#'perpetually seven' as my sister would say

[ghstyles]

Subtle | FWFW Extra

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WC: 3.2

Summary: Harry subtly, and not so subtly, says he wants to have a baby

FWFW Masterlist

Main Masterlist

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The first instance was so subtle that Y/N almost missed it. They were walking through Hampstead Heath on a crisp autumn afternoon, with the leaves turning gold and crimson around them. A young mother passed by with a stroller, her baby bundled up against the chill. Harry's eyes lingered on the infant longer than usual, a slight smile playing at his lips before he turned his attention back to their conversation about his upcoming studio session.

A week later, they were having breakfast in their sunlit kitchen. Harry was scrolling through his phone while Y/N reviewed case notes for her internship, Grumps watching them both with his perpetual look of feline judgment from his perch on the windowsill.

"My cousin Ellie just had her baby," Harry commented casually, turning his phone to show Y/N a photo of a tiny newborn with a shock of dark hair. "Seven pounds, healthy delivery."

"That's wonderful," Y/N replied, glancing up from her notes. "She looks beautiful."

Harry nodded, his expression thoughtful as he gazed at the image. "Yeah, she does," he said softly, before setting his phone aside and returning to his breakfast.

The third hint came when they were reorganizing the guest bedroom that doubled as Y/N's study. Harry paused in the middle of moving a bookshelf, surveying the room with a contemplative expression.

"This room gets great natural light," he observed, glancing toward the large windows that overlooked their garden. "Good for a nursery, don't you think?"

Y/N looked up from the box of books she was unpacking, a slight furrow in her brow. "I suppose it would be," she agreed cautiously. "Though it works well as a study too."

Harry nodded, seemingly satisfied with her response. "Just thinking aloud," he said lightly, returning to the task at hand.

The hints became slightly more transparent when Harry's sister Gemma visited with her toddler son. Harry spent most of the afternoon with the boy on his hip or playing on the floor, his natural ease with children evident in every interaction. Later, as they were preparing dinner after Gemma had left, Harry's expression was wistful.

"James is getting so big," he commented, chopping vegetables with practiced efficiency. "It goes by fast, doesn't it?"

"Mmm," Y/N hummed noncommittally, stirring the pasta sauce.

"You were great with him today," Harry continued, glancing at her with a small smile. "Very patient when he kept wanting to show you the same toy car over and over."

Y/N laughed softly. "He's a sweet kid. Easy to be patient with."

"Our kids would be like that, I think," Harry said, his tone deliberately casual despite the weight of his words. "Sweet-natured but persistent when they want something."

Y/N nearly dropped her wooden spoon, caught off-guard by the direct reference. "Our hypothetical children seem to have quite the personality profile already," she managed, keeping her tone light.

Harry just smiled, a dimple appearing in his cheek as he returned to his chopping.

The following week, they were shopping for new bedding when Harry inexplicably detoured to the children's section of the department store. Y/N found him examining a tiny pair of pajamas with dinosaurs printed on them, a soft expression on his face.

"Aren't these brilliant?" he asked when he noticed her watching him. "Look at the little feet."

Y/N approached cautiously, eyeing the admittedly adorable sleepwear. "Very cute," she agreed. "But I think we should focus on the sheets we actually came for?"

Harry reluctantly returned the pajamas to the display, but not before adding, "I always loved dinosaurs as a kid. Would be fun to share that with a little one."

Y/N merely raised an eyebrow, steering him back toward the bedding department.

The hints became even more obvious when Harry rearranged his touring schedule, declining several international festival offers that would have kept him away for extended periods.

"Don't you usually do the Australian circuit?" Y/N asked, peering over his shoulder at the calendar on his laptop.

Harry shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Wanted to be home more next year," he explained. "Keep my options open."

"Options for what?" Y/N pressed, sensing there was more to his decision.

Harry swiveled in his chair to face her fully, his green eyes meeting hers with unexpected intensity. "For whatever might come up," he said meaningfully. "Life changes. I want to be prepared for that."

Y/N narrowed her eyes slightly, understanding dawning. "Are you rearranging your entire career schedule around a hypothetical baby that we haven't even discussed having?"

Harry had the grace to look slightly abashed, though determination still shone in his expression. "Not entirely," he hedged. "But I'm thinking ahead. Isn't that what responsible potential parents do?"

Y/N shook her head, torn between exasperation and a reluctant tenderness at his planning. "Harry, we should probably have an actual conversation about this before you start declining career opportunities."

Harry nodded, reaching for her hand. "You're right," he acknowledged. "I'm getting ahead of myself. But I'm ready for that conversation whenever you are."

The subtlety was completely abandoned a few days later when Grumps knocked over a potted plant, spilling soil across the kitchen floor. Harry was sweeping up the mess while Y/N scolded the unrepentant cat, who watched the cleanup efforts from the safety of the counter.

"You're a menace in your old age," Y/N informed the orange feline, who blinked at her slowly in what could only be described as feline disdain.

"He's just asserting his dominance," Harry chuckled, emptying the dustpan into the bin. "Probably worried about his position as the baby of the family."

Y/N shot him a look. "The only baby in this family is the twenty-seven-year-old rock star who refuses to put his dirty socks in the hamper," she retorted.

Harry grinned, unperturbed by her deflection. "I was thinking more along the lines of an actual baby," he clarified unnecessarily. "You know, small human, cries a lot, utterly adorable?"

Y/N crossed her arms, unable to avoid the conversation any longer. "Harry."

"Y/N," he countered, setting the broom aside and stepping closer to her.

"You've been dropping hints about babies for weeks now," she said, trying to keep her tone measured. "Some subtle, some about as subtle as a brick through a window."

Harry didn't deny it. "And you've been expertly dodging every single one," he pointed out, though there was no accusation in his voice, only a gentle observation.

Y/N sighed, running a hand through her golden-brown hair. "It's a big conversation to have," she said quietly. "Life-changing."

"I know," Harry acknowledged, his expression softening as he reached for her hands. "That's why I've been trying to ease into it. Apparently not very successfully."

Despite herself, Y/N smiled. "The dinosaur pajamas weren't exactly subtle."

Harry laughed, the sound warm and rich in the quiet kitchen. "I got excited," he admitted. "They had little claws on the feet."

Y/N shook her head, but allowed him to pull her closer, his arms encircling her waist as he looked down at her with a mixture of hope and uncertainty.

"So," he said softly. "Can we have that conversation now? The baby one?"

Y/N studied his face, the earnest green eyes, the slight nervous tension in his jaw, the vulnerability he was allowing her to see, and felt something shift inside her chest.

"Yes," she agreed quietly. "Let's talk about it."

Harry's face lit up with such naked hope that Y/N felt her heart constrict. "Really?"

"Really," she confirmed. "But talking is all I'm committing to right now," she added quickly, seeing his enthusiasm. "This isn't a yes to actually having a baby."

Harry nodded seriously, though he couldn't quite suppress his smile. "Understood. Just talking."

He led her to the sofa in their living room, sitting close enough that their knees touched. Grumps followed at a dignified pace, jumping up to claim his usual spot at the far end, watching them with a suspicious yellow eye as if he understood perfectly well what they were discussing.

"So," Y/N began, feeling slightly awkward now that they were actually having the conversation. "You want to have a baby."

Harry nodded, his expression thoughtful. "I do," he confirmed. "With you, specifically."

The clarification made Y/N smile despite her nervousness. "Well, I should hope so," she teased. "Why now, though? We've only been married a year."

Harry considered this, his thumb absently stroking the back of her hand. "It's not really about timing in the conventional sense," he said slowly. "It's more that... I'm ready. I feel settled in a way I never have before. My career is established, we're solid, and..." he paused, searching for the right words. "I want to build something permanent with you. Something that's ours."

The simplicity and sincerity of his answer touched Y/N deeply. For someone who had spent most of his adult life in the transient world of entertainment, surrounded by people who came and went, the desire for permanence was profound.

"What about your career?" she asked, voicing one of her practical concerns. "You're still touring, recording. A baby would change all that."

Harry nodded, acknowledging the reality. "It would," he agreed. "But I've been thinking about that. I can scale back touring, be more selective about projects. Work from home more. I don't need to be on the road as much as I used to be."

He squeezed her hand gently. "And I know your career is important too," he added. "I'm not suggesting you give anything up. We'd figure it out together, find a balance that works for both of us."

Y/N appreciated his consideration, though she still had reservations. "It's a huge responsibility," she said quietly. "Once we make that decision, there's no going back."

"I know," Harry acknowledged, his expression serious. "And I wouldn't suggest it if I wasn't absolutely certain about us, about our future together."

His gaze held hers, steady and sure. "I love you, Y/N. More than I ever thought possible. And I want to share that love with a child, our child."

Y/N felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes, unexpected emotion welling up at his words. "I love you too," she whispered.

From his end of the sofa, Grumps let out a disgruntled meow, apparently unimpressed by the display of human sentiment.

Harry laughed softly, breaking the intensity of the moment. "See, even Grumps has an opinion," he joked, reaching over to scratch the cat behind his ears. Grumps allowed this attention for precisely three seconds before swatting at Harry's hand with retracted claws, a warning rather than an actual attack.

"I think he's voting no," Y/N observed with a small smile.

"He'll come around," Harry predicted confidently. "Probably appoint himself guardian and supervisor. He already thinks he runs this household."

"Doesn't he, though?" Y/N teased.

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the weight of the conversation settling around them. Finally, Y/N spoke again, her voice soft but steady.

"I'm not saying no," she clarified, meeting Harry's hopeful gaze. "But I'm not saying yes yet either. I need time to think about it properly. It's a big decision."

Harry nodded, bringing her hand to his lips for a gentle kiss. "Take all the time you need," he assured her. "I'm not going anywhere."

Y/N leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. "Thank you for being patient with me," she murmured.

Harry smiled, his green eyes warm with affection. "Always," he promised, before closing the small distance between them for a tender kiss.

Grumps watched this exchange with feline disdain before jumping down from the sofa and stalking away toward the kitchen, tail held high. Human mating rituals were clearly beneath his dignity, especially when they threatened to disrupt the peaceful kingdom over which he presided. Some battles, even a cat knew, were lost before they began.

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Later that night, as moonlight filtered through the partially drawn curtains of their bedroom, Harry and Y/N lay tangled in their sheets. What had begun as gentle goodnight kisses had evolved into something more heated, their conversation from earlier seeming to have kindled a particular intensity in Harry.

His lips trailed down her neck, lingering at the sensitive spot just below her ear that always made her breath catch. His hands wandered over her body with familiar reverence, tracing the curves he'd come to know so intimately over the past year.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he murmured against her collarbone, his voice deeper than usual, roughened with desire.

Y/N's fingers threaded through his hair, her body arching instinctively as he moved lower, pressing open-mouthed kisses across the swell of her breasts. He took his time, as he always did, savoring each response he drew from her, the slight hitch in her breathing when he grazed her nipple with his teeth, the soft moan when his tongue soothed the sting.

But tonight, there was something different in his attention, a new focus that became apparent as he continued his journey down her body. When he reached her stomach, his pace slowed deliberately, his kisses turning almost reverential. His large hands spanned her waist, thumbs gently stroking the soft skin of her abdomen.

"So perfect," he whispered, pressing his lips just below her navel. "You'd be so beautiful pregnant."

Y/N's eyes, which had drifted closed in pleasure, snapped open at his words.

Harry didn't seem to notice her reaction, continuing his attentive worship of her midsection. "Our baby would grow right here," he murmured, his breath warm against her skin. "Safe and loved."

He pressed another kiss lower on her stomach, his hands sliding to cradle her hips. "You'd be the most gorgeous pregnant woman," he continued, his voice a mixture of awe and desire. "Carrying our child."

Y/N couldn't help the giggle that escaped her, a combination of the ticklish sensation of his stubble against her sensitive skin and the sheer transparency of his intentions.

"Harry," she said, her voice tinged with amusement as she tugged gently at his hair, urging him to look up at her.

He raised his head, his green eyes dark with desire but questioning.

Y/N smiled down at him, shaking her head slightly. "I got the hint already," she laughed softly, pulling him up toward her.

Harry had the grace to look slightly sheepish, though there was no real contrition in his expression. "What hint?" he asked with exaggerated innocence, even as a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"The very subtle baby propaganda you're currently conducting," Y/N replied dryly, cupping his face in her hands.

Harry grinned, not bothering to deny it. "Is it working?" he asked, pressing a kiss to her palm.

"It's a bit transparent," she informed him, trying to maintain her stern expression despite the warmth spreading through her at his eager enthusiasm.

"Can't blame a man for trying," he murmured, leaning down to capture her lips in a kiss that quickly rekindled the heat between them.

When they parted, both slightly breathless, Y/N regarded him with fond exasperation. "You're ridiculous, you know that?"

"Part of my charm," he agreed without hesitation, his hands resuming their exploration of her body, though he pointedly avoided lingering on her stomach again.

Y/N laughed, the sound turning into a gasp as his fingers found their way between her thighs, discovering how ready she was for him despite, or perhaps partly because of, his transparent attempts at persuasion.

"Fuck," he breathed, his expression darkening with renewed desire. "You're so wet for me."

His touch became more purposeful, circling her clit with practiced precision that had her arching beneath him. "Is this what you want?" he asked, his voice a low rumble against her ear.

"Yes," she gasped, her hips moving instinctively against his hand.

He slid two fingers inside her, curling them just right as his thumb continued its maddening circles. "Or do you want my cock?" he questioned, his crude language a stark contrast to the tender words he'd been whispering moments before.

Y/N moaned, her body tightening around his fingers. "Your cock," she answered without hesitation, past the point of coyness or teasing.

Harry's eyes darkened further at her words, and he withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth to taste her as he positioned himself between her thighs. The sight of him licking her arousal from his fingers with such obvious pleasure sent another rush of heat through her.

"No more baby talk," she warned breathlessly, even as she wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him closer.

Harry smirked, lining himself up against her entrance. "For now," he conceded, before pushing into her with one smooth thrust that had both of them groaning.

He set a deliberate pace, deep and thorough, his eyes locked on hers as he moved within her. One hand gripped her hip while the other braced beside her head, giving him leverage to drive into her with increasing intensity.

"Fuck, you feel so good," he growled, his composure gradually unraveling as their bodies moved together. "So tight around my cock."

