#this was probably stated in the thread where their shop was first announced and I just totally missed that lmfaO

[kingdomoftyto]

Just now catching up on recent Flight Rising news and the dev update has me going through and reading the descriptions for the different shopkeepers and WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME GLASS AND GLOSS WERE CANONICALLY NONBINARY

#this was probably stated in the thread where their shop was first announced and I just totally missed that lmfaO #these descriptions also provide definite canon colors/genes for all the shopkeepers. just saying #(for anyone wanting to check it out yourself: idk if there's an easier way to find them but I've just been going into #the Page Source via right clicking on the page and then scrolling down a bit until I find the relevant line of text) #I also never realized until now that Patches has a prosthetic arm... rad. #Flight Rising

[alpacaparkaseok]

Lost & Found - 7

Pairing: Park Jimin x soulmate (oc)

Warnings: Insecurity, anxiety, abandonment

Word Count: 4.1k

a/n: as always, THANK YOU for reading! Thank you for reblogging (which is literally every author’s dream), liking, commenting (I DIE OVER YOUR COMMENTS/ASKS, THEY ARE THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY DAY) and just reading in gereral! Enjoy!

Chapter 7. Lie to Me

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Jimin finds himself robbed of breath as he watches that red thread dancing in the wind, the twin to his own. His heart is unsure of whether or not it wants to beat like a drum or stop altogether, leaving him clutching his chest.

Slowly, so slowly that it almost hurts, he brings his eyes up to the girl’s face. Only catching her side profile, he can’t help but be taken by surprise.

Soft is the first word that comes to mind when he catches sight of her eyes, her cheeks and nose. Her lips are pursed from where she must be biting them, making him emit a choked sigh. Her hair, falling around her shoulders, is deep with color.

He watches with no small amount of devastation as her eyes land on Elle’s figure, the cat already bounding down the stairs to greet her in the street. Coming to a stop, the woman crouches down and sets her groceries beside her. She reaches out to scratch Elle’s ears, and Jimin is unable to do anything but watch as those pursed lips ease out into a soft, beautiful smile.

It’s a smile, Jimin realizes, that he was meant to wake up to for the rest of his life.

Stuck in his trance, Jimin sees the woman pull her phone out and type out a quick message. Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she grabs her groceries once again and begins to trek up the stairs.

Like the sound of a nail being hammered into his coffin, his phone pings with a text notification. He doesn’t look at it just yet, refusing to accept the reality. He keeps his eyes glued to the girl, his heart throwing itself at his ribs with undeniable vigor.

Step.

She turns to head up to the top right-hand apartment, Elle leading the way.

Step.

Now she’s fishing keys out of her pocket, saying something to Elle as the cat leaps through the window with ease.

Step.

She’s pressed up close to the door now, fumbling a little with the lock before the door gives way.

Step.

Making sure she has everything, the girl does a quick inventory of her bags, giving Jimin a complete view of her face for a split second before stepping inside.

Close.

The minutes tick by, but Jimin remains frozen in place, staring at that door with the number 6 hanging from it. The inside of his head turns into a hurricane, not giving him enough time to batter down the hatches before everything comes pouring down. Bringing a shaking hand to his mouth, Jimin finally tears his gaze from the door as it all becomes too much and the tears begin to stream down his face.

It’s there, quietly sobbing in his car, that Jimin realizes that he will be forever haunted by the image of his soulmate. And it’s there, one hand wringing the steering wheel while the other tries to silence his cries, that he curses the cruelty of fate.

Cutting the thread wasn’t enough, he knows that now. Just because his soulmate - Jolie is his soulmate’s name, how can a name be so beautiful? - cut the thread, doesn’t mean that she stopped fate. There are other common threads that bind them together.

Who could have expected it to come in the form of a cat?

Hands shaking violently, Jimin turns the key in the ignition. The bawdy tune on the radio is turned off the instant it comes on, and he’s left staring at his phone that sits atop his console.

Closing his eyes and grabbing it, he does his best to control his breathing. With tears still escaping his eyes, he looks at the message that arrived what feels like eons ago.

Jolie (Elle): Thanks for dropping Elle off! I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for you.

Jimin is at a complete loss for words, so he does the only thing he can.

He calls Namjoon.

✂

“Did you enjoy your night out?”

Elle preens on the kitchen counter, looking like she definitely did. I shoo her away, setting the groceries down and immediately beginning to put them away.

“Well, I’m glad. Good to know I was worried sick over nothing.” When Elle doesn’t begin to miraculously speak, I sigh. “You know, I went and saw that therapist today. The one my boss talked about a couple weeks ago.”

I pause for a moment, staring at the can of soup in my hands. Reading the nutrition label but hardly seeing it at all. It’s still early in the day, but I find myself already at a loss as to what I should be doing with the rest of the day.

“Now that you’re home, wanna go on a fieldtrip?” Elle perks up at my offer, tail lazily swishing back and forth. Putting the rest of my groceries away, I fumble around for my jacket. Then, staring at the envelope Namjoon gave me that still sits on my nightstand, I walk past it and grab a small business card sitting atop my dresser.

I have some homework to do.

If I’m supposed to come to terms with the events of the past couple of weeks, I might as well start with the person that assisted me in this entire process. That, and Christina may very well be the only person that doesn’t want to strangle me at the moment.

Chung-hei and Namjoon are supportive, but they see this as one thing and one thing only: wrong.

Elle is already waiting for me by the door when I reemerge, slipping the jacket on. She bounds out the door as soon as I open it, heading toward the small path that leads toward the park. I chuckle, the sound at odds with the uneasy feeling in my chest.

“Not that way,” I call to the confused cat. “We’re taking a bus to Itaewon.”

✂

Jimin is sitting on a stool by the kitchen island when the boys come stumbling through the door. He hardly flinches at the sudden change, only staring at the marble countertop. Staring at it like it might come up with the answers he needs, but not getting any input.

Namjoon received a call about an hour ago from Jimin, the younger boy nearly hyperventilating into the phone as he told him two things before dissolving into some sort of shocked silence.

“It was her.”

“Help.”

It didn’t take much for Namjoon to piece it all together. He had just been on the phone with Chung-hei that morning, trying to remember if Jolie had a white cat named Elle, and if Jimin was indeed in possession of that same cat.

Chung-hei had confirmed it, although she was just as shocked as Namjoon. What are the odds?

Apparently better than they thought, if Jimin’s current state is any indication.

Namjoon had wanted to stop Jimin, but after a long chat with his soulmate, he decided that it may be best to just let fate run its course.

Now, looking at Jimin who has finally lifted his head, he wonders if he was a fool for letting it go this far.

“Jimin-ah we’re home,” Taehyung announces, heading straight toward the island and taking a stool on his right. Yoongi takes the one on the left, Jungkook settling for wrapping his arms around Jimin’s shoulders and nuzzling his nose into his hair in the way that only Jungkook does.

Jin, j-hope, and Namjoon all weave around to stand on the opposite side of the island, exchanging worried glances. Unfortunately, none of them are experts in severed soulmate bonds. However, they do consider themselves to be Jimin experts.

Hopefully that will be enough.

“Do you want to tell us what happened?” The question comes from Yoongi.

It falls silent as everyone waits for Jimin to speak. The quiet seems to be pressing in from all sides, nearly suffocating them.

Raising his head a bit more but not looking anywhere but the countertop, Jimin relinquishes his lip from where he was chewing on it.

“Her name is Jolie.” Jimin’s voice is still a bit shaky, but he pushes forward almost as though this is his only chance to get the words out before they’re forever locked up inside his mind. “Elle is...her cat. She was grocery shopping, I thought she was nice.”

“You talked to her?” Jungkook asks.

Jimin shakes his head. “No...not face to face. I had her number, when I thought I was just texting Elle’s owner. She seemed friendly.”

It’s quiet for a moment until Namjoon can’t fight the guilt anymore. “I’m...she probably is, Jimin. Good people make horrible decisions, sometimes.” He barely gets the words out without confessing all that he knows. He’s dying to, but he can’t. Something stops him, begging him to wait a little longer.

Nodding absentmindedly, Jimin sighs. “Elle loves her.” He stares burning holes through the countertop now. “She ran like a puppy once she saw her walking down the street. I think...she is a good person. So why…?”

He doesn’t need to finish his question, everybody is already thinking the same thing.

“Did she see you?” Taehyung wonders aloud, looking at his best friend with nothing but sweet concern.

“No, I was already in my car. But she...she texted me.” Jimin takes a moment before choking out the rest. “She thanked me for returning Elle. Said that she hoped it wasn’t too inconvenient for me.”

Once again, silence reigns in the apartment. It’s a rare occasion; these four walls are rarely quiet.

Hobi shuffles on his feet. “Have you thought about...you know…”

“What.”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Texting her back?”

Jimin finally looks up, focusing on Hobi. “Text her back? What would I even say? Why….why?”

Namjoon jumps in. “I think it might be good, Jimin. It may help you to get some closure? Just get to know her a bit better. Maybe you’ll find out why she made this choice in the first place.” What he doesn’t tell him is that he’s been meticulously checking the mail every day for any sign of Jolie’s letter. If she hasn’t written to him yet, maybe this is another way for his friend to get closure?

Jimin shakes his head. “I’m the last person she’ll want to talk to.”

“She doesn’t have to know that it’s you,” Jin chimes in.

“And besides,” Namjoon continues. “I think that maybe today was some sort of sign. She can’t turn away forever, you know? Fate will always find a way.”

What he was hoping might be uplifting instead has Jimin turning to look at him, some sort of cold fire flickering in his eyes before sputtering out. “I don’t want fate or whatever this is,” he holds up his thread, “to just exhaust her into finally coming back to me! Is it too much to ask that she actually wants to be with me?”

“I didn’t mean it like-”

Jimin rises from his seat, prepared to walk away. “I’m not you, Namjoon!” His voice echoes through the house. “I didn’t get the girl! She took one look at me and thought that it would be better to ruin my life than be a part of it!” Jimin’s chest rises and falls, his breath rattling with the threat of sobbing.

Jungkook keeps his arms wrapped around Jimin, planting him in place. He’s always known Jimin so well; he knew that he would try to run and hide at some point during this conversation, to lick his wounds in peace without having to hurt anyone else. They’ll take it, though. They’ll take all of the barbed words in exchange for some sort of breakthrough. For Jimin to feel something again.

Jimin shakes his head, angry at himself for the tears and sobs that try to break through. “I’m so tired of crying, Namjoon.”

Namjoon remains on the opposite side of the island, unable to come up with anything to say, other than, “I’m sorry.”

But it’s Jungkook who musters up the courage to speak next. He’s quiet, still practically laying on Jimin and knowing that he’ll get away with it. Resting his chin on his friend’s shoulder, he sighs.

“Jimin-ah,” he begins, “You’re right, this is exhausting. But don’t you think that maybe she’s just...scared? And don’t you think she wouldn’t be so afraid if she got to know you? The Jimin that we all know isn’t scary, but all she’s ever seen are the promotions and concerts and suddenly she’s been thrown into a world where the one person that’s supposed to be her’s belongs to the entire world.”

The icy exterior that Jimin had been clinging to melts a little, his chin dropping to his chest. Jungkook sees the encouraging glances from his hyungs, and continues.

“It’s harmless to text her a little bit. Just get to know her. Let her get to know you. You can wait, to tell you who you are. But if you quit now, you will always wonder what could have happened.” Jungkook squeezes Jimin’s shoulders a bit tighter. “Do yourself a favor, and let it hurt a little more now so you can feel better in the future.”

“Rip off the bandaid,” Taehyung mumbles.

Yoongi stares at the countertop as well. “We’ll be here to help you know what to say, if you need help. But just because she shut you out, doesn’t mean that you should return the favor.”

Jimin closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply before letting it out. When he opens them again, the pain is still there. Like a splinter caught in his skin. Painful, but not unbearable. Not when he’s got more important tasks to attend to.

He looks up at Namjoon, his cheeks a little red from embarrassment due to his outburst. “I’m sorry, Joon. I didn’t mean to yell at you like that.”

Namjoon shakes his head, offering up a small smile. “I know. Don’t worry about it.”

At that moment the doorbell rings, everyone looking at each other with confused expressions. Jimin’s heart rate picks up, his imagination running while.

Did she see him? Does she somehow know what he’s planning to do? Is she angry and here to-

“Chicken!” Hobi shouts, bolting from the kitchen to the front door. Everyone dissolves into laughter, the uneasy tension from before dissolving a little.

Once Hobi returns with several boxes of chicken, explaining that he called for it just before entering the house, they turn back to the matter at hand.

Jimin stares down at his phone, wondering how on earth to begin. Jin coughs around his food before speaking.

“Just start with something that you have in common,” he suggests.

That common thread that is trying to no avail to bring them together.

Elle.

✂

Elle, I have come to learn, believes that she is above taking the bus. She must have gotten a hint of the high life last night with whoever she stayed with.

She’s currently poking her head out of my bag, which she immediately burrowed herself in upon finding boarding the bus. I smirk down at her, keeping my eyes averted from everyone else. It’s nice to have a little friend with me. It helps me ignore all of the people staring at me.

Or rather, my thread.

No one has dared to ask about it. Yet.

It should only take about twenty minutes to get to Itaewon. Hopefully that’s enough time for me to slip away before someone plucks up the courage to talk to me. If they approach, maybe Elle will hiss at them.

Judging by the way she’s nuzzled into my bag, I suppose that may be too much to wish for.

Riding the bus and watching the city slip past through the scratched windows has always been the strangest form of therapy for me. It’s crowded at times, loud and overall an awkward experience for many. However it’s often one of the places where I can just slip away. Dream with my eyes open as street shops and people drift into the rear view.

I’m just entering that dreamstate when I feel my phone vibrate. Slipping it out of my pocket and ignoring the whispers coming from a group of friends a couple of rows behind me, I glance at the new message.

It’s from the person that dropped Elle off, finally returning my message of gratitude.

UNK: It wasn’t inconvenient, don’t worry. If I’d had it my way, I would have hung out with Elle all day. 😸

I snort at the message, leveling Elle with a glare. “Sounds like you two are close.” Elle stares back up at me almost as though challenging me to do something about it. I roll my eyes. “You think you’re wrapped around their finger, huh? Watch and learn, princess.”

ME: Did you use the cat emoji bc of Elle or are you the kind of person that regularly uses cat emojis??

I wait with my phone in my hands, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips as I watch the person on the other side appear to be at a loss. Those three dots pop up for a moment before disappearing again.

It happens again and again, and I finally decide to put my phone away instead of watching them struggle to make up their mind. There’s only about ten minutes left of the trip, anyway.

Another five pass before my phone vibrates. Giving Elle a pointed look, I take a look at the response.

UNK: ...so what if I use cat emojis?

UNK: they’re there to be used, you know. Maybe you should quit ignoring them and give them a chance. 😿

“Ha!” It takes a moment before I remember that I should try my best to not appear like a crazy woman. “See?” I whisper madly. “They’re practically begging me to keep chatting.”

ME: Wow.

ME: I feel like you took that very personally. Elle didn’t tell me that you’d be like this.

There’s another stop, a few people getting off but many more getting on. Most of them sit down without sparing me a glance. Only when they’ve all settled down and gotten lost in their conversations or phones do I allow myself to relax.

UNK: are you the kind of person that talks to their cat??

I give a startled chuckle, delighting in the distraction this conversation is allowing me. Before I can fire off a response, another text comes through, making me stifle a laugh.

UNK: 😼

Maybe it’s the silly conversation, or the fact that Elle has gotten to a position where she can rub her head against my leg. Maybe it’s the view outside, the late afternoon sun pouring down on the people outside, and me, watching the world through the bus window.

For the first time that I can remember since I cut my thread, life seems a bit more manageable.

I feel like I can breathe.

✂

Jimin can’t breathe.

Not with the way all of the members have crowded around him on the couch, Jin still munching on some chicken while he peers over Jimin’s shoulder.

“I liked that last text. It was a nice touch,” Yoongi croons from Jimin’s side. “Gotta stick to a theme.”

The others grunt in agreement, hardly noticing the absolute strangeness of the situation. Taehyung slings his arm around Jimin on the other side, never once looking away from Jimin’s phone screen. He hums to himself while they wait for those fated three dots to appear.

Jungkook’s neck is about to break from the way he’s craning it, sitting on the floor before Taehyung’s legs. It’s a miracle that he can see anything at all.

“Is she texting yet?” He asks, hissing as he rubs a sore spot on his neck. He gives up trying to see what’s going on, facing forward again. Hobi, sitting beside Taehyung, automatically reaches down and begins massaging the younger’s neck.

“No, not yet,” Hobi sighs. “I wonder what - OH SHE’S TEXTING!”

Everyone presses in closer to Jimin, the boy in question gritting his teeth with anticipation. “Do you think she suspects? Have I been too obvious?”

Jin produces another chicken leg from somewhere, offering a bite to Namjoon who doesn’t hesitate to chow down. “No, she doesn’t. You’ve been totally aloof.”

“Yeah, you’re good,” Namjoon says around his food.

Together, the seven of them stare at those three dots rippling across the screen. When they disappear for a moment, everyone groans. It doesn’t take long before they reappear, and suddenly a message appears.

“What does it say?!” Jungkook scrambles to his knees, struggling to get a good view.

Jimin groans, shouldering his way forward until he’s leaning in front of everyone. “Shh, let me actually read it.”

Jolie (Elle): Haha, touché. I feel a little weird texting an unknown number...do you have a name I could save you under? Or should I just settle for a cat emoji?

“...what do I do?” Jimin turns to face the others, a flicker of panic painting his features. “I can’t tell her that it’s actually me...she’ll quit talking to me!”

Yoongi shrugs, completely unbothered. “Just give her a fake name. Like, Jaemin or something. Close enough.”

“Ha! Yeah, do Jaemin. Reminds me of James Corden trying to say your name,” Jungkook cackles.

Jimin looks at the other members with big eyes, waiting for some other offer. Something better. Taehyung pats his shoulder.

“I know you hate lying but...I don’t think you have much of a choice.”

Sighing, Jimin types in a response. He holds up the phone for everyone to see, waiting for their grunts of approval before hitting send. A knock on the door has everyone except for Jin turning their heads.

“Don’t tell me you ordered something else,” Namjoon gripes. Jin just chuckles quietly, reappearing a few moments later with an armful of boxes. Jimin recognizes them immediately: it looks like an assortment of churros and other treats.

“Hyung,” Jungkook watches the procession with wide eyes. “What’s this?”

“Would you go grab the rest?” Jin asks instead of answering. Jungkook leaps to his feet, bounding toward the door where more treats await. His shouts of excitement drift back to the boys.

When everyone gives Jin an appalled look, he just shrugs his shoulders. “What? I figured that we’re going to be here for a while. Might as well get comfortable.”

✂

UNK: No, I won’t make you stoop so low as to use a cat emoji. Park Jaemin should work fine.

I nearly stumble down the steps of the bus as I make the mistake of pulling my phone out to see the latest response. Once Elle and I have made it safely to the sidewalk, I proceed to stare at my phone in utter horror.

Rereading that name again and again until I’m sure that I’m reading it correctly.

Why did it have to be such a similar name?

There’s a slight tremor to my hands as I try to come up with something to say. Saving the number, I take a deep breath. Elle watches me from the safety of my bag, mewling softly.

“Gimme a sec,” I sigh. “Is this some sort of cruel joke?” My mind is spinning too quickly to think clearly, so I pocket the infernal device and take a moment to orient myself. Heading down the street, I wait until I’ve made it a block before attempting to form a reply.

It would appear that my new friend is a little impatient. By the time I stop on the corner, there’s already another text waiting for me. The new contact name has me gritting my teeth, but I push past the initial shock that rocks me.

Park Jaemin 🙀: Unless you don’t like that name? I could always choose a different one.

“He’s a little...weird.” I glance down at Elle, who seems inclined to agree with me. “But nice, I think.” Mustering up all of my courage, I punch out a reply and send it before I can think twice about it.

ME: That’s fine. Jaemin it is. I just didn’t realize you were a guy? Elle always seemed wary of guys.

I set off down the street, finding it a bit different in the daylight than it was at night. That, and this time I’m not a hyperventilating mess. It doesn’t take long before I’m turning down an alley that I realize I’ve been seeing in my dreams lately, heading toward the tell-tale gray apartment with the warehouse attached to it.

There’s another text notification reaching my ears, but I ignore it for the moment. Knocking hard on the door, I wait to hear footsteps.

It takes a couple of attempts before a distant voice shouts, “Coming!” A few seconds later, the door is cracked open to reveal a disgruntled Christina.

She gives me a long look, recognition sparking in her eyes even as she looks entirely unimpressed by me. She eyes Elle, who stares right back at her.

“You know I don’t do refunds, right?”

There’s another text coming through, but I ignore it again. Instead I plaster on my best smile, which Christina sees right through.

“I know. That’s not why I’m here.” Glancing up and down the alley, I rub at my arms. Fighting off the sudden chill. “Mind if I come in?”

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#bts fluff #jimin fluff #bangtan #jimin x oc #bts x oc #jimin angst

[revengeisourlullaby]

Dai the Flu

Warnings: 18+, smut, unprotected, a bit of a daddy kink, spanking, biting, spiting, cumplay, quirk usage, choking, voyeurism, slight dumbification, degradation, lil bit of fluff at the end

a/n: this is my first time ever writing a smut. i’ve actually never really attempted creating something in the format of a fanfic. so please, if anything, lemme know what i can do better! hope you enjoy this <3

Word count: 7.5K

Dabi x female reader

You weren’t a part of the League of Villains, but you had a small involvement with them. It wasn’t the turn you wanted your life to take, but after you had a run in with Dabi, it was almost inevitable.

You were walking back to your apartment after your shift at the corner store was over. Darkness had already been cast upon the sky and the only thing surrounding you was the static from the neon signs declaring that a shop was still open. The whir of passing cars gave you a sense of comfort walking alone at such a late hour. The area of town where you lived had gone up in villain attacks and you were always on edge. It wasn’t that you couldn’t handle yourself but the last thing you wanted was to face off against someone you had no business doing so.

There was word going around about this guy who was a human cremation system and honestly it gave you goosebumps thinking about it. It was one reason you wished you had another way to get home. Just thinking about those blue flames flashing before your eyes was enough to give you nightmares and yet, the man who this quirk was attached to was something out of your dreams. You couldn’t deny that he was attractive, after seeing him on the news in passing one day while getting ready for work, his face was ingrained in your brain. Even though he bore resemblance to a modern day Frankenstein, something about him had you hooked.

You were almost a block away from your apartment complex when you passed an alleyway and heard footsteps. Curiosity taking over, you stopped in your tracks and tried to peer down the alleyway that was shrouded in darkness, a lone lamppost giving off dingy yellow light. You started to feel your stomach twist in knots as you heard the footsteps getting louder and the silhouette of this person becoming more visible. Once you saw the beginnings of this figure’s hair your heart stopped and your eyes widened in disbelief.

It’s him.

Your mind was racing and you were frozen in fear. You couldn't move your body to move, let alone let alone a word to announce for him to stay away from you. As he passed the lamppost you saw his staples shine in the dim light, making him look more daunting than usual. You shook your head to bring back to reality and attempted to make your break for your apartment. Having seen enough and being in paralyzed in your own astonishment, you wanted to get out of there as fast as you could. The universe had different plans for you though.

“Hey.”

“Fuck..” you muttered under your breath. Before your left foot could even touch the ground he stopped you dead in your tracks.

“You’ve been standing there like a lost dog watching me limp up here, least you could do is respond back.”

You turned, almost robotically and finally faced him. He had now moved up a lot closer to you and you had to crane your neck to look at him.

“Hey kid, you a mute or somethin’?” he chuckled to himself really while you were still slightly shaking in your frozen state.

“N-no.” you shook your head in embarrassment trying to get your bearings together. You didn’t want to end up like the others but also was so confused on how to approach who was in front of you

“Sorry I’m just a little shook up here. I don’t know what I was expecting by sticking my nose in this but it definitely wasn’t this.” you had finally managed to get out. Your breath heavy and hands visibly shaking.

“Well, since you stuck your nose in someone else’s business don’t you think you should help ‘em out if they need it. I think you do.” He smirked at his staples having a slight click when he moved his mouth.

“What are you suggesting here..” you trailed off. The man pointed at his torso that he was holding with his other hand in a poor attempt to stall the bleeding that was oozing out of him.

“Kinda a little cut up here sweetheart...what were you thinking about?” He smirked forcing you to turn your head away due to the unwanted heat rushing to your cheeks.

“Uh-yeah...I can help you out. I’ve got a kit at my place. Just follow me.” your voice was meek due to the sheer embarrassment you felt at the moment. As you walked out of the alleyway you felt his blue eyes burning through your back. You weren’t sure whether to start up a conversation, you couldn’t place if it was due to the fear running through your veins or fear of humiliating yourself again in front of someone you found so intimidating yet so beguiling.

Finally reaching your complex, you walked up the stairs leading into your second level apartment. Heavy footsteps trailing behind you, you grabbed your keys from your back pocket and unlocked the door to your home. As you stepped in you hit the light by the door, illuminating the main room. Turning around to shut the door, you took a deep breath to prepare yourself with the villain you just willingly brought into your home. Turning back around to face him you fully realized that you had Dabi standing in the main room of your apartment, blood pooling out into his hand and staining his white shirt.

“Come on let’s get into the bathroom and get you cleaned up.” your eyes refused to meet his and you stared at the floor while walking to your bathroom because you could once again feel the heat rising up into your face.

“You got a lot of guts to just bring a wanted villain in your place and help him out. How do you know this isn’t a ploy of mine to wrap you in my flames?” He asked while standing in the doorway of your bathroom while you were searching in the cabinet underneath the sink. Finding it, you stood up and faced him

“You would’ve done it already. You don’t peg me as the type to play with your food; plus, as you pointed out, you’ve got a situation we need to handle. Not as menacing when you’re asking for help. Even if you phrase it as an owed debt.” you turned away from him to open up your first aid kit box. Surprised at your own sudden confidence while speaking to him. Looking back up at him, you pointed toward your counter.

“Have a seat.”

He looked at you and a small smirk forming upon his lips. You furrowed your brows slightly, trying to understand the look he was giving you. You shook your head feeling that you were giving yourself away too much and grabbed the gauze out of the box.

“Can you take off your jacket and shirt for me…” your voice softening, feeling as if you were intruding somewhat. He silently obliged by taking off his top articles of clothing. As they both landed on the floor, leaving a small splotch of blood as it hit the tiles. Your breath got caught in your throat as you paused your movements, staring at his toned chest. Pulling you out of your thoughts you heard Dabi’s voice resonate through your ears.

“If you’re gonna stare like that you could at least get me some food. Or at least fix me up first.”

He smirked looking at you straight in your eyes. Your eyes widened, completely humiliated that you had been caught staring at him so shamelessly. You quickly grabbed some hydrogen peroxide from underneath your sink to wet the gauze and clean up his wounded area before you did anything else. Closing in on his torso you brought the wet gauze around his wound to wipe away any smeared and dried blood. Throwing the used one away, you grabbed another and wet it again placing it directly on his open gash. He hissed at the contact chastising you in the process.

“Hey watch it! That shit hurts”

“Look, it’s not like I want it to hurt, but if I don’t do this it will get infected. Pretty sure that's the last thing your body needs.” You looked at him with eyes narrowed. Glancing toward his scars. While you knew that comment was a little harsh, you were annoyed not only with yourself for slipping up in front him but also his attitude was starting to irritate you. 

“You’re pretty funny” he rolled his eyes and lightly chuckled at you.

