain the bits and drink three times a day.

Alternatives : If you can’t get Elderflower you can use Yarrow or Ginger.

Clove Tonic

Boil 4 cloves in a litre of water for half an hour,

Strain and sip throughout the day.

Folk magic wet socks

Soak your feet in hot water, while a thin pair of socks soaks in cold. Dry your feet and slip on the cold wet socks covering them with a thick pair of Whooly socks.

This works by drawing blood to the feet and dramatically increasing blood flow, forcing it to naturally cool.

#witches #herbalism #witchblr #coronavirus #covid19 #covid2019 #virus outbreak #virus

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firewoodfigs · 3 years

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it’s Saturday (finally)! here’s my shoddy attempt at consistency and journaling, and a quick summary of my disorganised thoughts 💃 no, I’m lying. I read through it and it’s not all that quick because my tendency for verbosity knows no bounds

This week was a lot more hectic than the past two. I spent Monday to Wednesday doing research and compiling them together into a knowhow, but Thursday and Friday were the worst because I suddenly got swamped with emails. Both days I had to work till / beyond midnight, and I still have about 200 more pages of corporate documents to proofread... I wanna scream just thinking about it LOL. I’m grateful to have a job during an economic climate like this, but sometimes it feels like everything is addled with so much uncertainty that I just can’t help but wonder if I’m doing the right thing with my life :’)

I haven’t been using the computer as much, because a significant portion of my 24 hours is dedicated to using it, albeit for other less interesting purposes (also because my eyes are dying at the end of the day). And as a result, the rate at which I reply to messages and stuff have been slowing exponentially (I’m so, so sorry about this!!) but I’ll get to them soon <3 Just an update that your friendly chaotic online persona is still alive LMAO

My creativity feels incredibly stifled this week. I haven’t been able to write anything without second-guessing myself, or without being overcome by lethargy or restlessness or self-doubt, or a regrettable mixture of all 3. :’) Hopefully the weekend will be a good time to recharge. I’m not planning to touch any work this weekend since it’s not as urgent as the other matters were, but this might mean that I have to work till midnight again on Monday and Tuesday LOL. But it’s fine. Priorities, ykwim!! (Weekends are a luxury and I’m not going to waste it like this LOL)

Date nights on Thursdays are so much better than date nights on Fridays, although it does tend to make us both feel like the weekend is already here 😆 I mean, the fact that it’s so much less crowded is already a big plus to me. I know people call me out all the time for being a paranoid hen and whatnot, but I just freak out when people come too close to me in public in a blatant disregard of the concept of social distancing (one of my biggest pet peeves is also when people remove their masks to sneeze or cough in the open, which happens a lot here. I mean, you might as well not wear a mask, or you might as well just stay... at... home...). Also a lot of restaurants mark up prices on Friday nights and we got to escape that >:)

I’m very thankful I got to squeeze in some time to spend with my bf and a couple of friends despite the sheer busyness of everyone’s week. The transition feels so surreal, and I know it’s been a lot harsher on some of my other friends too, than it has been for me. I’m glad that we at least have each other to vent to and struggle with, just like we did back in law school. Easier to struggle together than alone. :’)

On a related note, some thoughts I had about love and understanding last night - I think it’s easy to find love, if we just look hard enough and put aside the premium that society places on romantic love. Love comes in so many different forms - a simple gesture like a short text, an exchange of memes, an invitation to check out a new cafe together; from so many different sources - whether intrinsic or extrinsic, whether platonic or familial. But being understood has always felt like a privilege to me. A lot of times people just tend to think that I’m too “unexpectedly” deep or emotional or sensitive or intelligent, that I have a “surprising” amount of problems for someone who always seems so bubbly, or that I’m just downright eccentric (the last one is completely valid though LMAO). But I’m just so, so grateful to have people in my life who can understand me on an emotional, psychological and intellectual level, and that I don’t have to explain or justify myself for feeling a certain way because they just get it. It’s... validating. Different, in a good way. It’s so important to me because I truthfully don’t talk about my feelings a lot, although I’m trying to now because constant suppression is just a set-up for an inevitable explosion. :’)

I got my pay check, and!!! The first thing I did was to set up a separate savings account and deposit a decent portion of my salary there so that I won’t touch it for the rest of the month (hopefully) :’) I also got to pay off a small bit of my current outstanding debts, which is great. I'm really looking forward to the day I finally clear all my liabilities. But yes, I think my 19-year-old self would’ve been very proud of myself for not spending it recklessly hahaha. I used to have terrible, and I mean really terrible, fiscal management skills. Like, when I was in first year and second year I was tutoring a ton of people, but somehow my funds were just always depleting uncontrollably. It only dawned upon me much later that I was not conscious or cautious when it came to my spending habits (s/o to my bf and friends for explaining this to me and for teaching me how to manage my finances!!! ilyall), and that I really didn’t have a habit of saving for rainy days or for the future, in general. I watched this documentary about how people from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds tend to fall into this trap of ‘tunnel vision’, sans wanting to splurge on everything while they can because they never had the chance to do so in the past, or because they’re afraid that they won’t be able to do so in the future once the money’s gone. Being poor is also expensive because it means you might miss out on deals e.g. if buying 2 items is $2x-y, vs buying 1 which is $x, you might be more inclined to buy just 1 instead because it’s all you can afford at the moment. It definitely struck me hard, because I think when I first got all that money I didn’t think of saving it. I just wanted to buy a ridiculous amount of stuff (and real trashy stuff, because I used to think that quantity > quality especially when it came to clothes) and ~ treat myself ~ for roughing it out in law school, but hey, there are other ways to treat oneself apart from excessive splurging :^)

My biggest treats this week were the arrival of my books (I ordered The Queen’s Gambit and Grapes of Wrath and I might just disappear from the face of this planet lmao), getting to spend quality time with my loved ones and getting to catch the sunset on my evening strolls! I’m gonna end this long ramble with a few pics of them ✨ stay safe and take care, everyone, and have a wonderful weekend!!! *hugs*

#not fma #personal #also the fact that I still get 8 hours of sleep a day is nothing short of a miracle #also not saying we can’t buy nice things!! just... everything in moderation (LMAO what am I a health pyramid)

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dovechim · 5 years

Text

a remedy for mondays 01 (m)

➾ 11.2k

➾ summary: all you wanted was just one day off work. but for that to happen, you need to invent a plausible reason. and then somehow, somewhere along the way, things get out of hand, and now people think you’re having a baby with your co-worker Park Jimin after a one-night stand. confused? join the club.

➾ warnings: impregnation kink (all that jazz, u guys should know by now), brief mention of pregnancy termination, future smut

➾ a/n: this is written purely for fun & i hope you can understand my humour!!! please don’t go having babies just for some time off work. by the time i post this, it will be monday where i live. i hope this brings you all some joy :-)

ps: thank you to @jimlingss, who always hears my crazy ideas out and encourages me to go for them. heck, sometimes she even brings it out of me. idk where i would be without you :”D

You hate this.

The saying goes: work to live, not live to work. But at this rate, you’d rather just not exist at all if you have to continue work at this god.darn.fucking.job.

All around you, people are huddled into their seats, heads bowed below the partition that separates the desks. Frankly, you think this whole open-plan office thing is just bullshit. Who the fuck wants to make eye contact with Jeon Jeongguk when he’s picking his nose in the middle of editing a spreadsheet?

Not you, that’s who.

You sink even lower down in your seat as you continue to stare your screen with a pounding headache. The numerous open windows on your desktop are just mocking you at this point. The morning seems to be crawling by. Usually, you ration out your morning coffee and breakfast to keep you going; so your morning goes a little something like this: arrive 8.30am, check emails, get water from the pantry and fuck about while your bosses aren’t here yet till 9.15am. Reply to some emails till about 9.45am, then sit in a daze till it’s 10am and time for you to drink your morning espresso and nibble at the small bun you bought from the bakery nearby.

This usually gets you to about 11am, only an hour more to go till lunch.

A job in the public service is perceived to be prestigious by most; so you suppose you should be thankful for your job dealing with family policy. But what outsiders don’t realise is that working in a governmental organisation as the utmost bottom rung absolutely sucks. There are so many standard operation procedures for nearly every single fucking thing, even emails to senior management needs to be vetted by someone in a higher position than you. As a result, things get done very slowly and even if they do get through to senior management, it might just get rejected because they decide that it’s not good enough. Then the work comes all the way back to you, and the whole dreary process starts again.

Not to mention your asshole boss. Bae Joohyun. Senior Director. She has a notorious reputation throughout the entire department for being a hell witch from Satan’s posse. In her meetings she demands utter silence from everyone other than the presenter; sneezes and coughs or pen clicks and typing are strictly forbidden.

Technically, she isn’t your direct superior, and you don’t work super closely with her, but she has this mandate that all leave requests for the entire department have to be approved by her. You’ve submitted requests 5 times in the past year, none of which have gone through. As a result you haven’t taken a day off in a good three years since you started working here. You still remember that one time she rejected your medical leave and called you to her desk. You’d been nursing a terrible flu, your complexion washed out and almost falling off your feet. Looking in the mirror that morning had been a complete shock. You thought a zombie was staring back at you.

Bae Joohyun had narrowed her eyes at you. “What’s wrong with you that you need to take emergency medical leave, _____?”

“I-it’s this cold, ma’am,” your voice was nasal and stuck in your throat.

Bae Joohyun had rolled her eyes and motioned for you to speak up. “I can’t hear you, stop mumbling for heaven’s sake!”

“I have a cold, ma’am! Has been so for the past three days,” you sniffled and pressed a tissue to your nose.

“A cold?” Bae Joohyun raised an eyebrow sceptically. “You seem fine to me. You look the same as you usually do. Get back to work.”

Sometimes you feel like this company, in all its pro-family views, treats married employees with children better.

The resentment grows inside you as you tap on your keyboard harder and harder, earning you a timid glance from Jeon Jeongguk opposite you. But you ignore him, continuing to type out a reply to someone who somehow failed to read your previous email and continued to ask the exact same questions.

“______?”

You absolutely hate it when someone approaches you from the back in your blind spot and startles you like this. Forcing a smile on your face, you sit up straighter in your chair and turn around. It’s Taehyung from the Baby Bonus Team, and he’s holding a folder with a smile on his face.

“Morning, ______!” He chirps with a sunny expression, and you can barely muster enough energy to greet him back, let alone match his level of enthusiasm on a Monday morning. “Could I just trouble you to update this for me? It’s just our operations manual for the Baby Bonus Team that hasn’t been touched in like… ages. I just need the HR section updated. Is that ok?”

Before you can even reply, Taehyung places a folder on your desk and his email appears on your screen, and he’s off. It’s not a secret that Taehyung loves his job to pieces. He loves children, loves babies, and loves it that he’s doing his part to contribute to the nation’s falling birth rate.

Well, not likethat,since you’re pretty sure he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

But everyone else here seems to love children. Over lunch with your team, all they do is exchange pictures of their children, their friends’ children, or some random baby from Facebook and coo over how chubby and cute they are. You stopped going to lunch with them after Mingyu from Pre-Schools team showed everyone a picture of his niece in a soiled diaper.

Most of your older coworkers who are married with their own families have pictures of their children on their desks. You’re forced to stare at these pictures with the resentment bubbling up inside you as you listen to their latest rant about how your proposal is too skimpy, lacks real research, that email of yours is poorly worded, needs to be recalled etc; so can anyone really blame you when you’re unable to dredge up even the slightest bit of adoration for those grubby faced gremlins?

Clicking open Taehyung’s email and finding the document he attached, you scroll down to the section he mentioned. You realise that he was being modest when he said that it needed an update. The whole fucking section comprises of just a single sentence, and you’ll probably have to write it from scratch.

Sighing through your nose, you click open an internet browser and do a quick google search for the general HR benefits for expecting women and their partners. You also open up the intranet to take a look at your own company’s mandates, which seem to be quite a whole lot more substantial than the general ones (which is only natural since your organisation is so pro-family in its viewpoints). 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, for a start.

Good god. 16 whole weeks? That’s practically 4 months. That’s almost half a year!!!

Obviously you know that having a baby wrecks the mother’s body, and is a major life change; that’s why they need that much leave time. But right now the concept of not having to go to work for that amount of time is simply blowing your mind. Especially since it feels as if you’ve been working non-stop for as long as you can remember.

On top of the 16 weeks is increased medical leave that can be taken any time before the baby is born. Your company is incredibly sympathetic towards pregnant women, which is only natural considering the line of work that you do in family planning. In fact, you know of a few colleagues from the Baby Bonus Team who took almost a whole month of medical leave, spread out, before they had their babies.

Not to mention the actual baby bonus itself.

Curious, you click back to Taehyung’s document and scroll up to the section on Baby Bonus. You scan through and gather that it comprises of a cash gift of $8,000 to $10,000, on top of several other schemes such as a savings account with the amount matched by the government. The total amount of cash receivable just for having one child is listed at the bottom of the page.

You sit back in your chair with a sharp breath. You never realised it was this lucrative to have a baby. Imagine receiving free money from the government, and having all that paid time off. All you need to do is just pop out one (1) baby, and that’s it. You can suck the government dry if you devote the rest of your life to being a baby making machine. See what Bae Joohyun has to say when you slam your maternity leave application on her desk.

The thought makes you smirk triumphantly.

But a moment later, the triumph fades as you remember your very, very single self. Without a boyfriend to knock you up, there’s no way this scheme would work.

Sighing, you shake your head to get rid of all the useless fantasies as you get back to work.

“Hey, _____. Meet our new joiner,” Jeongguk’s voice stirs you from the zoned out state you’re in, frantically typing away.

It’s well after lunch now; somehow the time had flown past while you were working on Taehyung’s document.

You look up to meet Jeongguk’s eyes, and then your gaze shifts to the slightly shorter man beside him. He is wearing a large pair of black glasses that cover nearly half his face; his blonde hair is parted down the middle and neatly slicked back. This man can’t even meet your eyes; he gives you a nervous little smile but his gaze is off, fixed somewhere on your shoulder. His white dress shirt is tucked in neatly to his black dress pants, but he is constantly fidgeting.

“Park Jimin. Welcome to the team, buddy,” Jeongguk slaps Jimin on the shoulder with a grin. “You’re sitting beside me.”