Y/N responded in kind, her nails digging into his back as she met each thrust. "Harder," she demanded, beyond coherent thought as pleasure built within her.

Harry complied immediately, his hips snapping against hers with renewed force. "Like this?" he panted, adjusting the angle slightly to hit exactly where she needed him.

"Yes," she gasped, her head falling back against the pillows as the tension coiled tighter in her core. "Don't stop."

"Wasn't planning on it," he assured her, his rhythm becoming more erratic as his own control began to slip. "Come for me, love. Want to feel you come on my cock."

His crude encouragement, combined with the relentless friction where their bodies joined, pushed Y/N over the edge. She cried out, her body clenching around him as waves of pleasure crashed through her.

Harry followed shortly after, driven past restraint by the sight and sensation of her climax. He buried himself deep inside her with a final thrust, her name a rough prayer on his lips as he found his own release.

They remained connected as they caught their breath, Harry's weight a welcome pressure above her. Eventually, he shifted to lie beside her, drawing her close against his chest as their heartbeats gradually slowed to normal.

After a comfortable silence, Y/N tilted her head to look up at him, a mixture of amusement and affection in her hazel eyes. "Just so we're clear," she said, her voice still slightly husky, "amazing sex isn't going to make me decide about having a baby any faster."

Harry laughed, the sound rumbling pleasantly beneath her ear where it rested against his chest. "Noted," he acknowledged, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Though it was worth a try."

Y/N rolled her eyes, though she couldn't suppress her smile. "Like I said. Ridiculous."

Harry merely grinned, unrepentant, as he pulled her closer. "You love it," he murmured confidently.

And as she drifted toward sleep in the warm circle of his arms, Y/N had to admit, if only to herself, that he wasn't entirely wrong.

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a/n: I’d give this man as many babies as he wants

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[justforbooks]

Christina Hendricks

The star of Good Girls discusses Mad Men, sexual harassment and squaring her glamorous reputation with her ‘weird, goofy’ personality

Christina Hendricks appears on our video call with the most dramatic backdrop. Art deco gold peacocks bedeck a black wall, making her look, as she has so often in her career, a bit too good to be human. Perfectly poised, perfectly framed, perfectly lit, she is more like a dreamy vision of what humans look like. “I, erm, like your wall,” I say, pointlessly. She flashes a smile, as if to say: “Obviously.”

We are here primarily to discuss the comedy-drama series Good Girls, the fourth season of which will resume in the US this month after a midseason break. The elevator pitch would be Breaking Bad for girls: three suburban women, each hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, unite to embark on a life of cack-handed crime, only to discover they are good at it. The ensemble – Hendricks, Mae Whitman, who plays her sister, and Retta, their friend – works strikingly well, their pacey comic rapport instilling a sense of perpetual motion. You just can’t imagine Good Girls ending. Every time a plot line seems to be reaching its climax, something worse – and funnier – happens.

“It’s funny you say that, because originally, when I read the pilot script, I thought: ‘I love this, but I can’t imagine this being more than one episode,’” says Hendricks. “It felt like it finished itself.” She is unsentimental about it. Hendricks wasn’t looking for a new show – “I was happy doing films, taking my time” – but went into it with her eyes open. It is a network drama, for NBC – it is shown on Netflix in the UK – so producers are always aware that “it’s going into every house in the US on a Thursday or a Sunday and a family is watching it. They’re much more careful about numbers and advertisers and people being offended or not getting it. A cable show is much more: ‘We trust this creator – they’re a visionary.’”

It has a conventional tone – however dark the material, it is handled very lightly. Yet you can’t help but notice some hard-boiled social commentary from the off – if it weren’t for the bracingly callous US health system, the generation of wage-stagnation casualties and the patriarchy, none of the characters would have gone anywhere near a supermarket heist. More than Breaking Bad, it reminds me of Roseanne and the golden age of US mainstream comedy, when you could be poor on TV without that being a breach of good taste.

The 48-year-old has been a household name for almost 15 years, thanks to Mad Men. She was born in Tennessee, where her mother was a psychologist and her father worked for the Forest Service, and educated in Oregon and then Idaho. She didn’t have time for formal acting training; by the time she was 18, her modelling career had taken off. Later, when she had a manager, she took acting lessons: “I did that for almost a year and a half and put auditions on ice. Then I was watching a film – I don’t even remember what film it was or who was in it – and I thought: ‘I’m ready. I can do this.’” She has the most insistent work ethic; as she describes her life’s trajectory, she notes diligently the jobs she had while she was at high school, at a hair salon and a menswear shop.

In 2007, she appeared as Joan Holloway in Mad Men. She played the role for the next eight years, her character growing around the depth she brought to it, until by season seven she was almost the central part. In the early 2010s, Hendricks was talked about constantly, although she says the original focal points of obsession were the male characters: “Men started dressing like Don Draper and Roger Sterling. Suits came back in, skinny ties came back in. It took three to four seasons and then all of a sudden people wanted us [the female stars] on magazines. We were like: ‘This is strange – we’ve been doing this for a while.’”

Hendricks, along with January Jones, who played Betty Draper, came to represent so much. There was a great deal of rumination on their physicality, Jones as elegant as an afghan hound, Hendricks like the pin-up painted on the side of a bomber. What did it mean, people asked, that in the middle of the 20th century there were multiple ideals of the female form, whereas in the 21st century there was only one? How did that complicate the perception of gender equality as a steady march towards the light? Thousands of column inches went on that question – but, from the actor’s perspective, it was an annoying distraction. “There certainly was a time when we were very critically acclaimed, and getting a lot of attention for our very good work and our very hard work, and everyone just wanted to ask me about my bra again. There are only two sentences to say about a bra,” she says.

The signal impression the show left was of an ensemble at the peak of its creativity: actors, writers and the creator, Matthew Weiner, working in almost telepathic unison. It won the Emmy for outstanding drama series four times in a row, but the more notable year was 2012, when it was nominated for 17 Emmys (and didn’t win any of them). The take-home was: everyone involved with this is absolutely brilliant.

That harmonious picture was blurred two years after the show ended, when one of the former writers, Kater Gordon, accused Weiner of sexual harassment. Marti Noxon, a consulting producer on Mad Men, concurred that Weiner had created a toxic environment and said that he was an “‘emotional terrorist’ who will badger, seduce and even tantrum in an attempt to get his needs met”.

Hendricks takes this head on, in a considered, straightforward manner. “My relationship with Matt was in no way toxic,” she says. “I don’t discount anyone’s experience if I wasn’t there to see it, but that wasn’t my experience. Was he a perfectionist, was he tough, did he expect a lot? Yes. And he would say that in a second. We were hard on each other.”

It is impossible, from this distance, to adjudicate on Weiner’s character, but Hendricks’s response reveals something of hers. The easiest response in this situation, and the one 90% of actors give, is: “No comment.” Hendricks is always collected, never evasive, doesn’t gabble. She reminds me powerfully of Joan Holloway – and I am sorry to say it, because she insists throughout: “I’m an actress. I am completely not Joan. Not in any way. I wish I was more like Joan.”

I wonder if, while we were all fixating on Joan’s bras and whether or not, in the asinine words of Lynne Featherstone, the UK’s equalities minister in 2010, she represented a “curvy role model”, the audience was responding to Joan’s deeper life lesson – that self-possession is 9/10ths of the law.

What Hendricks emphatically doesn’t do is minimise the existence of sexism and sexual harassment in the industry: “Boy, do you think anyone in the entertainment industry comes out unscathed and not objectified? I don’t know one musician or one model or one actor who has escaped that. I have had moments – not on Mad Men; on other things – where people have tried to take advantage of me, use my body in a way I wasn’t comfortable with, persuade me or coerce me or professionally shame me: ‘If you took your work seriously, you would do this …’

“Maybe it was my modelling background, but I knew to immediately get on the phone and go: ‘Uh oh, trouble,’” she says. “That’s where it’s very much a job. We need to talk to the producers and handle this professionally.”

Yet, at the same time, she is defensive of her industry. “It gets a lot of attention because people know who we are. I’m sure there’s a casting couch at the bank down the street, I’m sure the same thing happens in management consultancy, but people don’t know who the management consultants are.”

Modelling always sounds like a harsh environment – predatory photographers vying with stringent agents to give everyone a complex about their thighs and stop them eating carbs. But that is not how Hendricks describes it at all. Her career sounds like one out of an 80s Judy annual: innocent and hearty, good for pin money and travel opportunities. “I think I was lucky – I didn’t start when I was 14. When I was about 18 or 19, I went to Japan for the first time, I went to Italy. We’d be lots of girls, sharing a house, and I sort of became the den mother. I’d make everyone egg salad sandwiches and Greek salads, going into this mother hen role.”

That is what they say about being taken hostage: if you want to survive, choose someone to look after. “Oh,” she says, coolly. “I wouldn’t consider being a model as being a hostage.”

She was only ever medium-successful, she insists – an “unusual and quirky” hire, rather than the slam-dunk face of everything. About as far as it went was that she never had to get another job to supplement her income. Probably the most famous image of that era in which she was involved was the poster for American Beauty. Two models were in the frame, so they took a photo of the stomach and the hands of each. In the end, they used Hendricks’s hand on the other model’s stomach. It sounds like a clunky metaphor, but it is true.

During this period, she moved to London with a friend, for the hell of it, living in a flat on Gloucester Road, “surviving on cider and hummus”. It is a glimpse of the oddball she says she was growing up, the outsider as whom she is rarely cast. This has been the story of her CV. “Early on in my career, I would get auditions and I would call my manager and say: ‘I would never cast me in this – she’s a cheerleader, she’s a bimbo. Can I audition for the other one, the weird doctor?’ And they’d be like: ‘No, they saw your picture.’ And I started realising that people didn’t see the weird, goofy me that I saw.”

She made the jump from modelling to acting via adverts, with what looks like fairytale ease. In fact, it was “a lot of pounding the pavement and showing up for auditions and getting rejected – and learning, as a young woman, to not take that personally”. By the late 90s, she was the face of ultimate female confidence, the woman who drinks Johnnie Walker and doesn’t need a chauffeur (these are two ads, not one for drink-driving). “I always thought of modelling as freeze-frame acting. It felt like a scene, and I still consider it that way. There are so many technical things that I think people don’t notice. They see you playing dress-up.”

From the commercials, she learned “how to hit a mark, how to memorise a line”, but acting wasn’t novel. She had been doing community theatre since the age of 10, and grew up expecting an alternative life, supplementing an art-house existence any which way. She never amplifies her creative urges. She is much happier talking about professionalism and graft, but that is strategic more than anything else. “I am incredibly emotional and I take things very personally. But I’ve learned to be a little bit of a politician and a little bit of a producer along the way. As a female actor, the easy go-to is: ‘She was emotional, she was hysterical.’ It can be a million other people’s fault, but it’s easy to point your finger at an emotional artist. So, I realised: if I’m going to be taken seriously, I need to have professional perspective and I can cry about it to my friends later.”

Yet she cares deeply about creativity, as is clear when she talks about Mad Men. “It may eclipse anything I ever did. And, if it does, it was a good one and I’m proud of it,” she says. “I got to bring who I was as a woman. I think I learned some of how to be a woman from Joan. No one would give a shit about me if it wasn’t for that show. I’d still be doing good work, but no one would have found me. If that’s the best thing I ever do, it was pretty good.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[happybkwrm]

Wentworth and the Crofts

I've been thinking about this for a few days so here goes;

Wentworth and Anne met and fell in love eight years before the start of Persuasion. Admiral and Mrs. Croft have been married for - fifteen years? So, at the time he and Anne met, his sister had been married for seven years. We don't know much about his background, but it's obvious (to me) that he looks up to his sister and brother-in-law. So, you might think that when Wentworth thinks about marriage, he's looking to the Crofts as an example to follow.

*******

"What a great traveller you must have been, ma'am!" said Mrs Musgrove to Mrs Croft.

"Pretty well, ma'am in the fifteen years of my marriage; though many women have done more. I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies, and back again, and only once; besides being in different places about home: Cork, and Lisbon, and Gibraltar. But I never went beyond the Streights, and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies."

... "I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared. Thank God! I have always been blessed with excellent health, and no climate disagrees with me. A little disordered always the first twenty-four hours of going to sea, but never knew what sickness was afterwards. The only time I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience."

Persuasion (pp. 45-46). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

****** From Wentworth's point of view; he has to compare his strong-willed, loyal sister, happily married to a Navy man, willing to face the difficulties at his side; loving the travel and fearing nothing but separation.

Then there's Anne, who (in his view) 'noped' her way out of their engagement at the advice of Lady Russell - a woman who openly disliked him.

Anne, who (according to the Musgroves) turned down a perfectly good match because (once again) Lady Russell said 'No'. (WE know that LR wanted Anne to marry Charles, but no one else does.)

I can't blame him for that. I'm not sure I would be so quick to give a second chance to someone who dumped me because of advice from someone who I knew hated me.

He doesn't hate Anne, he doubts her loyalty and strength of mind.

[rubythecrimsonwriter]

There was a point in my early college experience that my meal structure more closely resembled a Hobbit's than a human's, just by virtue of being incredibly busy and also trying to put on weight after I lost a bunch due to a surgery going mildly awry.

This was made incredibly obvious to everyone in my immediate vicinity because i set alarms to remind me to eat because my hunger receptors are basically useless to this day. Perpetually hungry for years because i was growing so fast, compounded with regimented school systems that didn't allow for snacks, plus hyperfixations that don't let me go for hours on end mean that I'm more likely to look up and have to count back the hours on when i last ate and think i should eat than i am to feel hungry.

My best friends had helped me set up the alarms and they had named the alarms appropriately, so when there was a project that resulted in my phone being in someone else's hand when the Elevenses alarm goes off, he looks at the alarm and looks at me and he knows my schedule because he's in most of my classes with me. And then he looks at his watch and the sudden realization that I had trained all of my classmates that had the same four morning classes onto MY schedule was hilarious and it went a little like this:

The alarm goes off. I'm patting down my pockets and bag for my phone because we've been playing swap with each other's phones for almost an hour. I find someone else's phone but not mine. I look up to try and find where the ringing is coming from and its in Josh's hand. Josh has seen the alarm and is staring at it. And he looks at his watch. And oh so slowly, his eyes tick over to mine.