You rolled your eyes, grabbing the small suture kit in your first aid box. Lining yourself up with his torso you pressed the needle against his skin,

“This is probably going to hurt a bi-”

“-You look pretty good beneath me like this.” Dabi cut you off before you got the chance to give your warning about the sutures he was about to receive. Looking up at him incredulously you scoffed and continued your work. He chuckled but before he could get it out of his system you cut him off by saying he needed to stay still or he would make this process a lot longer. Both of you letting out a sigh you finally finished up the last stitch and snipped the end of the thread with a scissor. Leaving the bathroom, you went to go grab a shirt from your bedroom.

“Stay here, I need to grab something.” you added before you left the doorway. You went into your drawer looking to find one of your oversized t-shirts to give to him. Grabbing an old Slipknot shirt you went back into the bathroom to find him standing in front of the mirror looking at himself. Holding your hand out you gave him the shirt.

“I’m not sure of the state of your jacket but I can’t let you leave with a bloodied shirt. It’d really make you eyesore out there.”

Staring down at you, Dabi looked at you with something that could almost be seen as curiosity. Taking the shirt from your hands, you swore you saw a small smile creep onto his face.

“Thanks princess.”

The pet name that slipped from his lips made you fluster immediately. Your eyes widening for a moment and heart rate picking up. He obviously saw the effect it had on you because when you looked at him the smirk that adorned his face was impish. Fully knowing what he was doing to you.

Picking his jacket up off your bathroom floor, he slipped it on and looked at you to move from the doorway. Scooching to the left you let him pass by. You knew he couldn’t stay but for some reason your heart sank as you watched him go to your front door. As if he knew the wave of emotions running through you, he turned around with his hand still on the door handle,

“Don’t worry sweetheart, you’ll see me around soon enough.” and with that he turned around and walked out the door. Your back hit the wall in your hallway and you let out a breath you didn't even realize you were holding in. Shoving your hands into your face you rubbed them and heaved out a sigh.

“What the fuck just happened...”

With that you failed to realize the world you just opened yourself up to. The world of having Dabi actively in your life. You failed to realize that this quick interaction with a villain that stirred up such fear in others was one to stir up excitement in you.

That happened over six months ago. Over the span of these few months you ended up becoming Dabi’s personal ER doc. Not by choice either. You never knew when he was gonna spring up on you while walking home from work, at work, or even sneaking through your window waiting for you to return home. Something he called a “pleasant surprise” for you. To see him sprawled on your couch covered in filth and the occasional markings of blood.

Tonight was the start of you finally having a few days off of work. So you decided to treat yourself to some self care days. You felt you deserved it. Between dealing with the nightlife that sauntered into the corner store and constantly having to patch up Dabi, you were reaching your limit of it all. You needed a few moments to yourself to finally release all the pent up emotions that were flowing over inside of you. Unlocking the door unto your apartment, you threw your keys into the bowl on the table by your door. Propping your hands on the back of your neck you stretched and let out a moan. Sighing, you walk into your bedroom rummaging through your drawers, you grabbed a sleep shirt, some underwear, and a few candles. Walking into your bathroom you set the items on the counter. Lighting the candles, you looked in the mirror noticing your tiredness masking over your face. Feeling grimey from the day's work, you stripped yourself of your clothes and turned the shower on. You wanted to scrub any filth off first before you decided to rest in the bath.

Finishing up cleaning off your body you pulled the knob on the head of the bathtub to switch up the source of water. Grabbing your lavender scented bath salts from the floor you poured them into the stream of hot water flowing from the knob. Deciding they had dissolved enough you let your body relax into the tub, the feeling of the water instantly relaxing your muscles. There was steam filling up the bathroom adding to the relaxing aura you had already created. Closing your eyes your mind had drifted to him. That blue eyed bastard. He didn’t even know your name. It was never short of a surprise whenever he showed up and you couldn’t deny the excitement that stirred within your body when he did. 

He was intoxicating. Like a drug. You knew that he was more than a handful to be involved with but, something about him wouldn’t allow you to leave him alone. You were always ready to help him, even if seeing him in such a state worried you. You wondered what unannounced visit would be the last. You couldn’t deny how you wished there was something more than just you patching him up and him leaving with a wink. It pained you not being able to live out this fantasy of yours, but you knew it was for the best.

Opening your eyes, you let out a big sigh. Bringing yourself up from out of the tub and letting it drain, you grabbed your towel from off the toilet and dried your body off. Blowing out the candles you put on your moisturizer and sleepwear and left the bathroom sauntering back in your room. Leaving your dirty clothes on the floor in the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of your bed your mind drifted to Dabi again and a sudden urge overcame your body. Feeling heat rush to your core you scooted further back on your bed and situated yourself into a more comfortable position.

Letting your hands roam down your body you scrunched up your shirt moving to play with your nipples. Guiding one hand down to your core you began to tease your sensitive bud through your underwear. Getting antsy you pulled your underwear off and threw them somewhere on your bedroom floor. Slipping your fingers into your wet hole you began thrusting them inside you, your back arching while doing so. Squeezing harder on your hardened nipple you let out a soft moan. Increasing your speed you grazed over the spongy spot inside you causing you to let out a loud gasp and a name slipped from your lips.

“Dabi~”

Too engrossed in your own pleasure you failed to hear the window in your main room slide open. A slender leg slipped through the window and Dabi pulled himself in. He had no intentions of being patched up tonight, he just decided to make a quick stop considering he was in the area. Turning around to shut the window he heard you gasping from the other room. Curiosity and pure sadism rushing through his veins he made slow steps to your bedroom. With you having left your door open he was able to watch over you without making a sound. Crossing his arms, a smirk was cast upon his face watching your writhe in your self made pleasure. Completely intrigued by your moans he continued to watch but what he didn’t expect was the words that followed,

“Dabi! Please~”

His eyes widened for a second but they quickly narrowed, carnal desires now taking over his mind. His smirk turned into a sadistic smile and he finally opened his mouth.

“I’ve always wondered what it takes…”

His voice boomed through your room, echoing in your head like a tainted prayer. Your hand ripped from your drenched cunt embarrassed heat rushing to your face. You felt mortified.

“D-dabi...what’re you doing in here”

“Ah, c’mon princess, that’s not how you were saying it before. Say it right.” He sneered at you obviously amused by your state of utter humiliation.

“You can’t just come in here unannounced” you tried desperately to keep your composure while your slick was drying on your fingers.

“I always come in unannounced and by the looks of things...looks like you wanted me to cum in somewhere else.” His voice dropped entering a state of utter rasp. Eyes trailing down your body. He started to stalk over to you like a predator to its prey,

“Dabi, I- you weren’t supposed to see me like this ever. Please...just leave I can’t take you looking at me like this anymore.” You hid your hand underneath yourself trying to look as in control as possible, but the docile tone in your voice betrayed your words. Dabi continued his tread toward you, coming up near the edge of your bed. Pressing his hands into the mattress he leaned forward, pinning you with his eyes against the bed.

“You’re right, but right now I really enjoy what I see.” Drawing his finger up your exposed leg. He continued his verbal assault on you

“In fact, I’d like to see you under me. Squirming and crying while you beg for me to give you a break when you know you just want me to keep fucking you.” He breathed out as he crawled over your figure.

“But before we do that princess, I just realized I don’t know your name. Why don’t you tell me, hmm” As if to emphasize his question, he pressed his thumb into your clit causing you to moan out his name.

“Nah, sweetheart, that’s my name. Tell me yours” He purred against your ear, his breath hot against it.

“Y/N.” you panted out “It’s Y/N.” Unable to catch your breath you just looked up at him, frozen at what was currently happening to you.

“Y/N huh, it suits you. Although, I can’t promise you that’s the only thing I’m gonna be calling you tonight.” He leaned down pressing unusually gentle kisses into the crook of your neck. Your body filling up with goosebumps and heat rushing straight to your core. You moan arching your back, simultaneously giving him better access to your neck. Enjoying yourself a little too much, you were brought back to reality when he sank his teeth into your shoulder. Hissing you snapped your head at him ready to bark out profanities, but he beat you to it.

His two toned hand wrapped around your jaw, squishing your cheeks together and pursing your lips forward.

“Don’t even try it. I got you all figured out Y/N. You make a move and I’ve already predicted it.”

“Oh bite me.” You hissed at him.

“Careful. Princess.” Growling out his words, he sunk his teeth back into your shoulder making you let out an ungodly moan. Coming out from the crease where your shoulder and neck meet he looked into your glossed over orbs

“I believe the sting proves heart to me, and I know that you love me. So submit to me, I promise you won’t want anything else.”

“Dabi, please.” you whined against him

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, say it one more time Y/N.” Releasing his grip from your jaw it allowed you to enunciate better even though he heard you clearly the previous time.

“Dabi, please, I wan- I need you so bad. Please Dabi don’t make me wait anymore”

“Look at you, whining like a desperate slut and all I’ve done is thumb your clit a bit. You’re pathetic. I love it.” Grabbing your jaw again he looked down at you his pupils blown wide with lust and his member poking at your sex through his pants.

“Open your mouth.”

Shamelessly, you opened your mouth, automatically sticking your tongue out for him.

“Good girl.” He curled his bottom lip back a bit gathering the spit in his mouth and he spat it into yours. You squeezed your eyes shut in shock of what just happened but you couldn’t lie to yourself. You were soaking and were begging silently for him to do it again. When your eyes opened back up they resembled that of a doe. Looking at Dabi with complete adoration. A dark chuckled stumbled from him mouth

“You liked that didn’t you, you naughty bitch.” He emphasized the last of his words with a hard slap to your thigh which jiggled from the impact. You bit your lip trying to hold back a moan to not give him the satisfaction.

“C’mon baby girl moan for me. They’re so sweet, I love ‘em. Let me hear you.” He slapped your thigh again punctuating his words. He slithered down your body and came face to face with your core. Wrapping his arms around your hips, he brought your body closer to his face, his nose brushing up against your clit. You whimpered, the unexpected contact making you grow impatient.

“God, please, please use your mouth on me, I’m begging you Dabi.” You cried out to him and he crowed at you

“Damn, I didn’t even have to ask. You’re such a slut.” He bowed his head into your core, licking a stripe from your hole up to your clit. You threw your head back indulging in the sudden pleasure he was giving you. Lapping at your clit, he looked up at you through hooded eyes. Feeling his gaze, you met his eyes and when you did he placed a small nip at your clit, following it with a hard suck. You darted your hand down to his head, threading your fingers through his stygian locks. 

Pulling at it, you felt him smile against your heat, still continuing his performance on your clit. Feeling your core twitch and the knot in your stomach tighten, your breath started to quicken and started babbling that you were about to cum. Tightening your grip on Dabi’s hair, your high washed over you spawning you to arch your back and your legs to shake from the stimulation. Panting heavily and trying to bring yourself back down you heard Dabi’s voice ring through your ears.

“Get up.” You were in such a state of overbearing lust that it took you a moment to register what Dabi had said to you. Your body finally registered his words and lifted yourself up from your spot on the bed. Standing up, you watched him roll off of his knees and sit on the edge of your bed waiting for you to finish his command.

“Y/N, don’t just stand there, come over here in front of me. You know I don’t bite hard.” He patted his lap while carefully watching your movements while you made your way toward him. Standing in between his legs you wrapped your arms around his neck, you weaved your hand in his hair pulling his head back. Looking into his alluring blue eyes, down to his lips and back up to his eyes. You two spoke an unspoken language and with that you smashed your lips upon his.

He moved himself a little further back onto your bed and pulled you down with him, forcing you to straddle his hips. The kiss was nasty and fueled by pure unuttered lust. Grinding down against him he let out a strangled moan. Your wetness leaving a trail on the outside of his pants. You clawed down Dabi’s chest and he pulled at your hair in response. With a low growl he pulled you away from him and looked straight through you.

“Get on your knees for me.”

Licking the leftover spit off from your lips you backed up and brought yourself down to your knees. Teasing with the buckle of his belt, you pulled it out of its loops antagonizing slow. Following suit with the button of his pants, you pulled them down along with his underwear. Your eyes widened slightly at the sight of his cock, having you wonder if you could fully take it down.

“Staring at it isn’t gonna do it for me princess.”

Looking up at him with doe eyes and a slight nod, you licked a stripe up from the base of his cock up to the tip, pressing a feather light kiss to the head. Lapping away at the drops of precum beading out, you swirled your tongue around his tip before gathering up spit and letting it fall down the sides of his hard cock. With one hand at the base you took him into your mouth, looking up at him through your lashes. Gagging slightly when his tip hit the back of your throat. Tears welling up in your eyes at the contact, Dabi let out a low moan, throwing his hand into your hair,

“God. You’re so good at this Y/N.”

With the sudden praise you picked up the pace feeling confidence surge through you. You incorporated your hand and bobbed your head in sync. Taking your other hand, you began to fondle his balls adding extra stimulation

“Y/N fuck. Fuck keep doing that” Dabi’s hand tightened in your hair and he began thrusting lightly into your mouth, attempting to hold onto the last bits of his composure. You hollowed out your cheeks creating a tight seal around his dick and he groaned so loud that it definitely echoed into the halls of your surrounding neighbors.

“Fuck! Y/N, I’m gonna, fuck I’m cumming- ah!” His thick ropes of cum shot in the back of your throat but before you could swallow Dabi grabbed your jaw again,

“Keep that fuckin cum in you mouth. You don’t swallow until I say you can. Now get on the bed and lie down.”

Keeping your mouth closed, you climbed up onto the bed and lied on your back, careful to not choke on the fluid residing in your mouth. Dabi stepped out of his pants and came up to place a kiss upon your lips. He reached down to the bottom of your sleep shirt and pulled it over your head. Before he came back down to your body, he discarded his shirt across your bedroom floor. He faced you again, kissing across your collarbone, trailing down the valley between your breasts and finally landing on a nipple. Suckling on it you let out an airy moan, still worried about choking on the cum you had settled in your mouth.

Dabi looked up at you and smirked, trailing his hand down the curves of your body, placing his palm flat upon your tummy he let his hand fall into your dripping sex. Rubbing small circles in your clit, he sucked harder on your nipple. You threw your head back in sheer pleasure simply forgetting about the cum in your mouth, you swallowed. One of Dabi’s fingers slipped inside your aching core and you whipped your head forward letting out a scream. This caught Dabi’s attention and immediately he was on your case.

“Oh. So my little whore doesn’t know how to follow orders does she? Such a pity I was hoping to have a little more fun with you.” Removing himself from your body he sat up on the bed. Looking at you, a domineering look took over his eyes.

“For not following directions...bend yourself over my lap baby girl. I’m gonna remind you of who’s in charge here. Now, count.” His voice dropped and your heart raced, making your blood boil all at the same time. How was he having this affect on you so easily. Your body moved on its own before you could resist his command. Laying yourself across his lap you felt your breath quicken, unsure of how these next few moments were going to turn out. Your questions were answered quickly when Dabi’s hand met your bare ass cheek. You let out a squeal surprised at the contact.

“I said, count Y/N. I don’t like repeating myself.”

“S-sorry, o-one.” you stuttered out as another slap came down on your ass.

“Two.” By the ninth slap your ass was starting to sting and you weren’t sure how much more you could take. All of a sudden you felt an unexpected heat creep up on your backside, when you turned your head you saw small embers of blue flying around. You saw Dabi’s hand raise,

“Dabi...why is your quirk activated?”

“Because princess, not only do I need to remind you who’s in charge, I need to remind you who you belong to.” With that, his hand came down with a final smack leaving his handprint branded on your ass. Letting out a scream that would make the hair stand up on anyone else, it brought a smile to Dabi’s lips. Letting him know that he had done his work properly.

“You’ll never forget me.” His voice dripping in your ear like honey. His foul words sweeten your mind and current neglected heat.

“Dabi, please I need you now.” Pulling yourself up from his lap you looked at him in the eyes, straddling his waist again.

“Move back.” you softly told him, a speck of dominance threatening to break through your tone.

“Watch the tone Y/N, remember who’s in charge here” he sighed out, but nonetheless centered himself against the headboard of your bed. You moved to the foot of the bed crawling up towards Dabi. Resting in between his legs, you gave him a teasing lick against the entirety of his length, looking up at him through your lashes while doing so. Furthering your journey up his body, you brought your legs around his hips hovering over his intimidating length. You already had the same thought before you sucked him off but taking him into your pussy had a different feeling. Setting off your nerves in the most pleasurable way imaginable. Lowering yourself you started grinding against his cock which released a groan from him.

“C’mon baby don’t tease me. I don’t think you want another punishment do you?” he cocked his head lowering his eyes as he finished his threat. A sudden wave of confidence bursting through you, you spat back at him

“I think you can handle a little teasing. I’m already yours, at least let me have a little fun.” You bat your eyes at him coming closer down to his face to insinuate a sloppy kiss. During your assault on his mouth, you reached your hand down between your legs and wrapped your hand around his cock, slowly pumping him. Receiving a small moan from him, you moved his tip to your slick opening and inched your way down until he bottomed out inside of you. Tearing his face away from yours he let out a moan that sent vibrations directly to your heat causing you to tighten around him.

“Fuck! Y/N” he panted, placing his two toned hands on the curve of your hips he helped you bounce up and down on him. Throwing your head back in pleasure you groan. He filled you up so well hitting up into your cervix with every thrust. Taking more control over your thrusts you brought yourself forward starting a heated kiss between you two. Weaving your hand into his hair you tugged at it, eliciting a groan from Dabi.

“Yeah, you like that Dabi?” You said in a tone that you would soon regret. The taunting nature that controlled your sentence, relinquished the last bit of power you had in the situation. Tightening his grip on your hips, Dabi flipped you over. The wind knocked out of you and your eyes widened as he hovered over you. His eyes a swirling mix of lust and predatory dominance.

“I let you have your fun. Now, it’s my turn.” Bringing himself down to your ear he breathed in “I’m gonna make your scream my name until you cry. I want you crying underneath me because it feels so good.” Noticing you starting to squirm beneath him in a poor attempt to feel some friction he smirked. Spitting in your face again, he ordered you, “Now, beg.”

With a hard slap to your thigh you squealed, mumbling out a small please in hopes that it would be enough for him. You were aching and were starting to lose your touch with reality.

With a dark chuckle, he spat at you

“That’s not fucking begging, do it right or I’ll leave you here a sopping mess. With only your hand to take care of you.”

“N-no please! Please, Dabi I need you. I need you so bad. I wanna cum I wanna cum with you inside me. Please, please don’t leave me here, I know I’m desperate, but please fuck me! I can't stand another momen-Ah!”

Without letting you finish your sentence Dabi plunged himself inside of you. Bottoming out you let out a moan so strangled you felt embarrassed at the sound that came out of you.

“Yeah, you’ve been waiting for this all night haven’t you. You hopeless slut. So fuckin desperate for my cock to be inside of you like this. You’re practically cumming already.”

Moaning out you arched your back in writhing pleasure, almost unable to consume what you were feeling all over. Dabi only added to your rapture by wrapping his stapled hand around your throat and bringing his other to play with your swollen bud. This extra stimulation forced you to clench and twitch around his hard cock which in turn made him pick up his pace.

“Look at you, you’re fuckin pathetic. Your pussy gets tighter as I wrap my hand around your throat. You like it when I ram into you like this?”

Lost in your pleasure you just squeaked out a moan not being able to form complete sentences.

“Fuckfuck, Yes! I love it, shit!” Slurring your words together you didn’t even feel the embarrassment that you had been all evening. You just wanted to be fucked, you needed to be absolutely ruined.

With Dabi’s quickened pace you felt the knot below your stomach form and you clenched tighter around him.

“You gonna fuckin cum, baby? Yeah, cum all over my cock Y/N.”

Dabi applied more pressure on his hand that was placed on your clit and that sent you over the edge. Your orgasm washing over you and stealing the last of your breath with a moan ripping through your cords. The pleasure that’s coursing through you caused your body to jerk forward, accidentally hitting your head against Dabi’s. With a growl coming from him and your pussy clenching around him he released inside you, feeling his hot ropes of cum paint the insides of your walls white. He dropped his head in the crook of your neck and bit down hard, almost drawing blood.

“God damn, you feel so good Y/N.” Panting out his words he flipped you over, “Bring your ass up here baby, I’m not done with you yet.”

Still trying to catch your breath, you bring yourself up on your knees arching your back to an angle that almost hurt. You felt Dabi line up with your entrance, once again teasing you. Not fully inserting himself in and playing with the shared juices dripping out of your hole.

“Daddy please don’t tease me again, I can’t handle it” you begged him. Before you could even realize what slipped from your mouth Dabi made sure to make you flustered about your current slip up.

“Daddy, huh? You wanna be my good little girl, princess?”

“Dabi, I-I I didn’t mean that I’m sorr-”

“Shh Y/N, Daddy’s gonna make you feel real good.”

With that Dabi sheathed himself inside you, the friction sending you over the edge. He set an unrelenting pace making you scream out in ecstasy.

“Shit! Dabi!”

Removing one of his hands from your side he wrapped it around the back of your neck, bringing your back up against his chest.

“Say it right baby girl, I wanna hear you scream it.”

With tears welling in your eyes from the overwhelming sense of pleasure washing over you you screamed out

“Daddy! Shit, please. Fuck me. I need you to ruin me”

Craning your neck to look at him from the side in your current position, he turned your head to face his and shoved you into a bruising kiss. The contrast of his skin setting sparks off in your brain. You had felt nothing like it and yet you never wanted to feel anything else in this moment.

“God, you feel so fuckin good clenching down on me like that. Like it when I fuck you like this?” He punctuated his words by thrusting even harder into you. Taking the hand that was around the back of your neck, he shoved your face back into the mattress of the bed moving his hand to press in the small of your back. Putting your back into a burning position. You screamed out attempting to get used to the pain you were just placed in. The sound of skin slapping echoed through the room and you knew that your moans were ringing through your apartment but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Dabi felt too good and you were lost in the euphoria of what he was doing to you.

“Ohhh, Fuck! Y/N” Dabi brought both of his hands to your ass now and was intensifying his thrusts. You were trying your best to meet his thrusts but his pace was so zealous you could barely keep up. You felt the fat of your ass rippling with each thrust and you were starting to feel yourself come to that peak again.

“Ohmygodoh~ fuck, Daddy, I’m gonna cum, please let me cum again.”

Tears were starting to fall from your eyes, the overstimulation of it all catching up to you. You didn’t mean to, but you let out a sniffle giving away your euphoric disposition. Slipping out of you and turning you on your back, Dabi plastered his hands on the side of your head, making you feel so small.

“I told you I wanted to see you cry Y/N, now why would you try and hide that from me? Your face, show me...let me know what you like.” He purred into your ear. Sending goosebumps down the entirety of your body and making your hole flutter around nothing. Lining himself back with your entrance he slowly pushed into you. Almost mocking you for being so close to your release.

“I’m gonna watch you cry while I fuck you and you’re gonna scream my name so loud that this whole complex is going to know exactly who’s making you feel this good.”

Starting at a slow pace Dabi made sure that you would feel every inch sliding in and out of you. You brought your hands to the sides of his back leaving red trails in their wake, careful to avoid his scars. Hissing at the contact Dabi moved one of your hands from his back and grabbed your leg. Bringing it up to rest on his shoulder, giving him deeper access to your soaking cavern. Tears began to fall from your eyes again from both the sheer excitement and lust of the situation you choked out stumbled words.

“Holy fuck Dabi, I’m gonna I’mgonnacum soon, oh my~ shit!”

You felt Dabi put his other hand back on your clit and began rubbing fast hard circles.

“Can’t even form a proper sentence, am I really fuckin you that good princess?”

“Yesyesyes, fuck Dabi please I’m gonna cum”

“Yeah? Yeah, c’mon, cum around my cock Y/N. Ohh, fuck!”

Letting a wanton moan rip from your throat your head dipped back into the sheets, but before you could be fully immersed in your ecstasy, Dabi grabbed the back of your neck forcing you to face him.

“Look at me when you come sweetheart, I wanna watch you fall apart before me.”

A moan turned into a scream and your final tears fell down your cheeks, wetting small sections of your hair that was sprawled out underneath you. Clenching and fluttering even harder around his cock, Dabi released another load into you, stilling inside you while he groaned out in pleasure and pride of how he ruined you.

Both of you panting and returning back to reality after living out your highs, Dabi came down to press an unusual soft kiss to your lips. It almost felt loving and after the intense scene the two of you just shared. It made you feel oddly comfortable. Dabi pulled out of you, his seed following shortly after, pooling out of your hole. Dabi laid down beside you, eyes piercing into you. Getting in your last breath you finally looked over at him, looking into his addictive blue eyes once more.

“That was hot.” He said sort of deadpan, yet his eyes showed something different.

“I think that would be an understatement. I’m still shaking...” you rolled over onto your stomach placing a hand on his chest. Drawing small shapes into his chest you continued your sentence

“...but, I’m not complaining, I could go a few more rounds with you.” Biting your lip you looked up at him. Something of a gleam of hope shining in your eyes.

“Not sure if you could handle it princess, you were crying quite a bit a moment ago.” He chuckled, a small yet sincere smile adorning his lips.

“Get up real quick for me.” You pushed yourself off of him and let him get up. He walked out of your bedroom and into the hallway. You heard the water running for a moment and then stopping. He emerged from the bathroom with a damp towel in his hands. Tossing it to you, he figured you knew what it was for. Giving him a nod, you silently thanked him and cleaned yourself up a bit. Your mind started to race and your heart plummeted, realizing this was probably just a one time thing. You watched Dabi reach for his underwear pulling them up his legs. Throwing the now used wet towel on the floor you grabbed a new sleep shirt from your drawer. Pulling it over your head you felt a deafening silence take over the room.

How did he leave so quick, you thought. Dread filling your face to turned around only to see Dabi still in your room. He was sitting on your bed, back halfway up against your headboard staring at you.

“Heh, I thought you left. It got so quiet.” You began fidgeting with your fingers feeling somewhat embarrassed again standing in front of him.

“Not you being embarrassed again after I was inside you. Besides, what kind of asshole do you take me for? Leaving without a word. I may come in without one, but you’ll always know when I’m gone, sweetheart. Come here.’’ Patting the spot on the bed next to him, you climbed in next to him sitting down. A little further away from him than necessary.

“Closer, Y/N.” A small smile fell on his lips as you finally let your embarrassment go and you cuddled into his side.

“Stay. Please.” You looked up at him, eyes glossing over out of fear of hearing rejection fall from his lips.

“I’m not going anywhere kid, not now.” Bringing his hand to rest on your head, he began to rub your temple, slowly lulling you to sleep. You didn’t know where you two were going to stand by morning, but that was a thought that could wait till then. Right now, you wanted to hold onto this moment, cherishing the memory.

#my hero academia #my hero academia x reader #my hero academia smut #dabi #dabi x reader #dabi x female reader #dabi x y/n #mha #bnha #dabi smut

[glimmerofawesome]

This is Sam Kerr: A superstar with elite sport in her blood

In the white-walled hallway of the Kerr residence in Perth, Roxanne Kerr has a framed photo of the moment her daughter’s image was projected onto the sliding-shell roof tiles of the Sydney Opera House. In the darkness, the profile of an airborne Sam Kerr sails above the waters of Sydney Harbour, backlit by triangles of yellow and green to celebrate Australia’s successful World Cup 2023 bid.

“Your daughter’s on the Opera House — how is that?” says Roxanne, dreamily.

The family treasure it all the more because through it, they glimpse Sam as she was when, aged eight, she walked through some hills and decided that if the other kids were rolling down, the least she could manage was a backward tuck. “And she just taught herself,” says Roxanne. “It amazes me that she can still do it at her age. It shocked me. The first-ever time she did it for the Matildas, she didn’t land properly, but now that’s all people want to see.”

Yet her daughter is just like every other, in that she often neglects to keep her parents in the loop. Roxanne is used to seeing Sam stare back from banners in Australian shopping centres. Normal, too, are the texts from family and friends captioned: “Look who I’ve bumped into.” But the small matter of her springing from the side of the continent’s most iconic building slipped Sam’s mind, as did her international debut in Canberra in 2009.