“Welcome, nice to meet you,” you smile and nod at him, but otherwise remain seated. No one can or will distract you from this document. You need to finish this by today, or else you’ll have to bring it home to work on it.

Park Jimin nods shyly as Jeongguk shows him to his seat. With this current arrangement, it means that the three of you are all facing each other in this cluster of desks. Sighing internally, you watch Jimin take his seat and arrange his things, see him glance shyly at you from behind his enormous glasses before his eyes dart away and he hides behind his desktop.

What a weird guy. He hasn’t said a single thing. Whatever. You turn back and resume typing, but then your phone chimes with an email notification.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON MEET AND GREET PASSES TO MEET agust d TOMORROW!!!

Your heart skips a beat and you abandon typing just to open the email. You bid for these meet and greet passes months ago when you bought tickets to see your favourite rapper in concert. No news had resulted in you concluding that you hadn’t won after all, and you were contented with the chance just to see agust d in real life.

But now…

You scroll down to look at the details of the meet and greet.

24 September 2019, from 4pm (please see your specific timeslot on your attached passes)

Each meet and greet session comprises of: an up close, INTIMATE, one on one opportunity to chat and take photos with agust d, lasting for 15 minutes

Your heart sinks as you check the time on your pass. You end work only at 6pm, and when you’d bought the tickets you thought it’d be fine for you to go straight after work since the concert only starts at 7pm. There’s no way you’ll be able to take half day leave to attend the meet and greet. There’s no way Bae Joohyun would let you.

Sitting back in your seat in despair, feeling the angry tears well up in your eyes and the frustration cloud your chest, you don’t notice a pair of meek eyes behind black glasses peek out behind the desktop.

All that’s going through your head is: there has to be a way, there has to be a way.

There’s no way you’re letting these passes go to waste just like that. There’s no way you’re not meeting agust d just because Bae Joohyun has a stick up her ass.

Tuesday morning finds you at Bae Joohyun’s desk with a leave application filled out. You carefully set it on her desk, knowing full well that she comes in at 9.30am on the dot every day.

Rumour has it that she colour codes her outfits based on her mood that day. As you slink back to your desk, you catch a glance of her clad fully in black, striding powerfully into the office in her black pumps.

Your heart sinks as Jeongguk sings out a cheerful good morning to you and Park Jimin, whom you hadn’t even noticed was already at his desk.

“Morning, Jeongguk,” you mutter under your breath. “Morning to you too, Jimin.”

The newcomer does nothing more than nod at you as he ducks back behind his computer. But today you don’t have the bandwidth to wonder about him as you click over to Taehyung’s email about the document from yesterday.

“Hey, aren’t you going to see agust d tonight?” Jeongguk sits up straighter.

“Yeah, why?” Your reply comes clipped, already in a bad mood just from anticipating your rejected leave application.

“I heard the results of the balloting for the meet and greet passes came out yesterday,” Jeongguk’s bright eyes are on your face. “Do you know agust d, Jimin?”

The blonde haired man shrugs as part of his face appears from behind his computer.

“Anyway, I think only like five people got the passes, and as of yesterday night, there are already bidders on the black market willing to pay almost a thousand just for one pass,” Jeongguk continues on.

“Huh, really? Who’d be that crazy to pay that much money?” You muse, looking at your phone.

“Right?” Jeongguk sighs dramatically. You know he’d be extra salty if you told him you won passes to the meet and greet. You’d already made the mistake of letting slip that you managed to get a VIP ticket, and Jeongguk had sulked for an entire week after that. “I mean, what are the chances anyway? If you think about it, those people who won the passes must be die-hard fans, since you can only win one if you managed to get a VIP ticket. Which die-hard fan would sell their hard won passes like that?”

The conversation tapers off as you reply to some emails, but you can’t help but glance back at your phone. A thousand dollars just for a meet and greet pass. That’s just crazy. The amount of money some people are willing to spend… it almost makes you wonder if you could… sell it since you can’t make it anyway…

No. No. You can’t sell agust d’s love just for a thousand dollars. You wouldn’t even sell it for a million dollars. Shame on you.

Hushed whispers suddenly erupt around you, and Jeongguk hisses like a startled cat.

“Shit, SD’s coming! Fuck, I was in the middle of a game,” Jeongguk scrambles to turn off his phone, muttering under his breath that his teammates are going to kick him off the team next time.

You sit straighter in your seat and turn your head towards the aisle. Sure enough, Bae Joohyun is fast approaching like a hurricane bent on destruction. Her face is as black as her outfit.

“Jimin, since you’re new, just copy what I do. Look at your computer and don’t speak unless spoken to,” Jeongguk’s eyes are wide with fear, but he is frantically typing away on his keyboard, turning to glance at the timid man beside him. “Got it? Don’t show any fear, she can scent it like a shark with blood in the water. No matter what you do, don’t make eye contact with her if she isn’t talking to you.”

When Jimin doesn’t respond, Jeongguk glances hurriedly to the younger man. “Did you hear me?!”

“Y-yes.” It’s the first word you’ve heard this man utter, and it is somewhat strangled and you barely catch it over the rising panic that unfolds around you.

“Who d’you think she’s here for?” Jeongguk whispers to you.

“No idea,” you choke out with a closed throat, even though you have a very good idea who she’s here for.

As Bae Joohyun nears your cluster of desks, she slows down. Her eagle eyes scan the floor where all the employees are huddled at their seats, typing away with hunched shoulders. You can feel her gaze land on you, and you close your eyes briefly to say a prayer for mercy.

“______.”

Your name is uttered into the silence, and Jeongguk’s eyes shift just a fraction to glance at you. They are wide with fear. Beside him, Park Jimin’s eyes dart to yours from behind his thick black glasses. But none of them move.

“Y-yes?” You turn in your chair to face Bae Joohyun.

“You applied for emergency half day leave this pm, am I correct?” The witch herself holds up your leave application form. “Seeing as it’s this last minute, it must be urgent. What’s wrong with you this time?”

It’s dead silent. Everyone is pretending to work at their desks, but you know all too well that what they’re really doing is eavesdropping on this conversation. Well, eavesdropping is too generous a term, considering that this conversation is made fully public.

“I… I’m…” You stutter and stumble over your words, struggling to think of a plausible excuse. Some part of you had hoped for a miracle, prayed to the gods eight times last night that Bae Joohyun would be in a merciful mood this morning and grant you the leave without asking.

You glance at Jeongguk, and by now he’s worked everything out silently in his head. His expression says everything. But he doesn’t dare to even look you in the eye.

Instead of him, you realise that another pair of eyes are watching you instead. Park Jimin’s head is tilted to the side, his eyes are observing your mini panic attack without darting away for once.

“Well? What’s wrong with you, I asked,” Bae Joohyun demands.

You can practically hear the clock ticking off the seconds till her patience runs out. Between that and Park Jimin’s persistent stare, your mind just goes blank, and you utter the first words that come to mind.

“I… I’m having morning sickness!”

“What?” Bae Joohyun’s tone is, for the first time, one of shock. “What did you just say?”

Despite Bae Joohyun’s presence, Taehyung from Baby Bonus has turned around in his seat. “Morning sickness? You don’t mean to say you’re…”

Your eyes dart around wildly all over the place in response to what you think Taehyung is implying. God dammit, if not for his fucking comment, you could have diverted it down a less conspicuous path.

“Pregnant?” Namjoon from HR pipes up. “______, are you pregnant? When were you planning on notifying HR?”

Oh god. Things are moving too fast. Slowly, people are turning around in their chairs and inviting themselves into what should be a private conversation between you and Bae Joohyun. Curious looks are directed your way, and you are tongue tied.

“______, I didn’t know you were married! You’ve been keeping it from us this whole time?” Someone from Pre-Schools, you think his name is Seokjin, exclaims in a chiding tone.

“No!” Your voice bursts out from somewhere. It sounds far away to your ears. “No, I’m not married!! I just had a… a… a one night stand.”

Fuck. You’re digging yourself into a deeper hole.

“A one-night stand?” Bae Joohyun narrows her eyes. Somehow you can see that she doesn’t really buy it. She is scanning your face intently, and if there’s even a shred of uncertainty, she will catch it.

“With him!” Pointing at the one person who’s been silent all this time, you can feel the gazes shift from you. You know what they say about a liar. They always have this compulsive need to supplement their lies with arbitrary details.

But it works, and everyone’s attention is now on Park Jimin. You can see his eyes dart around briefly for a moment before they return to yours. But they don’t seem any more panicked or surprised than they usually do. He is as cool and collected as he always is, and he doesn’t say a word, as usual.

“Damn, you and Park Jimin?” It’s Jeongguk who speaks up this time. “Who would have thought? I mean, the guy just started yesterday, that must have been hell of a welcome party you gave him.”

Several giggles and snickers break out in response to his lewd joke.

“Shut up Jeon, that’s not how pregnancy works,” Namjoon rolls his eyes. “They must have met each other months ago. Is this going to be another HR concern though? Inter-departmental relationships?”

Bae Joohyun glances down her nose at you derisively. “I have no wish to know what you do in your free time. But I must ask, Ms _____, that you inform HR immediately of any condition you have that might affect your ability to work.”

The intimidation wrought by Bae Joohyun is replaced by anger at her words. No wish to know about your personal matters, when she was the one who decided it was appropriate to ask why you need to take leave in front of the whole department? What if this was a real situation and you were facing an unplanned pregnancy? Instead of being offered sympathy and support, you’re faced with judgement. This woman is entirely heartless and should not be the head of a pro-family planning division. Not to mention that discussing your leave application publicly is utterly inappropriate. It’s this thought that gives you the courage to speak.

“So can I be approved?” You look her directly in the eye, throwing your shame out the window. What’s done is done. Since the whole department thinks you got knocked up from a one-night stand with a colleague, you might as well use it to your advantage. “For my half day leave. Can it be approved?”

A few beats of silence follow as Bae Joohyun looks cornered for the first time. There is an unspoken pressure even as people turn back to their desks to continue working. If she turns you down in front of everyone like this, she could quite possibly get reported for discrimination against pregnant women. Though it is unspoken, your shoulders relax as you realise you have the upper hand in this situation.

Bae Joohyun takes a deep breath.

“Fine. Approved.”

Wednesday morning, Jeongguk is an eager puppy trailing after you, begging for pictures and a blow by blow account of the concert.

“Just watch my Instagram story or something, I literally have no voice to talk to you right now,” you roll your eyes. Truth be told, your voice isn’t that bad off, but you just want to bask in that post concert afterglow for a moment.

“What was he like in person? Did you pass him my fan letter?” Jeongguk is relentless this morning, and his never ending chatter makes Park Jimin peek out curiously from behind his computer.

When your eyes meet, you freeze on the spot like a deer in the headlights. On Tuesday you left right after Bae Joohyun approved you, seeing as it was almost lunch time anyway. You decided that after winning a war, one rightly deserves to enjoy a stress free, worryless night out before returning to the battlegrounds once more.

But now that you’re here, it is a whole different story. Park Jimin glances at you wordlessly before resuming typing, and the awkwardness is killing you. You feel bad enough that you implicated him in this whole mess, probably ruined his reputation around here and maybe even giving HR a reason to keep a closer eye on him. But regardless, you probably should talk to the man and attempt to explain things, and at the very least, apologise.

“…ask him when his next mixtape is dropping?” Jeongguk is still at it.

“Hey, um, Jimin? If you have a moment this morning, can I speak to you in private?” You lean to the side to attempt to catch a glimpse of Park Jimin.

There is a slight pause before Jimin’s head appears, and he meets your eye for a moment before looking away again. He nods once before turning his head in the direction of an empty meeting room.

“Woah, should you be doing that in your condition, though?” Jeongguk comments with a lewd smirk even as his eyes lower to your mid-section, and you give him a scathing glare in response as you close your laptop.

“Shut up, Jeon. Just for the record, I ripped up and threw your letter in the trash,” you hiss at him, eliciting a horrified gasp as you follow Jimin to the meeting room.

“So, um…” You start off awkwardly once the door is closed.

Park Jimin is twiddling his thumbs, head bowed shyly and he refuses to make eye contact with you. Now that you think of it, his nerd glasses actually suit him quite well, but it’s just a shame that he’s too painfully shy to actually look anyone in the eye. He is quite a good looking guy, but maybe he has issues with his self-esteem is all.

“I wanted to apologise, first of all. And also explain myself,” you take a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into my mess. It’s just that- I… I just haven’t had a fucking break from Bae Joohyun ever since I started working in this fucking place.”

All the resentment just pours right out, and you’d be ashamed of yourself for using vulgarities at the workplace were it not for Park Jimin finally glancing up at you with a tiny smile on his face.

“I heard the rumours about her. So they’re true.” Jimin’s voice is still a little hesitant, wondering how much he should be gossiping about Bae Joohyun with another co-worker who could so easily rat him out and get him in trouble. But then, seeing as you’ve already managed to implicate him within a day of knowing him, how much dirtier can you do him, really? The thought brings a wry smile to his face once more. But then again, it seems like everyone here is more or less united by their intense dislike for Bae Joohyun. You of all people probably dislike her the most.

“True? What kind of rumours did you hear? And from where?” Intrigued by the man whom you’ve exchanged less than two words with before claiming to have had a one-night stand and a resulting pregnancy with, you lean forward in your seat.

Jimin shrugs. “Glassdoor.”

His response catches you off guard, and you are laughing with your hands over your mouth. “Oh my god. Please tell me you read the one where someone spit in her coffee. That was me.”

Jimin raises an eyebrow. “Really? I thought that was by a 54 year old IT engineer.”

“I can’t be putting my real age and designation on there, can I?” You point out.

“Were you the one who bagged dog shit and hid it in her office?” Jimin has that tiny smile again, and you have to admit it’s sort of cute when he comes out of his shell. He is even more handsome when he smiles, brighter and somewhat infectious.

“19 year old marketing intern? Yep, that was me,” you sigh in contentment as you remember rage writing all those Glassdoor reviews after a particularly bad meeting that one week. You didn’t actually do all of those things, but just imagining it and writing public reviews was enough for you to get your imagined revenge.

“ ‘Hid some dog shit in her office so she can be reminded of how shitty her management style is’,” Jimin recites from memory. “You know, I almost withdrew my application because of that review.”

Jimin’s dead serious tone makes you laugh again. The sound of your laughter fills the empty meeting room, and you have to admit that this is the most relaxed and carefree you’ve felt while working here.