"You're going to say its time for a snack and drag us all over to [coffee shop that sold bagels and a stupidly good chai i was obsessed with that was within easy walking distance]."

Everyone looks at Josh, because Josh doesn't really make prophecies very often. Or ever, really.

"Yes," I say.

And indeed, everyone was mostly packed and ready to go stretch their legs and get coffee and a snack before our next class at 11:45.

Josh just kind of looks at me. You know the one, where its kind of half terrified, half exasperated, with like a sprinkling of admiration like cinnamon powder? "The semester's been in session for a week and we're all already on your schedule?"

"I'm trying to regain fifteen pounds i lost in two weeks, while having 18 credit hours, while being a spotter for my sister. I start my day at 5 and you idiots dont even have a piece of fruit for breakfast, much less anything else. So yeah, when its 9 and I have second breakfast and you guys suddenly realize you're hungry? A snack and coffee to get through until when class lets out at 2? Then lunch? Rehydration and a snack at 4, also known as Tea? Dinner at 6? Our night class doesn't let out until 10, Josh. You're not half as tired as you were a week ago, and that's with three night classes and a seven am class twice a week. You really think that's because you're sleeping?"

I swear to anything you hold holy, you would have thought I'd just outlined my step by step plan for world domination that had an actual chance at working.

[eviesessays]

35. What are your favorite memories of each of your children growing up?

Whenever I think of the funny and memorable things my children did growing up, I always end up wishing I had enjoyed them more and worried less about feeding, clothing and educating them.  They were cute, funny, intelligent lovable children who did heart warming things.

For eleven years we lived on Lansing Drive.   It was a neighborhood of young families with children in every home.  One day I was at my easel painting when the doorbell rang and two older ladies said they were there for the concert.  They showed me their tickets drawn perfectly in Heather’s seven year old script.  Indeed there was a concert in my backyard.  Heather had gathered all the outgrown costumes from past recitals and taught the younger children dances.  Our patio was their stage and everyone generously applauded all the efforts. 

Jaylyn was my pensive one.  She seldom spoke up since Heather always spoke for both of them when necessary or not.  She once was invited to join Heather and their daughter, Joanne on an early Spring ride to the beach.  I told Jaylyn she could go but she had to talk to everyone.  On return she reported talking the entire conversation.  Joanne’s Mom asked if anyone wanted gum and Jaylyn reported saying, “I do.  I do”.Jaylyn once asked me if the back of our head was our three head since the front was our forehead.  She wondered if there were little hands in the dishwasher that washed our dishes when we closed the door.  

Heather was a girl scout and went off to Camp May Flather in Virginia, one summer.  She dutifully got all her things together by herself.  She very conscientiously checked her list and had everything.  I was so proud of her.  She recently told me she had kept all the letters I wrote to her and has scanned them into perpetuity.  Jaylyn was not interested in scouting.  She had no interest in sleeping on the ground with bugs running freely everywhere.  She wanted to take guitar lessons.  I signed her up with a teacher recommended by my neighbor.  She quickly lost interest saying he played with is head nodding sideways and his mouth open.  Definitely not a good match. In later years Jaylyn took up the dulcimer.  

About this time Robin was in second grade and came home one day bursting with the great news that her teacher’s cat had kittens and she could have one free if her Mom allowed this.  My response was an emphatic, “NO”.  I explained to Robin that she would lose interest in her kitten and fifteen years hence she would be off at college and I would still be living with that cat.  Her teacher then allowed the children to come and see the kittens and I agreed we could all go and look at the kittens.  Three weeks later we brought Ida Grey Pussy Cat Joss home and 18 years later I was still living with her.  At this same time Heather’s friend down the street had a miniature Schnauzer who had puppies and they would certainly take much better care and interest in a dog.  We named her OttenBritt and called her Britt.  It seemed a perfect name.   My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Anna OttenBritt.  She was born in Germany.  It was a great name for our new family member.  Peter was a senior in college in  May of 1985 when I had to have Britt euthanized.  She was a great pet.  her stub of a tail wagged at the mere prospect of play time.  All the children loved Britt.  Once when Jaylyn was in high school, she brought home an exchange student for dinner.  His name was Yugi and he was from Japan.  Britt was lying on her cushion under the desk in the kitchen and Yugi asked, “Is your pet a cat or a dog”?  She was just a cute little bundle of brindle grey fur but everyone loved Britt.  

Robin made every effort to keep up to her older sisters.  She played school with them.  She wanted to learn all they learned.  One day as her Dad was having breakfast she asked if he would like his paper to read and he agreed that would be nice.  She then asked if he would like today’s or tomorrow’s ?  Well, given a choice, he would take tomorrow’s.  Robin was at the coffee table shuffling papers and then tearfully said, “I can’t know what is tomorrow’s.  I’m too little to read”. Robin was not often stumped.

I clearly remember Heather’s first day of school.  She went off full of confidence that she could handle this.  She seemed so little to be sent out into the world.  When I waited for her after school she assured me she knew all the right answers.  The questions were, “What is your name? and Where do you live?’  My wee scholar knew all the right answers.  I was very proud of her.

Peter was about four when he was invited to our neighbor’s birthday party.  He had a fever the night before but seemed fine at party time.  In his best clothes he went off, gift in hand to Robbie’s party.  He was brought home about an hour later feverish and vomiting.  Peter was convinced the potato chips were bad and for many years did not eat a potato chip.  When Peter was in kindergarten he told me his teacher was very beautiful.  She in fact, was quite plump, had red hair and freckles.  She was a marvelous, kind and gentle teacher and I was proud Peter saw her beauty.

Only Robin escaped broken bones and Heather didn’t break her leg til she fell on the ice at the University of Maryland. When we lived on Lansing Jaylyn fell off her bike one day and came home complaining about her arm hurting.  Like a good mother and nurse I applied ice.  The next day there was no relief and Dr Shaver confirmed the arm was broken.  We went on our usual week at Rehoboth Beach with Jaylyn’s arm in a cast.  On a summer visit to Sioux Lookout Peter was playing on a self propelled merry go round and fell off.  He had a greenstick fracture  of his right wrist.  He was in Sioux Lookout General Hospital.  The next day under general anaesthetic if was realigned and a cast applied.  Peter was amazed that he went to sleep and he was not even tired.  The doctor I had known since childhood had made things right.

I cannot stop thinking about this story.  I think about the Mother’s Day breakfast in bed with eggs scrambled in peanut butter.  Then there was the time they tasted Miracle Grow tablets  and as I as looking up the poison center telephone number Robin,  was doing arabesque across the kitchen.  She assured me she had licked some and didn’t die.  

They were such great kids. We made trips to Canada to visit my brother Kip and his family of four.  One trip was in my Triumph T3 .  Heather was my copilot and Jaylyn, Robin and Peter sat on that wee ledge in back all the way from Washington, DC to Kingston, Ontario.  Kids do not come any greater than that.

[snugglyporos]

The gripe most people have with DW9 is thr voice acting. A common theme with Dynasty Warriors - that I've found at least, your experience may differ - is the voice acting is like they're acting in a play. It's theatrical and dramatic.

DW9 casts aside Lu Bu's iconic growly voice, and the actors just don't care as much as they did, that with being a drop in quality. Dw7, in my personal opinion, had it best. And that's someone whose heard both dubs.

Theres also the fact that one scene with Liu Bei, learning of the deaths of Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, that was reduced to a JRPG style interaction as opposed to the emotional cutscenes we know. It's one glaring example of just... missing heart, you know?

But yea, if you're playing in Japanese or Chinese the voice acting isn't a big deal. It's just that I've noticed. To be fair I haven't played 9 myself, but I have seen enough to have something. All the same, I'm happy you're enjoying it. (That said I think you'd like Dw7)

// Okay so... Here's my issue: I've been playing the game for years and 'emotional' is not what I would associate with this series. The voice acting has never been good. There are individuals who have good voice actors, Lu Bu for one, but a lot of them end up like Xu Shu's voice actor, or the ear bleeding sounds of the Qiao sisters...

I can put up with bad voice acting. I can. I need it to be passable and understandable. The fact that DW9 even HAS a dub puts it above Samurai Warriors 5, because while the VA is probably better overall, it fades into the background because my brain does not realize speech is happening.

I can also say that Samurai Warriors 5 tries to be 'dramatic' and it ended up farcical. No throwing herself in front of a bullet to save Nobunaga SHOULD be emotionally impactful, but I laughed my ass off because it was SO over the top and it was NOT earned. Meanwhile characters like Hideyoshi are perpetually stuck as 'eager moron' and... Well it's not good.

I have played, and beaten (by which I mean unlocked every character, completed all campaigns, max leveled, and completed ever side mode) in every Dynasty Warriors mainline game since 5.

5 is my favorite of the 'classic' games. 6 is not THAT bad. Seven is a game that I beat, but I can't remember anything about it, but I know I played a lot of it. 8 was fine, but I felt that it was kinda lacking with how anyone can use any weapon.

Here's my view: I think that Dynasty Warriors should veer away from 'dramatic' and embrace the camp to some degree. Remember when it was fun? I mean, I don't think it should be terrible, we don't need Shenmue levels of bad. I think expecting dramatic actors to play the roles is kinda... counterproductive.

Rather than dramatic, I think that they need voice actors who feel like they fit the CHARACTER. That brings some energy or identity to the character. Having so many characters means a lot of them blend together. Having a strong voice actor helps with that, even if they're only doing generic lines most of the time.

[splendidtext24]

Then again, maybe i won't

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[aegor-bamfsteel]

Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea. —TWOIAF: The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

House Targaryen had ruled Dragonstone for more than two hundred years, since Lord Aenar Targaryen first arrived from Valyria with his dragons. Though it had always been their custom to wed brother to sister and cousin to cousin, young blood runs hot, and it was not unknown for men of the house to seek their pleasures amongst the daughters (and even the wives) of their subjects, the smallfolk who lived in the villages below the Dragonmont, tillers of the land and fishers of the sea. Indeed, until the reign of King Jaehaerys, the ancient right to the first night had been invoked mayhaps more oft on Dragonstone than anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms, though Good Queen Alysanne would surely have been shocked to hear it.

Though the first night was greatly resented elsewhere, as Queen Alysanne had learned in her women's counsels, such feelings were muted upon Dragonstone, where Targaryens were rightly regarded as being closer to gods than the common run of men. Here, brides thus blessed upon their wedding nights were envied, and the children born of such unions were esteemed above all others, for the Lords of Dragonstone oft celebrated the birth of such with lavish gifts of gold and silk and land to the mother. These happy bastards were said to have been "born of dragonseed," and in time became known simply as "seeds." Even after the end of the right of the first night, certain Targaryens continued to dally with the daughters of innkeeps and the wives of fishermen, so seeds and the sons of seeds were plentiful on Dragonstone. —Fire and Blood: The Dance of the Dragons: The Sowing of the Seeds

I’m definitely not going to say the second passage is entirely true (especially not “rightly regarded” the Targs as godlike), and no Dragonstone woman objected to what is in-universe considered rape by their ruling family, whereas other women objected to “”First Night”” (a completely ahistorical so-called tradition the Victorians invented) in the North and Riverlands. I added the first passage in because that’s the only time it’s mentioned the Targaryens had slaves (though it’s never said when they emancipated them), but considering the alleged esteem the Dragonstone smallfolk had for this family, and that the Targaryens only converted to the Faith (that views slavery as an abomination) with Aegon I’s coronation, it’s my opinion that Aenar’s slaves—taken thousands of leagues away from their homelands by a dragon-controlling lord who foretold doom to the Freehold, which then turned out to be right 12 years later—intermarried with the people already living on Dragonstone, passing on Valyrian attitudes toward the dragonlords as a relationship more akin to master-slave than lord-subject as it was elsewhere in Westeros (which was then perpetuated by Targaryen men preying on the smallfolk women). Dragonstone is also noted by Stannis’ era to not be very wealthy (only in obsidian), so these “”gifts”” given during First Night could be the difference between poverty and some amount of generational wealth (which was Jaehaerys I’s excuse for keeping First Night, with Alysanne just protesting that other lords aren’t like Targs). It does make sense for Dragonstone, which lived under the rule of Targs for over a century longer than the rest of Westeros, without the influence of the anti-slavery Faith, with the influence of a slaveholding family and likely a population descended in part from their former slaves, and a largely infertile region short on luxuries Targs could give them, to have developed a culture (though by no means universal) that the Targs were godlike dragon-riders and prophecy-givers who could do whatever they wanted with the smallfolk. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome for the islanders. But that propaganda wouldn’t hold true for the rest of Westeros, especially the further away you get from the Crownlands.

Do you think people in KL/Westeros actually bought into the “Targaryens were closer to Gods than men…” myth like their stans always suggest?

I think that some probably did, yes, because propaganda is an easy sell for a lot of people. And honestly I don't feel like they had much of a choice, in terms of what kind of power they wielded I'm sure it did seem godlike.

[lunapwrites]

The Unforgiven - LTL Outtake

This was originally going to be a whole ass chapter and then I was having difficulty with it and then realized this Ministry scene itself wasn't actually important, no matter whose POV I try to write it in... so I'm cutting it out entirely. BUT not before I gift you all with the raw version of whateverthefuck I was trying to write lol. So here ya go:

-

It was Monday before Lyall heard about the results of the hearing, and only then by overhearing snatches of conversation on his way to his office.

He hadn't wanted to bother Auror Tonks by asking her on her days off, and no one else seemed to think that perhaps a man might want to know his son was still breathing. Occupational hazard, he supposed; most wizards would have pretended Remus had ceased to exist the moment those fangs had torn into his thigh. Easier to pretend their child had been eaten rather than simply othered.

Not that this was something to be proud of, as his son used to remind him: right, ta for doing the bare fucking minimum, Lyall. Always "Lyall," ever since the truth came out, and that's if Remus acknowledged him at all. His son had inherited his temper and Hope's propensity for grudges, and Lyall still didn't know whether to call that a blessing or a curse.

He picked up the photo of his wife, grinning wickedly at him as she made some wisecrack that Lyall couldn’t hear and never would again. Remus had inherited that, too.

“Word is that our son’s started quite a few fires,” he told her quietly, "so I nicked a copy of the Prophet off Donna in the Floo Office -- I know, I know; I wouldn’t need to nick it if I just took it at home. Only I’m hardly ever there these days.”