“She loves us to travel and watch her games, but she doesn’t like a lot of fuss,” says Roxanne. “She didn’t even tell us that she was going to get a cap. She never tells me anything because she’s too embarrassed, too shy. I have a friend who cuts out every single newspaper article. She must have seen the Opera House on Facebook.”

Roxanne called Sam, who said, simply: “It’s nice, isn’t it, Mum?”

You wonder if Kerr Junior would describe winning the Champions League today (Sunday) in the same terms or if she’ll be able to muster any words at all given her manager at Chelsea, Emma Hayes, spent the hours after reaching the final in a haze of joyful tears.

Her itinerant career comprises a shower of titles from three continents, her spell at Chelsea — where she is understood to be earning £500,000 a year — providing more than half the silverware. Previously, she would play in the US over the summer and then, come October, return home to Australia to compete in the W-League. Success against Barcelona today would yield her sixth winners’ medal for Chelsea in 497 days, having made her debut on January 5, 2020. It would also make her the third Australian to play in a Champions League final, close to two years on from becoming the first to score a World Cup hat-trick. Fewer than five Australians have ever represented either senior Chelsea team.

Kerr (right) celebrates the Fran Kirby goal that sealed Chelsea’s 4-1 win over Bayern Munich and fired them into the Champions League final (Photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

From her car in Perth, where she has run on her lunch break, Roxanne tells The Athletic how she found out her daughter had signed for Chelsea. She and Sam’s grandmother, Coral, had flown to Chicago, where Kerr was racing towards the NWSL Golden Boot, and entered her apartment to see a blue Chelsea shirt. “And nobody was allowed to know because she didn’t want it out before Chelsea announced it,” she says. “I was very excited, because I love London. I thought I would have had four or five trips by now.”

Kerr’s arrival on UK shores garnered unprecedented media attention — photographers were docked at Heathrow to capture her wheeling her way through international arrivals and followed her all the way to the waiting black cab — and this season’s Women’s Super League Golden Boot has left her and Hayes vindicated after a tricky first few weeks; not that there was ever any real doubt she would come good, but only this season has Kerr been able to show us the full contents of her armoury.

“I’m so happy for her,” says Roxanne, “because she didn’t score in those first couple of games and she’s so used to scoring. Every time she spoke to me, it was about the cold — she really struggled with that. We watched every game and she was nearly there, but I could see that she was beating herself up a little bit.” Kerr’s mum doled out the usual pearls of wisdom: “You’re trying too hard and it will come.”

“She wasn’t putting away goals that she normally would do with the eyes closed. I think she was just so nervous. But once she got that first one, you knew that it would start happening because she gets a rhythm and a confidence, and she’s happy.”

On current form, a third Ballon d’Or nomination feels inevitable. Her closest rival is Chelsea team-mate Fran Kirby, though it is a stretch to say the pair are in competition, they have instead glided through the season with their irresistible glee and elan, combining for 52 of the club’s 120 goals.

The moment it clicked for Kerr was when, after months of being assisted by Kirby and a year on from her Chelsea debut, she was finally able to return the favour as her strike partner scored four against Reading in January. “From then on, I was like, ‘OK — this is going to become something now. I’m going to make it my goal to not only get goals off Fran, but to help her score’,” she said. “When we play fast football, no one can keep up with us.

“When you give the ball to Fran, you know you’re going to get it back. Whether I’m making a run to take a defender away or making a run to get the ball, it’s always easy to play with her because she’s so unselfish. I don’t even have to look. I just know that Fran’s going to be there. It looks telepathic.”

Perhaps they were fated to play together. Maybe there is an alternate universe in which Kirby and Kerr never met. It could easily have been this one; 14,528 km separate Kirby’s birthplace in Reading from Kerr’s in East Fremantle, Western Australia. Kerr might never have picked up a football — she began her sporting career, famously, as an Australian Rules player until the opportunities in that sport dried up for girls when she was 12 — were it not for a visit to her cousin’s house shortly after quitting her first love. She initially refused a trial for the state side. Roxanne recalls the coach telling the family Sam was the first person to ever say no to him.

A young Kerr adorns the programme for the 2006 Qantas National Youth Championships for Girls

Then there was the injury in 2015: a Lisfranc fracture, where the metatarsal bones are dislodged and the foot, to put it simply, falls apart. Or, in Roxanne’s words, the bones “spread like there’s no support. It really can be career-ending”.

It nearly was for Kerr, whose Olympics dream was left hanging by a thread. She had a plate fitted in her foot and the Australian Olympic Committee wanted her back for their Olympic qualifiers in Japan. Roxanne drove her to the local park and would “video her running so they can see how she was, and I could just tell that there was no way she was going to get there. She always says, ‘I don’t realise how much I love football until something like this happens’.” Kerr made it to the Olympics though, later saying: “I had many conversations crying on the phone to Mum, telling her I didn’t want to do it any more.”

And there is the fact that Sam might not have ended up in Australia at all had her ancestors not upped sticks decades before she was born.

Roxanne’s father hails from Cork in Ireland — born in 1931, he recently turned 90, making him the oldest of 101 (yes, 101) grandchildren — and her mother’s side are from England.

Kerr’s grandmother on her maternal side was the only child of six to be born in Australia as both families emigrated by ship — “It took forever and I suppose half of them were convicts,” says Roxanne — landing in Freemantle, near Perth, with a £10 stipend.

Many who made the journey to Australia in the early 20th century were British migrants seeking a more prosperous life in another part of the Empire. After the First World War, Australia sought to expand its population in the event of further conflict and its government offered assisted passage, jobs and land grants to potential arrivals.

“Fremantle is where the heart of football is,” Roxanne adds.

On Baal Street, Palmyra, tucked behind spindle-fingered trees, stands the russet silhouette of the Sunlight Bakery. It is a museum now, due to restoration by the local council circa 1988, and you wonder how many of those who walk between the shelves lined with pewter kettles and ersatz bread know it was run by Kerr’s great grandparents in its heyday.

“They used to deliver the bread by horse and cart,” says Roxanne. There is a photograph in the State Library of Western Australia of a horse, Barney, guiding a rickety cart with “Bakers” painted on one side in white. Roxanne’s father became a sheet metal worker, helping build the now-demolished railway lines along the south.

Roxanne’s great grandmother purchased huge plots of land and gave them to her 14 children as wedding presents. Back then, Roxanne’s parents were allowed to keep racehorses in their back garden. Her uncle, JJ Miller, won the 1966 Melbourne Cup — the country’s most famous horse race — on a horse called Galilee. Her cousin, David Neesham, represented Australia in water polo at three Olympics and was inducted into the Water Polo Australia Hall of Fame in 2010. Her other cousin, Danny, is 73 and still riding horses, making him, Roxanne claims, “the oldest jockey in Australia”. There are “probably about 10 Australia Rules footballers” in the family, Roxanne says, including her father, some uncles and her son Daniel — Sam’s brother, 10 years her senior. Her husband, too.

Maybe such a sprawling family — Roxanne is one of 10 children — was always, by the law of averages, bound to spawn some sporting talent. The introduction of Sam’s father, Roger, makes the gene pool more enviable still, and there can be few families, barring the Osmonds and the Jacksons, with as many Wikipedia pages between them.

Born in Calcutta, Roger’s English father was a featherweight boxer for Bengal and his Indian mother played basketball. India had just gained independence from British rule: Coral Kerr, his mother, worked for a British paint company and his father, an Anglo-Indian, on the railways. Amid the violence of India’s final partition, they moved to Australia. The original plan had been to move to Melbourne but doctors warned that Roger’s father would struggle with the cold. They arrived in Perth when Roger was 10.

His and Roxanne’s introduction was something of a meet-cute. “He lived around the corner from me and I was riding past on my bike and we had a little bit of an altercation because of his dog,” she recalls, “My friend said one day, ‘Would you like to come and meet these really nice people that just moved over here?’ and it was him. I’m like, ‘These are the people we had a fight with last week!’”

They flew Coral back to India for an Anglo-Indian reunion and learned that she’d had an ayah, or a nursemaid, as well as “someone to sweep the floor, someone to walk the children to school, someone to take the children at lunch. She got taken to work every day and came home and everything was done, so she never learned how to do anything”. Aged 28, Coral then arrived in Australia with no domestic skills. “She went to the butcher and she bought sausage meat to make mince curry,” says Roxanne.

Roxanne’s uncle Michael was a professional Aussie Rules footballer and Roger moved in opposite.

“He grabbed Roger and took him to football, and something clicked,” says Roxanne proudly. He played more than 100 times in seven years of professional football. The highs and lows of his playing, and later coaching, career informed Roxanne’s handling of Sam as her daughter’s career lurched from fledgling to its apogee.

“Once you get up there, people just want to knock you down, but we don’t take much notice of it,” says Roxanne. “I would say to someone, ‘You think it’s OK for us to criticise my son or my husband and my daughter, but if I said something about your child, you’d be upset. What’s the difference?’. ‘Oh, yours are professionals’.

“I don’t think it gets any easier or harder. You just learn more, that this is the way it is.”

The Kerr family, with Sam pictured left, dad Roger (back row, left), brother Daniel (back row, middle) mum Roxanne (front row, second from right) and grandmother Coral (right)

One needs a human touch to raise two children embedded in elite sport, especially when Roxanne was en route to New Zealand and received a phone call from a coach to say that Sam was out of sorts. She was missing her school ball for her training camp. By then, she had already missed so much, so the federation sent her home the next Friday and Roxanne drove her to town on Saturday to pick out her dress.

“It was hard at the beginning because they travelled so much,” she remembers. Kerr had travelled with the Australian national team since she was 13 and was in her late teens when she moved to New York, the family separated by an ocean, an equator, 18,690km and a 12-hour time difference.

“Parents used to say to me, ‘How do you do it? I cry when my son goes on school camps and your daughter’s going halfway across the world?’ I’m like, ‘Just something you do’. I worry but I’m never going to stop them living their dreams. Sam doesn’t worry much about anything but she reckons I start crying before we’re 20 minutes out from the airport. Every time she dropped me in America, she’d say, ‘Bring the tissues because Mum will be crying the whole way there’. But she doesn’t.”

The Kerrs have a routine for big games: time difference permitting, the family convene at Roxanne’s house and they watch Sam play over dinner, surrounded by their nephews and niece.

A first-leg deficit meant Chelsea had to score twice at Kingsmeadow against Bayern Munich to progress to this Champions League final. The second leg earlier this month was locked at 2-1, the only scoreline that would bring extra time, for 41 minutes. “I was like, ‘They have to score this many goals’,” says Roxanne. “I never thought they would. I was so nervous, and I’ll be like that on Sunday. I won’t be able to sleep.”

The final will be shown at 2.30am in the Kerrs’ part of Australia.

Roxanne has predicted a 3-1 Chelsea win in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, but she lives in dread of a penalty shootout. “I’ll probably get up at one o’clock and walk around for an hour and a half, waiting for the game,” she says. “They’ve done us proud just getting there but now you want them to go all the way. I’ll set my alarm and we’ll all get up and watch it.”

There will be few complaints, you feel, at the early start if Kerr and Chelsea become European champions tonight.

#sam kerr #chelsea women #chelsea fcw

[thetruthaboutbeliza]

The Truth

A thread of Beliza’s innocence. 

To start out the Pilot for The 100 was filmed in July of 2013 and Season 1 started filming in August of 2013. This would’ve been when Bob and Eliza first became friends. It IS possible they had a brief fling during this time, however there’s nothing to confirm or deny that. 

It’s believed that Bob started dating a girl named Jane Gosden sometime in 2014 and they broke up sometime in 2015. I had trouble finding information about Jane originally and the only source I had found online said they dated 2014-2015 however, that is incorrect. They were together for a few years and broke up some time after May 2014. Jane actually still has quite a few photos on her Instagram of her and Bob together and her with his family. She still interacts with Bob’s sister on a frequent basis as well. I’m still not 100% sure when they started dated but, they were at least together from 2012-2014.

Bob and Arryn met in April 2015 at Supanova in Australia. We know this by photos of them at the con together. Below you can see Bob in the green hat in the back next to Arryn. Barbara is also in the center there in light blue. There are a few other photos of Arryn, Barb, and Bob hanging out during Supanova. 

Arryn and Miles Luna were dating from 2010 until some time in mid 2015 (either May, June, or July). They wrote blog posts confirming their break up in August 2015 and stated they’d been broken up for a little while but didn’t want to announce it until after RTX. In Arryn’s post detailing their break up it is important to note she cited Australia as a reason for their break up.

Everyone wants to attack Bob and Eliza for “moving on quickly” from their exes, specifically Bob from Arryn but, Arryn literally left Miles for Bob. Did they cheat? I don’t know. No one does. But she clearly fell for Bob during Supanova and decided to leave her family/friends/boyfriend behind and pursue Bob and a life in LA. Now it is important to note that she said she wasn’t moving until the END of September 2015. At that point in time she was ALREADY traveling quite frequently out to Vancouver. Vancouver is where The 100 filmed. Some of the cast had photos with her during this time, she was being tagged in posts with them and Bob, her and Bob were talking often on Twitter, and in some of her photos that were more “cryptic” (ie. photos of her at a coffee shop with her and someone else’s shoes) she mentioned something about “Aussies knowing how to do it right.” Bob is Australian. 

So sometime in July 2015 she started traveling often to Vancouver. August 2015 she officially announces her split from Miles but stated they’d been broken up for a bit but didn’t want to tell anyone until after RTX and that she’d be moving to LA to “pursue her dreams” by the end of September 2015. This pretty much confirms that the Anon Twitter account TruevFalse was correct in stating that Arryn still lived with her ex Miles for a brief time when her and Bob started dating. We don’t have the EXACT date/time of them officially starting to date but they were clearly talking seriously July-Aug 2015 if she was flying out that often to Vancouver where he was filming. At some other point she later specifically stated that she moved to LA for Bob. I’m not sure if this was in stream or where she stated this but, I’ve seen multiple people cite that she said that. Confirming she broke up with Miles for Bob. That alone should stop people from automatically attacking Bob and Eliza for getting together quickly. Was it quick? Yes. Even IF that had been cheating like Arryn claims - they wouldn’t have been in a relationship. Having an affair isn’t a real relationship and getting married a few months after officially dating is still fairly fast - cheating or not - but, that’s not for anyone else to comment on. Plenty of people have done something similar - hell some people get married weeks after meeting someone. When you know, you know. But if you’re going to attack them automatically for moving quickly, “Eliza stealing Bob”, or Bob leaving Arryn for Eliza - then you should be equally upset with Arryn for doing the same thing previously to be with Bob.

On to the abuse allegations. She states that Bob was controlling and isolated her from her family and friends and that she had no friends in LA. But that’s 100% HER doing. As I stated, she literally LEFT her boyfriend/friends/family/job to move out to LA where she knew no one to be with Bob. If you’re telling me he forced her to do all of that before they were even dating - you’re crazy. I do believe she left to pursue a better future in LA but, her main motive for moving was Bob. From there he then invited her into his group of friends (The 100 cast) and quite often she was out with certain members of the cast WITHOUT Bob present. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a controlling/abusive relationship but, I have. Also doing any sort of research on the topic will come to a very similar conclusion: abusers/controlling partners do not want you to have ANY friends, they especially don’t want you hanging out with THEIR friends outside of them being with you, and if they don’t like someone they tell you not to be friends with them, associate with them, or hang around them. Arryn was with The 100 cast a ton, like I said, a lot of times she was with them without Bob around. She quite often did photoshoots when she was home in LA with a friend, and she was still constantly hanging out with Barbara. My reason for bringing Barbara up is a few. 1) Arryn claimed Bob specifically didn’t like Barbara and thought she was a bad friend. This *could* be true, who knows. But if we’re going by Arryn claiming Bob was controlling, then he would’ve told her not to be friends with Barbara. Period. Now yes, Arryn would’ve had to see Barbara on occasion for cons or while they were doing promotion work for RWBY but, he probably would’ve told her to limit her interaction with Barbara during those times and outside of that - not communicate with her. That is what an abuser/controller does. 2) My other reason for bringing Barbara into this is because of Barbara’s boyfriend Trevor Collins and his ex Emily. Emily has talked about the abuse she suffered from Trevor for years during their relationship. She was much younger than he was and when they started dating he was controlling/abusive. She specifically stated she was NOT allowed to be friends with his friends or talk to them unless he was around and that he cheated on her with a co-worker (Barbara) and that they manipulated her by calling her crazy while she had suspicions but they denied it. Now that sounds awfully familiar to Arryn’s story and it’s quite hypocritical for Arryn to know her best friend did this and then to hate Eliza for “doing the same thing”. Here are pieces of Emily’s statement/story. Did Arryn steal part of her story for her own? I can’t say for sure. It’s also important to note Trevor is part of RTX which Miles, Barbara, and Arryn were/are a part of and that the “friend group” Emily was referring to probably included Arryn but, I’m not 100% sure on that.

Another part of Arryn’s story was that Bob FORCED her to be friends with Eliza. So he can FORCE her to be friends with someone but can’t FORCE her to not be friends with Barbara even though she specifically mentions he didn’t like her? She said he forced her to be friends with Eliza even though he had told her he “hated” Eliza but, I’m not sure when he would’ve possibly hated her as Eliza and Bob have been friends since filming began. There’s never not been interaction/photos/hanging out of those two. They’ve always been adamant about being best friends/super close. And Arryn was often seen with Eliza, again, without Bob around. I could imagine Bob trying to force her to be friends/friendly with Eliza while he brought Eliza around but, it’s incredibly odd he’d somehow force Arryn to hang out with Eliza on her own. 

On to the accusation of Bob being a biphobe and that he was not happy with her being bisexual. This one is just incredibly wrong for multiple reasons. Firstly, a few people defending Arryn have stated Bob has never shown any sort of support for Bisexuals or LGBTQ and that’s false. He’s actually been fairly vocal (to Bob’s standards anyways as he’s not very vocal on Social Media in general) about LGBTQ rights/support and has commented quite a few times about how proud he was to be a part of a show where they had a leading lady being Bisexual. Bob was also part of one of Australia’s first gay kiss scenes on tv. He went to Pride with Richard well before Arryn ever did and according to her statement she says “when he found out I was bisexual he was furious” but Arryn has always been openly Bisexual. She was constantly talking about it during on twitter during the time they were constantly tweeting each other back and forth before she officially broke up with Miles. There’s no possible way Bob didn’t know Arryn was bisexual before dating her. If he was biphobic, he simply wouldn’t have dated her, nor would he constantly be showing support for LGBTQ over the years. Arryn also frequently talked about being Bisexual still while they were dating. She was never not open about that. 

Those above are some of the times he’s been vocal about Bisexual/LGBTQ rights/support. He’s also a fan of Tegan and Sara and has liked a few posts of theirs. Then we have the post from yesterday of Eliza talking about being proud to represent Bisexuals by playing Clarke and Bob taking the photo/liking the post.

With Arryn deactivating her Twitter I can’t go through and find all the times she was open about being Bisexual while with Bob but, here are two instances I could find. So she never stopped talking about her sexuality while with Bob.

One of the biggest holes in Arryn’s story is when she talks about how she got a rental property for her and Bob in Australia and after doing the paperwork and moving everything in, shortly after he dumped her to be with Eliza and that they stole the place from her and that he never intended for that to be their place. The first thing about that is there was never a place in Australia - the place in Australia that Bob and Eliza have was BOUGHT by them and is NOT the place Arryn is referring to. I was incorrect about this statement - I got confused and thought Arryn had said in her statement that the house was in Australia but, she said “The Hills” and I remembered seeing some fans attacking Bob for posting photos of their house in Australia on his cover on Facebook as “rubbing it in her face” and combined those in my head. So I apologize. 

The place Arryn is referring to is the rental place in LA. I’m not sure how she made that error or why she didn’t correct it but, there’s that. So Eliza and Bob “stole” the rental home from her but, later on in her statement she confirms that she actually DID live in the rental house and that she left because she got spooked when fans found out she was looking for roommates since she couldn’t afford to live there by herself. She states that herself and plenty of fans have confirmed remembering seeing her looking for roommates during that time. Bob gave her the place originally, she couldn’t afford it and got scared, so she gave it back to him. That is the house where Bob and Eliza are currently staying at during quarantine in LA.  Now according to Eliza’s story of when her and Bob got together she states that she had signed a one year lease with her friend Nina in Vancouver sometime in Feb. 2019 and in March 2019 when they were unpacking Bob came over and asked her on a date. Going back to Arryn’s story, this couldn’t be true since according to her they were having an affair for at least 6 months that she knew of and that her getting their rental house in LA in December 2018 was essentially for Bob and Eliza she just didn’t know that at the time. These photos from Nina’s Instagram/Stories confirm Eliza’s side of the story.

So Eliza was still with Nina until at least May 2019. It wasn’t until June 2019 that Eliza was officially living with Bob and they had gotten Panda. 

If they stole this place from her, why did they not move in together until June?

Another part of Arryn’s story is about how she “caught” them together on camera while she was in New Zealand. That trip by the way, she was with her mother while Bob was home in LA recovering from knee surgery. She went on a trip with her mother (aka family that Bob isolated her from) while he was recovering from surgery. You’d think someone controlling would force her to stay and take care of them. Shortly after she “caught” them cheating, she publicly announced how much she missed Eliza and wished her a happy birthday via Instagram. So this was the “6 months” she was referring to, she “caught” them together, and then 6 months later in Feb 2019 he dumped her for Eliza. However, up until Jun 2019 (when they officially married/moved in together), Arryn was STILL friendly with them both on social media. Now I understand people want to say “well she was brainwashed by them, it makes sense”. Again, if you’ve been in a situation like this the moment you’re free from your abuser/s you cut the chord. It makes no sense she’d continue to be friendly with them both AFTER catching them cheating, AFTER he dumped her for Eliza and “stole” the house she got for them, and AFTER escaping her abuser. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and she did still feel the need to be attached to her abuser/s for a while after the break up, why was it that when she caught them cheating 6 months prior did she only claim she felt betrayed by one of her close friends and cut them off completely in June 2019 after Beliza announced their marriage? She had no problem cutting off the “betrayer” then. 

The youtube video below is an interview featuring Barbara and Arryn May 14th 2019 where at she talks about the betrayal. She says she had a friend betray a huge amount of trust even though they thought they were close and the best way to deal with it was to cut them completely off. (This was clearly about Eliza and is around the 53:00 mark). Mind you, going back to her statement she claims Bob “forced” them to be friends. In this same interview she also talks about getting a therapist (around 10:49 mark) “for no reason in particular” and “doesn’t know what she even needs help with” other than her anxiety and feeling like she didn’t want to dump all her problems on friends and wanted someone to talk to. She talks very light hearted about it and in no way indicates that she’s seeking therapy for an abusive relationship or anything similar. While watching this interview, at (29:40) is where she actually confirms moving to LA with a significant other. Confirming earlier that she left Miles for Bob. She also says that she found most of her friends were through said significant other (Bob) and although she’s friends with them even though they aren’t together anymore, she doesn’t have too many friends outside of that relationship but, (again she’s very light-hearted talking about this) that it’s because she spent so much time around them that your friends become theirs and vise versa and that she “really doesn’t want to make friends because she’s comfortable being alone”. She later (around 42:00) talks about how pretty much ALL of her friends have been because of boyfriends. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBtaCp_5Ro&ab_channel=RoosterTeeth

Now then, in her other statement she mentions her relationship with Miles briefly because people brought up that she cheated on him. She states “they were consenting adults in their relationship and he was okay with me being with a woman”. This is only true to a degree - he was technically okay with it, however she cheated FIRST, she started making out with a girl while drunk and he saw it and him and his friends thought it was “hot”. Afterwards she asked him if it was fine and he said “yes because I’m right here and it’s hot”. He also basically implies that he’d be “okay” with his girlfriend cheating with another girl but not a man. This is all from HIS mouth. Not only is all of that completely derogatory to bisexuals (I’m bi just FYI), it cancels out her statement of them talking about her being with another girl beforehand and him being okay with it because they did NOT talk about it before. He simply said he was okay with her being bi. 

Here’s the video: https://twitter.com/klarkbell/status/1294995706906849281?s=20 In her statement she also claims that Bob cheated on his previous ex (Jane) with Eliza. How would she know this first of all? And secondly, Jane is actually still close with his family. I can’t imagine she would be if he cheated on her. Especially because they dated for a little over a year where him and Arryn dated for over 3 years. Bob’s family cut off Arryn but, not Jane. It’s also a bit odd to me that Arryn’s mother is still friends with Bob’s mother. Terry is Bob’s mother, Bev is Arryn’s. 

Next we have the video that stirred Arryn’s statement to begin with where she was on stream saying “the last two women I dated were batshit, actually most women are batshit” and then proceeded to say that she has a history of dating “psychopaths and narcissists”. These are all incredibly gross statements and if you find yourself claiming that ALL of your relationships are either psychos, narcissists, and/or batshit - you should probably check yourself.

https://twitter.com/klarkbell/status/1302700329138565122?s=20

She says she’s terrified of Bob, always has been and still is. However, she never once claimed he was physically abusive. I don’t know a single person who’s been emotionally/mentally abusive who has ever used the term “afraid” when talking about the abuser. The ex I had that was controlling and the ex I had that was mentally abusive both had a lot of issues, they were assholes, toxic, and terrible partners but, I was never once afraid of them. I’ve dealt with a narcissist (actually the ex of my partner who has bullied/harassed me, not an ex of my own) and while being a pathological liar is a trait of a narcissist - it doesn’t make you automatically a narcissist to be a pathological liar and/or toxic. Nothing she describes = narcissist. So it’s not okay that she uses that term to describe Bob or any of her exes. Talk to anyone who’s been physically abused and you’ll get the statement of them being scared and/or terrified. However, you’ll also get a vastly different reaction from them compared to Arryn’s on how they speak about the abuse they endured and their abuser. If you’re scared of someone after being abused, you don’t call them names, you don’t laugh about name calling, or about the abuse you endured (no, not even to “break tension”), you’re terrified - you’re scared of speaking out extremely vocally because of “what they might do to you”. I’d also like to mention it’s extremely rare for the abuser to dump the victim. They’re controlling/abusive to KEEP you around, they SCARE you to KEEP you around. Not dump you to be with someone else. 

Abusive people also don’t just magically change/get better. They have a history of being this way and more often than not continue to be that way to future partners. Arryn claims Bob wasn’t supportive of anything she did, didn’t let her sing/do music, isolated her from family and friends, refused therapy. Yet, with Eliza it’s incredibly different. She’s always with friends/family and he’s often with them as well. She sings/does music as well and he’s supportive of it and everything she does including her foundation. And, he’s in therapy. They both are so she can figure out how to be a better partner for him due to his extreme depression/suicidal thoughts. I’d also like to remind you that Bob bought Arryn a new keyboard for her birthday one year and was supportive of her being in a friend’s music video in 2018.

Arryn was told at some point in a stream I guess about Bob going to therapy and she said something along the lines of “good for him although I doubt he’s changed”. If she didn’t think it was possible he could change, why did she say she tried to get him into therapy and he refused for years? Why would he refuse therapy but, go into therapy within months of being with Eliza? Since breaking up with Arryn, Bob has been incredibly vocal on social media about his mental health struggles where when he was with her he was fairly silent. He occasionally posted support for mental health awareness but, nothing compared to what he does now. Almost like his mental health got incredibly bad while dating Arryn and he was hiding it from the public/not allowed to talk about it. 