But belatedly you realise that you’ve gone very off topic, so you sober up and attempt to try to get things back on track again. “So anyway, about the um… one-night stand thing. We can just lie low for a while and make up some shit later. Tell them the baby didn’t make it or something.”

Jimin nods thoughtfully, tapping his chin. “Or we can say it was a false positive. Less for you to go through since people would be all over you with pity and sympathy if we said that. I don’t think you’d wanna be pretend to be distraught over an imaginary baby.”

“That’s right, you’re a genius!” You marvel the way he just comes up with these ideas so easily. “How did you know about false positives?”

Jimin only shrugs, pushes his glasses up on his nose a little and he seems to be blushing. “I studied biology as an elective back in university.”

There’s a pause of silence before you look him in the eye again. “I really am sorry, you know. For making you go through all this. I kind of just panicked and didn’t think before speaking.”

But Jimin doesn’t seem to be making as big of a deal of it as you are. “Y’know, it’s fine. It ispretty exciting to be accused of having a one-night stand on my very first day. Aside from that, things can only go up, right?’

It takes you a moment or two to realise that he’s making a joke, delivered in that deadpan way of his that betrays his sweet, innocent face. At your harried expression, Jimin breaks the act and giggles, and you nearly slump over with relief.

“So, I guess we have to act like we’re in a relationship too?” Jimin adds as an afterthought.

“It’s up to you, we don’t really have to make it that obvious,” you shrug as you get up from your seat and push the chair back to its original position. “I’m fine with being an unwed mother for a bit. I wouldn’t wanna trouble you any more than I already have. You don’t have to do anything else for me.”

Jimin is silent as he follows your lead toward the door. When the both of you are almost halfway back to your seats, he stops you with a brief clearing of his throat. “It wouldn’t bother me at all.”

You look back at him for a moment, and he just gives you another one of those shy little smiles as he goes back to his desk. For the rest of the afternoon, you find that you don’t really mind having an open office policy, not if it allows you glimpses of cute Park Jimin in his nerd glasses sitting opposite you.

The ruse goes on without a hitch for at least a few weeks. Here and there you get the odd look of curiosity and perhaps a little judgement from a few of the older ladies who tsk behind your back about you being a single unwed mother, but otherwise, things are better than ever. Just knowing that you have the freedom to take medical leave whenever you feel like it has improved your mood greatly, and the other day Namjoon from HR even came to tell you that you can come into work later if the morning sickness is really bothering you.

Most of all, people are also curious about the relationship between you and Park Jimin. Word has spread that he is the father of your pseudo baby by now, but thankfully no one is tactless enough to outright ask if you and Park Jimin are a couple now. Not even Namjoon from HR.

Monday morning comes, and you drag yourself into work, feeling slightly more worse for wear than usual. Every Monday, you have a progress meeting with your immediate superior that always leaves you in a bad mood after. It’s the same old tirade; getting piled with things that others have no time for, having previously submitted proposals rejected and being asked to redo them.

Today after the meeting, Jimin comes up to you just as you’re downing your fourth cup of coffee before 10am. He has a slightly anxious look on his face, one that’s out of place on his usual calm and composed self.

“Do you have a minute? We need to talk. Now.” Jimin turns immediately and starts walking towards the nearest meeting room, and in spite of yourself, your eyes are drawn to his ass in those pants. It almost makes up for the earful you got from your manager this morning. Almost.

“We’re in trouble,” Jimin says once you close the door to the meeting room. He is seated with his laptop open in front of him.

“What happened? Is it Taehyung from Baby Bonus again? I swear, if he accidentally deleted the whole archive, I’m going to shove a chair up his ass-“

“No, no it’s not about work,” Jimin swallows hard as he types something and turns his laptop to face you. “Over the weekend, someone wrote on my wall. They said- they wrote- just… just see for yourself.”

“Oh my god.” You hand flies to your mouth as horror slams into your gut. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that stupid punk with my own two hands. Delete it now!!!”

“That’s not the point,” Jimin’s voice sounds strangled as he directs your attention to the comments. “That’s my Granny. She saw it.”

The full extent of the damage done doesn’t hit you until you read Park JungMin’s comment.

“What was your granny doing up at freaking 5am???” You hiss in anger, poking Jimin’s shoulder.

“I don’t know- she’s an old person! She probably couldn’t sleep!” Jimin snaps back.

“Why didn’t you delete it immediately after you saw it!?” You accuse Jimin, pointing a finger at him. “None of this would have happened if you just deleted the post!!!”

“I only saw it this morning, for your information,” Jimin turns his head away from you and crosses his arms. “Forgive me for having a normal sleep schedule.”

“Fucking Jeon Jeongguk, I’ll kill him, I really will,” you mutter as you start to pace back and forth, already contemplating the numerous ways in which you can torture him.

“What are we going to do?” Jimin’s hands hover nervously over his laptop. “Granny will be so disappointed if she finds out it’s a lie. Maybe we should just come clean.”

You whirl around in indignance. “We can’t do that!!! It’s far too soon, if the truth comes out now, everyone will know I was just faking it. We need to wait at least three months. I researched, that’s the most likely time for a woman to have a miscarriage. Why did you have to add your grandmother on Facebook??”

“Hey-! She just wants updates on my life because she lives all the way in Busan!!” Jimin looks affronted when you mention his granny like that. “And if we’re playing the blame game here, if it weren’t for your concert, none of this would have happened in the first place.”

“That was agust d,” you say simply, as if it explains everything. “And that’s not the point. You have to tell your granny that it’s all a lie and tell her to keep it to herself.”

“But what am I supposed to say?” Jimin whines, his bottom lip jutting out and you swear you almost see him stamp his foot like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

“I don’t know, anything! Make something up!” You throw your hands up in exasperation.

“She has a weak heart, she can’t take it,” Jimin insists as he stands up and crosses his arms. “She’ll keel over in shock if I tell her there’s no baby. And she told me she’s already booked on the first flight to Seoul. You have to take responsibility.”

The absurdity of this situation means that you can’t decide if you should laugh or cry. “Well what do you want me to do? I can’t just magic a baby into my stomach like that!”

Jimin stays silent, and the implication dawns on you.

“No way. You’re insane. You can’t possibly mean that we should-“

“She wants you to come over for dinner tomorrow night.” Jimin says finally, his eyes now pleading. “She just wants to meet you. We don’t have to tell her that there’s no baby yet. Please?”

Oh. Well, for a second there, you thought Park Jimin was about to suggest something else entirely.

“It’s just one dinner,” Park Jimin pleads eagerly.

Your head is pounding, and the stress of the entire morning has caught up with you. Everything is too overwhelming, things are moving too fast and you’re too tired to argue with him any longer.

“Fine. Just one dinner. After that, we’re coming clean with Granny.” You fix him with a meaningful stare as his face lights up in glee.

“I promise!” Park Jimin grins as he claps his hands together. “Oh and ______... you might want to go easy on the coffee there. Pregnant women can’t have too much caffeine.”

This is ridiculous.

Just thinking that you could be curled up at home with a nice glass of wine in bed, instead of standing nervously outside some stranger’s house makes you more huffy and annoyed than usual.

Jimin beside you shoots you a look, and you roll your eyes.

“Did you hear me? Or do I have to repeat the entire story of how we met and ended up secretly dating for five months again?” Jimin nudges you in the ribs with his elbow.

“When I said make something up, I didn’t think you were going to become a scriptwriter for Marvel,” you roll your eyes back at him. “I’m just gonna let you do the talking. Ok? If they direct any tricky questions my way, I’ll just pretend I need to puke.”

Jimin sighs a long suffering sigh as he reaches for his keys. He always envisioned the first time he brought a girl home to meet his family as a wholesome affair. He imagined himself to be feeling over the moon, a little nervous but that was to be expected, and most of all, irrevocably in love with the woman standing at his side. Taking a glance at you now, Jimin can’t say this situation is ideal.

But hey, when life gives you lemons, right?

He opens the door and leads the way in, only to be accosted by a hug from his Granny having made it only about five steps in. Her comforting embrace and familiarity makes him relax again, and he hugs her back tightly.

“Granny! I missed you! How was the flight? Does your back hurt? You should have rested more! You should have let me pick you up at the airport,” Jimin says in a chiding tone as he places an arm around her, trying to steer her towards the living room area to take a seat.

But the stubborn old woman refuses with a smile that lights up her entire face when she catches a glimpse of you. “Ah, this must be ______! She looks so pretty! Too good for our little Jimin, I must say. Come in, come in!!! Take a seat and take a load off!!! You must be tired after working the entire day, and with the baby too.”

You can barely keep yourself from wincing when she mentions the baby, but otherwise, Jimin’s Granny is a very pleasant person. She exudes an aura of warmth and you feel at home with her immediately. Her compliments make you soft; and she seems to be incredibly genuine about them too. For the next five minutes, all she does is admire you; how smooth your hands are, how good your complexion is, how smart, kind and gentle you look, and also my oh my our little Park Jimin has managed to snag such a professional for a girlfriend.

“Granny, you’re embarrassing her,” Jimin mutters with a rosy blush spread across his cheeks as he stands beside the old woman. “And me as well.”

“Nonsense,” Granny chides Jimin as she turns to you with a smile that wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. “This is the first time our little Jimin has brought a girl home, you see. We were all worried that he was… you know, batting for the other team, which would be perfectly fine, but…”

“Granny!!!” Jimin actually does stomp his foot and cross his arms. The tips of his ears are red, the blush on his cheeks is prominent. “Granny, I’m hungry. Can we eat?”

It seems like Jimin knows exactly what works on Granny, because she turns around immediately and pats Jimin’s cheek. “Alright, alright puppy. We can eat now. Come, _____, you must be hungry too now that you’re eating for two. I asked Jimin about your favourites, I hope you like them.”

You glance questioningly at Jimin for a moment over Granny’s head as the two of you follow her to the dining table and have a seat opposite each other. While Granny’s warmth is nothing but welcoming, you can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. This, at least, is not what you were expecting. Granny seems perfectly fine with the notion of you being pregnant with Jimin’s child without getting married first. Perhaps society is shedding its traditionalist viewpoints and you just hadn’t realised it.

“You know dear, when Jimin told me the news, I was so overjoyed,” Granny says with a wistful smile on her face. “It’s one of my wishes to see Jimin happy with a girl he loves. And looking at the two of you now, even if I die tomorrow, I’ll be content.”

“Granny!” Jimin admonishes sharply. “You can’t say that! Your health has been getting better, hasn’t it? Are you taking your medicines? Three times a day, like the doctor said!”

Granny pats her grandson’s hand. “I am, puppy, I am. What does an old woman like me have to live for if her only grandson doesn’t even visit her anymore? At least now I’ll have the baby to look forward to. You’ll let me take care of it for you, won’t you?”

This last part she directs to you, and you glance nervously at Jimin. This is most definitely not what you signed up for when you agreed to this dinner. With every passing second, the guilt just piles higher and higher, till you feel like you might have trouble swallowing your food.

“Mrs… Mrs Park,” you say hesitantly, speaking for the first time since you set foot in this house. Pseudo baby or not, it just wouldn’t do to hurt this kind old woman, especially since she seems so excited and happy to meet you.

“Call me Granny, please,” she says as she pushes an extra bowl of rice towards you. “You should have this too.”

“Oh no,” you say automatically. “I’m watching my weight, so I shouldn’t…”

But it was the wrong thing to say. Granny immediately perks up, sitting straight in her seat, her eagle eyes on you. “Watching your weight, dear? Why would you be doing that now? You should be eating well for the baby! Is it this little punk who’s making comments about your weight?”

Granny seizes hold of Jimin’s ear and pulls, and he whimpers in the midst of spooning a giant bite of rice into his mouth.

“NO!” You blurt out in a panic, seeing your coworker’s face screw up in pain. You have to admit that you’ve been in a number of interesting situations with Park Jimin thus far, but something tells you that this isn’t the worst of it just yet. “No, Granny! I- I take it back. I’ll eat.”

Granny lets out a hmph as she releases Jimin’s ear with a warning glance towards her grandson. As Jimin reaches for a juicy looking sparerib, Granny’s chopsticks dart out and intercept him, causing the piece of meat to fall back onto the plate. She then expertly picks it up with her own chopsticks and drops it on top of your rice with a satisfied smile.

Jimin turns to Granny with a pout on his lips, and when your heart skips a tiny, little beat, you know you’re in trouble.

Somehow, bad news always comes on Monday mornings.

Today it comes in the form of Park Jimin, again, as he drags you into a meeting room the moment you finish your meeting with your manager.

“What is it now?” You hiss at him as he locks the door suspiciously. “Do you really need to do that? You know people think we’re like, fucking in here, don’t you? Thanks to your buddy Jeon Jeongguk.”

“Wait, what?” Jimin does a double take. “No, that doesn’t matter. My parents. They want me to marry you.”

“WHAT?” You screech so loudly that Jimin winces and covers his ears. “Tell them no, for fuck’s sake!”

“They already apparently bought an entire plot of land in the baby’s name,” Jimin goes on adding to the bad news as if he were adding fuel to the fire. “It’s in Baby Park’s name.”

“Oh my god.” Your head swirls and you wobble on your feet, and Jimin reaches out to steady you as if you were actually pregnant. You push his hand away with an irritated glare to remind him that all this is just a ruse. One that you’re beginning to seriously regret having cooked up all those weeks ago.

“What are we going to do?” Jimin sighs as he runs a hand through his hair, taking off his glasses for a moment to rub at his temples.

“We?” You exclaim. “What do you mean, we? Why are you talking as if we’re already married? You need to resolve this situation on your own, buddy. It’s not my fault your family likes to jump the gun!”

“What about you then?” Jimin snaps back with a raised eyebrow. “Look, it’s been two months, almost three, and I don’t see you making any plans to hide a watermelon under your clothes or tell people that it’s all just a scheme you cooked up.”

You gasp indignantly. “I was- I was working up to that! You know, coming up with my cover story, setting the stage, all that!”

Park Jimin crosses his arms in disbelief. “Oh really? So you’re planning on coming clean with everyone and telling them you’re not actually pregnant? Is that why you’ve been taking medical leave every week, running to the bathroom to ‘throw up’ every morning that you’re noton leave?”

“Have you been watching me?”

“A little hard not to, considering you sit right opposite me!”

The two of you are panting and staring hard at each other, both wrapped up in your own anger.