(Quiet office or quiet house, it didn’t matter.)

He unrolled the newspaper and showed it to her.

“Our boy made the front page, he did.”

The photo they’d used was the closest look Lyall had gotten at his son in fifteen years.

Dark shadows under his eyes; he hadn't slept, and no wonder given what he was facing. His hair was shorter than he used to keep it, but still longer than when he was a boy. Soft, golden-brown curls all shot through with silver, especially around the temples. He made it look dignified, even while he was bellowing up at someone out of frame.

“Last time I saw him properly, he was shouting at me like that,” Lyall mused. “Merlin knows I earned it -- he was never a shouter, our Remus. Not like I was.”

Apparently, Remus had publicly thrown his lot in with Sirius, and while the Ministry was letting the escaped convict have a retrial, they made sure everyone knew that the werewolf had sided with a mass murderer. (Alleged mass murderer, he corrected himself silently.) There was a whole three-page spread, detailing all the little things about Remus' life that Lyall had tried very hard to bury for him. All pulled from his filing cabinet, of course.

If Remus had just kept his head down -- but, no. He would never, not when one of those boys was involved; Remus would have died for any of them. Little Peter, who was always the first to help with the washing up. James with his heart of gold and his foot perpetually stuck in his mouth. Sirius, the boy with an eye to match his name and a wildfire grin that caught everyone around him.

The boy who, according to Remus, was innocent.

“I never understood why he did it. You always said he’d cut off his hand before he raised it against any of them, and you know what?” Lyall brandished the paper at his wife’s photograph. “I reckon you were right.”

[brionysea]

a group including mike tried to follow will into the upside down. el told mike to turn back, lying about why, and when lucas brought attention to how she was messing with their compass she just said that it wasn't safe. el stopped them before they could go into the upside down

the demogorgon trapped a group including mike in the middle school and got stopped by el before it could do whatever it came there to do, and if it just wanted to kill them, they would've been dead in a second. mike was right when he said that fighting it with a slingshot would be suicide. el threw mike back and specifically said goodbye to him before her cryptic "no more" and sacrifice

flayed will (vecna) only knew who mike was. the demodogs trapped a group including mike in the lab but they escaped before the dogs could do whatever they came there for. again, we're just left to presume ("that's presumptuous of you," max says) they just wanted to kill them. kind of because of mike himself, actually, while vecna insisted he was lying

mike brings up the hive mind and dustin names the mind flayer, describing it as "so ancient it doesn't even know its true home". meanwhile, mike still doesn't fit in with the wheelers at all, right down to his hair. i've seen holly's blonde hair get questioned too, but a lot of white girls' hair starts off blonde before darkening over time. it happened with mine, my sister's and a lot of other people i've known, so it's not that weird. mike's black hair, on the other hand, isn't really explainable if he's supposed to be genetically a wheeler

a group including mike goes into the tunnels, following the bait vecna put down earlier of the hub being a trap, and mike gets caught this time by a vine around the ankle. similar to how vecna copied el's power. it doesn't seem to do anything, except that it very shortly follows joyce and nancy getting the mind flayer out of will, and that mike starts acting weird and un-mike-like about a month later at the snow ball

the attempts to trap people get flipped when mike plans the sauna test

vecna lures el into a trap. during their interaction, el calls mike's name like seven times (interesting when she went in there to find the source...) and vecna tells her that he can't hear her

will calls mike the heart and says that without heart they'd all fall apart. that sounds like a pretty good explanation for why the upside down is perpetually dying

[cdyssey]

Would you be willing to write more abt Melissa and having kids?

No Children:

A/N: ANON, I just want you to know that this prompt lit a fire under my ass. I saw it at like 2AM when I first got it, started writing, and banged out like 900 words of the first nearly 4,000 in an hour.

AO3 Link

CW: Heavy Discussions of Pregnancy; Alcohol Mentions; Abortion Mention

—

It’s just another Wednesday at Abbott Elementary. 

Barbara arrives at the school at seven on the dot to prepare for the long day ahead, dragging her sleepy (and therefore ornery) daughters in tow. They’re both currently sitting at one of her low tables, coloring pictures of Blue from Blue’s Clues that she had printed out for them. Her eight-year old, Taylor, a perpetual rebel, is amusing herself by using rainbow colors, while Gina, already somewhat of a perfectionist at only six, is sticking with a more appropriate shade of light blue.

And they’re arguing about it.

Viciously.

As sisters do.

“Stop!” Gina whines, stomping her feet a little beneath the table, distressed at her older's sister's deviations. "Bwue's Cwues does not have yewwow spots, Tay!" 

“So?” Taylor retorts stubbornly, moving her paper out of her younger sibling’s reach as she goes to grab it. “And her name is just Blue!”

“Mom!” Her youngest turns towards Barbara with big, brown eyes. “Tay is being mean!”

“What? I’m not being mean!”

“Yeah, you are!” Gina pokes her tiny tongue out.

“No, I’m not!” And so does Taylor.

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

As they continue to volley back and forth, their “are toos” and “are nots” ramping up in fever pitch and intensity, Barbara, who had initially been hoping not to intervene and let the girls sort themselves out, finally closes her planning binder with a deep and thoroughly Biblical sigh, prepared to deliver a rousing sermon about appreciating each other’s creative differences before it’s eight o’clock in the God almighty morning.

(Goodness gracious, her coffee hasn’t even kicked in yet.)

“Now, girls—“ She starts crossly, her readers slipping down on the bridge of her nose, but she is immediately interrupted by a low chuckle in the open doorway and a sudden change in both of her daughters’ grumpy demeanors.

“Aunt Mel!” They exclaim at the exact same time, scrambling from their chairs to run towards the second-grade teacher, who is leaning heavily against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest.

Taylor, who had inherited her father’s long legs, reaches her first, wrapping her arms around Melissa’s middle, while Gina arrives a few seconds later and hugs her godmother’s leather clad leg. Barbara swivels around in her chair and smiles fondly at this sight, just as her best friend unbends her arms and pats each of the girls on their backs.

“Hey!” She laughs hoarsely, her hair falling elegantly over one of her eyes. “I thought I heard my little shortstops all the way down the hall. How’ve ya been?”

“We’ve missed you!” Gina says earnestly, resting her small chin against Melissa’s thigh.

“Where’ve you been?” Taylor demands, her lower lip extended in an adorable pout.

It’s an innocuous question that merits an unfortunate response. Melissa has been out for the last two days, sick. When she had called on Monday morning to tell her, Barbara had immediately startled with concern—(for Melissa rarely, if ever, takes a day off)—asking if she needed to come over later that afternoon with soup, medicine, or Gatorade to replenish her electrolytes, but the younger woman had adamantly waved her off, had said that it was probably just a bug. 

No need for her to get any closer than she had to.

And so, Barbara now peers at her friend closely, less-than-pleased to observe that she is still rather pale. There are stark lines beneath her verdant eyes and a pinched quality to her usually rosy cheeks. But more than that, now that she’s examining her with the intent to dissect, she notes the way that Melissa is holding herself. Despite the apparent warmth in her voice, despite the ease with which she is holding Barbara’s daughters, her entire physiognomy is strained, every limb rigid with a clear and visible tension.

Something is horribly wrong. 

“Oh, uh, I was just feelin’ a little under the weather,” she shrugs in habitual understatement, “but I’m better now. No need to worry.”

Barbara ignores this apathetic dismissal, deeply worried.

“Sweethearts,” she addresses her children firmly, “why don’t you start cleaning up your table? It’s almost time for you to head to your classrooms anyway.”

She phrases it as a question, but both of her daughters are well-aware that it’s an order. 

“Yes, ma’aam,” Taylor sighs dramatically, elongating her vowels, and her eldest is the first to detach herself from Melissa and slump back towards the crayon-covered table.

“Can we come and get candy after school, Aunt Mel?” Gina asks, still holding on.

“‘Course, kid,” Melissa chortles, tapping the first grader on the noggin with a bent index finger. “I got a whole jar of Laffy Taffy with your name on it.”

Gina grins sweetly at this, displaying the gap between her two front teeth, before extricating herself as well and skipping happily after her sister, their feud about colors thankfully forgotten (or, at least, temporarily put on hold). Barbara takes the opportunity that she had so perfectly arranged and jerks her head towards the door, signaling that’s where she and Melissa should go. 

And so they do. 

She gently pulls her classroom door closed behind them, crossing her fingers that her girls can hold it together long enough for a five minute conversation in the hall.

“You look like death warmed over, Melissa Schemmenti,” she mercilessly scolds when she turns to face the other teacher, who is now leaning against the brick wall, or perhaps more accurately still, being supported by it. Now that the girls are out of eyesight and earshot, she’s given up the pretext of a sincere and willing smile.

“Pssh,” Melissa snorts lifelessly, briefly glancing away. “You’re not gonna mince words with me this morning, huh?”

“Nope,” she returns, something of a steely smile hardening her mouth. “And I never will. We don’t do that as you very well know.”

Her friend glumly bites the side of her lip.

Yes, she very well knows.

For the most part, the two of them don’t bullshit each other as Melissa herself would bluntly put it, and that’s something that Barbara has wholly loved about their nearly seven-year friendship, the stunning lack of barriers between them, the raw intimacy of their communion. Whatever intangible fabric makes up the particulars of Melissa Schemmenti, then Barbara Howard must surely be cut from the same cosmic cloth.

They may have different clothing styles and grammatical understandings and opinions on when it’s ever appropriate to deploy a curse word, sure, but the hundreds, if not thousands, of differences between them are immaterial when their souls are so perfectly aligned, rotating around the same unchanging axis.

Barbara sometimes supposes that she must have never had a true friend before she met Melissa.

Because in all her nearly forty years, she’s never had a friend who has quite made her feel like this.

(Like her entire body could burst open and sing.)

“Yeah, okay,” Melissa sighs, rubbing one of her vivid brows tiredly. “You nailed me there, Barb.”

“And you would undoubtedly do the same for me if the shoe was on the other foot,” she affirms gently, reaching over and placing a steadying hand on the other’s bicep. She doesn’t like the younger woman’s color.

Or more precisely, the utter lack of it.

“Now, do us both a favor and tell me what’s wrong with you, so I can capably tell you how to fix it,” she continues, smiling softly, with the boundless affection she thinks that Melissa deserves.

She almost immediately regrets extending this open invitation, though, unprepared for the devastating return that so quickly follows.

She'd been expecting the flu, not—

“I’m late,” Melissa laughs bitterly, her eyes overbright, almost black in the glare of the fluorescent strips above. “Can you fix that?” 

Two measly words, and Barbara feels them both land in her gut like a knife—already distressed by Melissa’s distress—her nose upturning at the hypothetical of Joseph Lombardo ever becoming a father.

Melissa would make a good mother, so wonderful with children.

Her students.

Her nieces and nephews.

Taylor and Gina. For as long as she had known them, she has always been their kind and playful Aunt Mel.

But Joseph.

He’s a fun man—and maybe beneath all the booze and the stubbornness and the gambling habits, even a good one—but he’s not the kind of person that should be having a child right now, the disaster that he is.

And she thinks that Melissa knows that.

And she thinks that Melissa knows that she knows that.

“How many days?” She works hard to structure her voice into a passable degree of composure.

“Five, and I’m never late, Barb. Ever,” the second-grade teacher replies, visibly swallowing.

“But you don’t know for sure—you haven’t taken a test. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Melissa says shortly, but there’s a silent plea in her eyes, a desperation that Barbara readily interprets.

For the first time in her life, she needs someone to tell her what to do.

And she trusts Barbara to be that person.

The weight of this is not lost on her, the profundity of it.

“Okay,” Barbara murmurs, arranging her mouth into her best teacher smile, the very same one that she uses when she’s soothing a child who has fallen and scraped their knee. “Well, we’ll take care of that today, so you’ll know for sure. And then we'll go from there. How does that sound?”

We.

She uses the pronoun rather liberally, as though it’s them in this together, not Melissa and Joseph. As though they are the item and the interested parties.

The partners.

Melissa doesn’t seem to notice this verbal indulgence, though, her expression having acquired a terrifying distance to it as she wordlessly nods. 

Barbara squeezes her arm in a futile attempt to re-anchor her.

—

At lunch time, they silently get into Barbara’s sedan. She drives slowly, clenching the wheel so tightly that it’s a wonder that her fingers don’t leave impressions in the sun-beaten leather, while Melissa leans back in the passenger seat, her sunglasses eclipsing the haunted darks of her eyes. They’ll go to the CVS on the corner first to pick up a pregnancy test. They arranged it earlier in the hallway that Barbara would loan her a twenty in cash, and Melissa would buy their lunch with her card as a thank you.

“He’d see it on the next bank statement,” the second grade teacher had only offered in explanation for why it had to shake out like this. He, of course, could only refer to Joseph.

“And he can’t flippin’ know, Barb, okay? Not yet. Even if… uh… it’s um… you know…”

But Melissa had trailed off rather than complete the thought, her cheeks finally regaining a little pinkness in splotchy embarrassment, and Barbara had chosen not to press her at the moment, had opted to be kind. The bell was about to ring, and it was not the time to force the younger woman to be candid about a subject that had always clearly been complicated for her—something that Barbara had been implicitly aware of from the time she was pregnant with Gina, and Melissa had spent a vast majority of those nine months staring sadly at her growing belly out of the corner of her eye when she thought that Barbara wasn’t looking.

They don’t really talk about Melissa’s fraught relationship with motherhood in the same way that they don’t talk about how much Barbara hates Melissa’s idiotic slob of a husband or about the way that they both shiver when they accidentally brush shoulders at their shared round table. For all of their mutual pride about their total honesty with one another, neither of them are particularly keen on ever truly being vulnerable.

(Which is to say, maybe they’re not always honest.)

(Not in the few ways that actually matter, at least.)

But now, in the seclusion of the car, in this five minute liminal space between Abbott and the red-bricked, worn-down CVS Pharmacy, Barbara ignores the seething anxiety in her stomach and decides to wade through the viscous awkwardness between them. She coughs slightly to clear the thickness in her throat.

“Would you like to talk about it, sweetheart?” She asks tentatively, wishing that she’d thought to knob her radio on first. At least with a little background noise, the silence wouldn’t be so oppressive.