I want to say that the abuse and harassment Arryn apparently endured from The 100 fans while dating Bob and even after is completely uncalled for and I do feel bad that she had to go through that. No one deserves that. However, it’s important to also remember that there is absolutely NOTHING Bob could’ve done to stop that. Nothing he could say that would force people to stop saying shit. People are going to do what they are going to do regardless. True fans, should’ve been happy for him and supported his relationship. No celebrity can control their fans and the few times some of them have spoken out about their fans doing shit like this - nothing happened or it made the fans worse. Bottom line is fans have a problem of feeling entitled and that celebrities/their fav should listen to them. People didn’t like Arryn and nothing Bob said was going to change that. It’s incredibly naive to hold anyone accountable for someone else’s behavior. Much the same as Arryn isn’t able to control her fans doing the SAME thing to Beliza now. Bob and Eliza have both always been very open about how they don’t approve of bullying, harassment, and that you should “be kind”. That alone should be enough for fans to know not to harass/bully someone. They’ve both received hate mail, death threats, been told it’s good Eliza had a miscarriage and they hope she’s sterile, had mail sent to their house, etc. and they haven’t openly talked about that. They haven’t “told fans to knock it off”. Hell their marriage was literally found out by fans before they wanted to announce it because they found Eliza’s number and called her. That’s crossing a line too and harassing them but, they STILL didn’t say anything publicly. They instead announced their marriage and just said “we ask for privacy during this time”. So it makes no sense that you’d expect them or ANY celebrity for that matter - to have control over their fans, “force” their fans to stop doing shit, and blame them for what their fans do/have done. 

I do not believe that Bob is completely innocent. I believe their relationship was incredibly toxic and bad for them both and they probably brought out the worst in each other. I don’t doubt they had yelling matches and probably said mean things to one another. However, I 100% believe it was a MUTUAL thing. Arryn is NOT innocent or the victim/survivor and Bob is NOT the animal she’s making him out to be. It sounds more like she, not only felt betrayed by Bob and Eliza getting together, but that she was tired of their fans harassing her for years and continuing even after they broke up/got together that the only thing she could think to do was release a statement and throw Bob completely under the bus to save herself. If she’s painted as the victim and Bob the villain then surely the harassment will stop. Especially with how people blindly believe any statement released in regards to abuse or rape. After experiencing years of harassment she only decides to deactivate her twitter after people poked holes in her story and she realized not everyone believed her and she was STILL getting harassment. Again, she doesn’t deserve the constant harassment. I believe that is what pushed her to this point. No, it’s not okay that she’s lied and done this by any means but, I think she felt backed into a corner and lashed out. I can understand where she’s coming from, even though it doesn’t excuse it or make it right. 

One last note, something I remembered: she specifically stated Bob was the reason she deactivated Youtube and stopped posting/being on social media as much. However, she slowly stopped doing that while with Miles and in her statement about breaking up with him said she’d be taking a hiatus from Youtube but, would be back. However, I think she just decided against that because she wanted to unplug and live life. 

Now one of the major things everyone says is proof of her statement is that Bob has been silent. I’d like to remind you that usually guilty parties deny deny and are vocal. Bob’s silence is more proof to me that he’s innocent. He knows no matter what he says - won’t matter. If he denies it, people will say he’s lying. The victim/survivor wants to move on, they want to forget the abuser, don’t acknowledge them and just want to be happy. All of the things BOB is doing, not Arryn. I’ve seen people say “if he’s innocent he’d sue her for slander” however, how is that any different than the countless rape/physical abuse victims that don’t come forward or call the cops/take them to court? They don’t want to relive all that. They want to move on. The damage has already been done with her statement, same way as even though Amber Heard was proven a liar in court - the damage was/is done. Johnny still isn’t going to be able to work with Disney again, certain people STILL defend Amber despite the court findings/evidence. What would be the purpose of him denying it? The man is in therapy because he incredibly depressed/suicidal and looks so much happier/healthier in his marriage with Eliza. He just wants to leave it all behind. Denying it/suing her will just continue the lengthy process of moving on from everything and re-stir the pot. I’d also like to throw in there the fact that proving emotional/mental abuse is incredibly hard so it’s not like taking her to court over slander would really do anything. Johnny was able to fight his case because it was physical abuse and there was countless amounts of evidence/witnesses/documents/photos etc. Most people don’t have any solid evidence against mental/emotional abuse because it happens in person/in the moment. Unless you’re recording everything, you won’t have proof. It’s just he said/she said. That’s why the majority of Arryn’s statement was about cheating and not the abuse. 

#tw abuse #trigger warning #beliza #arryn zech #bob morley #eliza taylor

[need-a-fugue]

Centennial Man

Summary: Bucky may not want to celebrate his birthday, but you’ll be damned if you let his 100th go by as just another day.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Cavity-inducing fluff.

You’re gone when he wakes, that side of the bed cold and empty.

He twists around, fingers idly gripping the crumpled sheets where your body should be, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth as he blinks the room into focus. It’s dim but not dark, a sliver of early morning light spilling in through the crack in the curtains, still drawn – unlike how he leaves them when he gets out of bed in the morning, tearing them open to bathe you in the offending light, forcing you to writhe and moan and finally get up.

But today… you’re already up.

He slowly turns back around, rubbing his stubbled face into the million thread count sheets you insisted on buying a few months back – new sheets for a new home! – before landing his eyes on the bedside clock. His brows pull tightly together, confusion tugging his frown even further. Nine o’clock? He lets out a groan and rolls onto his back, a knowing, “Damnit,” flowing languidly out of him as he rubs at his eyes.

You turned off the alarm. Of course you did. You turned off the alarm to keep him in bed and then you disappeared to go do… something. Even though he told you – repeatedly – to treat this just like any other damn day.

He hears the front door open, the crinkle of a paper sack, a sharp, “Ooop,” in your voice to likely mark a near trip or spill. And he pulls himself up and out of bed.

“What are you doing?” he asks, stepping out into the hallway, tugging a T-shirt over his head, not even bothering to do up the jeans he pulls on. He peers into the kitchen, parking it at the breakfast bar to watch as you merrily pluck item after item out of a large paper bag.

“I went to our corner bakery,” you state, not even turning to look at him, so intent on unpacking the goodies. “I got croissants,” you spin then, just long enough to offer a quick raised brow, “obviously,” and turn back to the counter. “A blueberry muffin. A lemon poppyseed. A bran muffin,” you intone slyly, whipping back around to face him. “Because old men like you need their fiber.”

“Ha, ha,” he spouts, grumpy frown still painted on his face.

You reach behind and grab a single plate from the counter, pluck a paper coffee cup with the other hand, and step over to the breakfast bar. “And,” you announce with a flair, setting the plate down in front of him, “pain au chocolate. Because it’s my baby’s birthday. And he deserves it.” You wiggle your brows playfully, getting met with little more than a dramatic eyeroll from Bucky.

He points to your other hand. “That coffee for me?”

“Of course,” you state, setting it down in front of him before rocking back on your heels, crossing your arms over your chest, and offering an almost chiding glare. “Black. Plain. Boring. Just like you.”

He plucks the plastic top, tosses it to the side. “I told you… I don’t do birthdays.”

“You did my birthday,” you say with a shrug.

“Yeah,” he says after downing a long, hot sip. “You would’ve thrown me out if I hadn’t.”

Your face twists with admonishment. “No,” you intone, narrowing your eyes severely. “You just like being the gift giver, the one who celebrates other people. The hero.”

“Making you dinner for your birthday makes me a hero?” he asks, lips finally quirking into a small, crooked smile, a hint of mirth twinkling in his eyes as you roll yours in annoyance. He plucks a pain au chocolate from the plate, takes a giant bite, devouring almost half the pastry at once. “This is it, right?” comes out of him amid buttery crumbs as he speaks around the food in his mouth. “No party… no nothing, right?”

Another eyeroll, this one so deep it almost hurts. “Really, I should just count my gift to you as talking Tony out of that damn party.”

He swallows thickly, takes another quick sip of coffee to wash down the pastry. “I don’t get it. He hates me. Why would he want to throw me a party anyway? Unless it’s because he hates me… and he knows I’d hate it.”

“First of all,” you mutter spinning back around to grab your own coffee off the counter, “He doesn’t hate you.” You shrug. “He just doesn’t like you. And yeah, you being annoyed by even just the thought of a birthday gathering probably gives him a monstrous hard on.”

“Could do without that image,” he mutters before shoving the rest of the croissant into his mouth.

“But really, that man will take any opportunity to throw a party. Don’t make this all about you.”

“My birthday,” he states simply. “Not about me. Got it.”

You sweep out of the kitchen, rounding the breakfast bar to pull up next to him. “Nat’s covering for you this morning – ”

“You could’ve just said that instead of turning off my alarm,” he interjects, a bit of an edge to his voice.

You give him a get real stare. “You still would’ve gotten up by six… still would’ve gone down to the gym. It’s your birthday, you can sleep in one damn day a year.”

“Mm-hmm,” he mutters, reaching out for the remaining chocolate pastry.

“Anyway,” you intone, swiftly plucking the treat from him and tearing it in half, returning only a portion to his waiting, open hand. “As I was saying… Natasha’s covering for you, so no work today. Steve wants to hang out, so I said I’d send you his way for a bit. But I need you back here by six.”

“Why?” he asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Because it would be rude to keep the mariachi band waiting,” you snipe. “Why do you think? We’re having dinner.”

“I don’t want to go out.”

“Good, ‘cause we’re staying in.”

His eyes widen, brow arching into an utterly incredulous expression. “Don’t take this the wrong way, doll, but I don’t want you to cook either. I might not want to celebrate my birthday, but that doesn’t mean I want to get food poisoning for it.”

“I’m not going to…” You let out a low, annoyed growl. “You’re the worst. Just go… do whatever you want to do for a few hours.”

He reaches out and captures you with his metal arm as you try to scurry off beyond him, back to the bedroom. “What if what I want to do is right here?”

You swat him away, aiming a pointed finger as you take a single, wide step back. “No,” you declare, trying – and failing – to keep your lips from curing into a devilish smile. “Not now. Not yet.”

He turns back to the breakfast bar with a grunt. A scoff. A bitter huff. “I gave you two orgasms before the sun even came up on your birthday.”

“Psht,” you scoff. “I was barely awake. Probably dream faking.”

He shakes his head slowly. “Nope. I rocked your world.”

Your eyes roll back so hard that this time it definitely does physically hurt. “You are such an old man.”

                                                               000

“You should have a little more faith in her,” Steve says with a chuckle as he swipes at his hair in the locker room mirror, pinching a chunk between his fingers and twisting.

Bucky snorts in reply, rolling his eyes at his friend’s – frankly alarming – love affair with 21st century hair products as he does little more than viciously rub a towel through his own just washed hair. A two-hour run. Some light sparring followed by heavy lifting. A long ass shower. And he’s finally ready to face whatever you have cooked up for him. Mostly.

“You’re acting like she’s gonna throw you a surprise party,” the still-preening super soldier says, barking out a quick laugh when Bucky turns on him with a raised, wary brow. “She’s not going to do something we all know you’d hate.”

“I hate celebrating my birthday,” he mutters vaguely as he tosses the towel into a hamper by the door and roughly pulls on a sweatshirt.

“You didn’t used to,” Steve says, finally turning away from the mirror and locking onto Bucky’s eyes with a rather gloomy cast. “Hell, you used to drag me around to every soda shop and dance hall in the city. Kept me out all night just because it was your birthday and you damn well had the right.”

Bucky shifts his eyes away, unable to see such memories – vague, unattainable recollections of his past life, an utterly other life – through the simple, reminiscent lens of his friend. “Yeah, well. That was a long time ago.”

“Alright,” he sighs out, an almost disappointed edge to his voice. “Well, for what it’s worth… happy birthday, Buck.” He whips on a stiff button down – ever the dapper fella – and begins to do it up, keeping the sour-looking man in his periphery. “And just… be nice.” He heads for the door, dropping a hand to Bucky’s shoulder as he goes, giving him a swift jostle as he states, “She’s trying to do something nice for you. Don’t be a jerk about it.”

He does little more than mutter in response – something bleak and unintelligible that comes out like a lazy grunt – and turns to follow him out of the locker room, out of the sprawling gym. Each reluctant step towards the elevator, then down the hall to your newly shared apartment, seems to stutter and slow, his entire body prickling in a heated hesitation.

Why is it so different now? he muses dimly. Why does celebrating feel so… wrong?

Because it shouldn’t be happening, that’s why. Because he never should’ve lived to be 100 to begin with. And the only reason he did is because he was transformed into some sort of ageless monster, designed to kill. To end life. There’s no reason why anyone should be celebrating the beginning of his.

But of course, he’d never say that to you, would never tell you that he was undeserving of kindness or love or even just a birthday dinner. He’d tried that once already, and it ended with him donning a split lip. Tough love, apparently, was a phrase to live by where you came from.

“Ah,” you squeak out, an animated leap accompanying the all too excited utterance as you flash a wide, bright smile the moment he steps through the door. “You’re back! Perfect timing!”

His eyes blow wide as he looks just past you, cocking his head to peer at the fully made table to your left. “What is all this?” he asks with a laugh, sauntering over to the pristine settings and pulling in a long breath through his nose, taking in the strong aroma of… “Steak?”

You nod. “But don’t worry. I didn’t make it. I promise.”

Another laugh, and the accompanying smile lingers easily on his face, strain lifting from his shoulders as he watches you slip over to the counter to pour a couple fingers of what looks to be damn fine whiskey into a crystal tumbler.

“Sit,” you demand, dangling the glass dangerously between thumb and forefinger, waving it slowly back and forth in front of his face.

He does as requested, dropping into the chair, and reaching up for the glass only to have you flop heavily into his lap instead. A surprised oof blows out of him, followed by an amused, “Hey,” as you settle in and take a single, slow sip. Your eyes close, the softest hum of pleasure slipping from your lips as he slides the whiskey from your hand. “Good?” he asks before taking a long pull himself. “Mm, yeah,” he mutters, swiping his tongue languidly over his lips. “That is good.”

You nod and lean over to hack away at the giant, bloody steak on the table. “This,” you say with a flourish as you spear a bite with the fork and bring it up to Bucky’s mouth, “is from Donovan’s. One of Tony’s favorite places.” You wait until he accepts the bite, his lips still curling into a sly grin, before you raise a brow and further explain, “He claims it’ll melt in your mouth.”

Bucky chews slowly, relishing the perfectly rare-cooked meat before swallowing it down and offering a pleased nod. You dive back in and steal a bite for yourself, agreeing with Tony’s assessment wholeheartedly as you leisurely chew before moving your fork over to pick at the massive baked potato. Bucky lets out an airy chuckle in your ear, leaning forward to drop a swift, whiskey-laden kiss at your temple. “Is this my birthday dinner or yours?” he asks as he slowly lifts the hem of your shirt and sneaks his cool metal digits beneath.

You jolt in his lap as he splays his icy palm over your ribs and lets out another light laugh. “Fine. Fine,” you mutter, feigning annoyance as you rise and hand over the fork. “I’ll just sit over here… all alone.” You lower yourself into the chair across from him, bottom lip pulling into an overdone pout, all in the hopes of getting even just one more precious, sunny laugh out of him.

It works too. One laugh, one smile, each bleeding easily into the next as you sit across from your 100-year-old counterpart. Your – sometimes better, sometimes worse – other half.

The two of you slip easily into the moment, enjoying a calm and leisurely – and delicious – dinner together. The few words that fall from either of your lips – all too often busy with the succulent steak, dripping-with-butter potato, oddly amazing brussels sprouts – are truly unneeded, talking feeling wholly underrated when you can simply bask in the presence of one another. And play a dangerously distracting game of footsie beneath the table.

Once the meal is over, both plates practically licked clean, you jump up to clear the dishes, eager to get at them before he tries to take over. You drop everything into the sink with a clank and a thud – wince when you hear him hiss out a disgruntled, “Easy, baby.” – and pour him another drink before turning to slowly back out of the kitchen, holding the whiskey up like a carrot as you beckon him into the other room.

“Where are we going?” he asks, wily expression on his face, his hands dropping down to your hips as he backs you into the hall.

He begins to turn, not-so-subtly angling towards the bedroom. But you shuffle your feet to a halt. “Uh, uh,” you intone with a shake of the head. “You still have to open your present.”

His fingers trail up your sides, even as his head drops, lips lowering to your exposed collarbone where he sucks a small, sweet, red blossom into your skin. “Yeah,” he mutters into you, flesh hand ducking beneath your shirt, pressing a hot palm to the small of your back. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“No,” you laugh out, stepping out of his loose grip and giving him a small shove. You tug his hand out from beneath your shirt, wrap his fingers around the whiskey glass, and saunter off to the other side of the room to dig out a small, wrapped package. “I just ate a potato that weighed like four pounds,” you say as you slump heavily onto the couch, neatly wrapped gift in hand. “I need some time before… that.”

He rolls his eyes, takes a long sip of sweet, brown liquor, and sets the tumbler down on the side table before sitting beside you. “Okay,” he mutters vaguely, that unsure look returning to his face. “How much time do you need to digest?”

You laugh, the bright and tinkling sound swiftly bringing back his delicate, crooked smile. “Shame we can’t all have a super soldier’s metabolism, huh?”

He cocks his head playfully. “Am I not being patient enough? I thought I was being very patient.”

You let out a rather indignant snort and toss the gift haphazardly into his lap. “Yeah, sure. Patient. Also grateful. And kind…”

He leans forward then, curling into the bend of your neck and peppering your skin with swift kisses. “I am grateful, baby,” he murmurs into you. “Always grateful for you.”

Your hand slinks up into his hair, fingertips dancing lightly along his scalp. “Well… as for the patience part… we still have cake to get to too.”

“Thought you were full,” he whispers softly, his lips, tongue, now tracing the line of your jaw.

“But it’s your favorite,” you state, craning your head to give him better access.

“You’re my favorite,” he mutters into you. “Best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“Well,” you intone thickly, pulling away just a bit, knowing full well that if you don’t manage to duck out of this now, you certainly won’t be able to later. “That is good to hear. But I have it on good authority that devil’s food cake is your favorite.”

“Really?” he asks, voice sounding utterly disinterested as he tugs you closer.

You nod. “Steve gave me your mom’s recipe.”

His lips still on your neck, body stiffening beside you. He pulls away with a start, confused look on his face. “My mom’s recipe?” You nod again, raising a questioning brow. “You made… my mom’s cake? For me?”

Your hand slowly slides down to cup his cheek, eyes shining brightly as you say simply, “Sure did, baby.”

He looks almost… lost. For a long moment, he does nothing but stare at you, seemingly assessing everything about you. His hand rises to your face, fingertips brushing lightly along your cheek, thumb dropping low to gently press into the center of your bottom lip. “You’re amazing. You know that?”

“I do,” you say, tone straight and serious, teasing quality playing only in your sparkling eyes. You give him a wide smile and a little shove, gaze dropping down to the package in his lap. “Now, open your present.”

That crooked smile returns, not quite a smirk, certainly not a leer. You’ve come to know it as one of his most sincere expressions, even if it isn’t quite as bright and broad as that ever-elusive beam that only occasionally breaks across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It sets off butterflies in your stomach just the same. Because both of those smiles are seemingly only ever directed at you.

He looks down at the gift with a sigh and gingerly tears into the wrapping, pulling it apart to reveal deep brown leather, thick and supple. He slides his fingers delicately over it, over the flat, soft surface, before pulling it out of the wrapping entirely and flipping it over in his hands.

“It’s a new journal,” you mutter, tone suddenly peppered with apprehension. He looks up, expression unreadable, and you give a short shrug. “You only ever write in those notebooks and… important things… like your memories? Those should have a nicer place to live.”

His eyes lighten to a luminous, icy blue as he continues to stare over at you, into you. “That’s really nice, baby,” he says softly. “I love it.” His gaze drops back down to the book in his hand, brow furrowing as he traces a finger over the sharp, ridged pattern running along the edges of the cover. “What’s this?”

“Oh,” you start, a hint of hesitation working into your tone. “Yeah. That.” You reach over and pick up the journal, flip it over to show him that the same etching stretches along the back as well. “It’s my heartbeat.”

His eyes fly up to meet yours, a quick chortle pulling from his chest. “What?” he barks out, glancing back at the design and noting now that, yes, it does appear to resemble an EKG readout.

“Yeah, I had someone in medical record it for me. And then I sent it off to some… leather smith or whatever they’re called to emboss it… or… whatever.” You shake your head dismissively. “Anyway, it’s 101 beats of my heart. One for every year you’ve been alive. Plus one to grow on.”

“You…” He sputters for a moment, still staring down at the journal, staring down at the very rhythm of your heart sitting in his hands. And then his face splits wide, that big, bright beam you’d been waiting for – hoping for – taking over as he raises his head and locks onto your eyes. “You crazy girl,” he laughs out, shaking his head fondly.

“Crazy?” you bleat out, only barely able to maintain the faux vexation. “I just gave you my heart… almost literally!”

“Still figuratively,” he states with a raised brow. “But I damn sure love it even more now.”

“Well, good,” you breathe out, reaching over and tugging back the cover. “Then hopefully you’ll forgive the fact that I took the liberty of filling in the first entry for you. Go on,” you prod as soon as you see his eyes drop to take in your sloppily scrawled words. “Read it.”

He settles back into the couch with a grin, holding the journal open with one hand as he clears his throat dramatically and begins. “Dear diary,” he reads aloud, choking suddenly on a laugh as he shakes his head lazily back and forth. “You think that’s how I start a journal entry?”

You shrug. “I don’t make it a habit of reading other people’s diaries, so I really wouldn’t know.”

“It’s a journal,” he corrects, both brows cocked high as he leans back to peer down at you.

You merely roll your eyes in response, tapping the open book impatiently in a swift and silent order for him to continue.

He returns to the page, corner of his mouth quirking into a crooked grin as you press yourself into his side, laying your head atop his shoulder. “Today is my 100th birthday,” he goes on coolly. “My wonderful, brilliant, patient, funny, charismatic, beautiful, delightful, best damn girl,” he breathes out with a snicker, “treated me to breakfast in bed.”

“You were supposed to still be in bed,” you gripe from his side.

He goes on, gentle amusement and utter adoration blooming in his gut, as he reads aloud, “She’s really the best.”

You snake even closer, wrapping your arms around his bicep and singing out, “It’s true.”

He gives a slight nod and returns to the entry. “She ordered steak from the best place in town. Diary, you do not want to know how much that cow cost.” His head cocks towards you, single brow raising in an almost admonishing way. Again, you shrug and tick your eyes back to the page, encouraging him to go on. He does so, uttering, “Then she gave me her heart,” with a gentle fondness.

“I really am a peach,” you mutter, turning your face just a bit and pressing a lingering kiss onto his shoulder.

“You are, baby,” he agrees, dropping his lips to your hair for a moment before returning to finish the entry. He clears his throat again and continues with, “It was simply the best birthday I’ve had in all my hundred years. And the best part of all was the homemade cake, which my girl made with equal parts chocolate and love.” Another snicker escapes him, though it chokes and sputters in his throat as he reads the next sentence, uttering slowly, “and then wore like a nighty so I could lick icing off her thighs all night long.”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky imagine #marvel fanfic #bucky barnes imagine #avengers fanfiction #bucky x oc #Bucky Barnes

[crowdedimagines]

Babysitter - David Dobrik (2)

merry christmas to you because i’ve decided to make this a little series! happy holidays y’all, keep the feedback coming

PART ONE

I manage to get the girls fed and ready for the day without crossing David again. I think he’s taking a shower to get ready for the day. We have lots of things planned before going to the Streamys tonight.

“Wait, you’re kidding me, right?” Natalie huffs.

“What? Isn’t L.A going to be the best place to go shopping anyway?”

Natalie rolls her eyes, obviously upset that I put off buying a dress until the day of. I usually don’t procrastinate too much, but it was too hard to decipher between what was too dressy and too casual.

“Is there not a place we can go?”

“Yeah, I want to go shopping anyway.” Ester smiles. If I know that both of these girls are always down for shopping.

Natalie picks up her phone to move some things around and trying to figure out where to find a dress.

“Yeah, we can go right now. I’ll go check and see if David wants to come with. I know he needs to film soon.”

She disappears to go ask him, I’m glad she didn’t make me do it. David and I almost kissed. I’ve wanted that on and off for years, but now that it’s almost happened, I’m scared. How am I supposed to act around him now? What is supposed to come out of this?

“David is going to drop us off.” Natalie announces.

“Great.” I smile.

Right after that we all leave, piling into the Tesla. I look out the window as I watch the palm trees pass by. It’s December and it’s easily twice the temperature outside of back home in Chicago. It’s nice and relaxing, no scraping ice off of your car.

“-Y/n!”

“What?” I ask, suddenly turning, I hadn’t realized anyone was trying to grab my attention.

“I asked, what kind of dress are you getting?” Sara repeats.

I smile and turn a little in my seat to look at her. I love that these girls are still young enough to care about what I like and that they give me opinions. When they grow up I’m going to be crushed.

“I’m not sure yet. I haven’t a clue!”

“You should wear something blue, with glitter!” Sara decides.

“No way, that sounds so ugly!” Ester turns to argue with her sister. I bite back a smile listening to them argue back and forth over what in their young opinion is a beautiful dress. They only have a year and a half age difference, but they’re night and day sometimes.

“Wear red.” David’s voice suddenly grabs all of our attention.

“Red?” I ask, looking to see him in his rearview mirror. It’s the first time we’ve really exchanged words since this morning.

“Yeah, your prom dress was red. You look best in red.”

“Thanks.”

Natalie, thankfully, doesn’t comment on the awkward tension. Normally, I wouldn’t be so quiet towards a compliment. I can tell she’s picking up on it by the way she’s watching David from her side eye.

Eventually we make it the mall, David drops us off. He’s going to be back soon, he just needs to film a bit with Josh Peck who doesn’t live far away and then he’ll be back to pick us up.

“So, what’s going on with you and David?” Natalie asks. We’re both following the girls, they’re a distance away so they can’t hear us.

“What do you mean?” I play coy, I know that I won’t be able to get much past her. I’ve never been able to. There’s something about her being like a big sister in that sense.

“Don’t even pretend. You guys slept together last night, plus I saw you guys this morning. If I had known what I was walking into, I wouldn’t have barged in.” She grins. I know she’s loving this moment too much, she’s been rooting for this since they were juniors.

“Y/n, can we go in here?” Ester asks, pointing at a store I know they like shopping at.

“Saved by the bell.”

The girls both have a very successful shopping trip. They both pick out lots of clothes, I’m not even sure it’ll fit in their suitcases to come home. I on the other hand, haven’t come across a single dress that’ll work for the occasion. Or if one is okay, one of the girls vetoes it.

“Alright, this is the last one. After this, I’m going in jeans.” I yell as the woman helps me into the black dress. This one is different from the others that I’ve tried on today. It’s tighter, hugging me where it’s most flattering. As soon as I look in the mirror on the wall, I grin.

“Get out here already!” Sara yells, getting impatient.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” I laugh, opening the door and walking out to them.

All of them have stunned look on their face.

“Wow, that bad?” I tease.

All three of them jump in with a chorus of flattery. Each girl claiming to love it, stating it’s perfect.

“Would you like me to bag this dress up for you?” The saleswoman comes up to me, seeing that it’s been approved.

“Yeah, actually, I have one question though.”

She nods for me to continue, a small smile on her face.

“By any chance does this come in red?”

~

David picks us up shortly after that, it worked out in perfect timing that he had just finished filming when Natalie called.

“I’m guessing by the bags, it was a successful trip?” He asks as he pulls out of the parking lot and turns to head home.

“Yeah, you should see all of the stuff we got!” Sara yells excitedly, “You should see Y/n’s dress!”

“Shh, it’s a surprise!” I grin.

“Really?” David smiles, “So you found something good?”

I nod and we drive the rest of the way home. When we get there, there’s already a few members of the group just hanging out there. The awards aren’t for a few hours still. We all have lunch and David dives into editing.

“Is he always like this when he’s editing?” I ask, nodding to David whose been completely focused on his laptop for the past half hour.

“Oh, yeah.” Zane answers, “This isn’t even bad, he only needs to add what he filmed today to post. He edited like all of yesterday before you guys got here.”