“Look, I’ll forget everything else. Just tell your parents to sell the land or something. The price of land has gone up recently, I’m sure they can still make a valuable profit if they sell now…”

Jimin’s eyebrow twitches. “Sell the land? When they think it’s for their precious grandchild?”

“There. Is. No. Grandchild,” you spit back at him. “Oh my god. We’re just going in circles here. I need to get back to work. My manager already gave me hell this morning, and I don’t need this from you too.”

You leave him in the meeting room and make your way swiftly back your desk, waking your laptop and checking your emails. A few minutes pass before you can fully calm yourself down and reorientate to what needs to be done. First, you redo that spreadsheet, feeling slightly better once you drown out the entire world and just focus on the numbers and cells in front of you. In fact, you forget about this whole terrible mess for a moment or two.

“Hey, _______?” There is a tap on your shoulder, and you turn around to see your manager hovering behind you. She bends down to squint at your screen, “You’re not still redoing the spreadsheet, are you? Our meeting ended an hour ago, you should be done with that by now!”

“I-I’m sorry, something came up, and I…” your voice is weak compared to hers, and vaguely you can see Park Jimin lean over slightly in his seat. “I’m done with it now. I’ll send it over.”

“Good. And get started on the operations manual. I need it all by 5pm today.” Your manager gives you a pat on the back, starts to walk off, and then hesitates. “I know you’re in a rather… delicate situation, but that shouldn’t affect your ability to work. It’s a busy period of time, _____, and I expect nothing but the best from my team. Got it?”

You swallow hard as you try and return her smile. “Got, it, Manager.”

Turning back to your screen, tears are blurring your vision as you attach the document to an email and send it off. You can feel the curious stares of your coworkers all on you, and you feel more self-conscious than ever. Never mind that pretending to be pregnant is all a ruse. It was supposed to make your life better, give you some breathing space, but you feel more suffocated than ever.

You need some air. Now.

Standing up, you grab your phone and dip your head, striding for the exit quickly so that no one catches the expression on your face. Hopefully, they’ll think you need to puke or something, and not pathetically hide in a corner and cry your eyes out. Thankfully, this morning you had the foresight not to apply any eye makeup, so you can rub your eyes as much as you want.

This corner is actually pretty nice. It’s secluded that no one would accidentally wander in and find a hysterically sobbing woman, yet it’s not too far that you can’t make it back to your desk within five minutes if your manager calls. You wipe your face with the back of your sleeve, taking a deep breath and getting ready to go back and face everything once more, when you notice a pair of loafers standing a few steps away.

“Are you okay?” Park Jimin’s voice is familiar. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… intrude, but you just looked so upset and… she was totally unreasonable. Using that as an excuse to comment on your work ethic. Just unacceptable.”

He is shaking his head with a serious expression on his face, and it makes you laugh suddenly. Jimin looks up in surprise, eyes wide, but then a small smile spreads across his face as well as he tucks his hands into his pockets. It occurs to you that if Park Jimin weren’t here, no one else would have come to check up on you.

“I’m used to it,” you shrug as you check your reflection in your phone screen. “It’s just… I just need to cry once and I’m fine. You weren’t supposed to see this side of me,” you attempt a weak laugh. “You’re only supposed to know the bad bitch side of me.”

“You can still be a bad bitch even if you cry every now and then,” Jimin shrugs as if it’s obvious. “If you’re done crying, can we go for lunch? I’m starving.”

You make Jimin buy you some meat and you wolf it down in front of him as if you really were eating for two. To his benefit, Jimin says nothing and only takes out his wallet when it’s time to pay.

On the way back to the office, feeling decently satisfied and absolutely sure that you have a tiny little food baby (with today’s dress being particularly unforgiving around the midsection), you can’t help but feel a little bit better. Maybe Park Jimin isn’t so bad after all.

“______? Oh my god, ______? Is that you?” A far off voice calls, and you turn back.

And you wish you hadn’t.

Min Yoongi comes striding towards you with a huge grin on his face, waving as if he can’t believe it’s really you.

“Shit shit shit,” you swear under your breath. How much unluckier can this day get?

Jimin looks at you quizzically.

“It’s my bastard ex who cheated on me by getting another girl pregnant,” you whisper to him by way of explanation. “They got married last month but I never responded to their invitation.”

“Oh,” Jimin says, immediately grasping the situation. “I got it. Don’t worry.”

“What?” You look at him in panic, seeing the expression on his face and not liking it one bit. “What are you gonna-“

But it’s too late now for any further conversation, since Min Yoongi is now in earshot. He grins again as he looks you up and down. “_____! What a surprise! Do you work around here?”

“Y-yeah, what a surprise too,” you say weakly.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” Yoongi’s eyes dart to Jimin standing beside you for a moment, before they fall to your midsection. “But might as well. I wanted to congratulate you on the baby, because what a coincidence, right?”

He hands you a beautifully embossed invitation card with the words ‘Baby Shower’ on it, and you can feel your face draining of all colour. You swear under your breath.

“Oh! And this must be… the father-to-be?” Yoongi somehow doesn’t pick up on the escalating horror on your face, because he turns to Jimin and extends a hand of congratulations. “Congrats, man! How’s it feel? Excited to become a dad?”

Jimin sneaks a quick peek at your horrified expression. “Y-yes! Absolutely…. Um, thrilled, we are.”

At Jimin’s confirmation, Yoongi’s face seems to fall a little, and seeing it makes your heart clench in vindication. Serves that cheating little bastard right.

“I didn’t know you were seeing anyone, ______... let alone serious enough to… have a baby and all that,” Yoongi’s voice mellows a little as he directs his gaze back to you. “I thought you didn’t want to have children… for a while, at least.”

You detect a little bit of regret in Yoongi’s voice, and maybe a little bit of something you can’t quite put your finger on right now. In your five-year long relationship with him, Yoongi always made it clear that he wanted to have children as soon as possible. It was one of the major roadblocks in your relationship, and eventually it became the tipping point that drove him into the arms of another woman who was desperate enough to pop out his babies for him.

Wait a minute. It almost sounds as if Min Yoongi is trying to blame you for making him cheat. All of a sudden, you want to show him how you’ve been living all these months. Completely fine and happy without him. Better off, even. You want to make this cheating bastard realise that you’re not pathetic. You open your mouth in indignation, but before you can say anything, you hear Jimin’s voice.

“It all happened so fast, really,” Jimin shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “When I saw her I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and you know how life is… We aren’t getting any younger either, so we thought why not try for a baby while we’re at it? She’s perfect for me, and we’re very happy together.”

Jimin does it better than you ever would have been able to. His words are so smooth that even you are convinced that the two of you are in a stable relationship together. Glancing at him, Jimin looks so self-assured and confident that he puts Min Yoongi to shame.

Min Yoongi looks shell shocked. “R-right. Th-that’s really nice, I’m ha-happy for you guys. Congratulations again.”

You have no idea how Jimin is making all of this up, but the look on Min Yoongi’s face is enough. It almost makes up for when you found out about the breakup through the pre-wedding invitations he sent you.

“But we- we haven’t really told anyone yet, so how did you find out?” A frown creases your brow as you mentally run through a list of people who know about this pseudo pregnancy. The whole company, for one. Jimin’s Granny. Jimin’s family. And now Min Yoongi. But the question is, who told Min Yoongi? It’s not like he has any links with Jimin’s family.

“I mean… I saw the bump,” Yoongi scratches the back of his neck as his eyes drop briefly to your waist. “And um… I know you blocked me on social media a while ago. But I just wanted to check in on you and see how you’re doing. And I saw someone post on Jimin’s wall about the baby. So I kind of put two and two together.”

There’s an awkward silence as your hands immediately fold over your waist, your cheeks heating up self-consciously. You can feel Jimin struggle not to burst into laughter beside you, and you surreptitiously elbow him hard in the ribs.

“Anyway, um… I hope you’ll come to the shower,” Yoongi nods at the invitation again. “It’s on Sunday, and feel free to bring Jimin too. I uh… invited your mom too. I mean, it’s just… Your family wanted to know how Yeji and I were getting along with the baby and… we were so close so I figured…”

At this point the humiliation can’t get any worse. So you decide to just cut him off with a formal smile that you hope doesn’t look too forced.

“We’ll be there, Yoongi. See you.”

It’s fine. It’s all fine. Even if Min Yoongi knows, it’s all fine. You can just attend this baby shower, just show your face for about an hour or so and then disappear from his life altogether. And then he won’t even know that you didn’t have a baby.

The very definition of co-workers means that you only see each other on weekdays from 9am to 6pm. But if that’s true, then somehow along the way, you and Jimin had progressed far beyond the point of just being co-workers, to the point that you’re somehow spending half of your weekend with him.

You sigh to yourself as you watch all your friends’ kids run about screaming at the top of your lungs. You’re already beginning to get a headache from all these irritating little gremlins making so much noise. At least you’re not being asked to play with or look after any of the children. Seeing that you and Yoongi had dated for a substantial amount of time, most of the attendees at this baby shower are your mutual friends, and it’s awkward to say the least.

At least you have Park Jimin with you to be your pretend boyfriend slash husband so you won’t seem like the pathetic ex-girlfriend attending her cheater ex-boyfriend’s baby shower for his new wife. So far there haven’t been any difficult questions, just curious looks from your friends whom you haven’t seen in a really long time because you’re just so tied up with work.

“Hey babe, come here! This is really fun,” Jimin shouts to you from one of the game stations, and you have no choice but to stop sulking in the corner like an evil brooding witch.

(One of your friend’s kids had pointed an accusing finger at you the moment you arrived at the shower with a not so thrilled expression on your face.

“Mama, why is the evil witch wearing yellow, mama? Is she here to curse Sleeping Beauty?”)

“This is really fun,” Jimin says again as he pulls the blindfold off with a grin on his face. “Pin the diaper on the baby poo.”

He points to a target board with a questionable looking substance smeared all over the centre of it. The person next in line is blindfolded and trying to pin the diaper in the centre of the board, and there are disappointed yells when he misses.

To his credit, Jimin really does look as if he’s having fun. He’s been the only person to score a point at this game, and he’s acing all the other games: guess the baby food, pin the sperm on the egg, etc etc.

“I’m notpinning the diaper on the baby poo,” you frown at him. Who the hell comes up with these games? “Is there any wine here? God, I need a drink.”

Before you can wander away, Jimin grasps your elbow. “You can’t drink,” he says with a serious, chiding look on his face. “You’re pregnant.”

“No one here knows that, do they?” You roll your eyes at him and sidestep a screaming toddler who is barrelling down the walkway. For someone who was present at the time of conception of this scheme, Park Jimin really is taking this way too seriously.

Jimin sighs and follows you to the beverages table in defeat. If he can’t stop you from drinking, the least he can do is hold up his jacket around you to make sure you don’t get caught. But then, a very rounded, glowing looking pregnant woman suddenly accosts you, and by the look on your face, Jimin surmises that this can only be Yeji, the woman Yoongi cheated on you with.

“Ye-Yeji, you look… um… wonderful!” Your strangled voice gets lost as Yeji envelopes you in a huge hug, forcing you to squeeze up against her bump. “Congratulations!”

The mother-to-be is all smiles, her makeup is perfectly done and there is an ever present glow on her face. She looks like an absolute goddess in her flowy white dress and wavy hair, and its moments like this that remind you that Yoongi left you for someone better.

“I feel wonderful, thank you!” She places a hand on her protruding belly. “Oh, I was just chatting with your mother over here, you haven’t said hi to her have you? She’s been complaining to me that you don’t have time for her anymore!”

Fuck. Your mother. You’ve been avoiding her calls and messages for the past few months, and you give her a weak smile as she comes over with a dark look on her face. It’s not that you’re doing this on purpose, it’s just that the breakup with Yoongi was beyond messy. Everyone’s parents are naturally on their side after a breakup, but somehow your parents remained on Yoongi’s. Every call would be about Yeji’s pregnancy, how their baby room was progressing, how many kicks she felt in a day, all those needless details that only felt like repeated stabs to the heart when you were trying to heal and get on with your life.

“…I’m so glad you could come. When Yoongi told me the news, I was so excited I thought my water was going to break!” Yeji is gesturing excitedly as she gushes to your mother, and you freeze in panic.

She couldn’t have…

“_____, I can’t believe you’re pregnant too!”

Her exclamation has a few of your friends nearby turning around, and a few of them start to clap. Yoongi elbows his way through the crowd, his hair matted with sweat as he pants with exertion.

“Baby, you were supposed to wait for my cue!” He admonishes his wife with a slight frown, but then he kisses her lips when Yeji pouts.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t wait! It’s all just so exciting, I can’t believe _____ is going to have a baby too! I remember feeling so guilty in my first few months of pregnancy that I could barely sleep…”

“I know, I know, baby,” Yoongi shushes her with a kiss to her forehead. “Anyway, _____ and Jimin, we uh… we prepared something for you. We hope you like it, and uh… _____, I hope it can make up for all the shit I put you through in the past year.”

At this point, you don’t even dare to look at your mother. “Wh-what did you prepare?”

“It’s over there! In front of the photowall,” Yeji claps in excitement. “Go on! Everyone’s waiting!”

Everyone at the party clears a path for you and Jimin to make your way to the colourfully decorated photowall at the front of the party. On the floor in front of it sits a brown cardboard box.

With all eyes on you, you swallow hard and start to make your way to the photowall. Jimin follows behind you, whispering under his breath. “What the fuck is this?”

“Probably another lame party game or something… just play along,” you whisper back, your mind too preoccupied with thinking about how you’re going to explain your pseudo pregnancy to your mother. Knowing her disposition, it’s entirely possible that your father knows about it already, and maybe even your entire extended family, and… oh god-

The moment you step in front of the photowall, someone standing to the side of the box pulls something, and an explosion of balloons and streamers burst from the box. You are quite literally showered in confetti, and when you look up, there are four balloons spelling out the word ‘baby’, and another balloon with ‘congratulations’ on it.

“Congratulations on your baby!!!!” Someone shouts, and people are taking out their phones to take pictures of you and Jimin drenched in confetti. Someone claps, and soon, the entire party is clapping. There are hoots of congratulations, someone proposes a toast, your college friends are almost in tears, your sister is loudly announcing that this should go on Instagram, your mother is half crying and half glowering at you for not telling her sooner, and everyone is talking about you and your non-existent baby.