“Not really,” Melissa replies bluntly—which is only par for the course—but then, she just as quickly adds, “Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t even know how I feel about it ‘cept that I’m terrified outta my mind, and I got no one to blame but myself. I forgot to take the pill just one day last month.”

As Barbara gets caught by the singular red light between the school and the store, she glances over at her friend and tries very hard not to look indignant and haughty and like she despises Joseph Lombardo for all that he stands for.

“It takes two to horizontally tango without insurance,” she reminds her as neutrally as she can manage. “A one day lapse is not being irresponsible, Melissa. It’s being human.”

A perpetual insistence on having sex without condoms, however, is utter selfishness.

It might even be depravity.

“But I might have to pay for it anyway, Barb,��� comes a dull reply. The younger woman refuses to turn her way, looking out of the window. “For being human—whatever the hell that that means—but Joe’ll be so fuckin’ happy. He’ll be the first to forget that I’m miserable…”

It’s another loaded sentence, and Barbara hums indignantly—and perhaps a little indelicately—incapable of pulling her eyes away from the train wreck sitting next to her until the driver behind her honks because the light has turned green.

She reluctantly returns her attention to the road again and eases on.

But endlessly stubborn, she doesn’t let the freighted moment go.

“You have very strong feelings about not wanting to be pregnant,” she states the obvious first because she might as well. In the near decade that they’ve been friends, they have never broached this subject so closely before, so it’s all new territory—uncharted and untrespassed, and therefore, uniquely terrifying. 

Barbara has never felt in more danger of alienating her best friend by accidentally saying something insensitive. After all, both of her pregnancies were very much wanted and meticulously planned, as were her own mother’s. Her husband is a good and precious man, a devoted parent to their beautiful girls. So was her father when he was still alive. She has no intimate paradigm for any other way of being.

But she suspects that Melissa does.

She suspects that her best friend sometimes looks at the particulars of her admittedly idyllic life and feels a sharp pang of longing, and that hurts Barbara a little inside.

She doesn’t have comparable experience to ever relate. 

“I have strong feelings about not wanting to be my poor ma,” she snorts tartly, shifting heavily in her seat. “Poppin’ out redheaded kids left, right, ‘n center and raising ‘em all by myself because their dad’s a—well, Joe’s not a deadbeat, you know, but he’s just not as good with children as he thinks is. Won’t even change our nephew’s diaper when he comes to visit.”

And now that Melissa has started talking, she keeps talking; it’s clear that she’s bottled up these feelings inside for years upon innumerable years. But now the stopper has finally been unsealed, and these are the ramblings of a drained unplugged. 

“And that same lump of a husband wants a big household ‘cuz he was raised in one too,” she says, pointedly gesticulating with her hands, “but because he’s such a lump, he doesn’t realize how that all works.”

Melissa looks at Barbara for the first time since their conversation began, and the intensity of this gaze, the profound sorrow in it, grips her where she sits, even though she can’t entirely return the gesture, and maybe that’s precisely the point. The other woman is only staring at her when she can’t stare back. 

“My mom's body wore out so damn quickly, Barb,” she continues hoarsely. “It was up to me and Kristin Marie half-of-the-time t’make sure the little ones were clothed and fed because she was so tired all the time—either that or pregnant again.”

It’s a horrific image that Melissa has conjured, a body swelling with child after child after child, an entire household becoming populated by this unending labor, and Barbara knows—just from the small tidbits that Melissa has thrown out here and there—that the Schemmentis didn’t have a lot when she was growing up. They were constantly trading favors and IOUs with their guys who knew a guy to get furniture, clothes, and whatever else that they needed, which more than contextualizes Melissa’s present-day resourcefulness. She grew up with the understanding that this is what it takes to survive: always being the smartest one on the street, intimate with its brutal economy and a ruthless player within it.

Hearing the whole story laid out so plainly is harrowing, though; it makes Barbara vaguely sick to watch all the puzzle pieces firmly click into place.

“Melissa,” she exhales as they pull into the CVS. She neatly slides into a parking space at the front, cuts off her engine, and turns her entire body to face the other woman, to be as physically present for her as the geometry of their realities will currently allow. She wishes that there was not a console between them because she’d surely lean over then; she would envelop her in a maternal embrace as an apology to the inner child in Melissa Schemmenti who had been forced to grow up way too fast.

“I’m so sorry.” She contents herself with placing a hand on her friend’s forearm. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know.”

That you've been shouldering this burden all by yourself, that you've been so hurt.

I can't stand it when you're hurt.

For some reason I cannot rationally fathom nor explain, it absolutely ruins me.

“Nah, don’t be,” Melissa frowns, looking down at the hand covering her wrist, her fiery hair spiraling over her shoulder and forming a curtain that shields half of her face. “I don’t think I could have talked about it before today anyway.”

And she unclicks her seatbelt, bending over to grab her purse from the floorboard and making a meal out of doing so. Barbara reluctantly withdraws her hand, knowing that this is her clear signal to disengage. The second grade teacher is close to breaking, and she doesn’t want to do so in front of a live studio audience. She’s never wanted to invite pity through her tears.

It’s something else that they so perfectly share in common.

“Do you have the twenty?” Barbara asks, feeling helpless. She re-grips her steering wheel with stiffened fingers. 

“Yeah, thanks again, Barb.”

“And are you positive that you don’t want me to come in with you?” This is something else they established in the hallway mere hours ago; it feels like days now. Melissa is going to do the test in the CVS bathroom—too impatient to wait until they get to the restaurant—and she wants to do it alone.

(She always insists on doing the tough stuff alone.)

“No need,” she adamantly shakes her head and opens the door, swinging her legs out into the pleasantly cool air. Her combat boots slam against the pavement with a crunch. “I’ll be in and out before ya know it.”

Barbara is a little reckless then, inexplicably desperate even, as she lobs the next words at Melissa’s backside.

“You know I’m always here for you, right?” She asks, watching as her friend’s spine stiffens, her perpetually slumped shoulders squaring as though they’ve just received a knife between them instead of a tender acknowledgement of care. “I love you dearly, Melissa Schemmenti."

Melissa bows her head at this, white-knuckling her purse.

“I know. I love you too.”

A long beat then.

They love each other. It’s as simple and as utterly complicated as that. The acknowledgement of this crucial fact stretches profoundly between them for what feels like an eternity before Melissa finally sniffs once in a singular concession to the turmoil that must surely be broiling inside of her: the pain, the confusion, the complete and utter horror.

“I’m so scared, Barb. I’d make a shit mother,” she whispers, and it’s an entirely different line of thought from all the ones that she had so clearly laid out earlier. And there’s something in her strangled voice that makes Barbara instinctively understand that this is the main reason.

This is the fear that consumptively haunts and torments her usually unshakeable friend.

She doesn't trust herself.

She loathes herself even.

“And he’d be a shit father, and we could really fuck a kid up. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did that to another human being,” she rasps, every syllable tortured and broken. She pulls an agonized hand through her hair. “I wouldn’t. I can’t.”

Barbara calcifies where she sits, altogether freezes, listening to this, not quite digesting it. She’d nearly stopped breathing at even the barest hypothetical of Melissa being unable to live with herself. What in God’s name does that even mean?

“Melissa—“ She starts, her own voice powerfully constricted, but her friend viciously cuts across her, apparently not done.

“There’s a place on Comly, I think.” The words come out in a painful and congealed rush. “I’d need someone to drive me home. Joe won’t do it—not if it’s that.”

Barbara blinks once and then twice, immediately understanding what is not quite being asked of her but hinted at in a roundabout way. Hoped for. Keenly wanted. The euphemism isn’t exactly ambiguous. But then again, Melissa has never been the most subtle person in the world.

She’s always liked that about her.

Loved that even.

She deals enough in negotiating subtleties within herself as it is to be able to appreciate the art in others.

And so here they are, two women in a light-filled sedan, having just affirmed their love to each other. And here, just as plainly, is the opportunity for Barbara to prove that she absolutely means what she says, that her love is not another masterful calculation that she makes, but rather, it is a verb that she commits again and again and again.

“It’s okay t’say no,” Melissa goes on hurriedly, every word tripping over itself in a haste to be articulated. “I get it. I could just strong-arm Kristin Marie into doing it. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll even need—“

But it’s Barbara’s turn to interrupt now.

She may blink, but in the end, she doesn’t hesitate. In this pivotal moment, she frankly does not care what her sisters in Christ would probably say if they knew.

God’s love is more abundant than their judgment. 

And their judgment means absolutely nothing when she loves Melissa Schemmenti the way that she does.

(If she’s being completely honest with herself, they’d probably judge her for that too.)

“You never have to ask me to drive you anywhere,” she says firmly, stopping the deluge before it can begin, and she watches, with exquisite tenderness, as Melissa’s entire body unfurls in silent and visceral relief at this simple answer: her shoulders relax, she exhales all over, she shudders.

For this is apparently all that she needs.

An affirmation that she is unconditionally loved.

She nods once, still not looking at Barbara, and finally straightens up from the car and into the sun-slathered day, but when she goes to close the door, she turns and reveals her red smile through the window glass.

It is both a radiant gesture and a sad one.

The most meaningful exchanges between them often are.

[loquaciousquark]

4-Sided Dive Highlights - Critical Role C3 up to E58 (May. 17, 2023)

Rolling right into the next one, tonight’s guests are Aabria, Christian, Sam, and Travis. We open with Christian wearing sunglasses inside due to one eye being very light sensitive. Travis wins host and hulas his way into a monologue about an increasingly frantic recap of the recent plot, capping off with a ventriloquism segment and a French puppet wolf. It's...not...good, haha.

What the Fuck is Up with That? Sam reveals he verbally bleeps curse words when his kids watch the show, ha. Sam absolutely loves having the guests and mixing up the company. Sam to Aabria: "How do I know you?" Aabria: "What?" It turns out he means how did they meet? Aabria did a D20 game with Matt and Marisha (Pirates of Leviathan). Christian slid into Sam's DMs on Instagram, ahahahaha, and asked him for coffee with Marisha. Incredible! He just felt that Christian had a good heart! Sam, what in the world!

Aww, Christian is still such a fan of the show! (The way he's talking right now is very much like Jeremy Dooley from AH right after he first got hired.) He & Aabria got together for a Session Zero at Matt's place and feel like brother/sister now. They built the characters together. FRIDA came first & Aabria wanted to explore some holes in the world and was able to match elements around FRIDA's build. Plus they didn't know which members of the regular cast they'd be with. As Aabria developed the character Matt instantly decided she'd be paired with Travis. Christian knew FRIDA's color palette before anything else, ha! He knew he wanted to build a complementary character for Sam because he's grateful to the opportunities Sam had given him.

FRIDA has the level of rogue because they'd wandered around for a while on their own, and the cleric levels from Deanna's influence.

Aabria was determined to be a nice generous cleric to counteract any expectations of hard-ass-ness from Laerryn, ha! She picked the Dawnfather because he's one of the most hardline Prime Deities; she's a full cleric with off vibes. She wanted a contrast to FCG, who's in the position of a supplicant; she wanted someone more under the thumb of a deity in order to bring more facets of those relationships. Travis: "A perpetual IOU."

Deanna was one of the names from Chetney's vision; she was fully a Matt invention. Aabria loved the idea of being a past relationship and sent notes to Matt; then the day before they started filming Travis sent more notes to Matt saying she was a fling. "Damn it, I got downgraded to a fling before I even walked in!" Travis had to firm out Chet's backstory as they got to Uthodurn.

Sam really wanted to see Travis kill Santa, but Matt made Oltgar too regretful. Travis loves taking the dark routes in video games when available, but "with Mercer there's so much heart. I feel bad."

They had probably more god advancement in the last seven episodes than the entire campaign. I'm realizing this is about where I am in my show watch, which is why it all feels so current to me! Everyone loved the Changebringer stuff, except Travis could do without the Ring girl hair.

Ludinus was behind it from the start?! What the hell does the leather armor do? He caused the corruption of the Savalirwood 500 years ago, which means he's been planning this for a long time. He tried to kill them with Molaesmyr and corrupted the land, founded the Cerberus Assembly; he's constantly reaching back for the glory of the Age of Arcanum. Everyone hated the freaky animals.

The Rexxentrum Toy Authority was a beautiful moment! Sam: "Why would you come up with a three-letter moniker that was actually standing for something else??"

Sam is very grateful for this arc because it gave a lot of meat to his character. He feels that he's been asking so many questions: who am I, what are dreams, am I alive, who are the gods, I want answers. Now he has a connection with his god, a connection with FRIDA--it doesn't really matter what his original design to kill was for because he has such a bright path forward.

Deanna was built to complement many characters, and Aabria leaned into certain facets for this party over others. "The dying and come back was very built in for Laudna and Ashton and Orym especially" because she spent a lot of her life constantly bringing her husband back from 0 hp. She liked playing with the weird, unresolved feelings of knowing that the dead person isn't gone, just static and waiting. The husband is still alive but is super old???? Ha! "Dustyl" is his name.

Everyone's enjoyed exploring the haunted areas of Exandria. Travis describes several locations on the maps in detail from memory and everyone ribs him a little; it's really cute! Everything was a little wrong in the Savalirwood.

Sam thinks Fearne should have the staff. Fearne having teleportation would be incredible. FCG's coin has a once-a-day power that can cause distractions, ask the Changebringer a question, or get a luck point (which everyone's sure he'll use right away).

The last two interactions with the gods were fascinating because they weren't requests for help, they were demands. Deanna thought she'd died for a second at the end.

Aabria went pure life cleric specifically because she wanted to lean into the drama of resurrection magic being off the table. "Someone's dead? Oh, I'm great at this! Oh...wait..."

Jerry stole the show. Everyone agrees the goats are giant food.

Travis is sad they didn't fight the pterodactyl thing. FRIDA is intentionally built like a tank & has had Death Ward most of the time, so they intentionally drew aggro.

Travis intentionally pulled Chet away from the group when the moon started changing him specifically to avoid endangering the guests, and then Christian went after him! I have spelled "intentionally" wrong as "intentially" every single time. Christian knew it wasn't a "smart" play but thought it would be fun to interact with Chet, and that'll trump optimization every time for him.

The Tower of Inquiry! Favorite encounter so far? Travis: the Ludinus showdown. Sam: Laudna going down and not knowing how to Revivify. (Aabria asked if she could play Otohan and Matt was like, what? No!) Christian: the heist race where Ashton got the bust! Aabria: the same fight as Sam.