“Wow.” I shake my head in disbelief.

Pretty quickly after that, David’s posts. He slams his laptop shut and cheers at being done before going to his room.

“Y/n, you made the vlog!” Todd cheers from the couch.

“What?” I look up.

He turns his phone so I can see the clip, David filmed his sisters and I when we showed up at the airport and there’s a few jokes I made last night when we were all hanging out. I didn’t even notice that he was filming last night.

“First vlog appearance.” I smile.

“No way!” Jason argues. “You’ve been around David since he started his channel.”

“Yeah, but usually I’m with his whole family and they don’t like being filmed.” I explain. “Plus, when David and I hang out back home it’s usually not anything too crazy. Not vlog worthy I guess.”

“Congratulations on the first vlog.” Erin jokes, “It gets old.”

We all hang out and chill a little while longer before the girls both ask me to curl their hair. I also let them wear mascara with the promise that they won’t tell their mom when we get home.

“Y/n, are you ready?” Natalie asks as she walks by the bedroom. I’ve managed to complete my makeup and do my hair between helping the girls.

“Almost. I just need to get dressed.” I leave the girls to put on their shoes, I go into Nat’s room where my dress is hanging. I slip it on and grin, something about this dress makes my confidence shoot through the roof.

“Nat!” I yell as loudly as I can, hoping to grab her attention over the loud music. I yell it a few more times with no success. I can’t reach my zipper all of the way, it’s stuck and I can’t reach the spot at all.

“Y/n?” David’s voice asks as he knocks softly on the door. “Did you need something? Nat’s taking pictures.”

“Ugh yeah.” I groan and let out a humorless laugh, “Can you help me?”

He lets himself in, his face goes blank once he’s taken in my appearance. Hopefully it’s a good surprise?

“Can you zip this?” I ask as I turn around, I don’t want him to catch the blush rising to my cheeks.

“Umm, yeah.” He clears his throat a couple of times. Suddenly I can feel his hand on my exposed shoulder as he holds me steady. His other hand goes to the zipper. His thumb brushes along my spine the whole way.

“Alright, you’re good.” David clears his throat one more time, I can tell he hasn’t taken a step back though.

“Thank you, Dave.”  I turn around finally.

It looks like he was as flustered by the situation as I was, his cheeks pink too.

“So, what do you think?” My voice is practically a whisper as I gesture to down to my dress, “I took your advice.”

Here we are, dancing along the line of friendship again.

“The red looks stunning.” His eyes scan over the dress, over my body, before he returns the eye contact, “You look stunning, Y/n.”

“Thank you.” I smile, leaning my head up towards him.

What am I doing?

David slowly, looking between my eyes and my lips, leans down to connect our lips. After all these years, we’re finally kissing. My hands thread through his curls, his hands grip down on my hips.

“Y/n?” Natalie asks, knocking loudly.

David and I both push away from each other just in time for her to open the door.

“I just wanted to see how it was going. We’re leaving in like ten.” She smiles and I silently thank her for not commenting on what she’s walked into. “David you have a little something.”

She gestures to his lips before pulling the door shut.

“We should probably get going?” David smiles, turning around to look at me.

I nod to agree, “Wait!” Natalie wasn’t kidding, he has gloss smeared on his lips. I make my best attempt to fix it. David runs his hand through his hair a few times trying to get it to settle.

“Y/n!” Sara cheers, seeing I’m finally ready and out in the living room with everyone else.

“Oh my god, Y/n! You look gorgeous!” Carly compliments.

“Hot!” Zane chants making me roll my eyes.

I make my way over to the girls sitting at the table, we still have a few minutes until we leave. I baske in their compliments, giving them both compliments back. I think the girls are more in awe of seeing me in formal wear for the first time.

“Smile!” I cheese, making the girls lean in to take a selfie with me.

“I wish my mom would let us have instagram.” Ester rolls her eyes seeing me post it to my story.

“You’re both too young still, trust me, you’ll be glad later when old pictures don’t end up on the internet. Especially when you have a famous brother.” I whisper the last part making both girls laugh. It’s crazy that they’re already thinking about social media. Both girls are still so little, Ester’s not even to the eighth yet.

“Alright, let’s head out!” Natalie leads, everyone in the house files out to all the cars we’re taking.

“Ready?” David asks, somehow we ended up being the last two to leave.

“Let’s go.” I grin

they finally kissed! ahhh

#david dobrik imagine #david dobrik x reader #david dobrik #vlog squad imagines #vlog squad x reader #natalie mariduena #vlog squad

[queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm]

Daminette December Day 5: Fire (Continues from day 4’s prompt of gaming)

——————————————————————————

Damian Wayne Al Gul was never known for backing out from challenges. So when the opportunity came to “unmask” Ladybug, you best believe he was determined to seeing that to completion. A game plan began brewing in his head, “How am I going to get a Parisian streamer/designer to come to the states?” He muttered to himself, “There need to be a reason.”

‘What could make her want to come?’ Damian thought. There in his room, you could smell the oil and hear the gears turning inside his head. He brought his fingers to his temples, completely lost to the world at the momment. And then, it hit him. “I’ve got it!” He almost screamed, “I could make it into a sponsorship!”

“Hey, Demon-Spawn!” Jason barged into the room. A kunai flew passed his head, “Do- Watch it! Anyway Brucie wants us in the living room.”

Damian scowled. His plans would have to wait for now. This had better be good. As he made his way to the living room, Damian didn’t have the slightest clue that old Brucie Boy was about to make his job a hell of lot easier.

*Line Break*

On the other side of the world, our favorite girl had just finished “Tim Drake’s” commission. The client didn’t give much detail into what they wanted, all they said was to make them a suit and mask for the masquerade. Marinette had full creative liberty over the suit and mask. She wanted to go over the top, but on the off chance it was actually Timothy Drake himself it needed the right amount of subtlety to be functional.

(A/N: I’m not really good at describing clothes, but I couldn’t find anything that looks like I have in my head. Sorry!)

Marinette doesn’t do themes often, but she decided this design would become the newest part of her “Elements” collection. The suit jacket itself was a dark green, almost gray, color with multicolored leaves hand stitched into the material. Marinette had barely made it visible, but if one looked close enough it was definitely there. The pocket square was olive green with brown undertones as was the bow tie. The suit’s pants were the the same color as the jacket. The mask, however, the mask made the piece come together. The mask itself was brown, but the small details on the mask were lined with gold thread. Everything about this look screamed nature.

It had taken her a week to complete, and boy was it worth it. Marintte was relieved it was over, but loved the finished result. She packaged the suit and mask duo and placed her handwritten thank you note inside. The note read, “Dear Mr. Drake, Thank you for commissioning me for your gala. I do not know if it is the real Tim Drake and if it’s not please remember you do not have have to lie to get my attention. But if it is in fact Timothy Drake, himself, I want to thank you for this opportunity. I hope everything is up to your standards. Please continue to commission me for anything! Thank you for shopping at “Miss Fortune” Bug our! Signed, Ladybug” Marinette went straight to the post office to ship it to the American adress and returned home shortly after.

The next day at school would have Marinette begging for someone to put her out of her misery. It was announced that the class had won the Wayne scholarship to visit Gotham. And while Marinette was happy her hard work had seen results, it meant more work would be piled onto her. Ms. Bustier had cut her train of thought off, “Oh, and before I forget, we are invited to the Wayne’s annual Christmas charity gala. And Alya, there is absolutely no recording or interviews. If you fail to adhere to these rules, you will be bard from any and all other activities involving the Wayne family.”

Alya looked deflated by that fact. Lila was going to cook up some lie about knowing the Wayne’s, but once again Ms. Bustier had opened her mouth again, “Lila, we all know about your condition to lie uncontrollably. That being said, if you feel compelled to lie about knowing the Wayne family I would keep your mouth shut. Gotham is known as the city with the highest crime rate in the world. The Waynes have been known targets of Gotham’s villains, we wouldn’t want to be put in danger.”

Marinette had smirked at that comment and Lila eye had twitched, “Of course Ms. Bustier!”

The only thought that was going through Marinette’s head after that was, ‘What am I going to wear?’

*Line Break*

A month had passed and the trip to Gotham was tomorrow. Marinette decided to tell her followers on her twitch why there would be no more streams for another two weeks or so, “Today I just want to let you guys know that I will not be going live for like two weeks. I’ll be in America with my school for a trip. We’ll be attending a very important event there! I hope you guys won’t forget about when I’m gone!”

The comments and donations came in hordes. Most claiming that they could never forget about a gaming goddess. There where some asking about where in America she was headed to, “Well, usually I wouldn’t say anything. Buuuut, this is a very large city! We are headed to Gotham city!”

At 3:28 pm Damian Wayne, felt his heart stop. Ladybug would be in Gotham because of her Parisian class for an important event. There was only one Parisian class that had won if he remembered correctly, he’d have to ask Tim. Damian grabbed his phone in a attempt to see if Marinette would answer this frantic texting.

Her phone dings on stream, “Wow, I’m sorry guys I thought I had that on silent,” Marinette silences her phone but pays no attention to the contents on it. Her phone continues to buzz, “I’m so popular today,” she giggled, “To Damian, who I know is watching, can you please stop texting me when I’m live? Please and thank you. And before you heathens ask, no Damian does not know who I am so do go snooping to try and find out who he is,” She said in her heavily accented English.

Damian decided he would talk to her later, lest she be angry at him. The stream was relatively short today, only an hour and a half. Marinette had to go so that she would “actually be alive in the morning” as she put it. And when the cat is away, the birds go and play. Damian donned his Robin persona as he took it upon himself to continue his mission in uncovering Ladybug.

As he suspected, only one class from Paris had won the scholarship. The class president’s name had also just so happened to be none other than Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Damian then deduced that Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Ladybug are the same person. Oh, what fun this was going to be.

During the Parisian class’s time in Gotham, they had left Marinette behind 5 times. Let me repeat that. Caline Bustier, an educator and chaperone, had left one of her students in one of the world’s most dangerous cities not once, not twice, not even thrice, but five times. Thankfully on her first time she had ran into a young Arabic man named Damian. Marinette laughed at how much this Damian had reminded her of her client. He wasn’t wearing her designs though so she couldn’t tell if they were one and the same, spoiler alert: they were!

The night of the gala had arrived and Damian asked to accompany her as her date. Marinette would have normally said “no, thank you” but Damian and Marinette had gotten to know each other over the course of her adventures in Gotham. So instead she said, “Yes!”

Marinette had spent a month on her newest creation. The purpose for this gala and this one alone. It would make its debut in her “Elements” collection, after the trip. Marinette was particularly proud of this one, this time the theme was fire and boy was there going to be one. The mask she wore was lined with blue to symbolize one of the hottest flames there are.

(A/N: As stated earlier I’m not good at describing clothing, so here’s a picture of what I’m talking about. Also this is not mine and kudos to whoever did make it because I want this for myself.)

Damian waited patiently for his date to arrive. He was dressed in the exact opposite way. Cool blues and slivers donned his suit. His mask was white with red linning to contrast Marinette’s blue. None of what he was wearing was of “Miss Fortune” though. There wasn’t enough time for him to ask.

When Marinette exited the elevator, Damian had the wind knocked out of him. She looked like ethereal and in that momment Damian wasn’t sure if she really existed. He had seen the dress on her streams while she was making it, but this was the first time he had seen Marinette wearing it. Marinette was the epitome of regality.

But when Marinette saw Damian dressed like the prince she’d known him to be, Marinette almost fainted. Together they looked like gods gracing mortals with their presence. Anyone who saw them, assumed such as well. They’d stop and stare at Adonis and his Aphrodite.

They walked the red carpet and at that moment Marinette realized three things, one: She would have to reveal herself as Ladybug, two: she would have to explain herself to her followers, and three: Damian is that Damian Wayne???

“Surprise?” He said with a raising of his shoulders.

“We’ll talk later,” she said lowly.

Together they passed the reporters to enter and Marinette made her big reveal, “Miss! Miss! Who are you wearing? It’s gorgeous!”

“I’m wearing my own design! I run a website called Miss Fortune. You would probably recognize me as Ladybug on Twitch though,” she giggled.

Before she could answer anymore questions, Damian pulled her inside to the actual Gala. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on his brother’s faces when they relized who he had on his side. And by the sound of the shriek that ran throughout the halls, Tim and Dick had just found out. They raced over in an attempt to introduce themselves to her.

Marinette noticed that Tim was wearing the suit she had made back in November. She paled when she remembered accusing him of lying in her note, “You are wearing my design. You weren’t lying to me!”

Marinette was apologizing and Tim didn’t need it. She had every right to be suspicious whenever someone claimed to know or be part of the Wayne crew. Jason had a Batcow when he noticed the angel of a girl on the arm of a demon. And then freaked out even more once, he heard who she was.

The rest of the night went off without a hitch. Well... that was before Alya and Lila were escorted out for recording and lying on the Wayne Family name. Oh, boy legal was going to have so much fun with them.

Bruce Wayne seen four of his children huddled around a small French-Asian woman. He thought he should introduce himself. Unknown to Marinette Bruce was also wearing her work. Apparently Damian had commissioned that suit for Bruce’s birthday. Marinette almost fainted for the second time that evening.

As the party came to a close, Damian and Marinette stepped out to chat alone, “I know this is kind of forward, but would you like to accompany me on a date soon?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Marinette smiled as she rested her head on Damian’s shoulder while staring at the sky.

Fire is volatile. It can burn, destroy, and even kill. But fire is also rebirth, warmth, and passion. Marinette is the fire to Damian’s ice. Complete opposites that complete each other, just as it should be.

——————————————————————————

A/N: So the two shot is over!!!! Did you all like it? I think this one is my favorite so far. In any case thank you for all the notes, comments, and reblogs on the last part. I really appreciate it! If you want to be tagged let me know in the comments!

@daminette-december2019 @persephonebutkore @gingerdaile @seraphichana @mystery-5-5 @krispydefendorpolice @jardimazul @royalchaoticfangirl @theoryfan205 @goblinwhoships @emeraldpuffguide @spicybelladonna

#daminette december #damian x marinette #daminette #maribat #marinette dupain cheng #damian wayne #class salt #alya salt #lila salt #jason todd #tim drake #dick grayson #bruce wayne #robin #red hood #red robin #nightwing #batman #gaming #fire #miss fortune

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One:  Magical Loopholes

Chapter 53:  Prince Charming’s Turn

There was no arguing with David. A man with that kind of faith, that kind of belief, there was no use in bothering to try and talk him out of it. So long as the man was willing to risk everything, so long as Cora was still on the way, he couldn't see the logic in trying to argue with him. In fact, the sensible thing to do in this situation was help him. He wanted to be under a Curse so bad, then so be it.

From his home, he summoned a spellbook, a very particular one with a very special spell in it. He opened it to the right page and then handed it to Regina.

"I believe you're familiar?"

Regina took the book, looked over the page, and sighed. "Sleeping Curse…you do it," she snarled, trying to hand the book back to him.

He didn't even open his hand for it. "Let me rephrase. Time is of the essence, and I believe you are more familiar with this than I am…for once. You should be the one to make it."

Regina glanced at Henry, who looked between her and the book in her hands. Then she glanced back to him and David. He knew better than to say anything more. The silence was peer pressure enough for Regina, and eventually, she sighed.

"I guess I'll get started."

He nodded happily and waved his hand over the table. Everything he'd been working on all these nights to get through the town line border became visible. It should have been everything she'd need. And while she worked…

"You and I should have a little chat…" he muttered to David. "These things don't take nearly as long as you think they do. You'll need to be prepared."

He moved through the shop with David on his heels. He planned to prepare him for the task ahead without scaring him, but unfortunately, Henry followed them through into the front room. It was fine. A Sleeping Curse was not a difficult or time-consuming thing to put together, but it did take some time. And for the moment, David was probably the closest thing that Henry had to a parent. That soft part of his heart pulled out some silver and began to polish to give the pair some more time together, some memories for Henry…just in case things went wrong.

They could go wrong, very wrong. He could tell by how David had insisted he be the one to do this that he thought this would be an easy task. But the Sleeping Curse wasn't called a "curse" for lack of a better term. What he was suggesting, having Snow White kiss him while he was in that Red Room, was an untested theory on breaking the curse, and they were up against Cora. He was willing to let him go through with it because the ends justified the means, but this was by no means going to be a walk in the park. It was a perilous endeavor indeed.

Which was exactly what he told him when Henry finally announced he was going to go back and check on Regina's progress.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if they're not already, you need to get your affairs in order."

"There's no need. Mary Margaret will-"

"Do it anyway," he growled without listening to one more second of his "True Love will save the day" optimism. True Love most certainly could save the day, but first, Good had to have a win, and that was going to be more difficult than he thought.

As the sun went down, David pulled out his phone and made a call. He considered calling Belle himself, asking her how lunch went and if she had liked the burgers, but in the end, he decided against it. He didn't want to panic her, and besides, the phone that he'd planned on giving her was still in his damn pocket! He really needed to remember to give it to her the next time he saw her after all this was over.

"Alright…Ruby knows what's going on. She's not pleased, but my affairs are about as 'in order' as they need to be."

Ruby…with Henry in the back, he held in the swear word he wanted to say. The last thing he needs is for Ruby to tell Belle. She'd be over here in a-

"So…what's it like?" David asked, glancing back at the curtain as if to be sure Henry wasn't nearby before he turned back to him. "Being under the Sleeping Curse…what's it like."

"You never asked your wife?" he inquired sarcastically, though if he was honest, he appreciated the question. That at least showed that he wasn't going into it with dewy-eyed optimism.

"Oh, I did. She told me…but what's it really like?"

He smirked. Wasn't it David who had said they shared "honesty of the heart"? Yet he doubted his wife? Thought that she'd sugar-coated it or kept the truth from him? That was probably for the best. If he knew the truth, he doubted he'd be half as willing to go through with this.

"Physically, your body will be in a state of suspended animation. You won't appear to breathe. Your heart won't appear to beat to all who see you. You will appear to be dead. The only physical sign, of course, that you are not would take place over years as you don't decompose."

"Let's assume I'm not asleep for that long. This room Henry goes to…what do I need to know about it?"

How cute that he thought that was where he'd be delivered to first and foremost. He wanted to comment on that, he wanted to warn him, but he also needed to keep him focused and unswerving. If he scared him too much, to the point he no longer wanted to do this, then that benefited no one.

"It's your typical nightmare. No windows, no doors, bright lights, flash of fire, a general feeling of helplessness."

"Sounds delightful."

"It's not called a 'curse' for nothing, dearie."

"Hey…mom says we're ready," Henry called, poking his head out from behind the curtain. David didn't hesitate; he strode right into the back room, shoulders squared, head held high…completely ready to face his fate. He hoped he was as prepared as he thought he was.

In the back, David clapped his hands and rubbed them together energetically. "All right! I skipped lunch today…bring on the apple!"

He and Henry look at each other. The boy didn't know magic, but if he'd seen what his mother was doing, then he at least knew one thing.

"I'm afraid, Prince Charming, you're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way…" he muttered before waving his hand in front of him so that one of his spinning wheels appeared in the center of the room, close to the cot for his own convenience. David inspected it, looking it over as if he suspected the answer to the question he knew had to be running wildly through his mind. He crossed his arms and stared at the Great Wheel as he went digging for the needle. He hadn't kept on it in years. All his wheels were altered somehow, whether for making gold as the Dark One or just for ease of sitting down instead of standing at them as himself. He hadn't used a needle, like the one he pulled from the drawer now, since before his ankle injury.

"What do you mean, the old-fashioned way?" David finally questioned suspiciously, with a lot more calm than he expected him to have.

"You're about to join a quite distinguished club, Mr. Nolan," he answered, moving back to the wheel and checking to make sure it was still compatible with the needle. It was. "Before such innovations as the apple, back when the sleeping curse first came to be, a more direct method was required…through blood. By pricking one's finger on the needle of a spinning wheel, one falls under the spell. Your Majesty..." he remarked, turning to Regina. "You did his wife. I'm sure you'd like the honors."

Regina glanced at Henry but stepped forward, took the needle from him, and dipped it into the liquid at the bottom of the small glass vial she carried. He watched as the magic recognized it, filled the needle, causing it to glow a sickly yellow, and then vanished. Regina turned to the wheel and stuck it crudely into its place before turning back to David.

"It's all yours."

David came closer to the wheel. He rubbed his hands together as his heart raced, and he turned pale prematurely.

"Good luck," Henry suddenly stated, coming closer to David and wrapping his arms around him in an embrace.

David smiled, pulled him closer as he glanced up at Regina, of all people. "It's going to be all right," David assured him, voice still confident even as his own heart sped out of control. That was fine. It only meant the poison would spread faster.

"How do you know?" his grandson asked.

"Well…" David sighed, dislodging himself from Henry's grasp and sitting down on the cot. "How did you know Emma would save you after you ate the turnover?"

"I… I believed in her," Henry answered as he tried to bite back a smirk. Clearly, no one had talked to August then, and the fact that he'd arranged that was still a secret that was safe with him.

"The way Snow and I believed she'd come back to break the curse. That's the kind of faith that runs in our family," David smiled at Henry.

With that, Henry removed the pendant he'd been wearing around his neck from the moment he came into the store and placed it around David's neck. "This helps control the flames in the room. It'll keep you safe."

He smiled at Henry's act, perhaps the only one in the room that realized the significance of it. The relinquishing of that precious object, an act of bravery…Henry wouldn't need it again from this day forward. He'd be fine on his own. But David…

He smiled at his grandson. "I will guard it with my life," he promised. Then he took a breath. Henry backed away, returning to Regina's grasp. Sensing his resolve, he waved his hand over the wheel, threading it properly, and then set it in motion so that the needle spun properly, ensuring the curse would enter the bloodstream as it was meant to. Wheel in motion, David stared at the needle, then reached out his hand…and pulled it back.

He stopped the wheel at his hesitation.

"When I awake, I'll be in that fiery room?"

Fuck. Exactly the conversation he'd been trying to avoid for fear he'd lose hope.

"Not exactly," he admitted. "That room is where those who've already awoken from the curse return. You, however, are being put under for the first time."

"Then how will I know where to go? How the hell am I supposed to find a room with no door?"

He had no answer because the truth was that there were very few references to what awaited those who were placed under the Sleeping Curse. As far as he could tell, it varied for each individual person. He assumed that there was a way to that room. The soul traveled back to the Netherworld after waking because it was familiar. It could only be familiar if the soul had been there to begin with. How to get specifically to that Red Room, without knowing what hell awaited David Nolan on the other side of his Curse…

"And that, dearie, is the conundrum we're all depending on you solving. Now, I say this with the utmost sincerity…Good luck."

Before David could question it further, he set the wheel to spinning again, letting the noise of the creaks and groans fill the room. David huffed at his insistence but didn't question it. Instead, he sat forward, reached out for the needle, and pressed his finger into it until a single drop of blood beaded to the surface. He had just enough time to turn his hand and examine it, before he saw his eyes close, the man slumped forward lifelessly and was gone.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Dark One #Mr. Gold #Regina Mills #Evil Queen #Henry Mills #mary margaret blanchard #Snow White #David Nolan #Prince Charming #Snowing #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, August 14th, 2021, Part 1

I know, I know - it has been a long time. Fortunately, I made lots of other posts to keep you occupied while you were waiting for this update! And even better - now you get two updates at once, because the original post was too long for Tumblr.

The short-term plan is to continue adding more blog posts to my website while still producing this news summary fairly often. Is there something you really like or really hate about this feature? Please let me know, by leaving a comment or emailing me.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

By now you have probably heard about the Star Seller Programme Etsy will implement on September 1st; here is my summary. Some quick points a lot of people seem confused on:

you only need to reply to the first Message from a buyer in a Message thread they initiated

you can check the csv provided on the Star Seller dashboard (click the Shipping score, then click Export) to see which items Etsy said you shipped late; there are tons of bugs right now so expect errors

US sellers have tracking available for regular mail for under 60 cents (great for greeting card & sticker sellers), but only through Etsy Labels

Most Etsy sellers have no hope of getting this bonus, due to their low sales and income numbers, living outside of the United States and therefore not having affordable tracking, or the stringent 5-star review requirement, where even 4 stars counts against you.