Beside you, Jimin is equally stunned, but unlike you, he isn’t at a loss for words. He pulls you in close, pretending to pose for the cameras with a jovial smile on his face.

He still has the gall to joke around as he says, “maybe we should have that baby after all.”

In the blink of an eye, things just got very, very out of hand.

Number of people who know about pregnancy

Whole company: (estimated 200 people)

Jimin’s Granny

Jimin’s family

Min Yoongi and wife

Attendees of Yoongi’s baby shower (estimated 50 people)

Your family

Total: 265 people

#bts #bangtan bookclub #bts jimin #bts fics

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bills-pokedex · 4 years

Note

What happens if there's an outbreak of a pokemon-to-human transmissible disease in your region?

Well! Allow me to say first off that many regions have excellent healthcare systems, but admittedly, no one can be equipped for everything, especially if it’s a new disease and/or one with very little research on it to boot. Still, this isn’t a cause for panic, as generally speaking, regions will respond rather quickly to new outbreaks, especially given all of our cultures’ emphasis on traveling across the land to befriend pokémon.

That said, speaking as someone quite used to health scares in major cities (ah, the many, many outbreaks in Goldenrod…), a few tips:

Preventative/Preparation:

Wash your hands. Twenty seconds, whenever possible, and don’t forget about between your fingers and under your fingernails. They say you should sing “Happy Birthday” to count the seconds, but you know what also works? Rockrolling yourself. I’m serious.

…actually, I’m going to need a read more. Lanette, can we get a read more in here?

Thank you!

Preventative/Preparation:

Wash your hands whenever you touch something in a public area. You don’t need to disinfect everything (at least, in a public place—disinfect spaces within your home often); that’s going a bit overboard. But at least wash.

If you don’t have access to a sink and soap, always carry hand sanitizer. I know they say overuse of hand sanitizer will lead to superbugs, but you don’t need to overuse it. Just use it whenever you’re about to eat, touch your face for any reason, or handle anything particularly dirty. (Use a tissue to help wipe off any dirt, incidentally.)

Don’t touch your face, especially if you haven’t washed your hands. This increases your risk of infection.

If the disease is respiratory—and sadly many are—wear a mask, even if you feel well. Wearing a mask isn’t just for protecting yourself from catching the disease. It’s also for avoiding transmitting it to others, should you be asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic. In other words, it’s a matter of public health. Also, regarding the rumors that have been going around that masks will affect your respiratory system negatively or exacerbate medical conditions, rest assured that they do not, and if you have a respiratory condition, you probably shouldn’t be journeying out when there’s an outbreak of a respiratory disease in the first place. Get someone else to help you during said outbreak, and make sure they’re wearing a mask and gloves themselves.

If the disease is foodborne or waterborne, luckily, these are some of the easiest outbreaks to avoid (other than any outbreak of a disease transmissible only by bodily fluids). When at all possible, cook your own food, boil and purify any water you get from the tap (if you’re not sure it’s filtered) or a water source, and don’t order drinks with ice (which is often made with tap water). If it’s not possible to cook your own food, be careful, and try not to eat anything that you know has been involved in recent contaminations within that region (such as romaine or ground beef often are in Unova, for example). Try to avoid raw foods as well if you’re not used to it.

Also, bug spray. It’s very important, especially if you’re traveling through any region with a high population of mosquito-borne illnesses.

Try to avoid crowded areas, especially (quite obviously) the places that are known to have been hit with an outbreak. If this isn’t possible, follow the above steps.

If you can vaccinate for it … vaccinate for it. If you can’t for health reasons, that’s fine, and you’re excused. You’re not excused if you’re refusing to get the measles vaccine for moral reasons. Stop that. Get vaccinated. (Side point: Being unable to afford the vaccine is also a potentially decent excuse in certain regions, but try asking your doctor or pharmacist for discounts or financial solutions. Getting the vaccine is better than getting sick and missing work anyway.)

Never panic-buy supplies. It’s okay to stock up on essentials, but do so early and build up a cache. Do not do it all at once, or you may be contributing to more panic. Especially do not do this with medical supplies. People may actually need those.

What you do need: A small cache of basic medical supplies (in other words: a first aid kit and basic cold medications—enough to, again, cover a week of isolation), your prescriptions, canned soup or food (for cooking if you’re not up for a full meal), dried beans and rice (work just as well as canned soup—especially if added to chicken broth), a box of disinfectant wipes, masks (if it’s a respiratory illness that you’re dealing with). Again, you’re not surviving a zombie apocalypse; you’re surviving a couple of weeks indoors, at most.

Always, always, always understand the disease involved in the outbreak. Do your research, and be wary of the media. The media will always isolate numbers and make things seem worse than they are, as they’re reliant on viewer numbers in order to keep themselves afloat. Instead, understand that most diseases that spread readily also come with low mortality rates, and those that die from a disease are typically the elderly, the very young (note: not in all cases—some diseases carry a higher survival rate for children than others), those who are immunosuppressed or -compromised (such as those undergoing chemotherapy or with certain medical conditions), those with underlying health issues related to the organs the disease targets, or medical professionals who undergo repeated exposures. And even then, depending on the disease, a number of these people may survive. It’s all because diseases are caused by what are essentially parasitic lifeforms; viruses, bacteria—the whole works—they all need your body in order to reproduce. As such, they’re designed first and foremost for their own reproductivity, not to specifically kill you. In any case, the media will never tell you this and always lead you to believe that you will die from the disease in question, when in reality, it’s more like this will only happen if you’re either not in the best health as it is ... or in a situation where you absolutely can’t receive proper healthcare.

Still, never assume an outbreak is over until you hear the words “contained,” “cured,” or “vaccine is available.” This is very true for diseases that are very easy to transmit, but the moment you stop being smart and vigilant, the moment a second outbreak is bound to happen. Always be cautious and always take steps to protect yourself from the disease at hand, as protecting yourself means protecting all others around you. Don’t forget: just because you’re likely to overcome a disease doesn’t mean someone you’re close to is.

That said, Pokémon. Not to advertise, but the PC is perhaps the safest place for pokémon during an outbreak, as once converted fully into data, poké ball and all, they can neither transmit diseases nor be exposed to them. On the other hand, never feel as if you have to keep your team in the PC at all times. On the contrary, do your research and make your own judgment calls. Remember that not every disease will affect every pokémon. (Geodude can’t catch avian flu, for example, but torchic certainly can and will likely die from it at that.) Furthermore, sometimes, a poké ball is enough protection. Finally, if the outbreak hasn’t reached your area, it’s altogether unnecessary to box your beloved partners.

Treatment/Care:

If you exhibit symptoms that align with those of the disease at hand (flu-like symptoms, for example), try to seek out medical attention. (Note: This means calling a medical provider and following their advice on subsequent steps.) I realize this isn’t always viable advice in every region (Unova), but seeking out medical attention and taking steps to take care of yourself is far better than exacerbating your condition by ignoring your symptoms. Reporting your illness also helps general public health by allowing the medical system to keep track of how many cases there are and where the disease may have been.

Likewise if your pokémon start exhibiting symptoms. Especially if they’re battle-ready pokémon (and thus have a higher rate of spreading disease to other pokémon than those kept as pets).

If you’re on a journey at the time and notice that you’re developing flu-like symptoms, go to a clinic for humans. Do not go to a pokémon center. This risks spreading the disease to other traveling trainers. (Note: Human clinics are free for trainers as well, and their staff members are often among the first to be trained in handling infectious diseases.)

If doing any of the above three things, if we’re talking about an outbreak of a severe disease of sorts, call ahead before you go. Do not simply show up to one of these facilities and state you have symptoms. Calling ahead allows medical teams to prepare to receive you, thus minimizing the potential of spreading the disease. Do this even if you’re not sure if you or your pokémon have the disease, and yes, do this even if talking on a phone is emotionally difficult for you. Believe me; medical staff will not judge you. You are likely going to be the patient worth the least amount of judgment.

If you’re not required to be in isolation, yes, wear a mask, but also, always cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze. Preferably, do so into a disposable tissue and dispose of the tissue immediately afterwards. Never simply cough into the air. (Basic etiquette, I know, but you’ll be surprised how often people don’t do this.)

Hydrate yourself as much as possible, even if you don’t feel thirsty. Your body needs as many fluids as possible to combat every illness.

When handling a sick pokémon, always wash your hands before doing anything else, and never, ever touch your face before doing so. You may also wish to wear a mask in this case.

Furthermore, never violate a Nurse Joy’s orders for isolation. If your pokémon needs to be isolated, isolate it, no matter how bad you feel. Additionally, do not use that pokémon to battle, and limit its interactions with the rest of your team (unless you know the disease can’t spread to their species). On the positive side, pokémon tend to recover quicker than humans from illness (in a matter of days, as opposed to a week or more), so as long as you follow the protocols for proper care of a sick pokémon, it should be fine.

Always wash your hands after caring for an infected pokémon.

Remember that pokémon need rest and hydration when they’re sick just as much as humans do. Also remember that you need rest and hydration if you’re sick. And of course, try to avoid letting your pokémon care for you while you’re sick. It may be a nice gesture, but it places them at risk, especially if they can be affected by the disease.

Most of all, don’t worry. You may be miserable, but diseases will generally pass. As I’ve said earlier, most infectious diseases you hear about, unless you’re traveling through a developing region (particularly one in the tropics), actually have a lower mortality rate than the media will have you believe. Take care of yourselves and above all else…

Wash your hands. Seriously.

#asks #tw: disease #long post #our world #Anonymous

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saibh29 · 4 years

Text

Let me look after you

Pairing: Kelly Severide x Reader

Warning: Not much, fluff, grouchy more fluff.

AN: Wrote to the prompt ‘if you move from that spot, I swear to go i will tie you down’

******

You weren’t a very good sick person, you had too much natural energy and exuberance. According to Kelly who slept next to you most nights you weren’t even still when you were asleep. Hell he’d even gone to the firehouse with black eyes a few times where you’d flailed into him while you were dreaming.

It’s what made you such a horrid patient, it took a lot for you to respect your bodies need for rest. Which is why even though you’d struggled not to either sneeze or cough every 30 seconds so far today, you’d still gone into work.

You liked your job, as a public defender you gave legal advice to people who otherwise would be able to afford it. It made you feel like in some way you were contributing to society. Also you could do paperwork at your desk just as easily as you could do it at home on your couch. That’s what you’d been telling yourself at least.

In reality your optimism had possibly been misplaced. You were now also running a fever and you could see your assistant making not so subtle glances at you through the glass screen separating you both.

She’d made a rather urgent looking phone call about 30 minutes ago which is why you weren’t altogether surprised to see your boyfriend storming through the office floor aiming for your corner room.

He stopped briefly at your assistants’ desk and said something into her ear which made her nod and start making phone calls. He then came right into your office, no knocking and then instantly closed the blinds cutting you off from the rest of the floors prying eyes.

“Want to explain?”

The sarcasm really made you want to be difficult and answer his question with just as much snark. You didn’t have the energy though to form that complicated of a reply.

“I honestly didn’t feel this bad this morning”

Kelly had already left for work before you woke up this morning meaning he had no way of checking that statement. “Why don’t I believe you?” he came around the desk and spun your chair over to face him. “You’re really pale babe”

“Yeah? I'm always pale” well look at that maybe your sarcasm ability wasn’t fully drained yet.

Kelly ignored you pressing the back of his hand to your forehead, frowning “you’re burning up. We need to get you home”

“I don’t want to go home” add stubborn on top of sarcastic.

“Want has nothing to do with the situation now” you were determinedly going to keep fighting when Kelly simply put his hand over your mouth cutting off any further words from you. “You can either move your ass or I can carry you out over my shoulder. Decide, because either way you’re going home”

“You are not carrying me” you got reluctantly to your feet, even that amount of movement though made your head spin and you wobbled on the heels you’d still worn. Kelly grabbed your arm steadying you.

“Easy sweetheart”

“I don’t need you help” you weren’t exactly happy with him for forcing you home even if logically you knew he was right.

“Alright, walk to the door then”

“You think I can’t?” Kelly just waved his hand towards the door inviting you to try. “fine”

Biting your lip to try and clear the fog in your eyes you carefully took one step, then another and even one more. You were just starting to feel confident when the nausea hit once more and your head span. You had a second to realise you were going to fall and that you had nothing to grab onto to stop yourself. You never hit the ground though because Kelly caught you, holding you up as you got your head under control.

“Willing to accept help now?”

“You going to hold it against me?”

“No babe” his arm went around your waist holding you into his chest. “Your sick babe and I want to help”

“I am sick” you admitted it out loud for the first time. “Kelly?”

“Yeah”

“Can you take me home please?”

Kelly to give him credit didn’t say I told you so or anything like that just helped you into your coat, putting his arm back around your waist and with you putting most of your weight on him you got out of your office, into his car and back to the apartment.

Kelly put you down on the sofa. “You have to go back to the firehouse?”

He snuck a look at his watch “In a bit, let me get you a drink and some pills”

“I can do that”

Before you could even begin to move Kelly grabbed your shoulders holding you down onto the couch. “If you move from this spot, I swear to go I will tie you down. Understand? Y/N understand?”

“Yes, jesus”

Kelly let go of you and took a few steps away eyes glued onto you, watching for any twitch of movement. When you obediently stayed still on the sofa he left to go and gather together some things for you.

Your head was pounding and you’d started to consciously feel sick all the time now not just because you were trying to move. It felt like horribly enough you’d caught the flu.

Kelly came back with a horde of things in his arms. He put a glass of water and a couple of paracetamol on the coffee table in front of you and then up one of his old firehouse hoodies and joggers.

“Want to change?”

You really did, that hoodie looked really, really tempting right about now. You honestly didn’t think you could change on your own though without passing out.

So, you did something that you only ever did with a handful of people. You asked for help.

“Can you… can you help me with these?”

Wordlessly Kelly lifted you back up to your feet and started on the buttons of your shirt. You slipped your feet out the heels standing barefoot as Kelly finished off the buttons and pulled your shirt off then going for the zip at the back of your skirt. Once you were stood in nothing but your underwear Kelly then pulled the hoodie over your head and let you rest on his shoulders while you got your legs into the joggers.