How does it feel being part of a larger group? Sam: FCG's entire first group died, so this new group is a lot of pressure. FCG's been one event away from berserkness multiple times. Every time they long rest, Sam can roll a d4 to reduce stress points, but he's self-imposed a rule that he doesn't do so on non-active days.

Sam literally leans over to Travis about his old age rules. Travis has to roll a 100 on the dice (three 0s) in order for Chet to drop dead. He's not concerned at all that it'll happen; Sam is hilariously concerned.

The Deep Dive, sooner than usual! Sam absolutely loved the interaction with the bull. He's delighted "the power of friendship" mattered.

Travis has been sitting on the RTC reveal for a while. He sat down a while back and really mapped out a lot of Chet's backstory and where he traveled, and again pulls out tons of map details like the Wuyun Gorge. The one place he hasn't been yet is Issylra.

FRIDA is a little nervous about turning into a werewolf; being around the group made them more comfortable, but the reveal of killing all those people is concerning. FRIDA also felt they were able to see Chet inside the beast during that fight & loves the idea of being unadulterated & free. Christian texted Matt & asked what it all meant that night, and just got in return, "ahahahahahahahaha". Ha!

Aabria is fascinated that developing these relationships with Bell's Hells has changed the previously friendly ease Deanna had with FRIDA. It's not quite a strain, but it is a reevaluation which is not settled; it's painful. FRIDAY had a strong opinion on the absence of pain and the absence of sadness; he hadn't appreciated how important current relationships were before FCG. Sam: "We have so much in common. We're both metal. We're both murderers."

Sam butchers the FRIDA acronym, which Aabria of course nails. Far-Ranging Integrated Defense Aeormaton. FCG is scared about the Changebringer's lack of clarity, and fears for the future. Travis suggests that if FRIDA dies, FCG should incorporate their body parts. Christian: I'd give you FRIDA's legs.

Everyone laughs at the size differences/similarities in their partners. Dani's (female) SO and she share clothes. Sam shrinks things in the dryer and gives them to Quyen. Alissa is taller than Christian so she can't wear his clothes; same for Aabria and her husband. Travis rolling over in bed is a literal health hazard for Laura, ha!

It took Travis forever to realize Deanna was his Deanna; Aabria even pointed to her name & he didn't get it. When it did click, the panic was real; he had acid reflux and realized she knew the backstory and he didn't! He didn't know if he should be angry or happy or neutral to see her; he had to wait until he had more context clues.

The romance for FCG and FRIDA was organic in nature. Originally they'd thought Deanna & FRIDA might have something, but it didn't pan out. Sam did text Christian to make sure they could lean in after.

Aabria loved getting to play with a character she helped develop in ExU (Fearne).

Tower of Inquiry, Redux: character's favorite board games? Chet: Chutes & Ladders. Deanna: Pandemic. FRIDA: Risk. FCG: Operation.

Post-Break Shenanigans: Super Smash Brothers! Sam: Dark Samus. Travis: Wolf. Aabria: Kirby. Christian: ROB.

Travis thought Oltgar was going to be more of a shit, but he's 100% okay tracking Drixlich instead.

Deanna is concerned after the conversation with the Dawnfather because while it's on brand, she fears losing her powers/life. She'd rather pay it forward first.

Sam wins round one! Huh! Round two: Sam: random (Falco), Travis: Ganondorf, Aabria: Ganondorf, Christian: ROB again.

FCG is weirdly comforted to have direction from the Changebringer; Sam likes her vibe. He was little freaked out by how demanding she was at the end but looks forward to exploring that relationship.

Christian wonders if FRIDA belonged to Ludinus. All he gave Matt was the dream of the child's legs. Time runs out on the second round and Christian takes it by percentage!

Round three: everyone picks random. Sam: Diddy Kong, Travis: Terry, Aabria: Kirby, Christian: Bayonetta.

How does Chet feel about the gods? It's only a matter of time before Chetney takes the gods' place.

FRIDA was very freaked out by fighting Aeormatons, but Chet's gift especially helped a lot.

Deanna feels that while the gods aren't a nascent part of the world, if it weren't them, it'd be someone else. Sam found it hard to play a religious character because his instinct is to be subversive.

Sam asked Matt if FCG had his initials carved on him somewhere after FRIDA revealed theirs. Matt said, "you don't know," then let Sam throw out a handful of suggestions for what the acronym stood for. He didn't know which until the moment, though. The entire conversation was inspired by Christian's play; "Christian did a cool thing and I wanted to steal it."

Christian's best friend Jack was helping him with acronyms; Christian had come up with "FRIDA" and Jack defined it in about thirty seconds, haha. Backronyms!

Travis loved the first Catha transformation. Now he has to decide who to transform into a werewolf. Everyone loves "Bells Heals" as a minigroup name, and "LoveLetters" and "Body Count" for the FRIDA/FCG ship.

Aabria found the two relationships with Deanna/Laerryn very different; with Sam she planned it out, and with Travis she knew she was surprising him. She is fully embracing the "we've already banged" dynamic for all her characters now.

The post-credits scene is a cutout of Sam spinning into the abyss.

That's that! One more 4SD is out right now (came out yesterday), but I'm going to catch up on the show first!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Azul for the character bingo

***Standard disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions of the character(s); regardless of what I may think of them, sharing my thoughts is NOT meant to offend or to shame anyone that thinks differently.***

***CONTENT WARNING: mentions and discussion of bullying!***

This one’s going to be quite weird 😂 For those of you who may not know, Azul used to be my favorite character back when I first started Twisted Wonderland (JP) upon release. Since then, he has fallen from grace and now sits as one of my least favorite characters in the entire cast (which I know is a very controversial take; I’m well aware of Azul’s popularity both in the Japanese audience as well as in the international audience).

A huge part of the reason why I was initially drawn to Azul was because The Little Mermaid was basically the only Disney movie I had a strong connection with of the ones that the Great Seven were modeled after. I religiously watched that movie and its sequels as a kid. I collected sea creature plushies and listened to The Little Mermaid soundtracks to help lull me to sleep. I dreamed of being a mermaid when I grew up despite not being able to swim. The whole under-the-sea aesthetic enchanted me, and since the original movie didn’t characterize the eels too strongly, I of course gravitated to Azul, who is based on The Little Mermaid’s iconic villainess, Ursula. Little me had always preferred Ursula to Ariel anyway. I really adored her unique lavender skin, her seashell jewelry, her overdone makeup, and her fuller body (it was rare for me to see that kind of body type portrayed in media back then so the variety was great). It was also so cool seeing her tentacles move in the water and how they filled up the space on the screen???? Additionally, I found her to be one of the smarter and sassier Disney villains, which I really appreciated. AND THAT WHOLE THING ABOUT URSULA BEING KING TRITON’S BANISHED SISTER??????? Catch kid me slurping up lore and fan theories about that 😳 

ANYWAY, THE POINT IS THAT I SIMPED FOR URSULA WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID SO I WAS LIKE “okay I guess I’ll simp for anime Ursula now that I’m older” since I anticipated a lot of what I loved about Ursula to also be present for Azul. In the beginning, this was mostly true and I was loving every second of it. I absolutely adore it when a character uses their smarts instead of their strength to overtake their enemies and obstacles, and Azul was really serving that up in episode 3 (and later on, episode 4). He wasn’t exactly like Ursula, but the traits that Azul offered that were uniquely his happened to fall in line with what I usually enjoy, so I had no complaints. Azul was calm, cunning, and above all else, a force to be reckoned with, someone who was always way ahead of you and difficult to outsmart.

Then we got his backstory, and he completely lost me.

I’m sure that this shocks many of you, as Azul’s backstory is one that often garners him sympathy and empathy. I’m NOT saying that I’m apathetic to his situation; I actually empathize a lot with what he went through as someone who has been bullied myself and felt resentful toward those perpetuating the bullying... and I can totally understand why he’s trying so hard to invent a new, more confident identity for himself, but that doubt and insecurities still remain from his past trauma. It’s admirable how Azul didn’t let the bullying weigh him down; he instead used his negative emotions to motivate himself to study hard and get in shape. However, in the context of what Azul would later do with his intelligence and magical abilities, it leaves a foul taste in my mouth.

Truthfully, I dislike Azul’s backstory, and Azul by extension, for very VERY personal reasons. The implication is that Azul improved himself in part because he sought revenge against his bullies. He eventually does get what he wants, robbing his bullies of the traits that they were most proud of in exchange for “helping” them, and continues to run that shady business to this very day. So... what? It’s okay to be driven by spite? It’s okay to seek revenge against people who have wronged you? It’s okay to keep swindling others for personal benefit under the guise of altruism just because you were hurt in the past? I’m sorry, but I just cannot agree with any of that.

I realize that I may be viewing Azul’s backstory from a somewhat shallow perspective, but when I first read it, my gut reaction was to be hurt on a very personal level. Again, I’ve been in Azul’s exact situation before. I’ve even felt the same disdain toward my tormentors that Azul did, and I used the thought of revenge to fuel myself to excel academically to “prove them wrong”. That might have made me a good student, but it also made me very bitter and haughty for a period of time. I would later come to realize the error of my ways and worked even harder than I initially had to scrub away that hateful version of me and open myself up to others. To see Azul, someone very similar to me, be rewarded over and over for being truly awful makes me feel as though my own efforts to be a better person were somehow for naught. Like, that’s NOT how things work???? I look at Azul and I see what could have happened to me if I continued being resentful; I would have become someone just as bad, if not worse than, my bullies 😔 I’m NOT saying it was okay for them to have bullied Azul, but kids/teenagers are assholes and don’t realize the full extent of how their comments can hurt others in the long run; what is Azul’s excuse, especially when he is older and fully aware of the consequences of his actions?

Honestly, I probably wouldn’t be so offended by Azul’s backstory if I didn’t find myself relating to him so much... I still like seeing him engage with the other characters (particularly when he’s trying to butter them up), but as it stands, I cannot ever see Azul the same way that I initially did. He reads as someone that kid me would have looked up to as a role model, someone who could “stick it to the haters” and make all of his dreams come true at the same time, but now that I’m older I see just how detrimental that line of thinking can be.

I think that Azul works best when paired with good characters he can bounce off of (namely, contradictory characters or people who can push Azul’s buttons). This includes the twins and Jamil, who provoke Azul in their own ways. He’s forced into a vulnerable position with Jade and Floyd, who are aware of the past that he often tries to bury and could bring it up at any moment. Meanwhile, Azul dials up the charm and confidence to 11 when he’s with Jamil which 1) is fucking hilarious, especially with Jamil shutting Azul down while wearing a deadpan expression and 2) makes me think that he wants genuine companionship with someone he can relate to (even if he probably does intend on also using Jamil as an asset to his business if Jamil transfers to Octavinelle). I really feel like I’d like Azul a lot more if he just made more vested efforts to open up (but I understand that he’s not currently in a secure enough position with his identity and trust in others to actively pursue that).

[dandelion-sugar]

i've fallen inlove with the archon reader, but if it doesnt make you stressed or anything do you mind a part 3 + the war?

𝑺𝒐𝒖𝒓 『Tartaglia x Archon!Reader』 - Part three

Summary: Reader is the first existing Archon, the one who offered the seven gnosis to the first Archons. She is the “Mother” of the Archons.

Warning: Angst, blood.

Author’s note : Hehe ~ I'm sorry it took me so long to post this third and final part of Sour ! Thank you very much for your patience and support ! I didn't expect this first story to please so much ♡(灬'ㅂ`灬)!I don't promise to be very active unfortunately, I'm on an end of year project ! But I will try to be during the summer !

1600 words || 7,5k || Part One || Part Two

Your troops are getting dangerously close to the capital. No innocent inhabitants of the small villages were harmed or hurt. Your orders were meticulously followed by your mechanical troops. Morax did not join your war. He did not wish to take back his gnosis, judging that the terms of his contract would no longer be respected. You understood his fatigue and his desire to live as a human without the weight of an entire people on his shoulders. However, you cannot digest the fact that he preferred to go and give his gnosis to Fatui rather than engage in an adult discussion with you. Why didn't he come to you before ? A slight bitter taste of betrayal invades your mouth, a taste that you cannot get rid of despite your efforts.

"Your thoughts are written on your face, Mother," says Barbatos.

His wings flap lazily in the air to levitate him a few inches off the ground. Barbatos had not wanted to leave his mother alone. He is not the biggest supporter of your decision but he cannot leave you alone with your sadness. Barbatos has lost his dearest friend and most of his comrades, losing the woman he considers his mother would be terribly painful for him. He was not an active participant on the battlefield, however, he perpetually produced a powerful wind that destabilised the opposing troops. Normally, without his gnosis, he could never hope to defeat the will of The Archon Cryo in his territory, however, Barbatos was supported by his mother who is the first Archon. Through her, he found himself connected to Celestia again, he had full control over the wind again. A much greater control than after his awakening.

"Don't think too much about Morax's decisions that led to him giving away his gnosis," he comforts you with his ever cheerful smile. "I can't help but feel bitter. Am I so frightened that my own son can't come to see me ?" you confess with a hint of resentment. "Heeee ? A slime would be scarier than you !" he laughs enthusiastically. "It's nothing to do with being afraid to talk to you. Over two thousand years of tirelessly watching over his nation, never failing. Watching our brothers and sisters fall in battle or succumb to madness. As solid as stone can be, it crumbles with time."

"But…" "But." Barbatos interrupts you by raising his voice. "You have looked after Teyvat since its creation. Do you think it's easy for us to come to you and tell you that we want to resign, to leave you alone ? Not to mention that for Morax, he wanted to prove to the world, to himself, that humans were autonomous enough to do without a god. Mother, the purpose behind the opening of the seven thrones, your purpose that led to a bloodbath among the ancient deities and mortals…it is finally realized. Humans have been allowed to flourish and they have outgrown their need to have deities in their lives."

You glance, out of the corner of your eye, at Barbatos. His words are surprisingly wise, which contrasts drastically with the childish smile he offers you. A slight sigh passes your lips as you raise your right hand to ruffle his hair affectionately. He lets a simple chuckle escape him, appreciating your love.