Etsy will have new shipping requirements for items shipping within the United States, but they didn’t surprise most sellers who had been paying attention to Etsy’s shipping “suggestions” in the past year. You will soon be required to add a shipping carrier, mail class, processing time and originating zip code so that Etsy can estimate a delivery date. Note that items without these 4 details will be deactivated instead of renewing in the near future; Etsy says they will let everyone know when that happens. They also want tracking added as of August 11th, but you can get around those requirements. Finally, they don't want items marked as shipped until with the carrier, which means you cannot use other (cheaper) label services unless you print the same day you ship. (No doubt they want more sellers buying Etsy Labels!) This is also an issue if your local office doesn't get frequent pickups, as Etsy doesn’t count those offices as the actual carrier. Don’t make these mistakes on your ecommerce website. [Slow load times is still one I am working on]

ETSY NEWS

My summary of the last 18 months of Etsy search changes shouldn’t contain many surprises, but you will still want to check it out, just in case. Not providing many details on what actually changed, Etsy is now going to be putting reserves on more payments accounts than they initially announced. “The factors we look at are not changing, but we’re making updates to both the specific timeframe and earnings threshold we use. Sellers may have a reserve placed on their account if they recently made their first sale and have earnings above a certain threshold. Now, we may also hold a higher percentage of funds in reserve than we’ve communicated previously.” This fits with them “temporarily” banning new shops from non-Etsy Payments counties (except for India). They can’t hold money if they don't control the money. This seller is having 75% held for 3 months, while this one has to wait up to 180 days. One seller noted that this is easier on people from countries with access to Etsy Labels, because at least those people can have their label fees paid out of the reserve. There were new European Union VAT and customs requirements as of July 1, and Etsy put several pieces together with details of how it will all work on their site, but there is still tons of confusion. You can read about Etsy collecting the VAT and how to fill out the customs forms here, and how to fill out tariff codes here if you weren’t already doing that. The information on IOSS has been particularly dense, but a UK seller got some clear instructions from Royal Mail. Etsy sent Canadian sellers an email telling them to and their GST/HST numbers to their accounts per a new Canadian law, but provided zero information on said law, and therefore created quite a bit of confusion. There is an Etsy forum thread here. Amazon explained it much more clearly. Note that many online businesses started charging Canadians GST and HST in July, so if you are not GST exempt, be aware you may end up paying more for website builders, streaming services etc. Here is Squarespace’s explanation. Etsy fees went up July 1 for sellers in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Etsy calls it a “Regulatory Operating fee”, but others note that these countries applied these taxes to large internet companies who were paying little tax up until now. Note that eBay is one of the only companies who has so far not passed the fee on to its sellers. Etsy has bought Depop, the online marketplace for second-hand fashion. Here are articles in The Guardian, CNBC, The Verge, Cnet [text & audio], and Vox. Most commentary mentions that Depop skews younger than Etsy's current base of buyers and sellers. Depop is not without its critics: “[the site] has contributed to a phenomenon of sellers scouring thrift stores to find items that can be marketed for far more than their original purchase price, and sometimes broadcasting their findings on platforms such as YouTube. This has fueled criticism that Depop, among other sites, has helped established another cycle of waste within reused clothing marketplaces while driving up prices at thrift stores, as Vox’s Terry Nguyen explained in April. The platform has also been criticized for lacking body diversity and contributing to sizeism.” [from Vox] While there are some similarities between the two businesses, most haven’t noted that this was the second company bought by Etsy that sells used but not necessarily vintage items. (Selling used is a big trend right now, and is expected to continue to grow.) Music marketplace Reverb is now partnering with manufacturers of new instruments. What will change at Depop once Etsy takes over officially? They mention more seller services here. [slide 20] You can register to watch the webcast of the investor call here. [I haven’t watched it yet.] Then Etsy bought Elo7, the handmade marketplace often referred to as the Etsy of Brazil. This acquisition will also continue to run independent of Etsy instead of being absorbed into the main site as Dawanda and A Little Market were. Shares rose after the announcement

[includes a CNBC video interview with Josh Silverman] Other platforms are also jumping into the Latin American market. Etsy has removed the Google Analytics tracking codes from shop home pages, making it tough to know how much traffic you are getting. Still no word on whether or not this was intentional. A seller claims Etsy allowed a hacker access to the seller’s shop, even though the seller had 2-factor authentication activated. Etsy released its Transparency Report for 2020 [pdf], with a summary here. They blame most increases in infractions on the swift growth of the site during the year. Here’s a scary set of stats: “About 0.44% of orders placed in 2020 resulted in a case, up from 0.37% in 2019. 1.3% of buyers with a purchase in 2020 filed a case, and 13% of sellers who made at least one sale in 2020 received a case...Case rate may continue to increase in 2021, as we are focused on making it even easier for buyers to report order issues to the seller and to Etsy.” Note they used to include the number of shops suspended for non-handmade and other prohibited items, but skipped that this year. Hmmm Etsy continues to clean up the site, including through banning the sale of gun parts and accessories. Rob Price, the reporter who might have triggered some of the recent Etsy actions with his article at the end of April, reported on the incorrect suspensions here [paywall, Business Insider]. “Insider put out a call on Reddit to speak to Etsy sellers who thought they'd been banned wrongly, and received dozens of emails from users who had been banned recently and said they were confused as to why. Insider asked Etsy about 11 of these banned stores, and seven of them were subsequently unbanned. (Some other sellers managed to get themselves unbanned by appealing the decision independently, and others weren't comfortable with Insider talking to Etsy about them.)” I can confirm that some sellers are getting reinstated on their own, including a few that surprised me. Despite the cleanup & the media attention, there are still a lot of fake vaccination IDs available, as well as “COVID-19 misinformation merchandise”. “Additionally, a label in the seller’s listing read “Ad by COVIDid,” which means that the seller purchased extra paid advertising and Etsy collected money through ad fees on the fake COVID-19 vaccination IDs.” NPR also covered this story, and Slate still found some on Etsy in July, but they disappeared within a week. More pages on the Etsy site are now available in Russian and Portuguese, including Seller Handbook articles - which is bizarre, since people in Russia can’t open new shops right now. Etsy is also greatly expanding its office in Mexico. Etsy released its fall trend report, giving us tips all the way to Halloween. They still anticipate a lot of outdoor events, reunions, weddings and other delayed events, as well as buying for the major dates such as back to school and Halloween. Some search data: “3,697% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for fidget toys...Over the last three months, we’ve seen an increase in searches for tapestries...245% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for Victorian Halloween items...272% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for sweater vests...1,368% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for Halloween diy...414% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for neon wedding signs.” For a change, Etsy got the holiday trend report out really early this year. It covers Canadian Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. It lists overall trends, bestsellers and popular search terms for all major categories, and does breakdown some country trends as well. “International sales increased 145% compared to the same time in 2019, driven by increased international marketing.” It’s too much to summarize here, so do check out your category for some tips. There was a bizarre copyright infringement scam on Etsy in mid-June, with someone impersonating eRank filing crazy claims against shops selling SEO and Etsy selling advice. Etsy reinstated the listings by the end of the day, but anyone affected should make sure they complain

to Etsy about the fact each shop now has a “withdrawn” IP claim against it. Forum thread is here. The Attribute update for July included dozens of new gemstone attributes for jewellery, as well as new video game categories and more new updates for India.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Find most SEO stuff confusing? Here’s a really good beginners’ guide from Mangools, including a vocabulary section in the first chapter. The last chapter is a quiz to test what you learned after reading through the whole document. Keyword research shouldn’t just be about Google SEO. Rand Fishkin talks about social media, content creation and market research, with good tools and sources included. Ahrefs is a well-known paid tool for keyword research, but not everyone knows they also offer a free Amazon keyword tool here. You can’t download results without paying, however. If you aren’t already using Google Trends for product research, search optimization and more, here are 15 tips from Google on some of the things Trends can show you. Hubspot has some more examples. Market research is a big one! SEO for YouTube: even though the content is video, keywords are still crucial. Google’s John Mueller gave some advice on how to rank a website within a specific country. He also did a June search news video with links to more details in the YouTube description. Google is working on yet another cutely-named algorithm element: Mum. It isn’t live yet, but the testing has it working in multiple languages and multitasking to grasp what the searcher is looking for. It also understands images. Here’s another explanation. Seems there was a huge Google algorithm update around May 22, but no one knows why, and few noted huge changes in their website stats. Ranking was also really volatile earlier in May with a lot of up and down days. Then Google announced a core update on June 2, and confirmed there was a July core update as well, which started promptly on July 1. Here is one analysis of the June update, and this site also included the July changes in its report. “Many of the current winners were among the losers in previous Core Updates, and now some of these domains have been able to achieve triple-digit visibility growth rates. “So, it could be that Google has made a mistake here and will reverse the changes,” says Marcus.” Hang on - Part 2 is coming up shortly!

#EtsySellerNews #SEO #content marketing #ecommercetips #microbusinesses #ppc advertising

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

In a way, the trail for bio-fabricated animal fabrics is already at least somewhat blazed for Modern Meadow. Unlike with clean meat, some people are already beginning to buy lab-grown animal-based garments, many of which utilize comparable technologies to those employed by some of the companies discussed in this book. For example, California-based Bolt Threads is growing in vitro spider silk (what their webs are made of), starting with yeast cells that have been engineered to spit out the proteins naturally found in the extremely durable arachnid product. Unlike the more common silk from worms-who’ve been domesticated and bred for silk production over the course of many centuries-spider silk is far stronger, some types being even sturdier than Kevlar, all the while being as soft as, well, silk. The problem with trying to produce it commercially is that spiders don’t do so well when we try to farm them, typically eating one another in the crowded conditions needed for insect farming to work. Cannibalism just doesn’t lend itself to profitability. (A team in Madagascar did succeed in producing a farmed spider silk garment in 2009, but only after four years offering a lot of spiders.)

With $90 million in venture capital raised, in 2017 Bolt Threads announced its first commercial product-a necktie that retails for $314, and were only made available to fifty lucky individuals who won a lottery to buy them. The company also inked a deal with Patagonia for its arachnid-free spider silk garments. A Japanese competitor named Spiber (as in "spider fiber") is doing the same thing and in 2015 partnered with North Face to produce the so-called Moon Parka, a durable winter coat containing their lab-grown silk that is, at the time of this writing, available for sale in Japan and retails for $1,000. And shoemaker Adidas is already starting to use lab-produced spider silk, called Biosteel, manufactured by a German competitor of Spiber named AMSilk. The company boasts that “a spiderweb made of pencil-thick spider silk fibers can catch a fully loaded Jumbo Jet Boeing 747, with a weight of 380 tons.” […] 

Second, as GFI’s Bruce Friedrich points out in a blog on the topic, clean meat at scale won’t happen In a laboratory-all processed food started in a food lab, even Corn Flakes and peanut butter, for example. But no one asks, "Would you eat lab-produced Corn Flakes?” Rather than being produced in a lab, clean meat would be produced in a factory (or call It a brewery if you prefer), where the majority of food sold In supermarkets Is produced. Food companies, of course, have R-and-D teams laboring away in labs, but once they get their recipe down, the actual food production moves to a factory. Similarly, clean meat factories will be a far cry from a laboratory; they’ll have massive tanks in which the meat will be cultured on a huge scale. [...]

Not everyone will convert, needless to say, but enough will likely do so to make a difference, and, presumably, a profit. As well, even if only twenty percent of meat-eaters were willing to switch, that would still make clean meat a multibillion-dollar industry. […] 

Hansen is right that predictions have been made for years about cultured meat coming to fruition, and yet the meat industry largely hasn’t felt that threatened. But things do seem to be changing in the wake of high-profile product unveilings by the likes of Post and Valeti, and certainly the investment from Cargill. Gone are the days of clean meat being purely a theoretical daydream of environmentalists who want a more sustainable way to produce meat. With commercialization looking increasingly likely, we won’t need to rely on pollsters to tell us how consumers may react when clean meat is available to them. People like Hansen and Nestle may not want to eat meat if it didn’t come from a slaughtered animal, but how many others will share their repugnance at such a thought?

Kristopher Gasteratos, founder of the Cellular Agriculture Society (created in 2016), is more optimistic. He believes animal agriculture is so inefficient that humanity will be forced to abandon it, at least for the bulk of our protein production, or we’ll pay the price. His analysis of the situation doesn’t pull any punches: “Factory farming of animals will end one way or the other. The real question is this: if we don’t find an alternative to factory farming soon, will we as a civilization end with it?”

Gasteratos is convinced that the public will come to accept clean meat because there’s such an existential necessity for it. But his view is also informed by a study he conducted over the course of 2016 with the assistance of both New Harvest and the Good Food Institute. In the study, Gasteratos led a team of researchers who asked thousands of survey respondents their views on the topic. Based at Florida Atlantic University, the project ultimately surveyed more than thirty-two hundred undergraduate students and about fifteen hundred adults both in the United States and Australia (the two nations with the highest rates of meat consumption on a per capita basis). Unlike the aforementioned surveys, which largely asked if people would eat "meat grown in a lab:’ Gasteratos took a deeper dive, wording his key question in a way that provided respondents with more context: “Scientists are working towards producing meat by using animal cells instead of living animals. This new method of harvesting meat is called “cultured meat” and will likely be available to the public within the next decade. It is important to note that cultured meat is real animal meat, so it should not be confused with current meat substitutes which are made from plants. If cultured meat is proven safe by long-term research, tastes the same as current/conventional meat and is priced affordably, would you eat cultured meat?”

Upon simply being asked this question, without any discussion of clean meat’s benefits, 61 percent of the university students claimed they’d either “probably” or “definitely” eat it. After being told some of the benefits, either ethical, health, or ecological, that number spiked to 77 percent. Among the fifteen hundred adults, the numbers were similar: 62 percent were willing to eat it without knowing its benefits, while 72 percent were willing once they knew of those benefits.

Other interesting findings from Gasteratos’s work include some pretty fascinating results about just who is most interested in eating this meat. “People still seem to be generally unaware of this topic, but what really shocked me was our finding about how higher self reported meat consumption correlated with higher cultured meat acceptance. Basically, the people who say they eat the most conventional meat tend to be the most receptive toward a cultured alternative, while people who say they eat little meat, and especially vegetarians and vegans, are the least interested.

In other words, clean meat probably isn’t for the people shopping at the farmers’ market or their local co-op, It holds far less appeal with the natural-foods crowd than the crowd going to KFC. But that's okay. In fact, it may even be for the best considering that the number of people who eat conventional meat is far, far larger than those who frequent their local farmers’ markets.

Comments left by respondents offered some good qualitative insights into the general perception. "I don’t care where the meat came from so long as it’s safe and tastes right;’ explained one respondent, echoing a widely held sentiment among participants. Others expressed some qualms about meat-eating but thought cultured meat could be the answer to their concerns: "I heard meat is really bad for global warming;’ one respondent wrote. "this would sort of absolve me of that guilt.”

- Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, Paul Shapiro

#clean meat #vegan #veganism #fashion #leather

[kabhi-haath-pakad-k-tu-mera]

If the Stars Align in Our Favour

Ch. 5 — The Result

“The path of life is twisted,

Fate, wickedly entwined,

Take hold of your intent,

The way ahead is clear.”

**********

The one day that Iqbal is home and rested long enough for her to broach the topic is right before they leave. It is, coincidentally, also a rare occasion wherein he is in bed before her. Not sleeping, no—because sleep is hard to come by in such times for everyone—but resting all the same. 

Sehmat steals covert glances at him through the mirror she is sitting before, brushing and tying up her hair with trembling fingers, though whether they are trembling due to the secret she is about to reveal or something else is anyone's guess.

She sets her comb down but does not get up, looking at the tired, worried, and wary woman in the mirror for a long minute. She lets out a soft sigh before getting up and making her way to the bed, pulling back the covers and settling under them as softly as possible so as to not disturb Iqbal, but once she is under the covers he shifts over and turns off the night-lamp beside their bed. She watches as he resumes his previous position, lying on the bed but not closing his eyes. He stares at the ceiling, deep in thought. She wishes she could read his mind. Everything would be so much easier if she could read his mind. She sighs again, turning her own eyes towards the ceiling, listening to the sound of silence—only the fan rotating on its axis and the voice of the nightlife. The cantonment is quieter than usual. Somewhere in it all is the quiet sound of Iqbal breathing—a reassuring sound, though she doesn't know if she would be able to hear it again after tonight. The thought builds a painful lump in her throat.

Iqbal breaks the unnerving silence softly. “Sehmat?” 

She turns to see him looking at her, concern and a question in his voice. 

“Yes?” she asks in an equally soft voice, not missing the involuntary tremor in it.

“Are you alright? You seem distressed.”

“Oh,” Sehmat breathes out, “yes I’m—” Words die in her throat. 

Yes I’m fine. It’s nothing. 

She could say this. She should say this. Except she’d be lying. And Iqbal would see through it.

“I …” she tries again, still wondering what to say. She pauses, turning towards the ceiling again. She can feel Iqbal’s eyes on her. He puts a comforting hand on her own, and she decides to go with the truth.

She takes in a deep breath and asks, voice carefully devoid of anything but curiosity, “What do you think of– of children?”

She feels his hand tighten on hers, feels him get up from his reclining position to look at her, and feels the careful deliberation in his voice as he answers, “They’re … alright, I suppose?” He pauses, and Sehmat sighs. “But …” he continues, voice even more careful than before, as if he were treading on eggshells, “... I had always hoped to have a family … and now that I—we are married …” he trails off, looking at Sehmat with an unreadable expression. She is still looking at the ceiling, watching the light from outside dancing on it. She swallows, picking at a stray strand of thread at the edge of her blanket. 

“Sehmat?” Iqbal says again, and the urgency in his voice compels her to finally look at him, worry, confusion, and what she thinks is hope, on his face.

“I have to tell you something,” she whispers, and Iqbal squeezes her hand softly. She entwines her fingers with his. “I’m pregnant.” 

Her heart is pounding as she whispers the last part of the word, eyes on Iqbal’s face trying to discern his reaction. It is not on either ends of the spectrum. There is a glimmer of happiness, yes, and his lips turn up in an awed smile, but more than that there is concern, and his eyes are searching hers. 

When a few moments of silence have passed and Iqbal’s initial shock has worn off, he asks, a hint of hesitation on his voice, “This is a good news … isn't it?” 

“Yes,” Sehmat says, a little surprised, “yes, of course.”

“Then why do you sound so worried?” he asks tenderly, drawing closer and brushing her cheek with his hand, “why do you look so scared?” 

Sehmat looks at him, more surprised than before, lips parted to speak but at a loss of words. He has caught her off guard. And in that moment she cannot help but say all that has been bothering her ever since they announced the war. 

“I am happy,” she says in a shaky voice, still looking at him, “but this is not the best time to have a child, is it?” She shuts her eyes, turning away. “You’re going off to fight. In a war.” 

Beside her she hears Iqbal sigh. 

“Who knows if– if you’ll even be–” she stops, unable to go on. She opens her eyes, leaning against the headboard, and looks at her hands instead of at him.

“Sehmat,” Iqbal sighs softly, drawing her against himself the way he always does to comfort her, her head leaning against his chest, listening to his beating heart, and his arms around her, giving her a sense of protection—however false it may be. 

"It's going to be okay," he says, pulling her closer, rubbing comforting circles on her skin, with surety neither of them can possibly have, but it serves to comfort her all the same. "I'll be back before you know it. And I'll be here to meet our child." 

She certainly hopes so.

**********

They go off to fight. 

She watches him approach the car from their bedroom window and her heart begins its descent to the pits of her stomach. It is barely dawn, the sky only now beginning to lighten, and the window pane pressed against her cheek is strikingly cold, but it helps in keeping away the waves of nausea which otherwise threaten to overpower her. 

Iqbal looks up towards her as if he had already known she was watching. It reminds her unnervingly of their wedding day. It hasn’t been too long since then, but that memory somehow feels as if it were of a different lifetime. He had known where to find her even then. They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, and Iqbal gives her a slight smile which she tries and fails to reciprocate. It is almost too much to take. Because this is it. This is war. This is war, and they are on opposite sides of it. There’s going to be a battle.  Her husband will be fighting in that battle. Iqbal might die. Countless others certainly will die—soldiers from her motherland and his. And however much she may want Iqbal to come back home, she wants her country to remain safe and sound more than anything. If she had been oblivious to the enormity of the situation before, she certainly isn’t now. The burden of the scene is beginning to settle around her like a blanket, one that is weighing her down unpleasantly.  

The world is grey, she decides, not black and white as she had once believed. She had been naive back then. There is no good side or bad side in war, there is your country, and your duty to your country. And that is what they’re all doing—serving a higher entity, a noble entity. Their countries. She had always known that she'd do anything, give up anything, for her country. And now she is. She doesn't regret her actions, no. Because regret and guilt are two separate emotions. The same way her duty and her conscience are separate. One always overpowers the other. No, Sehmat does not regret her actions, does not regret saving her country from being caught unawares, but watching her family members—because that is what they are. Family—climb into the vehicle does wrack her with guilt. If they were to get hurt or …  or die … 

He gets in and they set off. Her eyes stay on the vehicle until it is a tiny speck indiscernible from its surroundings, and she doesn't leave the window even after that—she hasn't got the strength, and there are too many things for her to brood about. 

**********

It is Munira bhabhi who pulls her out of her brooding. Well, her, and the investigating officers who come to the Syed house to investigate. It's a regular investigation they say, a part of the head-count they've been conducting while they're looking into the fire. It's been a week since the men have been gone. Sehamt does not miss the way their eyes stay on her suspiciously once they find out she is Indian by birth. 

It is again Munira bhabhi who takes charge. Protecting Sehmat fiercely and glaring the officers down into submission. And it works. It works, because they are a part of the Syed Family. Probably the most powerful army family in the cantonment. They leave them alone soon enough, or, at least, pretend to. Sehmat sees them looking from inconspicuous nooks and crannies, her own spy's eyes finding them with practiced ease, and gliding over them as if they weren't ever there with the same practiced ease. 

She doesn't go to Saadiq anymore, nor to Imtiaz to buy flowers. The first time that she had set foot in Sarvar's store has also been her last. She keeps up the pretences until the number of spies keeping track of her lessen, and only then does she dare step into her own shop—not that there is anything other than business to look forward to over there. She has had no contact with South for a month. It worries her.

**********

Two weeks since they've been gone later they hear news on the radio of Pakistan's aerial attacks on Indian Air fields. It's December the 4th. Sehmat's heart positively stops beating. 

**********

A day later they hear of Indian attack on the harbour, something she knows is because of her information. The destruction is huge, positively crippling. At least one thing she is sure of: Pakistan will not win this war. Not with their Navy and Air Force in this state: crippled crafts and fuel and ammunition that is burning up the sea. 

The civilian lives are in danger too. Munira bhabhi's family—her mother and father and her brother's wife and children—were hard to contact, but they're okay. For the time being, at least. The guilt she is feeling grows as she sees Munira's eyes shining.

**********

Four days later there is another attack—by India, on Pakistan—on the same Karachi harbour. The fire from the first one is still blazing. Shaken whispers around the cantonment tell of abandoned Naval plans and a PNS Ghazi. 

Sehmat notices the spies coming back, their eyes trained on her.

Perhaps, she thinks, it's time to visit Suraiya appa. 

**********

One week, or less, later, there is news when Sehmat comes down for breakfast. Not of a victory or of a defeat, but of the end of the war. Of an Instrument of Surrender. Of a country called Bangladesh (so they won. Relief like nothing floods her soul). Of soldiers taken as prisoners of war—not in the west, no, but in the east. Her heart goes cold anyway—she doesn't know where they are. However she—and Munira bhabhi, going by how pale she looks—prefer not having to think about that. 

They go to the Mosque to pray instead. Spies don't follow Sehmat anymore, not after Suriya appa's unconditional and strongly worded order to the chief of the investigating agency—who owed to her and Colonel Siddiqi his position—about how to treat the wives of officers gone to war. There is still nervousness in her as she steps out of the house and towards the Main market. The only respite she has is the Sarvar Store still being open—so they don't know—and of Imtiaz giving her a not unintentional look. 

She looks pregnant now—she has gained the weight. She still hasn't told her superiors. A frightening thought settles into her mind that she pushes away. She doesn't know if Sarvar or Imtiaz or Saadiq would convey this piece of information to Mir sahab. On one hand, it's the logical thing to do. On the other hand, they wouldn't know if this was ever the part of a plan. She herself had been planning on waiting until at some opportune moment, in some celebration or other, she had the chance to meet Kabir sahab, or, more easily, his wife Pallavi. What other way does she have, that is not suspicious? The phones don't take calls from India yet. They won't for a sufficiently long time.

**********

A month and half after they had left, the men come back. All three of them, each in one piece. They have scars—physical and mental ones—and they have a hardness behind their eyes. It is the humiliation of defeat and the unsettling truth of a battle. They don't look at her any differently though. They truly believe she is of here now. 

And they are happy—they had apparently already known when they had come back, she is told that Iqbal told them right before they entered the battlefield—for her and Iqbal. For the future that is to come. 

Iqbal is no less soft than before—she doesn't think she could see him in any other light, this side of him stands out so much—but he is less like himself. The same hardness behind his eyes too, though they soften considerably when they are trained on her. It makes her conscience heavy.

But her family is home now, and her Home—her country—is safe, and perhaps, perhaps, so is she. 

**********

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2 

Read Chapter 3 

Read Chapter 4 

#raazi #raazi fanfiction #raazi AU fics #raazi fix-it fic #fix-it au #sehmat khan syed #SehmatKhanSyed #IqbalSyed #iqbal syed #sehmat syed #sehmat khan #IqbalandSehmat #sehmat and iqbal #samar syed #hurt/comfort #angst #romance #drama #suspense #multi chap #in progress #alia bhatt #vicky kaushal #meghna gulzar #bollywood movies #bollywood #bollywood fanfiction

[devilrising]

Fallen Draco, Pt. 11

This story is following a prompt set by @mymindsmadness

Summary: AU where Draco is a fallen angel, and the way he gets his wings back is by guiding Harry in defeating Voldemort, but it all goes wrong when Draco starts falling in love with Harry.

Word Count (Part 11): 3,692

Word Count (Total): 35,270

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Mentions of abuse/torture (non-graphic)

***

17th April, 1998 (continued)

“What on earth do you mean by that?!” I scream before remembering once again that Harry can’t hear me. But Hermione can.

“What? Christ, what’s happened Draco?” She rushes from where she’s sitting under the tree, her notepad and pen forgotten. There’s a wild look in her eyes, like she’s going to go literally mad if I don’t tell her.

Swallowing drily I manage to whisper, “They’re in there, Hermione. They are actually in there, with dozens of guests.”

“Dozens…” Her voice is filled with fear. “Anyone recognisable?”

“Not to Harry,” I say. “Hold on, he’s speaking.”

“They are in the living room too, Draco. Another 30 at least.” Harry’s words cut off for a second, as he presumably looks around from the vent. “I don’t know any faces, but names could be another story.”

I relay that to Hermione, and she hurriedly grabs at the notepad and writes it down, still standing. “Should he progress, or do we want to utilise him here?” I ask, thinking that she will have a clearer head than me. But why should she? She’s his best friend, and I’m… what am I to him?

“Progress as usual, I think. Now we know it’s possible, he can always go back in,” she reasons. Nodding at the logic there, I ponder about how we’re going to instruct Harry. I share the concern aloud, before it hits me like a Bludger. Quickly stealing Hermione’s paper and pulling a quill from my pocket, I scribble the message. Squeezing my eyes shut and praying that this works, I telepathically send him mh memory of writing the words.

“Instructions received, continuing ahead as planned.” Harry’s voice instantly soothes me, and my hammering heart slows a little. He understood.

“He got the message,” I say out loud, happiness clear in my tone.

“Brilliant,” Hermione says on a sigh of relief. She carefully makes her way back to the tree, sliding down the bark and to the ground. Tapping the grass next to her, she beckons me to follow. I do as she says and make myself comfortable. I look at her for a second, wondering about the Golden Trio’s relationship. Harry is in the very centre of this war, the only person who can ultimately defeat the Dark Lord. Weasley and Hermione are off to the side, heroes only because they befriended him when they were eleven years old. They must be constantly worried about his well-being, as well as being concerned for their own. Because they are targets too. Get to either of them, get to Harry. And now I’m in the picture, not that I ever wasn’t. It’s just that now it’s the Dark side trying to get to me. And it’s also Harry keeping me safe. Another blow against both him and I in their minds. Another reason to take him down. It makes me all the more determined to not let any harm come to him.

“Draco?” Something is clutching my shoulder and shaking me, and my head snaps up. As my vision clears I see that it’s Hermione, her face slightly panicked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I stumble. “Just thinking.”

“Whatever about? You looked murderous.”

“That’s… not important,” I reply. She does not need to know how deep my feelings are, regardless of the fact that she already knows that they exist.

“Harry, yeah?”

“Fucking Merlin!” I retort. She makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes at how observant she is. “How on earth could you know that?”

She ignores my cursing, but fixes me with an odd look. “I didn’t, not really. I do know however, that nothing between you two is ever simple.”

“And what is that meant to mean?”

“That for you both, it’s always all or nothing. And you are definitely not feeling nothing.”

“But Harry is…” I mutter beneath my breath. I instantly regret it as her eyes light up. That only happens when she is about to argue her point, and win. I refuse to give her the satisfaction, no matter that I kind of want her to win this one.

“That is where you’re wrong, Draco. And you know that, because I told you so ten minutes ago.” One of her hands threads through her hair, tugging at it in frustration. “Why do you never listen?”

“I do! I take your advice more than I probably should,” I confess.

“Not when it comes to Harry!” She sounds exasperated, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“Because it simply can’t be true,” I state, staring into her eyes so she sees my sincerity. “Nothing will ever happen, because it can’t. We are on other sides of this war.”

“You used to be,” she argues. “Not any more.”

“But no one else will know that. I will also be seen as the boy from the other side.”

“But you are not. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise Draco.” She pauses, allowing a fond expression to cross her features. “Besides, Harry’s never cared what others think about his choices.” With that, she sits back down and starts writing again. Sighing, I sit down too and wait for anything else Harry has to say.

***

A couple of very long hours later, and Harry is Apparating back out of the wards and into the cover of the trees. I see him first and leap to my feet. My movement announces his arrival to Hermione, who jumps up as well. We both rush at the man who just infiltrated the Dark Lord and my father’s lair, all but clinging to him. Hermione gets the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, but I stop myself complaining because that means I can rest my arms on the slimmest part of his waist. His skin is hot beneath his shirt, and I desperately want my hands on his bare skin. But I don’t allow myself the temptation, and carefully step back. Hermione lets go a second later, a blush creeping up her face.

“Sorry, I just didn’t know if I’d see you again,” she whispers into his neck.

“Me either,” he confesses. His eyes flicker to me, an unreadable emotion carefully contained inside. My heart clenches, my palms growing sweaty. Harry looks like a god, even with his ruffled hair and his bloodied face. Bloodied face? I scan my eyes over him, trying to find where the red smudge has come from. Fixing them in a shallow cut on his cheek, I walk forward so I’m closer to him again. I reach my hand up and tentatively run my fingers over the cut. Harry visibly winces, his green eyes clouding over in what must be pain, and I hurriedly withdraw it. Harry’s face grows pink, and with his eyes still glossy he looks almost flustered. Ignoring the heat that is quick long pooling in my stomach, I drop my hand off his warm skin and step back again. I force my hands behind my back, grasping them firmly to stop them trying to reach for him again.