You were fully dressed again and Kelly rested you back down onto the couch. “I must look truly awful, you didn’t even try to cop a feel”

“Even I have rules about sick people. Especially sick girlfriends”

“Such a gentleman”

Kelly smiled pointing at the paracetamol. “Take your pills”

You did swallow the little pills, leaning back into the cushions of the couch.

“I have to go back”

“I’ll be fine” your eyes were already fluttering closed. “I'm just going to sleep for a bit”

Bending over Kelly kissed your still burning forehead. He was a little worried about you, but admitting that to you wouldn’t make anything better, in fact you were liable to just get even more stubborn about resting.

“If you feel worse call me”

“Alright”

“Y/N I mean it”

Flipping the hood up over your head you mock saluted him. “Aye aye Lieutenant”

He wasn’t going to get anymore agreement out of you than that he knew that so he grabbed his car keys getting ready to head out again. He was nearly to the door again when your voice stopped him.

“Kelly?”

“Yeah babe”

“Thank you”

“No problem” his hand was on the door handle turning it when you spoke again.

“I love you”

“I love you too” he said, smiling to himself because only you could sound so reluctant to admit that you loved someone.

You went quiet again and this time did let him leave the apartment to go back to the firehouse. After all there were people with a lot worse problems than the flu that needed him to rescue them. You were lucky though, luckier than them, because at the end of the day you were the one he came home to.

*******

@lclb13 @moli1497 @clementines-x @the-chosen-one-time-lord @no-other-names-availible-blog @angelaiswriting @selldraug @angryares @thenovarose @georgiagrl1990 @punk-rock-5-sos @mindofthescattered @dontstopxx @iamabeautifulperson18 @madelinecraig03 @ka-x-in @im-hurric4ne @mesmericbell @something–awesome @weirdpotato-14 @putinontheritzz @soulslaststand @fuckthatfeeling @ember1201 @morganlb23 @kitkatbadass @tomhopperarms @fakingintrest @artprincessbree @dreamer-lover-laughter @artprincessbree @rime-warrior @captainvaneswife @jaib2-blog @kapolisradomthoughts @thingsandstuffienjoy @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @aya-fay @itsbubbaog @hp-hogwartsexpress @emmykinzs @thatbadassunicorn @sassywingednightmare @weirdnewbie @goyawriter @shipperfangirling @nathaliabakes @stillreadingfantasy @waywardblueshun

#chicago #chicago fire #one chicago #chicago fire x reader #chicago fire x imagine #kelly severide #kelly severide x you #kelly severide x reader #kelly severide x imagine #kelly severide x fanfic #severide #severide x you #severide x reader #imagine #you #reader #fanfic

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should-be-sleeping · 4 years

Text

PSA: Pandemics & You

I had H1N1 when that happened and young, healthy people were all, "lol it's just the flu nbd" and let me tell you, as a person with underlying health conditions, H1N1 was TERRIBLE. I was so sick, so intensely, for so long, it was awful. If I hadn't had access to healthcare and resources and people to take care of me, I absolutely could have been hospitalized and maybe not come back. All because I went to an airport. It didn't matter that I tried not to touch anything, it didn't matter that I washed my hands. Other people were being careless. I need you to do something for me right now: consider other people. (More under the cut...)

It is imperative you stop buying toilet paper and start washing your hands and limiting your exposure to people. Not just to avoid contracting COVID-19 yourself (because you'll "be fine") but to minimize the chance that you give it to someone else. And if you're sick and can help it at all? JUST STAY HOME. If you have to work, I get it, American PTO is a unicorn. Capitalism is a fuck. But you don't then also have to go to the store, or to a restaurant, or to a birthday party. Don't panic. Most of you will in fact be totally fine if you contract COVID-19. Don't hoard supplies, other people also need things. Check the CDC website, follow their guidelines. Importantly washing your hands and keeping 6 feet of personal space between you and everyone around you in public as much as you possibly can (obviously you can't at, say, the checkout line at the store). Don't be selfish. It's not just about you. It's about all of us, and some of us won't "be fine." So calm down and do your part. FAQ

"But corona virus has always been around!" Different corona virus, bro.

"But the flu is just as bad!" You should be trying not to spread influenza, too, dude. Also, it's not. Generally speaking, the flu does not usually cause lesions in your lungs.

"I heard it can only be spread through direct contact, so since I don't know anyone personally sick, I can't get it." That's cute, but wrong. It’s just as infectious as the flu, which means every 1 person being careless can potentially infect at minimum 2-3 other people. COVID-19 can live on surfaces for up to 9 days, which means you could conceivably contract it from any surface you touch (including your mail) if you don't thoroughly wash your hands. It also spreads through water vapors from infected persons within 3 feet of you who cough, sneeze, or talk. So yeah, "avoid people" is legit advice.

"Most people don't even have symptoms so I could have it right now! What's the point?" 1% of people is not most. 1% of people who get COVID-19 are not symptomatic (usually the very young). They can still spread it, however, and those they spread it to are usually symptomatic. This is why you should maintain 6 feet of personal space regardless of whether you "feel sick" and stay home as much as possible if you feel even slightly unwell.

"I know a person who had it and they were barely sick. HOAX!" Good for them, that's not the case for everyone. So please just wash your gotdamn hands and follow the CDC guidelines anyway.

"I was told I should stock up on everything!" With a novel virus it is likely large numbers of people may be sick simultaneously because there is no preexisting herd immunity. So expect disturbances in your community if there is an outbreak in your state. Businesses and schools may need to close for up to 2 weeks even without quarantine simply due to the amount of people sick at once. Have back-up plans in case that happens (such as ordering things online). There's no need to stock up in advance on anything except items you cannot have delivered -- like prescription medications. Ask your doctor to write a prescription for an extra 2 weeks supply just in case you cannot go to the pharmacy.

#covid-19 #corona virus #corona #coronavirus #cdc guidelines #don't panic #just consider others

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ditttiii · 3 years

Note

(´･_･`) Would it be bad of me to say that I'm honestly unsure about what to feel about masks? If you would rather not read and/or share, even to respond to, my ramblings about it, I completely understand, and I'll mark them at the start, so you can easily recognize which ones are mine and delete them if you so wish. I just wanted to share my thoughts/get your input? 1/5

Bad to say that you’re “unsure” or “skeptical”? No, or well at least I don’t think so. Early in the pandemic, we were told not to wear masks, mainly so as to not divert the limited supplies away from the healthcare workers. But another reason given was that masks are insufficient to protect the wearer from many respiratory pathogens, which yes, sure, true. Masks are no concrete protection and they are “insufficient” but masks were never made to be the final defense either? Social-distancing isn’t perfect, neither is testing or contact tracing, but sometimes a lot of imperfect, small preventive measures, can become a shield. If vaccine is our sword against the virus, the preventive measures, in some ways, are our shield.

You said if everyone uses them in the right manner they’re great, but the sad fact is a lot of us don’t. Even after the constant, repetitive requests by medical professionals and governments all over the world, do all of us actually wear masks as we should? I don’t know about you, but everyday I see at least 10 people not wearing a mask (I scarcely, if ever step outside) and what about the amount of people who wear it wrong?

As for the later part of this ask, and this is just my opinion, people who say shit like that will always face a higher risk of infection, regardless of if they wear a mask or not. It has been explicitly, repeatedly told that masks alone will NOT protect someone. They are no holy grail. Masks coupled with social distancing and basic awareness of the pandemic and it’s guidelines, however, will keep the casualties to a minimum until a working vaccine is released. A shield is no elixir, and anyone who doesn’t understand that simple fact is a moron. As an adult, one should know better.

If someone finds a mask unbearably uncomfortable and needs to keep adjusting it, then they should carry a sanitizer with them and use it prior to and after touching their mask. Being selfish and self serving during a pandemic? I...that’s just fucking stupid? Masks aren’t iron armors. Doctors, Nurses, Mine workers, factory workers--millions of people have been using them regularly for hours on end for years. They weren’t born with a mask strapped to their face. No, they learned to get used to it, pushed themselves through the initial discomfort. If they could do it then, we can do it now. It’s not everyday that we face a global pandemic with millions (and counting) of casualties.

People are careless, a piece of fabric tied to a face cannot make someone careless. Social distancing is possible even with a mask on, and maybe where you are, the population isn’t too high, but even then, why gamble with health? lives?

Multiple studies have shown that face coverings can contain droplets expelled from the wearer, which are responsible for the majority of transmission of the virus. This 'source control' approach reflects a shift in thinking from a 'medical' perspective (will it protect the wearer?) to a 'public health' perspective (will it help reduce community transmission and risk for everyone?).

I think yeah the lack of law/official recommendation might be why a lot of people where you live don’t wear masks. Personally, I don’t think social distancing without a mask on is a smart thing to do. It is estimated that 40% of persons with COVID-19 are asymptomatic but potentially able to transmit the virus to others. In the absence widespread screening tests, we have no way of identifying many people who are silently transmitting the virus in their community.

Suppose you are social distancing in your work place. You are infected, asymptomatic and thus most probably your infection is undetected. Now, your boss asks you to get a copy of some document. Fine, cool, you move to use the common printer, sneeze or cough into your hand, touch the buttons and bam. The virus is now on the keys. Done, copies in your hand, you move out the door. You are social distancing, great, but now anyone who touches those same keys and touches their mouth (even unconsciously) is at a risk of being infected. What if that person is a 40 year old woman with lung/heart issues? What if her immune system isn’t strong enough to combat the virus and she falls sick?

We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have an effective working medicine.

What. If. She. Dies?

Whatever media outlet says that is wrong. Medical professionals have been telling us time and time again, that masks can only protect us to a certain extent, and that without other measures in place, we will face a higher risk of infection. The best approach is to be careful, respectful, and mindful of not just our health, but also those of others around us. Disease modeling suggests masks worn by significant portions of the population, coupled with other measures, could result in substantial reductions in case numbers and deaths.

Be smart. Be thoughtful. Wear a mask, if not for yourself, then for those around you. A 20 yr might not die from corona, but a 40 yr old lung patient most probably will.

Here are some links that convinced me to wear a mask.

|| ◈ || ◈ || ◈ ||

Stay Safe and Take care of yourself & those around you ♡

#ditttiii asks #tw: covid #covid mention #listen to medical professionals #this is their field of expertise #do NOT rely on media outlets for your information #be smart #and oh i m always here to talk/ramble with 😊#i hope my thought process came out...half way coherent atleast #ajahajahaj its 7 am ish and i m lowkey drowsy #zzzzz...

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xxx-cat-xxx · 4 years

Text

Peter Parker and Bruce Banner’s Guide on How To Make Iron Man Sleep

For @sallyidss. Happy Birthday, Sally! This is about 1% hurt and 99% comfort, or in other words, pure fluff and chicken soup. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Thanks to @whumphoarder for beta reading and to @maikkuax for the video game reference.

____________________

Peter wakes up to a dazzling amount of texts on Saturday morning.

One is from Tony, sent at 3am, telling him that Bruce is sick and might not be able to help Peter with his biology project today as they had planned, but he is still welcome to drop by the tower.

Then there’s another one from Tony three hours later asking him whether he could pick up some soup while on the way; one from Bruce at 8am, telling him that Tony is sick too, but ‘he won’t admit it so just try to somehow get him to rest once you come over’; and then one more from Tony telling him to ignore whatever Bruce just told him.

Peter grins to himself while reading the texts - he can almost hear his favourite superhero couple bantering and fussing over each other. Then he gets up for breakfast with May and a shower before heading down to the corner grocery store. He gets soup (chicken for Tony and vegetable for Bruce), as well as some of the Fairtrade chocolate bars that Bruce buys for ideological reasons and Tony eats en masse because he’s got a secret sweet tooth. Peter stuffs the groceries into his school bag along with his laptop and makes his way to the tower.

Tony definitely looks under the weather when he opens the door; pale and with a very clown-like red nose that is dripping constantly.

“Hey kid, thanks for the delivery,” he jokes with a raspy voice. He takes the bag and mimics shutting the door in Peter’s face before smirking and opening it fully to let his unamused mentee in.

“Very funny, Mr. Stark.” Peter removes his shoes and jacket and then stops, frowning. Through the hallway, he can see that the bed in the master bedroom has been demolished into what looks like a heap of firewood. “Uhm, what happened to your bed?”

“Well…” Tony interrupts himself to cough harshly into his elbow. “So, uh, we had a bit of an exciting night. Not in the fun way, unfortunately…” he trails off. “Anyway, Bruce went back to sleep after breakfast, but I thought we could head to the lab and start working on the chameleon fabric you suggested for your suit.”

Peter is sure that working in the lab is the opposite of what Tony should be doing just now - his mentor looks even more tired than usual and the slightly glassy quality to his eyes suggests that he is running a fever - but Peter also knows that saying this out loud will only be counterproductive.

“What if we watch a movie instead?” he suggests.

“I’m not watching a movie at eleven in the morning,” Tony protests. “We have the whole day in front of us - time to build, invent, change the world..." He flaps his hand. "All that jazz."

“Okay, okay…” Peter thinks for a second before an idea hits him. “But before we start with the suit, I do need your help with something else.”

“Now what?”

“So, Ned and I have this gaming commentary channel on YouTube where we livestream playing “The Witcher 3”? And it’s going pretty well, but Ned says he needs help developing his stage persona, you know, talking in a way that is interesting and keeps your audience engaged? So, he thought that you might give us some advice because you’ve got a ton of experience with speaking in public and all that?”

(It’s not entirely a lie - Ned and Peter have joked about getting Tony involved in order to increase their viewership, but he is pretty sure that Ned would be mortified upon hearing that Peter actually suggested it to the billionaire.)

“Wait, you and Ned are making videos of you killing virtual trolls while talking about it? And people actually watch that?”

“That’s...another way of putting it.”

“Sounds like a gigantic waste of time.” Tony scrunches up his nose. “Either I play the game myself, or I spend my downtime watching something interesting.”

“Hey! Our last one has more than 3000 hits!” Peter defends.

“People have too much free time. Including you.” Tony points his finger at Peter before quickly covering his mouth to contain a sneeze. “But I suppose I can take a look if you really want me to…”

Peter grins. Stage one: complete.

They settle on the couch in the living room. Tony can’t suppress a small sigh when he leans against the cushions. He massages the bridge of his nose in a way that makes it clear to Peter he must be nursing a headache.

“Hit me, kid,” he orders.