"Nevertheless, I will not go back on my decision to help you. I will not let The Archon Cryo start a war against Celestia, against you," Barbatos reassures you. "I also want to make humans understand that there is a whole gap between them and the gods," you say serenely, tightening your grip on your sceptre.

Barbatos only laughs once more as he summons a powerful gust of wind to ward off the frosty wind emitted by The Archon Cryo's will. The weather in the Ice Nation was getting worse and worse as the war approached the capital, and thus, its ice castle. It won't be long before The Cryo Archon comes out of his castle to confront you. And you'll make sure you get her out no matter what.

"Looks like The Tsaritsa is getting impatient that we're not dead," you hum, "I have to admit I'm slightly impressed with the strength of the Eleven Harbingers." "Enough to offer them a fight against you ?" your son asks, accompanied by a teasing laugh. "No. But the fight is dragging on and I want all the gnosis taken, plus the cryo gnosis back. Let's let the Fatui fight the Ruin Graders and get to The Tsaritsa."

Barbatos nods, finishing your sentence with a melody played on the harp. You turn to him completely, raising an eyebrow at the sudden melody. He only laughs and shrugs his shoulders. Barbatos' fingers twitch on the strings of his musical instrument, giving his harp a final blow, bringing you both up into the air with a strong draft. Yet the air current only suspends you several hundred metres off the ground without moving in any direction.

Curious, your face tilts in the direction of your son, who is just looking at the horizon.

"Will you be able to kill him ?" "Barbatos…" "Mother. Can you kill Ajax if he gets in your way ?" your son asks, insisting on the question.

The timbre of his voice proves to you the seriousness of his question. Despite your many thoughts of the reunion you will inevitably share with Tartaglia, you are not sure if you are ready to take his life. The conflicting feelings that were stirring in your chest did not make it easy. A difficult decision that Barbatos could only half understand.

"Yes, I would kill him if he got in my way." You answer in a monotone voice under the bitter gaze of your son who does not question your decision. He simply hoped that you would not regret your choice.

Tartaglia looked up from the floor, his body aching and screaming with every movement he tried to make, no matter how small. The ice throne room was covered in blood. That metallic, acrid red that stained the crystalline, icy floor. "So this is the power of a god" he thought as he visualised in his mind the battle Barbatos had fought against the other Harbingers. Archon Anemo…he was no longer the weak little bard, he was the personification of the wind: powerful and devastating. No one had been able to get close to you, Barbatos was constantly protecting you…no…In the words of the Archon, he was the one protecting them from you. "If you can't hurt me, how do you expect to kill her ?"

Childe could not deny such a reality. He watched you defeat The Archon Cryo as if it were a walk in the park. He was torn between his admiration, his excitement at seeing such a powerful opponent, but also the fear that he would not find the sweetness of your character. Was that a lie ? Was this your true character ? Did he even have the right to be disappointed when he was also hiding his trauma and insatiable bloodlust ? Tartaglia winced as his fingers curled around his bow, but then a green arrow stuck the back of his hand.

"Barbatos." You call to him. "Don't take back your words, Mother."

"There was no need to hurt him further" You say. "He was making a hostile move." He defends himself.

Barbatos sighs before walking out the broken window, with his gnosis in hand that you handed to him. Your eyes follow your son's departure before you turn your attention to the battered body of your former lover. You know he could not survive, not in his condition. You want to help him…you really do, but the mixed expression on his face…you can't take a step in his direction.

"Is this the end you wanted Ajax ?" You ask softly. "Ah… the ending I wanted…" He repeats in a voice broken by fatigue. "Seeing you with my family was the best ending I could have hoped for." "… They weren't hurt…" You can't say more than that, your throat knotted with emotion. "I know…the Ruin Graders avoided the village…perhaps I should thank you for that." Childe coughed after he spoke his words.

Your face twists in an unpleasant way, as your body reacts on its own. Your hands move to your former lover's face, before retracting. Your eyes show a complex gleam that makes the redhead smile. A faint smile that he used to give you in the simple moments you spent together. A tear slides down your cheek. You can only watch as Tartaglia's skin grows paler and paler, almost blue.

"Do you think I could become like Vennessa ?" He asks you on a humorous note.

Your lips tighten into a thin, almost guilt-ridden line. Childe closes his eyes, resigned. You know he couldn't go up to Celestia. He didn't qualify. Being the first Archon did not give you absolute control over Celestia.

"Don't make that face, your smile is much more beautiful…"

"Don't take back your words, Mother," Barbatos had said beforehand. The echo of his voice echoes in your mind like a dark mantra. Your heart is torn in two by indecision. The human you once were at his side wishes to spend another moment in his presence, while the Archon you are knows full well that your two worlds cannot coexist. You can never again live together happily. He is the one who participated in a war against your children. Against you. Just as you unleashed your fury upon his nation, wiping out all enemy forces, destroying The Archon Cryo with your own hands.

Time makes this hard decision for you. Leaving only your eyes to rest on the inert chest and the fragile smile that beaded on the bloody blue lips of your former lover.

"Us together with your family is also the ending I would have liked for us."

[kirain]

Your healthcare isn't free you stupid fucking canuck! You pay for it with your taxes! We don't! 🇺🇸

I don't know why so many Americans throw this out there like it's some big secret we aren't aware of. We know it's funded by our taxes. When we say "free", we mean we don't have to worry about walking out of the hospital with a $900,000 bill after giving birth or paying $40 to hold our newborn after a c-section. It's "free" in the sense that anyone and everyone is entitled to good healthcare and can visit the hospital whenever they need to.

That said, I'm not going to pretend I know everything about American taxation, but I do know you pay for your healthcare via insurance. Meaning if someone doesn't have a good plan or make decent money, they're screwed. In Canada, that doesn't happen. For example, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, he needed multiple treatments and surgeries for four long years. Want to know how much those treatments cost him? $0. The only thing any of us had to pay for was the $7 parking fee when we went to visit him at the hospital.

In contrast, I personally know Americans who have, sadly, had to file for bankruptcy because of their cancer treatments. I know an American construction worker who lost three of his fingers on a job, but because his insurance didn't cover the full cost of reattaching all of them, the doctors actually made him choose which one to save. Imagine having to do that. In the end, he chose to save his middle finger and lose his ring and pinky finger. I know an American who got stuck with a $50,000 hospital bill because he had a heart attack. I know Americans who have tried to ration their INSULIN because they were worried about their next payment.

I remember when this made the news, everyone was acting like it was "cute". It's not fucking cute, it's dystopian as hell! A seven-year-old American girl who needed brain surgery raised her own money and relied on donations because her mother's insurance didn't cover the cost. Are you insane? This isn't "cute". This shouldn't be celebrated. She shouldn't have had to worry about this. She is a child who was dying.

I also don't understand why so many Americans seem to think our taxes are astronomical, when in reality you actually pay more taxes than we do. From what I understand, the max tax in America is 37%. For us, the max is 33%. That max also only applies if you make over $200,000 a year. Most people pay between 15-20.5% in taxes. I certainly don't pay 33%. I don't know anybody who does. So you pay taxes plus insurance. Granted you can claim more at the end of the year, but honestly ... so? America spends more on healthcare as a share of the economy (nearly twice as much as the average OECD country) yet it has the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rates among the eleven nations. You also have the highest chronic disease burden and an obesity rate that is two times higher than the OECD average. Thanks, but I don't mind claiming less on my taxes.

So now the argument is, "Why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare?!" I hear this one a lot once we reach this point. Putting aside the fact that you can barely pay for your own, it's a benefit for the country as a whole. There's nothing wrong with being individualistic, but no country is truly individualistic. We all rely on each other to keep the country afloat. Not only that, but what's wrong with helping your fellow man? And if you really are that selfish, just remember that free healthcare benefits YOU as well. Like when my dad got cancer, like when my sister almost died from a childhood fever, like when I came out backwards and jaundiced when I was born and had to be incubated for several days. The money pooled from all of our taxes makes sure we're all taken care of.

The other argument I hear at this point is wait times. I admit that for a while I believed this one, but as it turns out American and Canadian wait times are almost exactly the same. The average ER wait time in America is anywhere from 40 minutes to 4 hours. In Canada, it's anywhere from one hour to 6 hours. Not that much of a discrepancy, and I've personally never had to wait anywhere near 6 hours. I think the most I ever waited was four hours when I dislocated my toe. As for the claim that Canadians run to America en masse for specialists? Well, that's quite simply a myth. While there are indeed some Canadians who do that, it's mostly the wealthy who feel justified in skipping the line. We also have those services here, where those who are better off can pay out of pocket for private healthcare.

Now to throw a big monkey wrench into the works, probably the most shocking statistic is that Americans actually flock to Canada for affordable Healthcare. In 2014 (which is the most up-to-date data), roughly 52,000 Canadians went to the US seeking medical care; mostly prescriptions. In contrast, over one million Americans came to Canada. That number doesn't even include how many Americans went to these countries:

Anything you may have heard about Canadian healthcare is just a lie perpetuated by your government because they don't want you to see the benefits of a universal healthcare system. And not even just Canadian healthcare--the same system is used in the UK, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Norway, Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Iceland, New Zealand, etc. I'm not saying it's flawless, there are certainly aspects that can be improved, but I'll take it any day over the mess you have going on. 🇨🇦

No. In all honesty, this isn't about what country is "better". I have many American friends that I love and care about, and I would very much like to see them have access to free, sufficient healthcare.

[avintagekiss24]

leave out all the rest | c. beck

→ pairing: chris beck x black!reader

→ word count: 5387

→ warnings: 18+ ONLY, smidge of angst, smut, sex, breeding kink, oral sex (female receiving), vaginal fingering, hand job, explicit language

→ square filled: @badthingshappenbingo

flashbacks

→ request: chris beck + breeding kink + "babe, I’m never gonna finish this work if you keep doing that" + "I know for a fact that you can be a hell of a lot louder than that"

→ author note: dr. space daddy is finally here! this is also the first of my 5k celebration fics! all fics will be tagged #5k...holy god. thanks so much for the request @thedarkplume​! title from linkin park leave out all the rest (i loveeee this song); line divider by @firefly-graphics​; flashbacks are in italics. i also formatted this with the beta text post editor on desktop... so hopefully nothing looks weird and the italics/bold actually work... it is tumblr after all.

oh, hey, there’s a bit of a marvel crossover in this too!

Nervous doesn’t even begin to describe how you feel in this moment. Your stomach hasn’t been settled since you got the call two days ago. It’s been flipping and twisting ever since. Sleep hasn’t come easy either, but you’re used to that. Ever since Chris left, you haven’t slept well. It’s been almost seven hundred and thirty days— well, just three days short.

You follow the two tall military men, decked out in their dress blues, through the secure facility, your black leather combat boots thudding against the tile floors. Everything is white— the walls, the floors, the coats of all the scientists and doctors milling about— except for you and your flowery, thigh length sundress. Dark eyes wide, teeth nibbling on a sore, often bloody bottom lip from all the nibbling, small purse bouncing off one hip as a duffel bag bounces off the other.

Winding through corridor after corridor, pausing as the men lift their badges to keypads to get door after door to click open. An eerie quiet looms throughout the entire building, nothing but random beeps, your breathing, and footsteps.

Nervous doesn’t begin to describe it.

The walk gives you too much time to think about the last seven hundred and twenty seven days. All of the crying. All of the anger— the screaming. Chris trying to calm you down, assure you that they were okay— that he had to do this.

"It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?" You sobbed into the phone, staring up into the stars, knowing that he couldn’t but secretly hoping that he could see you.

"This is not easy for me," he choked back tears, his tongue heavy, "Leaving you is never easy but I have to do this, baby. We have to go back for Mark. We have to."

You didn’t answer his calls for over a week. And when you did, your words were quick and harsh.

"I can’t do this anymore. I’m moving in with my sister."

Chris was silent on the other end of the phone— too silent. He sighed after a while and just said, "Ok. I understand."

That was day four hundred and sixty three.

So you moved in with your sister. Got a job at the local bar, picked up every shift you could, sometimes working sixty, seventy hours a week— just so you didn’t have to think about him. It didn’t work. You’d still stare out the window at night, up into the big black sky and through the twinkling little stars, wondering where he was, what he was doing. If he was thinking about you.

Unbeknownst to you, Chris continued to call your sister. Just to check on you.

Day seven hundred was when two Air Force officers walked into the bar as you were cutting up lemons and oranges. Your stomach, in a perpetual state of tight and sour, dropped to your feet. It’s never good when the military comes knocking on your door.

“He’s dead,” you spit out, eyes watering, chest starting to heave, “He’s dead, isn’t he? They’re all dead.”

When they removed their hats, your hands flew to your face, covering your mouth to muffle the sobs. You just knew they were all dead. Humans can’t stay in space for this long. It’s not natural.

“No ma’am,” the taller, brown skinned man answered, a small smile breaking onto his face, showing off the distinctive gap between his two front teeth, “They’re back in our orbit. They’ll be landing within the next seventy two hours.”

It was a flurry after that. Phone calls, you moving back onto the base, protocol gatherings, interviews with local and national media. None of it mattered. You just wanted to see him— you needed to see him.

Not before his mandatory three week quarantine that is.

Day seven hundred and twenty five is when they called to let you know that he was ready to move onto the second phase of his integration back on earth. Two weeks cohabitating with another person of his choice, just to make sure that his body and cells can still tolerate, you know, earth— and that he doesn’t give off anything that could make earthlings sick.

They called to let you know that Chris chose you— if you wanted to, of course. If not, he could call his sister.

You were packing your bag before the call even ended.

After two days of getting tested for everything known to man, it’s now day seven hundred and twenty seven and here you are, passing through the last set of doors and stepping into a large observatory room. One of the General’s starts talking, but you don’t hear a word. You just blink slow, lips falling open as you stare back at Chris as he stands at the little square window of his living quarters. He smiles soft, running his hand through his short, dark hair before waving and placing his palm on the window.

Tears cloud your vision. Your chin trembles as a sad smile spreads on your face. A sob chokes in your throat and a warm tear streaks down your cheeks. Despite the talking man, you step up to the window and press your much smaller hand on the glass, spreading your fingers to match his. Chris rests his forehead to it and you do the same as you really start to bawl— shoulders shaking, face breaking, breath rushing fast and hard.

"Baby, don’t cry. Come on pretty, don’t— don’t cry."