Hermione behind me tuts in annoyance, and I think I know why. I hear movement from where she is standing, and then she comes into view behind Harry. Her bushy hair sticks out from her head, obscured by Harry’s own. She moves forward so that she’s extremely close to him, and a trill of jealousy coils in my gut. She’s allowed to be so open with her affections, but if I make mine know he’ll surely reject them. I can’t allow myself to hope otherwise. Hermione turns his head and whispers something into Harry’s ear. His face instantly heats more than I previously thought possible, and he helplessly shakes his head. Hermione isn’t taking no for an answer, and spins him around to face her. She tries to murmur again, and again there’s a shake of a head. I stare at them, trying to figure out what they’re saying. But Hermione is clever, and has covered her mouth so I can’t lip read. This time when Harry moves, it’s a brief shrug of his shoulders. Hermione looks exasperated, but she drops it all the same.

“Tell us about what you heard,” she suggests as she takes out her notebook again and steps back around.

“How did you know I heard something else?” Harry demands with a soft chuckle.

“Yes, news of dozens of people inside the Manor is bad, but not bad enough to put that weight on your shoulders or that look in your eyes.” Hermione shakes her head, annoyed that she still needs to explain in herself in a situation like this.

Stories race through my mind of things my father used to tell me about the Manor as a child. At first, they seem irrelevant. Tales of the House Elves and the wards that keep evil people out. But then a particular one shows up, and I sharpen the memory as much as possible.

It’s night, and eight year old me is sitting on the leather sofa next to my father. Mother is out shopping for presents, as it’s nearly Christmas, leaving us alone in the house. He tells me about special spells that can eavesdrop on specified areas, ones that can capture the scene like a memory in a pensive or a muggle camera. He said that those spells would be incriminating evidence if anyone ever tried to hurt us. Now though, the memory of the conversation is startling and the meaning is very, very obvious.

“No!” I call out, all the authority I can muster put into my voice. It’s a command, not to be argued with. Harry instantly falls silent, Hermione’s pen slowing down as she finishes the note.

“What?” Harry asks, cutting straight to the point and turning curious eyes on me.

“I remembered something. We need to leave,” I say, conviction strong in my tone.

“Ok.” Hermione waves her wand and gathers all of her things, grabbing ahold of Harry and me. Before Harry can get a word out, she has Apparated us back to Grimmauld Place.

The sun is slanting through half-closed blinds, coating the drawing room in an orange glow. It feels almost eerie. Threatening in its accuracy to how we are all feeling.

“What the fuck happened there?!” Harry demanded, throwing his hands up but not stepping further away from Hermione and I.

I reach a hand out to him, placing it carefully on his shoulder. He visibly shudders, and I withdraw the hand. Halfway back to my side though, I’m flooded with confidence, and put it back. “My father told me something when I was about eight,” I begin. “Stories of the Manor and everything in it. About how safe we were there, as no one could touch us.” I pause, looking Harry dead in the eyes. “He spoke of special wards, detection spells. One of those spells is an eavesdropping spell.” I wait for the meaning to sink in, and watch as Harry’s face drains. “It is untraceable, and you would never know if it was activated.”

“You’re saying…” Hermione starts, “that someone could have been listening to us the whole time we were there.” It isn’t a question. She knows she’s right. I nod.

All the information we collected and discussed, just for someone else to hear it. They know what we know. And then the realisation fully hits me. Shit.

“We need to move. Now!” I nearly scream. Harry summons everything we just brought with us and grabs me. Hermione throws a hand over mine and I Apparate us away. We jump four times. The first three are just to get far enough away, but the last one is vital. I’m taking us to Rivington Woods.

***

“Sorry,” I gasp out as I collapse to the ground. Leaves crunch beneath me and a stick digs into my back, but I’m too exhausted to move. I feel a shift in the air next to me, and watch as Harry lays down too. My eyes roam over him, double and then triple checking that he isn’t splinched. Then I turn around and look for Hermione. She is already walking around and setting up wards. She’s had a lot of practise.

“Let me explain,” I manage to say in a raspy whisper. Harry nods and reaches a hand to me as I turn back to face him. “If they heard everything,” I begin, “they would’ve heard Grimmauld be mentioned. That’s also where they took Mother from.” My heart clenches at the mention of my missing mother. We never found her at the Manor, and I can only hope she’s okay. “They know what we know, and can use it against us. They heard Rivington Woods mentioned, but I’m not sure Weasley is actually here, is he?”

Harry shakes his head. “It was part of a plot Hermione had. He’s actually in the Forest of Dean.”

I exhale in relief. “Well, they now also know for a fact that I am with you.” I feel my cheeks hurt. “Not- not with you, per se, just with you-”

“Draco.” Harry’s thumb rubs comfortingly over my hand. “I know what you mean,” he says. His skin is tinged slightly pink.

“When you guys have stopped talking, we still have more notes to write,” Hermione calls from somewhere behind me.

I rush to stand up and nearly fall over again as my vision spots. I throw a hand out to find something to hold onto, and it lands on something firm and warm. Once I have my balance back, I open my eyes and see my hand splayed across Harry’s chest. His head is cocked to the side, a smirk across his lips. I pull away instantly, blushing further. Notes. Right. Something to focus on that isn’t how strongly I’m being pulled towards Harry. Harry goes stiff, his posture shifting so that he’s standing straight. The only thing that gives away his dread is the caved-in shoulders, scrunching inward to protect his chest.

Harry’s mouth moves almost silently as he whispers something. I have no hope of understanding the barely-there whisper, and apparently neither does Hermione.

“Harry, you’ll need to speak up.” Hermione taps her pen impatiently against her notepad.

“Two weeks…” Harry murmurs, slightly louder. “Two weeks.” Again, firmer.

“Two weeks… until what?” Hermione asks, although the lack of shine in Harry’s eyes is enough for me to realise exactly what he is saying.

“Oh no.” Gasping, I sink to my knees on the cold, hard dirt. That’s not nearly enough time to prepare. My world is spinning around me, threatening to collapse in. Not only is my father getting closer to finding me, and no doubt torturing me to death, but also… this.

“Draco?” Harry whispers into my ear, afraid I’ll break. I think I might.

I shake my head and an arm wraps around my neck and waist. The skin is warm and solid, and soon I’m engulfed with comfort. Harry always knows what to do to make me feel better.

Relaxing into the touch, I manage to calm myself down and stand up again. Harry grins at me and I can’t bring myself to move his arms away from my skin.

“Can someone please tell me what just happened?” Hermione asks, clearly not keeping up with the realisation still fresh in my mind, regardless of Harry’s comforting presence.

“Two weeks until my father and his lord make a move.”

Hermione’s mouth drops open, her hand stilling halfway through a word. “What?!”

Harry nods solemnly, squeezes me, and then walks over to her. Air meets the warmth Harry’s skin left on me and goosebumps rise on my neck.

“Technically, it’s two weeks tomorrow. May second.”

“Did you hear any of the plan?” Hermione’s voice is called and disattached, back in work mode.

“No.” Harry shakes his head in annoyance. “I only know that it’s in the evening, in the Department of Mysteries.” Of course, the Unspeakables. It seems like months since I learnt of that idea. I guess no one wanted to change the goal, even knowing that I know it.

“So they’re going ahead with it then,” I say. “This is the plan they were trying to involve me in before I left.” Hermione nods at my little bit of context and jots it down.

Harry moves back to my side, so close our arms are nearly touching. “We need to inform the others,” he declares. “The second is very early May. We were preparing for about the tenth, so plans will need to be sped along.”

“You already have things organised?” I shouldn’t be surprised, not really. It is a war after all. It would be stupid not to be ready, especially when was able to give them some information. Still, I would’ve liked to have been aware.

“Sorry for not telling you Draco, it’s nothing personal.” Harry smiles a small smile at me, but I feel distant and unsure.

Nothing personal. This whole time, I have been growing steadily closer to Harry. Developing feelings I’ve never felt before, and here he goes saying it’s ‘nothing personal’. I take a step away and nod rapidly.

“Of course. Nothing personal, you did what you had to to prepare.”

“Draco?” Harry asks, hearing the coolness I’ve forced into my voice. “Are you alright?”

“Quite alright.” Turning around, I take a step away into the forest.

A hand on my wrist forces me to a halt. It’s too small to be Harry’s, meaning it’s Hermione who is currently preventing me from disappearing. Determined as always, I don’t turn to face her when she speaks.

“Draco, he doesn’t mean it like that.” Her voice is calm, reassuring. Exactly what I need but not what I want to hear. I would rather sink into the feeling of loneliness, at least that’s comforting.

“You know he doesn’t mean it like that.”

“Of course I don’t!” I snap as I whirl around. That seems to have got her attention. “I don’t know anything! Because he never fucking talks to me about anything irrelevant to the war or my ‘condition’,” I argue. And it’s true, I tell myself. The fact that we sit a bit too close to each other for friends, or that we use the disguise of being boyfriends whenever we’re out in public, aren’t important things. They can’t be, because Harry clearly doesn’t feel the way I do.

“Of course he does…” Hermione murmurs.

“Wait what?” I double take.

“Of course he feels the same way, Draco.”

“Did I say that out loud?” Idiot, clearly I did.

Hermione doesn’t move, just looks at me with eyes filled with curiosity.

A stick breaks behind me and I jump. Pivoting around, I’m met with sad, green eyes. Harry.

“You- you weren’t meant to hear that…” I utter.

Harry doesn’t say anything, just steps closer to me and pulls me towards him.

“Oh Draco,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to put you through that.”

I tug myself out of his grasp. “You’re sorry that I like you?! That’s great Harry, just great.” I turn to seek Hermione, but see that she’s already vanished. Apparated off to her boyfriend probably.

“Draco!” Harry shouts after me. “That’s not what I meant at all you prat!”

“Then what the fuck did you mean by that?!” I spit. “How else could I possibly have taken that statement?!”

Harry walks closer and holds my upper arms to my body. “I like you, you absolute prick.” He stares right into my eyes, and I feel like the earth is going to swallow me.

“I like you, despite everything that this world has thrown at us.” Harry waves a hand at us, and I swallow hard. “Despite you being a fallen angel, despite your father and Voldemort trying to kill us, despite our less-than-great history. Draco, how could you ever think otherwise?”

“I don’t know…” I whisper.

Harry is so close to me my brain is melting and I’m no longer thinking straight. My gaze slides down to his lips for a split second before I pull them back to his eyes. They are sincere and filled with longing, and I don’t know how I managed not to realise. I shrug Harry’s hands off me so I can move, and throw myself at him. Our chests collide with a dull thud and I wrap my arms around his neck. Our faces are nearly touching, mine slightly higher than Harry’s. His eyes are even more green this close up, his glasses reflect me in the transparent and fragile lense. Harry shifts his arms so they are around my waist, and pulls me that last fraction closer.

When our lips finally meet, my eyes slide closed and I sigh heavily. We fit perfectly together. I slowly start to respond to his insistent kiss, marveling at how right this feels. How right we feel. Harry is the one that opens his mouth first, but I stop it there. Today is not the time to snog in a forest. He understands doesn’t try again, just allows his hands to rub circles on the small of my back. When we finally break apart, Harry is smiling a silly grin at me and I feel impossibly stupid.

“I’m so sorry that I’m so oblivious,” I say.

“You? Ron told me today that you like me. Right before we left for the Manor, actually.”

“Yeah. Well Hermione told me at the Manor!”

Harry shakes his head. “The fact that Ron, who hasn’t seen you at all while you’ve been here, had to tell me, means I was clearly the more oblivious.”

Sighing, I say, “Well, you are a Gryffindor.”

“And what exactly is that meant to mean?!” Harry asks with mock exasperation.

“Nothing,” I reply. “Just that Gryffindors are known to not be the brightest.” I allow a smirk to cross my face.

“Explain Hermione then, mister I-have-a-response-for-everything.”

“She is merely an exception.”

Harry scowls, and I’m overwhelmed with the desire to kiss it away. Remembering what just happened, I finally give in to something I want, and do just that.

***

A/N: I’m finally back with an update! This has only taken like three months... I will never abandon this, don’t worry, I was just hit with a bout of procrastination and writers block. So sorry for the (extremely) long wait. Love you all Xx

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[entomancy]

(Fic) Daywalkin’ in Vegas

...let’s be honest, this ‘short backstory fics’ thing has done what my writing tends to do, and Escalted.  So let’s escalate.

Title: Daywalkin’ in Vegas (Wattpad) Setting: Increasingly not even serial-numbers-off-VTM. VTM infact exists in-world as a gaming system, which really annoys Fancy Vampires. Warnings: Gore; depictions of violence/ death against a child. Words: 6537 Summary: A failed siring gets the attention of two very different parts of Vegas Below; and a young blooded nosferatu puts herself in the centre of a dangerous balance.

-

Beep.

Twenty-eight forty.

Beep.

Thirty-one seventy.

Beep.

Nox watched the till display tick up, comparing the total to her mental tally.   She had enough; she knew she did.  It might have been in tattered bills, tarnished coin rolls and bits of change so old they were chipped like gears around the edges, but she was always real careful to plan these trips down to the grubby dime.  In and out, as unobtrusive as possible.

Beep.

A final bag passed, the green-yellow numbers flickering one final time.  The cashier smiled in customer service plastic as she read out the total, then followed it with a look of awkward concern.

“That’s all for you?  We - er – we have some good specials,” she said hesitantly, nodding towards the little stack of brightly-labelled packages beside the register. It was mostly sweets and tampons, and Nox bit back on a grin at the sight. Nice thought, but that hadn’t been her ‘bloody’ problem for a while now.

“That’s it,” she replied, adding: “Thanks, though.”   Sure, it was an upsell, but a kind one. The girl even managed to keep back any disgust at the state of some of the cash; it had been cleaned up, but people didn’t tend to drop crisp ones into a cup on the sidewalk.

Nox carried everything out to the repurposed shopping cart that she’d left just inside the little bodega’s doors. The thing was unbalanced and took corners like a drunk, but it was better than playing pack mule herself. The new bags settled down on top of the day’s earlier buys: bulk discount batches of toilet roll, bleach and superglue, along with cheap fabric for bandages. Plus, now, thirty-eight dollars and eighty-six cents’ worth of the cheapest mince and frozen shrimp available within a four-mile radius.

There had been a time when she’d had to worry about dietary fibre. Or vitamins.

The cart’s wheels creaked and rasped on sidewalk dirt as she headed it away, hunching down over the handle as she pushed; partly for more control, mostly to keep her face in shade. Her battered baseball cap and hoodie did a pretty good job – accompanied by garish plastic sunglasses and a stained bike mask – but every little helped. It also added to the overall ‘bag lady out on an afternoon shuffle’ aesthetic she was going for. The trick was to inspire just enough awkward pity to be invisible, but not enough to be a target.

Apparently, her act was off today. She’d just turned a laborious corner, distracted by trying to keep the bags all stacked, when she felt a hand clamp down onto the top of her head and yank hard. She didn’t move, but the hood pulled away and she heard a yelp of disgust even before she swivelled around. Two young men stood behind her, gawking in revulsion at the revealed state of Nox’s scalp, in all its piebald, peeling, erratically-thickened glory. A thin braid slithered down her face, torn too-easily free along with the hood.

She gave the scene one more heartbeat to really settle in, before grinning widely. Faced with a mouthful of teeth like broken ivory, the youths managed to look even more horrified.

“Aye, that’s how I caught it too!” Nox cackled theatrically, before snatching the hat back from now-unresisting fingers and jamming it back into place. “Don’t go scratching yerself anywhere pretty fer a bit, eh?”

The lad – and his already-retreating backup – hesitated, then let out a string of bravado-born obscenities. Freak – gross – blah blah blah I-have-a-tiny-dick blah. He kicked at the cart as he started follow his friend, and Nox let just enough spill out to sate the petty spite.

Once they had gone, she picked up the packets again and began to fix her hood. The exposed skin was stinging and smarting already, a poison-ivy prickle that calamine wouldn’t touch. At least it was late enough in the afternoon that she probably wouldn’t blister from the exposure. More annoying was the missing chunk of hair, and she probed at it gingerly. No deep wound, thankfully; which probably meant that the straggly braid had been almost ready to fall out anyway. She tended to keep about half a head of hair going, on average; so it’d grow back.

The lads were long gone by the time she was ready to set off again. With any luck she’d be nothing more than an awkward moment in a day of shoving their weight around; quickly forgotten. Being gross in the eyes of idiots wasn’t a Breech, after all.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful. Streets gave way to alleys, sidewalks to cracked paving, to rotting asphalt, and even the graffiti began to wane as she got closer to home. The main occupants of this ass-end of nowhere – a ghetto’s dumpster of a place – didn’t exactly make it their business to advertise where they were. Those that needed to know; knew. Those that knew, generally didn’t care – which was honestly a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Nox had heard the stories of what it had been like only twenty years ago. It was strange to feel that there was any sort of luck to her history, but six years wasn’t twenty.

Reaching a gap in an otherwise unremarkable wall, she glanced around quickly, making sure that no one was watching. Then she straightened up, gripped either side of the overloaded cart, and hefted it up through the broken brickwork in one smooth movement. She vaulted in after it, dropping down into cool shade, and let out a sigh of relief as the accepting touch of Karloff’s Invitation washed across her. The sense was like a door opening in welcome; like taking the first familiar turn towards home after a long day’s drive. It also meant no more unwanted attention – without that explicit permission, you’d never be able to recognise the entrance, or even keep your attention on what you were looking for. She was as invisible now to all other turned-aside eyes as everything else within the Invitation’s borders.

A few more rattling corners later, Nox finally turned into the Homestead grounds. The whole area had once been a crammed-in mess of squat apartment blocks, copy-paste civic solutions built without charm to fill the need for cheap rooms. The Homestead was the only one of its kin still standing, now surrounded by an opened-out area of recent amateur demolition and scrap-built fencing. Bright splashes of street art cut across sagging concrete and the blacked-out eyes of the windows, although the tags and themes chosen indicated the difference between these creators and the more standard ones of the world outside. Most of this had been painted at night, for example, with rather more variety on the theme of ‘hands’ grasping the tins.

There was a lot more inside, and below, but she felt a particular warmth at these murals. Out here, on the surface. Bright in sunshine that most of them could never see. The Nosferatu might be Vegas Below’s crusty little secret, but they were damn well there.

Bits of cracked paving clicked and skittered beneath the cart’s wheels as Nox made her way through the fences and to the big, bolted main doors. There was a rough porch built around the frame, mostly to give extra shadows, and she looked up at the tiny glints of watchful glass sunk into the surrounding wall. She waved.

“Dimestore-Blade’s grocery delivery,” she announced, and listened to the familiar rattle of bolts start on the other side of the door. A few moments later it swung open and a hunched figure peered out, wincing back from even the thick porch shade. This was Max; an older woman than Nox in both kinds of age, who managed her marks via a combination of extensive bandaging and even more extensive needlepoint. Watery black eyes looked past her, squinting through a gap in the heavily-embroidered scarf wrapped around her head.

“All okay?”

Nox nodded and lifted the trolley over the threshold.

“Fine.” She didn’t mention the youths. Didn’t seem a lot of point. “Let’s get this lot into the freezer before it can walk on its own, yeah?”

Safely inside the slightly-fetid gloom of the entrance, Nox took the opportunity shed her bag-lady layers. True, she couldn’t actually overheat, even on a Nevada afternoon, but being swathed in that many layers was still claustrophobic. Beneath the mismatched fabric strata was an increasingly-threadbare pair of yoga pants and a dark vest, and Nox gave a small sigh of relief as she folded up the rest of her daylight-drag, shoving it onto a shelf nearby.

“Right,” she muttered, as much to fill the air as anything else, and turned back to the trolley. Max had already transferred much of it into precarious piles in her own arms. Her scarf had slipped down, revealing a hairless head webbed with splitting skin; much of it made whole again with patterned patches of colourful thread. The fabric discoloured over time, of course, but it reduced the leaking.

Balancing their burdens, the pair made their way further into the Homestead. Closest to the entrance was the most decrepit part, occupied mostly by shelves and old furniture crammed full of clothes and patched umbrellas for venturing out, and with years of dumped debris building up in corners. Rooms with windows – even those as thoroughly blacked out or bricked up as these were – mostly housed the rat runs or storage, because no one wanted to spend a lot of time somewhere where crap mortar could result in dayburns. Similarly, the roof and most of the top floor was given over to pigeon roosts and No avoided them whenever possible. She’d never much liked pigeons before this, and she still held that even their vitae tasted of garbage, somehow. Still, they were much dumber than rats, and they did lay eggs, so that helped.

The really lived-in part of the Homestead was underground. Everybody knew Nosferatu lived in the sewers, right?  Okay, so Nox would admit she hadn’t much understood the difference between ‘sewer’ and ‘storm drain’ before her life had taken its scabby turn, but she sure did now. Vegas had extensive storm drains – large concrete tunnels that lay under much of the city, designed to quickly shift heavy rain away from the tarmacked surface above – and they were ideal: underground, dark, not monitored.

And not actually full of shit.

The arrangement used to be… messier, Karloff had told her. When they hadn’t been so organised; when they’d lived closer together with others who had slipped through the cracks Above. Some of the Family had started off as those same ‘unfortunates’ after all; those who were aftermath-sired in a broken frenzy, or from the bloody jaunt of some fuckfang cutting through the ranks of those who wouldn’t be missed. Splitting their claimed tunnels off from the main circuit and establishing the Homestead proper had happened later, after the Vegas Accord had given the Nosferatu a Clan-status, and hunting them for sport stopped being an acceptable weekend activity.

Six years sure ain’t twenty.

Max chatted away as they walked; an idle litany of gossip, social media tidbits and reports from watchers all over the city, woven together into what Nox tended to think of as ‘Radio Max’. Spying on people was apparently another nos stereotype; but honestly when you didn’t really sleep, were functionally invisible to large portions of society, and had worked out how to divert half-decent broadband from badly-secured leisure networks overhead, it wasn’t difficult to get ahead on current events.

Plus the rats, of course. 

Information was power, and they had precious little of any other. Although Nox sometimes wondered how much of those scant threads of power that Karloff put such value on would diminish if Clanpires in general figured out how to just Google things.

They had reached what she thought of as ‘mainstreet’ of the Homestead tunnels – a long space with concrete pillars linking floor to ceiling every thirty feet or so, quite cheerfully lit by a mishmash web of light fittings rigged up overhead – when yelling broke out further down. Nox and Max shared a look of alarm at the commotion, but it was when her name became suddenly clear in the shouts that Nox’s stomach dropped.

“Get this stuff away, will you?” she muttered, carefully setting her packages down beside Max, and turned to meet the oncoming figures. Even wrapped in a heavy coat and thick gloves, she knew the loping form of Skaad instantly.

With features which sagged so violently that his bruise-yellow skin frequently tore at the edges, and a mouth like a lipless sharps bucket, Skaad was nonetheless gifted with some of the keenest senses in the clan, plus a damn-near eidetic memory. Which meant he spent most of his time skulking in hidden places, listening to things he shouldn’t, and following people who thought they were alone in their secret business. Having him sprinting towards you, so fast his eyelids were visibly flapping, wasn’t a great sign.

Back in the world Above – before her life had gone to hell in a weirdly specific way – Nox had been a paramedic. It was useful in the day-to-day, being the closest thing this bunch of ragged immortals had to a resident doctor, but there was only really one sort of actual emergency left down here.

Skaad skidded to a halt, and grabbed her arm with a worrying urgency.

“Got a phresh one. Get yer kit!”

Fuck. A fresh one meant one thing: someone had found a dumped fledgeling, one who’d been showing signs of the Change going wrong and been tossed aside by their disgusted sire. Intervening quickly could help, particularly getting a pigeon smoothie down them fast, but the panic on Skaad’s drooping face didn’t line up with -

“What’s so – ?” she started, but he shook his head, steering her towards the plastic-covered tunnel they used as a makeshift clinic. He leaned in to shove her again, but lowered his voice and muttered just before he did – and the words sent ice down her spine.

“It’sh a kid.”

Oh no.

Oh fuck.

-

You didn’t turn kids.

When your working knowledge of vampires had been a general pop-culture miasma and some blurry memories of teenage Buffy marathons, finding yourself on the other side of the supernatural coin came as a shock in various ways. One of which was the weird sensation that you should have studied it all harder, somehow. Nox had certainly felt stupid, in her early days, as a man with a face like a charred wasps’ nest listened to her stutter her way through half-remembered fiction and worse-remembered reality. But she’d apparently got a few things right, and somewhere in that muddle had been the idea that you shouldn’t turn kids.

There were all kinds of theories as to why – from the debauched to the practical – but she found that in many ways it didn’t matter. Whatever fucked-up intention you had, it wouldn’t work. Too young just… didn’t take. And when a siring didn’t work, there was every chance the result would end up on her table.

She scrabbled through the assortment of old drawers and boxes that stored her gear, pulling out anything she thought might work. Bandages, thread, craft superglue, repurposed bottles of hard spirits that would do in a pinch for sterilising. The best-case scenario things. And the rest. Old herb pots of fine powders; thrift-store silver cutlery hammered and polished and changed into a very different set of tools. Sharpie-labelled bottles of liquids that moved weirdly in the light, and a range of refillable lighters that definitely didn’t contain hydrocarbons anymore. All the things she’d picked up in the last six years that fitted in with other sort of medicine.

The plastic curtain behind her was yanked back and a sound she had been trying not to hear finally demanded her attention. It wasn’t even a scream, and Nox hated, hated hated hated that she recognised the cadence there perfectly: raw, animal agony of sound torn from a throat that was violently reforming around it. She turned to see Skaad forcing flailing limbs down, looping thick restraints around rippling flesh, and finally allowed her full attention to turn down to the spasming form.

Gore looked different through vampire eyes. It was hard to describe exactly how – partly because wordsmithery had never been one of her strong points, but more because trying to compare feelings from now and then was always going to have a huge fucking hurdle of shifted species in the way. She’d still probably seen more human blood in nine years on the ambulances than during the half-dozen in and out of Vegas’ shadows, and but everything afterwards had been… different. Displaced. Detached. Just didn’t seem as visceral as it used to do.

But this did.

Acid tightened in Nox’s throat as she stared down at the shuddering mess in front of her. Blanched skin bubbled and writhed, tearing as it pulled away from the muscles beneath; themselves little more than contorting ropes of livid tissue that pulsed under dying heartbeats and spilled black fluid from ever-widening rents. The throat was gone, now a bubbling pit of desperate breaths, sucked past exposed tendons that wriggled like furious worms. Half-clotted ichor was pooling from gashes along the arms, down the stomach and further: the marks of peri-sire wounds, those that had been still fresh as the invading blood forced itself into collapsing veins. The eyes were side-to-side a sickly crimson-yellow, bloating out from a face that was collapsing in on itself, and throughout it all, the kid screamed.

It was revolting. Nox had to bite down on the vicious spikes of fight-flight that were going off in her mind, so violently she could feel her hands trembling from the horror and her disgust at her own reaction. It was an instinct, an unbidden response to a failing siring – she knew that – but understanding it didn’t make it easier. Everyone down here had ‘gone nozz’ during their own Turn. Hell, a few of those brought to her were walking around now, not seeming any weirder than any of them, but she’d still felt that awful surge of fundamental wrongness about them before they stabilised.

Nox gritted – all of – her teeth, and slammed her kit down on the table.

Instincts can fucking blow me.

“Let’s see what we can do.”

-

It turned out what they could do, wasn’t much. Cleaning, sewing, cutting, sealing – nothing held. Stitches fell from uncertain skin, or tore great new holes as fresh spasms pulled at the edges. Wet rags soon littered the floor, sodden with black and yellow fluids that turned the rough concrete into a slippery, stinking mess. The bleeding wasn’t slowing, even as the body seemed to be crumpling in on itself, gradually liquefying around the bones.