“Okay, but before we start, you need to know a few things...” Peter launches into a long-winded explanation of the game’s storyline with more than a few unnecessary details of the characters’ backgrounds. He pretends to concentrate on the screen where he walks Tony through different tutorials, but out of the corner of his eye he sees his mentor slowly sinking deeper and deeper into couch.

“...and then they bring Uma to the witcher school of Kaer Morhen,” Peter goes on as Tony tiredly attempts to follow along, his blinks growing longer and longer each time, “where Yennefer removes his curse and transforms him into Avallac'h...”

When Peter can’t think of anything else to babble about, he starts playing their most recent video. Tony sits up a little straighter and rubs a hand over his face to concentrate. But at about the two minute mark, he stops the screen with a wave of his hand.

“So, not to be rude, but that was kind of painful, Tony declares. “You guys literally started with a 45 second explanation of why you prefer the old controller design to the new one. No wonder you’re putting people to sleep.”

Peter frowns a bit. “I mean, we weren’t that bad…” he defends. “And the new ones do kind of suck.”

“Sure, kid,” Tony huffs. He shifts position on the sofa with a sigh. “Alright, listen. It’s obvious that you two are knowledgeable about this game, but if you want to engage your audience, you’ve gotta try to establish your credentials in a way that’s still interesting and relatable. For instance, I once started a TED Talk by describing how I hacked NASA during an MIT frat party so that I could send a rocket to draw a dick over San Francisco. ”

Peter snorts at that admission.

“See? Exactly,” Tony points out. “That’s the kind of reaction you want your audience to have - that’s called a hook, kid.”

The longer they watch, the more Tony seems to be melting into the couch. His comments become less and less frequent, and at some point he leans his head back against the pillow, barely looking at the screen anymore. By the third video, Peter can see his mentor’s eyelids fluttering shut.

He waits for a few minutes and then pauses the screen, just to see Tony’s eyes fly open again. “I’m listening!” he assures.

“Yeah, I know.” Peter hides a smirk. “Just, uhm, relax a bit.”

“I see what you’re trying to do here, kid. I’m not stupid,” Tony protests nasally, stifling another sneeze, but he doesn’t make any move to get up from the couch.

Peter starts the video again, knowing that the battle has been won. Five minutes later, Tony is asleep.

Peter watches a few more videos on his own (now that he pays attention, he realises that most of Tony’s suggestions, despite being sarcastic, are actually in line with what the popular streamers do) before FRIDAY informs him that Bruce has woken up.

He finds the scientist in the kitchen, making tea.

“Hey Dr. Banner,” Peter greets. “How are you?”

“Hey Peter.” Bruce gives him a warm and slightly sleepy smile. His voice is a bit hoarse. “I’m fine. Is Tony asleep?”

“Yep,” Peter declares proudly. “Used my hypnotically soothing voice. And obscure video game lore."

Bruce heaves out a sigh. “Finally, thank god. I had, uhm… kind of an incident last night and I don’t think he slept at all after that.”

Peter thinks back to the broken bed frame and chooses not to comment.

“Do you want some tea?” Bruce asks.

“No, thanks. I’m okay.”

Bruce takes out a box of cookies instead and hands a few to Peter. “So, what was this thing you wanted me to look at with you?”

“Oh, it’s just a bio project,” Peter says with a shrug. “But we can do it some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

“I’m okay...” Peter gives him a suspicious look and Bruce’s smile deepens. “No need for that - I’m not Tony, I would tell you if I wasn’t up for it. But I am actually feeling much better after sleeping and I wouldn’t mind some distraction.”

“Okay, well then...”

Peter likes Bruce a lot. It took him a while to get close to him because Bruce is not a person who easily lets people in, but now whenever Peter visits the tower, he looks forward to seeing the scientist almost as much as he does to seeing Tony.

Tony is brilliant, energetic, and funny, and he constantly encourages Peter to think deeper, work harder, do better - to improve himself. Which is a fun challenge, but it can also be quite exhausting at times. Working with Bruce is the exact opposite. He makes Peter feel calm, slows him down when he overthinks, and makes it clear that mistakes are something that happen to everyone and nothing Peter should be too concerned about. While spending time with Tony is the equivalent of a rollercoaster ride, being with Bruce feels more like a calm day at the beach, and Peter has realised that he needs both from time to time.

They move to Bruce’s study (since Bruce doesn’t allow food in his lab and they don’t actually need to do any experiments for Peter’s project) with Peter’s laptop, biscuits, and several bars of Fairtrade chocolate.

Tony wakes up with the blurry images of a nightmare still on the rims of his consciousness. He feels cold, achy, and slightly out of breath. It takes him a few disoriented moments to realise that his face is mostly buried into a couch pillow, blocking his mouth and nose. He frees himself and sits up stiffly, wiping at his slightly damp cheeks. His nose is dripping annoyingly and he isn’t sure whether that’s only because of the cold.

“FRIDAY?” he prompts nasally.

“It is 1:17pm on Saturday afternoon. Dr. Banner and Mr. Parker are working in the study room. Everyone is safe and well, boss.”

“Okay. Thanks, FRI.” Tony takes another few moments to ground himself before getting up from the sofa, rather unsteadily. His body seems to have tripled in weight and his head feels like an overfilled balloon that’s ready to burst. He kind of wants to fall back onto the couch and go to sleep again, but at the same time he definitely doesn’t want to revisit the dreams he just had.

Instead, he ventures into the study where he finds his partner, who is sporting an adorable bedhead, together with his mentee enthusiastically modelling a DNA strand on a laptop screen.

“Coffee?” Tony asks hoarsely.

“Good afternoon to you too, Tony,” Bruce smirks and nods towards a pot sitting on the table. Tony pours himself a mug and downs it in one go, marvelling at how much better it makes his throat feel immediately.

Feeling slightly more human and ready to deal with the actual world, he leans over Bruce’s shoulder and nuzzles his head against his partner’s ear. “How you feeling, green bean?”

“I’m much better. Sleeping helped a lot, actually.” Tony gives him a critical once-over and seems to accept that. “Peter is doing an impressive job with his project, by the way,” Bruce adds.

Peter blushes at the compliment. “It’s not me - Dr. Banner is helping me a lot!”

“I’m really just sitting here and watching you work,” Bruce dismisses before addressing Tony again. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m”—Tony’s voice breaks in the middle of the sentence and he has to clear his throat before continuing—“I’m good.”

“Mm-hmm.” Bruce raises an eyebrow. “FRIDAY, what’s his temperature at?”

“100.2 degrees, Dr. Banner.”

“Thanks.” He turns to Tony, who is coughing again. There seems to be a brick stuck inside his chest and it feels like he can’t take a full breath at all. Bruce gives him a concerned look. “This sounds painful.”

“‘S okay,” Tony dismisses.

“Maybe you should try using the inhaler -”

“Stop mother-henning, Bruce,” he grumbles with a glance at Peter, who is very clearly trying to act as if he isn’t listening to every word, but the pain in Tony’s chest is suddenly replaced by a surge of warmth upon realising Bruce’s worry about him. The scientist seems to understand and just squeezes Tony’s hand before turning back to the screen.

Tony pours himself another cup of coffee and grabs a slice of toast as well as two of the chocolate bars before settling into the chair across from the two of them, munching away and watching them work. Seeing them together leaves him with an annoyingly sappy feeling. Bruce, usually rather shy, is much more self-confident around the kid and visibly happy about Peter’s genuine interest in everything scientific. He is also a much more patient teacher than Tony ever manages to be, which seems to be putting Peter at ease.

After finishing his food, Tony debates moving to his own lab to get some actual work done, but he is so, so tired, and everything kind of hurts. Standing up seems like a lot of effort. So instead, he crosses his arms on the table and rests his head on top of them, closing his eyes for just a moment.

He listens to Peter and Bruce when their conversation shifts from Peter’s project, to May’s new vegan disaster recipe, to the idea of using Peter’s webs in order to create a hammock that can hold the Hulk. Tony smiles into his sleeves, imagining Hulk chilling at the beach between two palm trees, swinging to and fro, to and fro, to and...

“Hey.” Bruce rests his palms lightly on Tony’s shoulder.

He jerks upright. “Wasn’t asleep.”

“What, I would never think that,” Bruce says with a smirk.

Tony rubs his tired eyes and then his aching forehead. “Where’s Peter?”

“He went to heat up the soup for all of us.”

“Hmm.” Tony grabs Bruce’s hands and presses them against his overly warm cheeks, enjoying the cooling feeling they provide.

“Did you have a nightmare earlier?” Bruce asks, his hand now moving up to cup Tony’s forehead. “You seemed kind of out of it.”

“Yeah,” Tony admits, leaning into the touch. “I don’t remember what it was about, though.”

Bruce hums and presses a light kiss to the top of Tony’s head. “Fever dreams are awful. But at least you didn’t break any furniture upon waking up.”

Tony, sensing the guilt below the light tone, only huffs. “I’d been wanting to get a new bed anyway for a while now. Did you know there are self-making ones now? And levitating mattresses? Or we could go for one of those free-swinging beds, to match Hulk’s upcoming hammock.”

Bruce smiles and shakes his head. “A normal one would do, Tony. Or we could try something different. Did you know that sleeping on the ground is actually quite good for your back?”

Tony snorts. “Yeah, no. I’m a billionaire, Brucie, we’re not sleeping on the ground because our bed is broken. Levitating one it is.”

Peter comes back with the steaming soup, which does wonders for Tony’s raw throat. At Bruce’s advice, he takes some Advil that muffles his headache a little and remembers the times a few years ago when he would be sick with only JARVIS as his company, feeling a little chilled and very lucky.

In the end, Tony does agree to watching TV, but mostly because Bruce admits to still not feeling up for anything more demanding (which Peter suspects is not entirely true, but he definitely won’t call him out). They let Peter pick, who of course goes for the newest Orville episode, and settle on the huge living room couch with a steaming mug of tea (Bruce), a packet of chocolate (Tony) and another helping of soup (Peter).

Peter notices after a while that Bruce is gently massaging Tony’s head, playing with his hair. Tony seems to be sort of melting into the touch, his head leaning against Bruce’s shoulder, eyes almost closed. He looks old, but not frighteningly so - more in a serene way that makes Peter want to capture the moment on film.

In the years he’s known him, Peter has rarely seen Tony anything but buzzing with energy, jumping to and fro between ideas and lab tables. The only person who is able to slow him down and occasionally get him to take a break without having to outright trick him into it seems to be Bruce. And as sorry as Peter is to see both of them sick, it’s also heartwarming to observe how they are taking care of each other.

Peter knows that most people his age find the idea of spending a lazy movie Saturday with their family kind of boring, but something in him loves the idea of settling down like this. Maybe it’s the fact that it reminds him of how it used to be with Ben and May, or that the time he spends as Spider-Man is already adventurous enough, or the sheer thrill of seeing Iron Man and the Hulk’s alter ego in their pyjamas on the couch, nuzzled up against each other.

But whatever it is, there’s nowhere else Peter would rather be.

____________________

If you liked this, make sure to check out @twentyghosts‘ beautiful fic Cold, Comfort with a similar setting that inspired me to write this one.

All my fics

Taglist: @toomuchtoread33 @yepokokfine

@badthingshappenbingo This is my fill for the ‘Common Cold’ square.

#sick tony stark #science bros #science boyfriends #irondad #sickfic #tony stark #bruce banner #peter parker #chocolate #common cold #fanfic #it was so hard to find a title for this

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peachyromanoff · 4 years

Text

Don’t Panic

Sickness, isn’t it a bother? No one enjoys feeling like they’re teetering on the edge of death, flirting with the diet version of hell. Stuffy noses, sore throats, sickness coming out of both ends (sorry), etc.—they’re all avoidable, if you know what steps to take and diligently follow them. We’ve faced illnesses of all kinds over the years, but recently, it seems that one illness in particular has rocked the boat... significantly. If you haven’t been following the news for the past few months, then you must have missed this decade’s most fearful virus yet, the Coronavirus. Which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with the alcoholic beverage, Corona. But don’t worry, despite what the media and politicians want you to believe, this isn’t the end of the world. That doesn’t mean you should disregard it and go back to living haphazardly—it means that we, as a society, need to strongly reinforce safety precautions. What precautions can keep you, family, friends, and complete strangers safe from the nefarious Coronavirus? Well, I’m glad you asked. Here’s a few ways that can decrease your chances of catching any contagious illnesses.

Wash your hands

This should be a given by now, but it sadly needs to be brought up again. Let me ask you something, do you think you’re properly washing your hands? If you hesitated, then don’t stress, here’s how to effectively wash your hands. Cold water holds no benefits, so make sure to always clean your hands in hot—or at least warm—water. Think about it, you wouldn’t clean raw meat in cold water wouldn’t put raw meat in a cold oven, would you? Heat kills germs, don’t forget it. Also, remember to use a generous amount of soap whilst washing, and never wash your hands in under twenty seconds. Twenty seconds is the minimum—so, no, just putting your hands under water won’t do the job, sorry. Just sing the chorus of your favorite song, and by the time you get to the second verse, you’re all good.

Wear masks whenever you’re in public

While masks won’t 100% prevent you from catching any contagious illness, it still proves to be quite an effective barrier. It benefits not only people trying to protect their immune system, but sick people themselves. Disposable masks are preferable, but they’re only good for one time use. Once you remove the mask from your face, you can’t put it back on. Rewearing a mask that you’ve already removed once is unsanitary. The once-safe barrier is now tainted, so it’s best to just trash the used mask.

Avoid close contact with others, especially those visually unwell

No shaking hands, no hand holding, no kissing, no hugging, no hanky panky—you get my point. Avoid close contact for the most part, especially with people who show visible signs of sickness. This doesn’t mean you should act arrogant towards anyone with a slight cough, but it does mean that you should move away from anyone recklessly trying to spread disease. You know the people that: cough into the open air, refuse to wash their hands after sneezing into them, discard snotty tissues wherever, etc. Keep yourself safe first, but don’t put others down while doing so. Ignorance is dangerous, remember that.

Keep hand sanitizer on you at all times

This one ties in with regularly washing your hands—which should always be your number one option, if available. However, I do realize that a nearby sink isn’t always accessible, so hand sanitizer is good enough substitute. Random situation: let’s say you’re eating fast food in a car and you have to use you hands to eat. There’s no soap or water accessible at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you should risk it all for chicken nuggets. Always keep a miniature hand sanitizer on you at all times. It’s portable and worth the investment to avoid catching any viruses.