The sound had gone quieter, if not softer, and Nox didn’t have much hope it would stop soon. It might be days yet, before the final sparks of vitae or life or cruel continuation finally went out.

Too young. The kid – the girl, most likely, going by anatomy – had been just… too young.

They had to have known that.

“I’m outa tricks,” she said, although the words felt thick and sharp in her mouth. She wanted to keep going. She wanted to, so fucking much. But somebody had done this. Somebody who knew this would happen.

“I’m gonna make her comfy,” she continued, then hesitated even as she pulled out the frankly-horrific cocktail of morphine and street drugs that might make a dent in a system caught somewhere between undead and alive. Skaad looked at her, and held out a clawed hand.

“Want me…?”

“Nah.” Nox shook her head, and swallowed. “You can get the others outta upstairs, though. I need to – to make a call.”

Skaad stiffened, his jaundiced eyes flicking between her and the table for a moment, before he let out a low hiss and ducked away through the curtain. Nox administered the mix and tried to convince herself it would have any sort of palliative effect. Then she went back to the drawers and rummaged again, right at the back, until her fingers closed on the ridged plastic of an old nokia.

There weren’t many numbers in the phone, but it was the first one she selected, under B.

- SUMFCK SIRED KID. ITS BAD -

She threw the phone back into the drawer and hurried out, past the plastic sheet and into the tunnels, leaving sticky footprints in her wake. Not a great look, but everyone would already know what was happening. Nosferatu gossiped like – well, like a society of insomniac, semi-immortal shut-ins.

Overhead, an erratic cluster of repurposed pipes trailed down through the domed roof, emanating from the rat runs above. Drainpipes, corrugated plastic, bits of plumbing, and all of them shaking slightly with the constant pass of tiny feet within. They opened out onto tiny highways of shelving that lined the walls, all heading in the same direction as she was. Pairs of black-beady eyes glanced at her as they passed, and with so many concentrated here, she could feel the faintest flick of Attention in each one. They were all headed to a squat metal door at the end of an offshoot passageway. The rats passed freely back and forth narrow holes punched in either side of the door; but Nox knocked. She knew she was already expected and entered after a respectful moment.

Karloff’s chamber was bigger than it looked like it would be from the doorway. Nox wasn’t sure what the space had originally been – some kind of maintenance room? – but it was now dark, and warm, and smelled less of rats than might be expected given the constant rodent tide. Shelves lined the walls, full of books and occasional pieces of recycled pet furniture. One floor-ceiling tower was filled entirely with old radios, police scanners, walkie talkies and the like.

The old man himself lay where he usually did, propped up in a nest of pillows and blankets in a box-like bed in the centre of the room. He presented an impossibly gaunt figure: papery-brown skin layered like peeling paint across sharp bones, with eyes so thickly clouded they sat like grey-milk marbles in unclosing sockets. His face looked scorched, blackened at the edges of the old dry wounds that had taken his nose, torn away most of his lips, and presumably shattered the broken fangs that jutted from his mouth. There was – as usual – a huge white rat lazing across his chest, nearly the size of a terrier and wearing a dark silken ribbon, and its sharp crimson eyes fixed on Nox as she entered.

She bowed her head, and tried not to leave bloody footprints on the rug.

“I need a temporary Invitation,” she said. It was blunt, but there was no point in dancing around it. He’d already know anyway. As she spoke, the huge rat sat up. It’s pale paws were clasped in front of it, folded in a strangely human-like gesture, but Karloff himself turned his head only slightly.

“’Belton,” he said softly, in the throat-based hush of his voice, and Nox nodded. Her fingers twitched into fists, and she felt the sticky remnants of gore slide between them.

“I… I’m running out of options, and she – ” the words were sticker than her fingers, getting caught on her lips “ – she’s real bad.”

The rat cocked its head and Karloff drew a slow breath.

“You will not do it?” he asked. Nox’ throat tightened.

“If I gotta. But I want him to see her, cos I – I could do this, but I ain’t got a snowball’s chance of doing anything about it.”

Karloff’s head turned further, and the clouded eyes passed over her with an intensity that Nox could feel, as if they skipped sight entirely and went right into her heart instead. There was another stretched moment of silence, then the pressure dropped and the rat turned away, curling itself neatly under its master’s chin.

“It is done,” Karloff said. The long fingers on one hand twitched slightly, and the faintest hint of a frown dug into his face. “...take care with the old death. You have seen little of him.”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you,” Nox added before she headed out again; first to check that the cocktail of drugs had at least calmed the kid’s screams, then back into the upper house. A few rats followed her as she slid into the squeaking, busy dimness of the runs to use the sink that still stood in one corner, using brownish water to at least scrub some of the stains from her hands. Then she set to wait, pacing with nervous energy.

No one joined her. By now, everybody would know what was happening, and no one wanted to be around when he came calling.

The problem – okay, so one of the problems, in a dreadful, tangled ball of ever-more layered problems – was that it was very, very difficult to kill a fledgeling in any way that could be considered humane. A body already in the process of tearing itself apart was resistant to most damage for the same reasons that you couldn’t punch a fog. Getting any kind of drug to land in an even-partly vampiric system was difficult enough at the best of times, and this…

Well, there was sunlight, but everything about Nox’s very being baulked at the idea of using that method. She knew with personal, hellish intimacy that the agony from that would get through even a Change. Torturing someone to death with one of the few things worse than what they were going through was really not the point.

Plus, there was a tiny, tiny part of her mind that hoped she was wrong. She’d only been dealing with this stuff for a handful of years, and while rumours varied widely about how old Belton actually was, he’d seen a lot of shit. Maybe she’d missed something. Just maybe…

It seemed to take an eternity before the roar of an engine outside broke through Nox’ whirling thoughts. She hurried to the door, took a careful breath, and peered out through the little viewing slot. Not that anyone else would have been able to ride a motorcycle up to the Homestead without the permission of Karloff’s Invitation, but it never hurt to keep caution.

A huge bike was settled just beside the front steps. It was black, but in the way a magpie’s wings were black, with oil-slick iridescence hinting around the edges. The rider – dressed to match, in that seamless continuity of clothing that Nox had started to think of as ‘vampire sunscreen’ – had already dismounted and was stood beside his bike, the raven-sheen of his helmet turned towards the door. There was no visible gaze to meet, but the weight of his attention was like ice down her spine, and she opened the door as deliberately as she could.

“She’s downstairs,” she said, as the figure came up the steps. The sun was already going down, barely spilling dying light over the surrounding wall of buildings, and the porch shadow was very deep there. It only got deeper as the big man stepped into it – and then paused, right on the edge of the frame.

“May I enter?” His voice was never as heavy as she expected, with a melodic edge that absolutely did not match what she knew lay under that helmet. Nox rolled her eyes.

“I texted you, and you’re here, right?”

He was always so… old fashioned about this. It wasn’t like it was a general requirement. Nox stepped back, gesturing inwards.

“Come in already,” she added. The man might have been big – although ‘fucking enormous’ would be a better description, needing to visibly turn and duck to get through the doorframe – but he moved deceptively fast, and was well inside the hallway, starting to remove his helmet before she had had time to shut the door. She turned to look, not even pretending not to stare as he unclipped all the security bits and lifted it smoothly free. The dramatic effect was only slightly spoiled by the oddly-bulging balaclava he had on underneath – but Nox supposed that if her ears could meet at the back, she’d want to keep them restrained inside a helmet too.

Belton looked… well, he looked like Belton. There just plain wasn’t anyone else like that. The best description she had ever been able to come up with was that he looked like someone had tried very hard to make a bat in the character creation screen of a pro-wrestling computer game. It was as if the underlying architecture that should have made a human skull had been stretched and tweaked and twisted into something approaching Chiroptera from the other side.

It probably said something worrying about her own psyche that – somewhere in the mess of emotions that Belton inspired – a part of her really, really wanted to see an xray of his head.

No time for this.

“C’mon,” she nodded him to follow her back down the Homestead’s passageways. The rats watched them from every surface; their skittering highways unusually still as the majority of glinting little eyes were fixed on the visitor. They were the only visible watchers, and Nox tried not to notice how empty every space they passed through was. It added another level of eeriness, with the just-abandoned debris of life seeming like some extremely localised Rapture. Even Nox’ rapid explanation of the situation fell muted around them; for his part, Belton just listened and nodded every now and then. He didn’t look around.

How familiar was he, with this place?  He’d come a few times since she’d been here – and of course, that first time meant he’d sure known where it was. Nox’ gaze slid sideways. Belton had removed his gloves by now, and the hands revealed couldn’t even remotely be thought of as human; the fingers were too long, bone and tendons standing stark beneath mottled grey skin; capped by black claws that curled from the nailbeds, polished to an obsidian gleam.

How many times had those hands run across the outer walls of the Homestead; at Karloff’s limits; searching for a way in?  How many times had those claws torn into sagging flesh, or crushed furry watchers into broken blindness?

How many times had he come before he had brought her here; a crispy mess of fledgeling coated in sand and gravel and gore, spat out by the desert and into hands that immortals feared…?

The plastic curtain seemed to rise up like an exclamation, a cold shot of right now breaking her thoughts, and Nox came to a sharp halt. There was still sound from inside: a bubbling, slurred collage of moans that had made it past the drugs, and her hand froze halfway to the curtain. The swell of renewed, visceral revulsion felt like she’d choke on her own fucking hypocrisy, and she couldn’t suppress a slight hiss.

“It’s – ” she started, through gritted teeth, but cut out as Belton gently touched her shoulder.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Nox’ fingers twitched, then she turned away, moving until she could lean heavily against the nearest concrete pillar and rested her forehead against the pitted surface. The groan might as well have been coming out of the air. It pressed down around her and her skin crawled.

She hated this, and she hated that she hated it like this. Some depraved motherfucker had dragged a fucking child into very literal hell and she’d tried, she’d tried with every stupid, macguivered bullshit tool she’d put together out of garbage; she’d tried everything and it was never going to have meant a damn thing and all she could focus on, really really focus on right now was how fundamentally disgusting that fucking sound was –

And then it stopped.

Nox physically sagged against the pillar, relief and nausea chasing each other through a stomach that was dropping into her boots. There was only one reason for the sudden silence, and she let her eyes slide closed, muttering the same half-wordless prayer she’d always used when a case went bad, or a patient flatlined in the ambulance. Whatever that meant now, she’d never been sure, but it still sort of fit.

She’d known. She’d known when she picked up that damn phone.

But fuck me if hope isn’t a bitch.

It wasn’t long before there was the faint brush of plastic again and Nox opened her eyes to see Belton smoothing the curtain back behind him, covering the sudden stillness. There was a long moment of silence before he turned to her. His eyes were the most human-looking part of his face, and the grey gaze sought hers.

“I’ll be on my way, then.”

Nox nodded numbly. They went out the way they came; still alone, still watched at every step by a hundred rodent stares. Back up, back to the door and out into the thickening dusk of the evening – and it wasn’t until the porch steps were creaking under his boots that Nox’s nerve rose again.

“Hey – Belton?” she managed, and the big figure paused. He looked back at her and one curled brow raised, moving an ear with it. Nox pulled the Homestead door shut behind her as she sought the right words. “This… ain’t your job, right?”

“I don’t have a real tight specification,” he replied, then shrugged. “But broadly?  No. To be honest with you, my boss couldn’t give a rat’s twat what happens with the Nosferatu.”

“So why’d you come?” Those words came fast, but Nox didn’t try to stop them. Belton paused again, then hung his helmet and balaclava over the big bike’s handlebars. He sat down on the steps, hunching a little in that strange shape his back took when he wasn’t standing, and Nox slid down beside him at the unspoken invitation.

Belton shook his head, what might have been a wry smile tugging at the edges of his too-wide lips. Glints of needle teeth flashed in the dusk.

“It’s a question of perspective, see,” he said quietly. “For someone like you?  This’ll ruin your whole year. Getting all Lady Macbeth with the inevitable. But for me?” He held up a hand and slowly flexed the clawed fingers. Once; twice; and Nox couldn’t draw her gaze away from the mottled skin as it shifted over his bones. Belton sighed. It was an old sound, so old that any hint of what it might contain had worn away like stone under rain.

“What’s one drop in an ocean?  Don’t get me wrong – ” he added, with the edge of smile falling away again “ – I’ll feel bad about it; but I’m not losing myself any sleep.”

She should have been angry. She wanted to be angry, at the casual way this bat-faced bastard just said it; as the so-recent feel of the kid’s crumbling flesh slammed against her thoughts and ghosted under her fingers, and bile she wasn’t even sure she had anymore swirled at the back of her throat. She should be angry.

“...thank you.”

“No need for that,” he replied – but Nox shook her head.

“Nah; there is. Things need saying.” She fidgeted with the hem of her pants for a silent moment, before continuing. “Don’t believe you actually sleep, though.”

This time there was no mistaking that Belton grinned; and the resulting expression was exactly as unpleasant as it sounded.

“No?  Not even if I say I’ve got little bats on my pyjamas?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Now that there’s uncalled for.”

Nox grinned, and even as she did she could almost hear Karloff’s voice in her head. Be wary of the old death. 

And yet…

There was another long silence, although this one felt less tense.

…fuck it. When am I gonna get this chance again?

“They found her in the desert,” she said carefully, scuffing dust across the steps with one toe as she spoke; an idle motion to distract herself from the nerves inside. Belton nodded.

“Aye. Letting lady sun do the dirty work. It’s an almost foolproof method, really.”

Nox looked down at her own hands; where the patchwork of thickened tissue traced patterns like dry riverbeds over her pallid brown skin. The sun burned bits went blistered red, then dark and crackly, then sickly pale when that peeled; slowly edging back to her default. It sure as hell wasn’t pleasant; but it wasn’t the chemical-melting collapse of flesh that she’d seen on others.

“So, that make me a fool or an outlier?”

“I said almost.” Belton leaned back a little, looking up into the dark expanse of sky. “Always going to take a risk when you don’t stay to watch. Although I’ll admit it takes some big balls to stick around for that sort of disposal. What with the deeply ingrained phytophobia of your classic vampire, and everything.”

Nox raised her most intact eyebrow.

“This is more about your junk than I want to know.”

Belton laughed. Really laughed; the kind of melodic tone that bordered on a snatch of song and that was so very out of place coming from within that face.

“Oh, I’m not claiming that kind of testicular fortitude. Sunlight scares the piss out of me as much as it ever did. Don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can get over. Built-in, you know?”

“You ride about in the day,” Nox pointed out, and Belton waved a hand back towards his helmet.

“I’ve got some really bespoke protective gear, see. Amazing what’s been done with polymers in the last thirty years.”

Nox blinked.

“…you’ve got bike pleathers?”

“Technically I’ve got an integrated neo-polymer baselayer,” Belton stopped and his nose crinkled – which was quite an extensive expression. “…ah fuck, that sounds like I’ve got plastic pants, doesn’t it?  Keep that one to yourself, will you?”

“Sure.” Nox’s shoulders sagged again as reality dropped back suddenly. She decided to just go for blunt. “With… the kid. Someone did that, and before that they – ” her words choked again, at the thought of where some of those peri-sire wounds had been.

“I know.” The amusement had gone from Belton’s voice as he stood up, heading back to his bike rather abruptly. The engine roared into life as he swung himself astride it, folding his ears into their cover, and Nox had to shout to be heard above the rumble.

“Do they… just get away with this?”

“There’s plenty that think they should,” he replied calmly; oddly easy to hear over the din, as he slid the helmet into place. “It was like that for a long time.”

Nox’s lips drew back, almost of their own accord, working to some defiant instinct she only had partial control over.

“And you?”

“Me?  I’m a monster on a chain that I put there.” Belton looked up, and just before the visor snapped closed, there was a flicker of crimson in his eyes.

“But I’ll see what I can do.”

-

#Entofic #Vampire Nonsense #urban fantasy #The Vegas Masqerade #Nosferatu grocery shopping #terrible daywalkers #this WWE-manbat-looking mofo #I'm not warning for 'blood' on a vampire setting #help the plot keeps happening

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

what would everlark quarantining at skadi look like? 😉😉❤️

Which Everlark, lol. There’s technically three in this universe and it would effect all of them differently.

Honestly though, Anon... while I appreciate that you’re intention in sending this was probably for something cute and fluffy, maybe even smutty, I’m not sure what I can do for you right now. My brain literally sounded like a car wreck when I first read this ask, and in the silence that followed, “No.” probably because given the nature of their lives and how hard I worked to make this universe reflect the real world, there’s no way this pandemic would not have a deep effect on the characters of this universe, just like it’s having on everyone in real life. There would be some heartwarming and funny things happening but there would also be a ton of stress and fear and worry, as well as actual tangible consequences. These are world traveling athletes whose competition season runs until mid March in places like Europe. There’s a real possibility one of them got stuck overseas. Gramps is over 70 with underlying health issues. Katniss. Is. Arapaho. And the tribes are some of the more vulnerable communities because the government made them that way through centuries of maltreatment. Brigid was born with lung problems. At the end of the day, Skadi is still a hotel dependent on people traveling to it for income. See where I’m going with this? Pandemic and quarantine would affect every part of their lives.

But... as a good friend of mine has managed to point out even as I was typing this and diving off a cliff into a response something like this

This family is a bunch of rather creative and highly determined survivors. So with that in mind, I’ve pulled myself back together and come up with as much kindness and goodness as my frazzled brain will allow for today. You ready?

There’s a family text thread that’s been insanely busy for weeks now. Katniss has to silence it on her phone or she was going to go crazy. She still checks every couple hours or whenever she randomly hears Peeta laughing.

Graham shoots something like this and sends it on that group text thread to make everyone laugh. It starts an entire series of silly gifs/videos they post to a public website maybe social media and they all contribute to, even the s’mores babies. You can thank @savvylark for providing both the ray of hope and the gif:

Savannah and the girls engage in a lot of art therapy and arts based education. Chemistry experiments with chalk. Physics lessons? I think you mean how many ways can we launch paint at an old bedsheet. All of it videotaped with Brigid dressed like a mad scientist and Caitlin as her pissed off, sarcastic minion.

Despite the fact that some of the real resorts in that area often have a ski season that would still be happening right now, a lot of them are closed — some of them closed up shop back in mid March before there was even a single case in the state— and are not taking reservations that start before May 13th, which could still change as well. Gramps would be one of those people shutting down sooner rather than later. His main focus... taking care of his employees and family.

Katniss and Peeta use the opportunity to increase awareness and maybe raise funds for some of the harder hit communities. Katniss starts hosting an online book club in conjunction with something like this:

The biathlon team all buy ice cream makers from online and start a YouTube channel where each of them takes a turn making ice cream and video taping it like it’s a cooking show.

Can you adjust ski fabrication to making some kind of medical equipment? I don’t know but if there’s a way, Peeta would find it.

Original Everlark manage to keep sane by going outdoors into the mountains a lot. There’s not a lot of people in Wyoming to begin with and with Skadi closed, there seem to be even fewer. Social distancing is only difficult in the mental and emotional sense for them.

Ryen starts a doggie and cat daycare for medical professionals and people in essential jobs who suddenly find themselves working insane hours.

Rosie might still be working her ass off full time, videoconferencing with patients and monitoring their progress from home. How do you maintain physical therapy at a distance?? But she’s always got someone who can video bomb and make her as well as her patients laugh.

I’m sorry if that’s not exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s the best I can manage right now.

#outside chance universe #oh my god they were quarantined #and it sucked #but they make the best of it #anonymous #look at that ask

[comiyaviww]

🎉[HAPPY NEWS]🎉 #JewelieBday2020⠀

Dear Jewelie, following your amazing “Happy News” reports, this year we also want to celebrate your special day by sharing our “Happy News” back to you!  📰

WISHING YOU THE HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY!  🍰 🎈

- Your worldwide Co-MYV family from Planet Earth.

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From: Aunty Ku Country: Malaysia Dear my lovely Jewelie~ I have a son one year younger than you, thus, seeing you grow healthy and happily makes me happy. Like a cotton flower, you bloom beautifully and continue to bring happiness to my heart as I wait for the flower to turn into a boll, and then into a bur that reveals the cotton fiber.  

You probably didn't know this, but Malaysia is not a country where people believe the cotton plant can grow commercially. My country focuses more on rubber tree and palm oil tree. Therefore, planting cotton trees is a little bit strange to Malaysians, especially on layman's side. However, the cotton tree is a quite a resilient type of plant. At my home, given enough nutrition and water and suitable soil, it can live all year long and bear fruits with lots of quantity twice a year! And they have lived in my garden for almost two years now! I watch them grow, learn about their sicknesses, and learn most of the insects and critters that visited them, eat them or made them as their nesting ground or home. Discovering new things, seeing new creatures is also my own kind of happiness.

You see Jewelie, sometimes happiness doesn’t come instantly. Sometimes you have to wait for it patiently, invest your time, your energy and your financial resources to make your dreams come true. However, there will be times when happiness doesn’t come, when though you have achieved something, sometimes it came when you have some sense of relief and security. Your heart is at ease, as some people would say.

However! Some happiness can also be bought thru shopping. Like this one here:

This is takli. It is used as a tool to spin fiber into yarn. From the yarn thread, we can either crochet it, or knit it, or weave it to turn the yarn into fabric for clothing items or household items like a blanket, cushion cover, and other stuff. I couldn't find it anywhere in my country as spinning the cotton fiber and turn them into yarn is also a strange practice in my country. I've been waiting for this little guy for almost two months since I last ordered it. Due to covid19, postage has been delayed. And finally 2 days ago (14/10/2020) it arrived safely at my home 

That is all I wanted to share with you today. Happy birthday Jewelie.

May you grow into an amazing person, whom love and cherish her parents until the end of their lives, and achieve all of your dreams. May life is kind to you and provide you enough.

Sincerely yours,  - Ku Shairah Jazahanim -16 Oct 2020

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From: Hyunjeong Country: Korea

안녕 쥬에리

Hello Jewelie!

I am Hyunjeong from Korea.  First, Happy Birthday to you 생일 축하해 쥬에리~~

I wish All lucky & beautiful things with you, and I will let you know my happy news. I hope my happy news will make you happy! 

A week ago, my second nephew was born. He's still small and looks like a monkey or a little bird, but he’s adorable. How this precious creature is made and born, it’s amazing. I want to leave a lot of kisses to him, but I'm really sad that I can't meet him these days because of COVID-19

I will pray that the virus will disappear as soon as possible, meet my nephews, and meet you and your daddy, MIYAVI. 

Love from Korean Aunt Hyunjeong

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From: Raira Country: Japan

🎈 HAPPY NEWS 🎈

Hello, princess!

"ありがとう" is a universal word that brings people a little happiness. 

In the shop an old woman said to me, "I want that item there." 

I handed it to her and she happily said "ありがとう" over and over again. It made me smile too. 

When a kind little action makes someone else happy, it makes me happy too. It's always in our lives. And we can all be happy if we don't forget to say "ありがとう(Thank you)" to each other. 

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From: Kyoko Country: Japan

Happy Birthday, Jewelie❣️ May happiness and joy come to you My Happy News is that I managed to come to your daddy’s live show in September. I was able to have a short trip, see my favorite persons（←including you & your daddy🥰）, and have  a good time! Thanks to all of you, I enjoyed myself🤩 ありがとう❣️and おめでとう from Kyoko: takeshiorin, JAPAN

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From: Becca Country: USA

Jewelie,

Hello Jewelie! My name is Becca and I am from Tucson, Arizona. I am 21 years old and am a senior here at my local university, the University of Arizona! I am also part of our school’s marching band, which we traditionally play at our home football games. Sadly, this year though, we are not allowed to play at any of our games because of COVID-19 and our sports conferences not allowing us or fans to enter the stadium. 

This being said though, one bit of ‘good news’ that I would like to share with you is that we have been able to schedule our 67th Annual Band Day virtually AND have it available for people nation-wide since it’s online! Band Day is an event we traditionally hold in-person at our football stadium and have around 40 high school marching bands from around the state compete. This year will be a little different, seeing as it will be held virtually and they cannot compete, however it will be equally as exciting! Especially seeing as we can still share our passion for music and the marching arts.

I hope this finds you very well, and I hope you have a wonderful birthday! You deserve the best birthday ever, and the love you receive every day! <3 <3

Becca Soto

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From: Maura Country: USA

Happy Birthday Jewelie! Since I know that the environment is important to you, I wanted to share some HAPPPPY NEWWWWWS about the environment in honor of your birthday!

“Singaporean Government Plans to Plant One Million Trees by 2030”

The government of Singapore has announced a plan to plant one million native trees by the year 2030, with the goal of helping endangered species thrive and ensuring that every resident of Singapore lives, “no more than ten minutes from a park”. Although Singapore is a small nation, their ecosystem is rich and precious. By planting these trees, they will provide habitats for “numerous birds, reptiles and plants” which may face extinction. These trees will also help fight pollution and improve air quality for Singapore.

I think that the Singaporean government has a great idea, and I hope that other governments follow suit, and create even more plans to help our planet!

Wishing you a joyful birthday full of happiness and love! From your CoMiyavi Auntie, Maura (News Source: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/singapore-to-plant-1-million-trees-bringing-parks-to-people/)

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From: Betty Country: Italy/Ethiopia

Hello Jewelie, 

Here is a CoMYV aunty writing to you from Italy, but the happy news I want to share with you is from my home-country Ethiopia (somewhere  in the Horn of Africa). 

I also did some research like you & this news was something that made me happy in this past weeks. Following sustainable development & clean energy, Ethiopia is now on the final stage of the long awaited start of “The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam" on the Blue Nile.

It is set to become the largest hydropower plant in Africa, providing renewable energy for many people, and helping them to greatly improve their daily life. This made me really happy and hopeful for the future of my country. It was big celebration in Ethiopia too, also because the rainy season this year helped this first stage to be completed in a shorter amount of time. They saw it as a good sign from Mother Nature!  

Once we will be able to travel again safely, I hope you will keep visiting many places around the world, noticing the beautiful diversity that also connects us. Remember that you have all of us, a bunch of comyv family ready to welcome you.

Happy Happy Birthday to you, wishing you just happiness. መልካም ልደት 

CoMYV love from Betty/Kanmisa 

(News Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2020/grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-egypt-nile/) -------------------------------------------------------- From: Sarah Country: USA

Dear Jewelie,

I want to wish you the happiest of birthdays. Thank you for participating in the Ishihara family lives, and for always sharing such HAPPY NEWS with us! Your heart is so big and you are such bright light in this world, bringing so much joy to all of us! 

I have a bit of personal “happy news” that I wanted to share with you, and hope it puts a smile on your face - recently, my family adopted a puppy! She is a sweet girl we named “Lucky”, because we are lucky to have her, and she is lucky to have a home now. Every day she is growing big and strong, and she is a super smart dog! We enjoy teaching her tricks like “sit” and “paw”, and she really likes to play fetch with her ball. 

Some interesting facts about American Pit Bull Terriers: they are super friendly and have a goofy personality; they’re great as therapy and emotional wellness dogs; they have a great sense of smell and are often used for search & rescue and other sniffing jobs; they are very muscular and athletic and can jump very high; they are wonderful family dogs and used to be known as “nanny” dogs because they love children so much. 

She is bringing lots of joy to our family since we are all working and learning from home this year. I think we also bring her lots of happiness by giving her a warm and loving home.  

I’m thankful for the virtual connections we all have in these times, and I look forward to the day that friends and family can celebrate and enjoy time together again. Please take care, stay safe, and keep smiling! Remember, we are always under the same beautiful sky! 

Happy Birthday Jewelie! ❣️ 

Much love from your CoMYV Aunty, Sarah --------------------------------------------------------

We hope you keep looking for HAPPY NEWS every day! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEWELIE!

#HAPPYNEWS #MIYAVI #JewelieBday2020⠀ #JewelieIshihara #comiyaviww #happybirthday #birthday2020 #birthday