Don’t touch your mouth, eyes, or face.

This one goes without saying, but make sure you avoid touching any part of your face with unclean hands. Don’t wipe your nose, rub your eyes, or touch your mouth. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

While these tips aren’t meant to be a suit of armor that’ll keep you protected from the Corona Virus—or any contagious illness for that matter—it’s very important that you follow through on all of them in order to keep yourself and those around you in good health.

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afterthelastreset · 4 years

Text

Krisei Zodiac Event Pisces Week

Pisces Zodiac Sign Info Gotten From:

https://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/zodiac-signs/pisces/

“Pisces are very friendly, so they often find themselves in a company of very different people. Pisces are selfless, they are always willing to help others, without hoping to get anything back.

Pisces is a Water sign and as such this zodiac sign is characterized by empathy and expressed emotional capacity.”

💧Pisces Week

(This the entire element Is water Im going to base the element off that with the au Ocean rune or just water scenes, since in the rules were aloud to do stuff based off the element of the Zodiac sign.)

Day 1:

The beach. A wonderful place to go on a hot day for anyone with plenty to do and see and so much activities for anyone even if you weren't a swimming person. Building sandcastles. Getting a tan. Going swimming. Just relaxing with a good book or painting the scenery. Volleyball. Collecting seashells. Snorkling or diving and seeing all the cool fish and underwater life. There was also the occasional fisherman and someone doing watersports like surfing, water skying, jet boats, a whole lot of fun on the beautiful waves and deep blue sea- Or if you were the pair of friends in question, you'd be sitting at a picnic table under the shade and snacking on the food you got. Milkshakes ain't got NOTHIN' on the heat here now, except maybe the chocolate ones they served. Chocolate milkshakes was always the best in his opinion as he happily ate and watched all the other people running around and doing whatever they wanted to do on this smoldering hot day, it was too hot for him though sadly. Fur and all but the scenery was really pretty, even more so now that it was sunny and not cloudy like it had been recently. So of course he'd drag his friend out of the house and into the glorious great outdoors!!......Buuut they were a little busy looking at a little piece of drift wood they had found while walking In the hot sun before being dragged to the giant umbrellaed picnic tables of the beach resort. They'd been doing that for quite a while actually.

"Kris?" The human hummed not looking up at the other one across from them. "What are you doing there?"

Instead of looking up from their lap they just shrugged. "Carving somthin'."

he frowned. he knew Kris wasn't a big fan of being in public, but this wasn't exactly what he had in mind for the two of them to do when he dragged the brown haired human out of the house. SO hhe smiled politely and asked. "Really? Whatcha carving now?"

"You'll see. Almost done," they mumbled still not looking up from their position and Ralsei just groaned and sat down into his seat.

he sighed and went back to his coco milkshake then. Watching as people still walked by and once and a while looked up just to see Kris still carving something with their carving knife and keeping it out of sight of the other until they suddenly brought it up and finally held it out to him. And in their hands was a small little carved out fish. he smiled and took the small gift from them and looked at the neatly carved little goldfish he was just handed. If it wasn't obviously made of wood then she would've sworn it was a real goldfish. They always had a nack for this thing and found Kris giving a small smile back, Ralsei couldn't help but stand up to go hug his friend.

"This is beautiful Kris! Thank you!"

"Your welcome."

Day 2:

*This takes place in the Au OceanFellrune since I wanted to try exploring this au more*

Well this certainly was a pickle wasn't it. Imagine just going for a swim with your best friend and enjoying a nice day at the beach to just relax, simple right? Yeah- Nope. A storm had blown in unexpectedly and swept through the sea just a few hours after they arrived. All he wanted was to just relax around on his floaty, not be swept out to the middle of the gigantic lake with no way back..Well, he could swim but those waves didn't look so promising against his mediocre swimming skills, at least if he stayed on the floaty he could stay afloat and not worry about sinking.

But now he had another problem...The sky was starting to get darker by the minute and he wasn't too sure which direction was the way back to shore anymore. It was kinda hard to tell with the waves being so tall and him getting tossed back and forth like a ragdoll on a beach ball wasn't the best feeling in the world, and he was starting to feel like puking. Man....he was starting to get tired of this-

"HELP!! ANYONE?!" Don't ask why he thought it was a good idea to start shouting for a friend who couldn't help him, might've been just a reflex or a hope but it would soon lead to more bad than good...Or would it? "HELP?! HEL-"

A wave chose that exact moment to rear it's ugly head and crash down over the poor human's body, the wind was knocked outta him like a rock slammed into her. Immediately air bubbles surrounded his form as he unceremoniously screamed from the hurtful impact, darkness surrounded his form as the stormy waves above continued to rattle about like some sort of punisher. It was surprisingly....calm in the dark black surrounding him. Almost like the night. Completely silent. A peaceful way to go if she didn't want to die.

It was when he turned and found two pink eyes and a mouth full of teeth staring at him did he scream again.

You know....It's really troubling trying to find some peace somewhere where there's not a lot available just swimming around, so imagine his luck when he stumbled across a seemingly dumb person just floating about in the middle of his territory. Kinda dumb being all the way out here in the middle of the dam storm, but who was he to judge. A human's a human. A quick wave was able to knock whoever the person was over and into the water where he waited. He grumbled just thinking about it... But that thought soon vanished after seeing her face.

UGH- He hated puny fighters. This one wasn't worth the trouble...Not enough courage on her. He also didn't appreciate the bubbles shoved in his face when she screamed again and started kicking up towards the surface. His face scrunched up in annoyance. Did everyone always have to be so rude when they see a gigantic aquatic goat monster looking at them? Oh well. At least he got to do the scaring part he always liked.

Ounce he made it back up through the swaying surface, coughing and spitting out out hislungs, a dark shadow loomed out from under him. In a split second the shadow had bust through the waves with ease. Water splashed over him, almost sending him down under the water again.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOU FOOOOOL!!!" His raspy voice boomed over the noise of the waves and wind. "Those who enter my territory are doomed to DIE! Wha- H-HEY!" He flinched back when he yelped and instinctively grabbed onto him to keep from being drowned down by a wave. "HEY! Do you have a death wish! Those who ever as much as touch me are bound to- HEY! STOP DROWNING WHEN IM TRYING TO THREATEN YOU!!"

With a blub sound another wave sent him under. He groaned. Did his enemies ALWAYS have to make things more difficult like this? He stuck his hand back under the waves and a moment later he pulled the shivering, sputtering human back out of the bobbing water. he coughed and spat out some of the salt water, heaving and looking up at him.

".....*sigh* You know what? Screw this. My voice isn't worth some drowned human."

He began turning in the opposite direction and making swimming through the waves look like a breeze. he gave him a confused. "Where-....W-Where are we g-g-going?"

"Im dumping you on the shore. You're not worth the trouble of straining my voice."

Day 3:

IT WAS HOT!!

A lot hotter than what he was really used to, and to be perfectly honest, he didn't enjoy having the burning feeling in his lungs, or the amount of ssweat running down his body, or the heat baring down on himself. What was wrong with enjoying a nice inside inside and relaxing? Maybe cuddled up together in a nice air conditioned room, watching the live action of Romeo and Juliet? That was a beautiful tale is he did say so himself. But Noooo- he just had to go running today of all days on the beach. When the sun was fricking making it almost 80 DEGREES!! He stopped and heaved his lungs out, hands on his knees and gasping for breath like a fish out of water. Soft foosteps rang out behind him and soon someone stopped next to him. It took a few moments but he eventually looked up into the smiling face of human.

"W-What art you..*wheeze* smiling at?!"

He laughed. "Ralsei, when was the last time you even took a relaxing jog?"

"KRIS?! Running on the beach with fur is too much. C-can’t we just go swimming instead?)

He laughed again and very easily stood on one foot and stretched the other out into a ballet pose. "Ralsei, exercise never hurt anyone. I know I enjoy it.~''

''THAT'S BECAUSE YOU’RE BUILT FOR THIS!! W-With NO fur!! I-I feel horrible! Why did I bake and eat so many cakes!?”

"Oh don't be so cranky." He rolled his eye not paying him any attention. "We still have half a mile before we can start back."

He heard his lover groan behind him and he chuckled again, well the sooner they finished the sooner they could go back. It was just then he heard wheezing sounds behind him and he turned around....and blinked. His boyfriend was no where to be seen. Until he looked down that is and saw a puddle of exhausted ghost monster on the sand.

"RALSEI!!"

Day 4:

*merman Kris braces legs and goes on land to ask Ralsei a question*

The screams of children swarm about the place as he stood outside the building. He never did like the thought of screaming little munchkins running around him, or their dirty little hands grabbing onto him, or sneezing on him-; He shuddered just thinking about the germs. Funny coming from someone who's eaten raw fish, but he was free to not like what he wanted. But, he was here for a different reason. Not for the kids-

"ACK-"

One of the small buggers crashed into his legs while running around. The little girl shook her head before squealing in delight and getting up to run after another child. Playing tag he presumed.

"Kris?"

He jumped and whirled around into the curious face of the very person he wanted to see...And who he sometimes got mad with. No he didn't like it when he held his hand. Or when he gently kissed him. Or when he smiled and hugged him- He hissed at himself which made him frown and raise a brow.

"Um. Are you ok?"

"NO!...Yes! Im fine. Im fine!"

His crooked smile didn't seem to faze him more and only resulted in more confusion. This wasn't going as he planned was it? Nope! He could see it in his eyes as he looked him up and down. It was pretty rare to see Kris on dry land, with legs, he seemed to despise legs and preferred to sticking to his underwater domain. ….So why was he here in the first place?

"Ok....Um. What're you doing here? I thought you hated land."

"I do!....I- Uh-" His face flushed a light pink, and he mentally cursed himself for stuttering. "I-....C-Came to see you."

"Really?" He nodded and he became a litle redder. Of course, he giggled at the cute sight as soon as it happened and he groaned. Did he always have to respond with his cute little giggles or when- HOLY CRAP! he grabbed his hand! His eyes shined like little gems up at him, and he actually gulped. "That's so nice of you. Did you want something?"

This was it. This was the moment he came for. So of course he opened his mouth-....And a high pitched squeak came out. They froze. A look of abosolute horror coming over his face. he however went wide eyes and gasped. ….Oh no. Not this. He didn't like where this was going- he squealed in glees and immediately grabbed his face.

"THAT WAS SO CUTE!! YOU SOUND JUST LIKE A BABY!!"

His face blew up a bright red and he sputtered. "I-IM NOT A CHILD!!" he cooed and booped his nose. "S-Stop! I didn't come t-t-to be treated like a child!"

he hummed. "Then what did you come here for?"

"I want a date Ralsei! I h-hate it when...you...….." His eyes widened. " D*MMIT!! Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?" he faked innocently batted his eyelashes and giggled once he drowned in the red sea of blush. He was always so easy to fluster like this. So, it was perfectly natural to place a small kiss on his cheek. The result was weird drowning fish noises and him reaching up to try and fail to limply pull his face away from him. he giggled that cursed cute smile. "I'm really honored you came all this way to see me and I'd love to go out with you."

His mouth dropped. "R-Really?!"

he nodded. "But I have to finish work first. Is that ok?";

He nodded silently and he patted his cheek before letting go. A couple children came up to him and wisked him away into a game he didn't understand and he didn't move. Just stand there red faced and silently watching after him...…..He gulped heavily and slowly leaned back up into standing position.

He needed to get better control of his expressions.

Day 5:

*more merman Kris*

What had made him come to this? What lunatic controlling fate made the grand decision of making him fall for such a small weak little thing like him? He would probably never know, but the way he was giggling and holding his very red face right now in his soft little hands. He could always turn around, swim away, and never look back-....but he mustve put some kind of spell on him as he continued to gush at him.;

"I could eat you right know." He gave a small growl, showing on his fangs to give his point. "Know one would know and you always risk yourself by coming you know.''

he smiled. "You won't do that."

His brow raised. "How can you be so sure?"

he smiled wider. "Because your face tells a lot more than you think."

D*M IT ALL TO NEXT HELL!! He cursed himself for being like this, for being so weak and vulnerable around someone who wasn't even a threat to him. What would happen if some danger did come along?! NO! He didn't like the way he looked at him with those big beautiful eyes, or the way he was so patient with his stupid arse, or the way he was always squishing his cheeks in his soft paws and calling him cute- NOPE! NOT AT ALL!! And he definitely didn't spend last night laying awake thinking about how cute and soft he was! Nope! And he definitely didn't hit his head trying to catch him a fish she loved just to see him smile at him-

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!

…...Ok. Maybe- But that's a very small maybe.

Day 6:

*even more merman Kris*

"S-Stop it."

"Why? You're acting like a child."

"Because I don't like physical contact. And I'd like to see you prove me wrong.'' He made a move to pry his hands from his face but that idea was scraped when he felt something small on his face.

OH SWEET MOTHER OF HECK-!! WAS THIS GOATvSERIOUSLY-?! he gave a small kiss on his cheek which he froze at, immediately his face broke out into a watermelon red. His hands were shoved in front of his face as to hide his embarrassment.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH- STOP THAT!!"

She just giggled and gave him another small kiss. More muffled screams followed, before the flustered screaming merman turned around and jumped from the doc red faced still holding his face as Ralsei giggled and waved good bye.

“Bye, Kris. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Day 7:

*ralsei helping Kris with his fear of water*

He shouldn't. He couldn't......HE CAN'T!!

"I can't do this."

The human whimpered out as his red eyes gazed over the body of water that was in front of him. Already he could feel his body sweat and legs wobbling as he stared at it. A small black hand grabbed his making him flinch and look at the smaller demon next to him.

Ralsei blinked his pink eyes at him and smiled. "Oh, come on. It'll be ok." To prove his point, he stepped into the kiddy pool still holding his hand. "See? It's safe and sound."

He shook his head. "I-I don't think t-t-this is a good idea, Ralsei." He gulped down the lump in his throat. "I-I think it would be m-much better if I-I watched..through a window."

Ralsei still didn’t back down as he pulled Kris forwards more and yanked him a bit forwards enough for the human to yelp and freeze when the water came up to his ankles and shuddered at the cool feeling around his feet but managed to smile for Ralsei sake. Making the goat monster smile back.

“See? I told you it’d be alright”

@krisei-world

#KriseiZodiacWeek

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