Chris’ voice is muffled by the thick glass, but just hearing it— so close, so familiar— after so longs it’s just… it’s almost too much. It is too much.

“Ma’am, we can’t let you in there like this. We need you to calm down.”

Dense thuds shake the glass as Chris pounds on it, "Open the door, Sam!"

Sam grabs your bicep, gently, guiding you towards the door— Chris following you both, still talking to you through the glass.

"It’s okay baby, I’m right here. I’m right here."

“We need you to calm down,” Sam starts again, “He hasn’t been around—”

"Sam! Goddamn it, leave her alone! Open the door!"

“Beck! You cool it in there!”

"Don’t be an asshole! Open the door! She’s scared!"

You hear a scoff, “Step back from the window, Dr. Beck.”

"I swear to God—"

“Step back from the window, Dr. Beck.” Sam is stern now, pointing his finger towards Chris. 

Sam pauses for a few long seconds, blinking slow but keeping his hand around your bicep— and thank God, because you honestly need it, “I’m going to badge you into the hallway, okay? You take this keycard,” he presses it into your palm, “And put it up to the keypad at the second door after I close this door behind you. It’s only good for one passthrough— once you’re in, you’re in until the medical staff clears you both. Understand?”

The second half of his speech is softer, his thumb rubbing the back of your arm. You like Chief Master Sergeant Sam Wilson. You nod quick, rubbing at your face with the back of your hand, sniffling hard and focusing a shaky breath out through your teeth as you step in front of the door. There’s a loud click and the metal pops, Sam reaching past you to push it open.

Your body, on autopilot, takes three steps to the second door, eyes staring at the keypad on the wall beside it. Chris is still talking to you through the windows, one hand pressed to the glass, the other on the door handle.

"Just a few more seconds baby. You’re doing so good."

There’s another click— Sam closing the door behind you. Water fills your eyes again, emotion choking up in your throat at the gravity of it all. All of the screaming. All of the crying. All of the hating him and loving him and missing him for seven hundred and twenty seven days all culminating right here, right now, while he’s just three feet away from you. The sky used to be the thing keeping you apart— now it’s just a wall. A door— that you can’t walk through.

"Baby, Chris says gently, "Come on baby. Open the door, honey."

You’re frozen. Eyes locked on the keypad, fingers gripping the keycard so hard they start to burn. Open the door, honey takes you back. Takes you back to the day that he told you he was going up— that he’d be gone for a year.

“Open the door, honey. Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” You sniffle, staring at your reflection in the mirror in your small bathroom.

“You knew this was coming. I don’t know why you’re so mad.”

“A year? A year, Chris? I’m just supposed to put my life on hold for you for an entire year?”

He sighs through the door, “I’ve worked my ass off for this, you know that.” You do know that, you’re just being selfish. Needy and selfish, “I know we’ve got plans baby, but it’s just a year. One year and then I’m all yours—”

“Yeah, until the next time you decide to go up there. This is what Melissa warned me about. You get addicted to it.”

“I won’t.”

“You will,” you retort, “I know you.”

That makes him laugh, and then you’re laughing because he’s laughing, “Open the door, please.” Chris sighs again.

As soon as you turn the knob, he’s pushing through it, lifting you up off your feet and twirling you around— to make you laugh again.

You were standing on a precipice that night and neither one of you knew it. Your lives, both individual and combined, would change forever and that was the night that set it all in motion.

The keycard digs into your fingers and palm, bringing you back into the present. Back into the hallway, back in front of Chris. You blink, linking eyes with him again, finding them soft and down turned, his head tilted as he presses his fingers to the glass.

"Let me hold you," he says soft. So soft that the glass between you gobbles it up. But you just know that’s what he said. You just know.

The door clicks in your ear, a breeze is in your face as Chris throws it open, and then you’re consumed. Arms wrapped around you, hard chest against yours as you’re lifted right off of your feet. He’s so warm— he’s always been so damn warm.

“Oh my god,” he whispers, leaning back a little as you push your face into his neck, “This moment was the only thing keeping me going.”

“I’m sorry,” you sob, pushing your face into his shoulder, your tears wetting his NASA sweatshirt, “I’m so sorry, I was so selfish,” the words are clipped and broken, heavy on your tongue, “Chris, I—”

“Don’t. Don’t do that, it doesn’t matter.” He sits you back on your feet, rubbing your back with both of his large hands, “I’m the one that should be sorry.”

You cry openly into his chest, wrapping your arms around him and pushing your hands up into his sweatshirt, under the thin t-shirt underneath— just to feel his skin, “I missed you so much.”

One, two, three, four pecks of his warm lips on the top of your head before he rests his cheek there, holding you tight as he takes a deep breath, “All that’s over now, hmm?” you can feel the smile on his face, “We don’t have to miss each other anymore.”

-

A yawn pushes out of your mouth as you stretch out tight, sore muscles screaming. Eyes flutter as you shift, another deep breath pushing out your nose as you nuzzle your face into the pillows, body cocooned in warmth. You’re drifting again, quick, when an abrupt panic races through your veins without warning. Your stomach drops, skin instantly flushing with heat as you spring up, eyes as wide as saucers as your breath rushes.

That’s when you hear it, an all too familiar sound. A pencil, tapping slowly, methodically, against something. It calms you instantly. It’s real, you’re real, Chris is real, and you’re here. He’s here.

You swing your legs over the edge of the small bed, tucked in the corner behind a small partition. There’s a soft light glowing underneath it and a single red blinking dot emanating from the corner of the room— a camera. You push your hair out of your face but keep your fingers on your cheeks, closing your eyes as you focus on your breathing. In, out, in, out, in, out. There’s a murmur, Chris mumbling to himself and you can’t help but smile.

You stand and start moving towards the noises, padding soft and slow as his mess of brown hair and hunched back comes into view. He stands, switching out an X-Ray on the viewer before he plops back down into the swivel chair, staring at it for a second before he starts flipping through the large, open text book just to his left. There’s a little white board off to the right, leaning against the wall, the days he’s been “gone”, seven hundred and twenty seven, scribbled in his messiest of messy handwriting.

The little slice of time watching him sends you right back to your college years, waking up in his dorm room, finding the bed empty and him huddled over a too small desk, furiously flipping through a thousand page text book. You’d sneak up on him, just as you are now, barely dressed and sleepy eyed. Dig your fingers into his hair, scratch his scalp slow. Giggle as his shoulders slump and his head falls back a little, him moaning all the while.

“God, that feels good.”

“You let me fall asleep.”

“You cried yourself to sleep. Didn’t have the heart to wake you… you look like you haven’t slept in a year.”

“Hmm, more like two. What are you doing?” you ask, pushing around his side and crawling into his lap, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“Looking at our X-Rays from earlier today. I’m working on another paper for the Institute.”

“Trying to see if you guys are still earthlings?”

He laughs, the sound rumbling through you, making you smile, “Kinda, yeah. Our body masses have changed dramatically— our bones are longer, I’m not shitting you.” You giggle again at the enthusiasm in his voice, “It’s just a few centimeters, but still. Our brain waves are a little different, metabolism has sped up… it’s incredible.”

You keep the small smile on your face as your fingertips drift over his chest, rubbing slow as you feel his eyes fall to you, “You should get back in bed,” he says, squeezing your knee gently, “You look so tired, baby.”

“Not without you.”

He laughs again, “My circadian rhythm’s all fucked up, I can’t sleep.”

“Then it looks like you're stuck with me,” you kiss his chin and then cuddle back into him, “Don’t mind me.”

Mind you, he doesn't. He just goes about flipping pages and scribbling down random thoughts, marking up his pile of x-rays and fumbling through his and the rest of the crew's medical charts. You push your hand up into the arm of his navy blue NASA sweatshirt, raking your nails up and down his forearm absentmindedly as you breathe him in. Your other hand wanders too, tracing the band of his dark sweatpants before skipping up into his sweatshirt, brushing over his stomach and up to his chest.

The pads of your fingers outline the muscles that are still there, his pecs, down and across his soft abs, before back up and over a cheeky nipple. He jumps slightly, crinkling his nose as he smiles big and hard, “Babe, I’m never gonna finish this work if you keep doing that.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“Oh, is that so?”

You bat two big eyes up at him, the weight of going almost two years without catching up with you right at this moment. A hum vibrates in your throat as you stand, taking a few steps away from him before you toss your eyes over your shoulder, licking your bottom lip before sinking your teeth into it. You hold out your hand, wiggling your fingers after a few moments, watching him drag his big eyes down your bare legs and then back up over your powder pink satin shorts and matching camisole.

“Come to bed, Dr. Beck.”

He’s up and on his feet before the words are out of your mouth. Warm fingers interlace with yours as the two of you move back towards the bed, falling onto the soft twin size mattress. His weight dips into the bed as he sinks his knees into it, pulling his sweatshirt over his head as you crawl towards the headboard. You draw your legs up, swaying them gently back and forth, palms flat on your thighs as you inhale deep, watching as he tosses his shirt to the floor.

The smile on your face grows larger as he crawls over you, pushing your legs open with his soft hands before he settles right between them. Chris takes his time looking at you, smiling soft as his eyes drift over your face, his index finger dragging down the bridge of your nose, over two full lips, and down your chin and neck. You let out a quick breath when the pad of that sneaky finger dips just inside your tank top— right into your cleavage.

He cups your face, his thumb resting on your lips, brushing gently, “I’m never leaving you again,” he whispers, blue eyes filling with earnest as they bounce between yours, “I mean it.”

You turn your head into his palm, pressing your lips into the soft, warm skin, planting kisses, “You promise?”

The delivery is breathless. Quiet. Small. Almost begging him to mean it. He takes a deep breath, pushes it out slow before leaning in, closing his eyes as he rubs the tip of his nose against yours. That’s when he kisses you— slow. Deep. Tongue pushing through your lips and into your mouth.  Massaging the roof of your mouth before sliding along your tongue. He even moans a little, lets his body— muscles, bones, brain— relax. Lets himself melt into you because it’s just been so damn long.

It ends slow, the kiss. Chris grabbing your lip with his teeth and pulling gently before he rests his forehead to yours. Eyes closed, his big, skilled hands and fingers flirting with your calves—pushing over your knees and then down your thighs to come to rest on your sides and hips.

“I promise.” You slide your hands up and down his sides, letting your eyelids flutter as he continues, punctuating his words with more gentle kisses, “We can start that life you’re so crazy about,” he laughs when you laugh and wrap your arms around his neck, “Buy you a house.”

“On the base?”

“I thought you didn’t like the base?”

“I don’t… but I kinda... do.”

“Then yeah, on the base if that’s what you want.”

Your eyes are still closed as hot lips press against your face— the crook of your nose, underneath one eye, cheeks, and then chin. You push your fingers up into his hair as he forges a path with his lips and tongue— down your neck, over two collarbones, down your arm— all the while his hands move upward. Up into your silk top, nimble fingers playing with two tight nipples before he rucks the silk top up to your chin.

“Wait,”

“What?”

“What about them?”

“Them, who?”

Pointing with your foot towards the blinking red light in the corner, “Them.”

He laughs and you laugh, covering your face with your hands until Chris pries them away, “They’re nerds, babe. We’ve already made them so nervous they’ve left the control room.”

You honestly can’t remember the last time you laughed this hard. Not since he left you suppose. It’s a nice sound, for both you and him, filling up the small space, making it alive and lived in instead of clinical and dry, “That’s not nice, Chris!”

He shimmies the thin material up over your head, casting it to the floor, “It’s the truth! I should know. Remember the first time I saw you naked? I couldn’t look anybody in the eye for a week.”

The memory makes you laugh, soft and dreamy-like, “That was so long ago.”

Chris catches the tone. It makes him halt, for just a second, his eyes shifting away from you. Guilt. For holding you at an arm’s length for so long. For making you number two. For making you wait for him for so damn long.

You tilt your head, eyes searching his. Gentle hands claim his face, pulling him back into your strong gaze, “Stay with me,” you whisper, eyes bouncing between his, “You’re buying me a house.”

“Ah, yes,” with one fell swoop, your shorts are pulled down your legs, right over the tips of your manicured toes and thrown to the floor, “One story? Two?” He asks, back up on his knees.

“Umm, maybe just one,” You answer, sitting up, slipping your hands into the dark sweats still covering his bottom half, “A two story house is too much to keep clean.”

You pull, but not all the way. Just enough to see his hips and that little tuft of dark hair underneath his belly button. You can’t help yourself and lean forward, kissing his stomach, giggling when he jumps a little. When you do it again, kiss him, and then a third time, and a forth, he gives in. Sweeps your locs over your shoulders and pulls them into a ponytail in his hand. That’s when you hook your thumbs back underneath the thick band of his sweats and pull a little harder, pushing the material right over his hard cock, making it bounce.

Chris kicks out of the sweats, grabs your face in his hands and tilts it upward. Leans down and kisses you again— soft. Sweet. All while rubbing small circles into your cheeks with his thumbs. He stays there, forehead to forehead, eyelashes spread over his buttery, quickly blushing red cheeks as you palm him, dragging your hand from the base right to the tip.

It doesn’t take much— never has. After a few strokes, he’s wet and red all over. Chest, neck, cheeks. Mouth agape, pulling in ragged breaths as his eyelids flutter. He swallows hard, and then hums quick, deep and throaty before inhaling through his open mouth. You push upward, kissing him as you continue slow strokes, sweeping a thumb over his wet tip.

Fingertips brush along the inside of your thigh, down low, first by your knee. Then, slowly, they skirt upward, not groping or kneading, just brushing— flirting with your skin until they reach their destination. You gasp, mouth falling open as adept fingers— not only just in general, but with your body specifically— push through wet folds.

��One story it is then,” he breathes, hot, unhurried, “A dog and a,” he slams his eyes shut, hissing and grunting when you squeeze him, “Fuck baby,” he swallows again, lips trembling as he nuzzles in, rubbing the tips of your noses together, “A dog and a cat.”

Your free hand wraps around his neck, fingertips pushing into his hair as your head tips back, hips start to shove forward, eager for his touch— wanting those fingers inside. When Chris obliges, sinks his index and middle finger into your cunt—  touch starved and needy— you mewl. Making a real sound for the first time in seven hundred and twenty seven days. It enlivens you both.

Chris pushes you back, lays you back onto the small mattress, spreads you out. Keeps his fingers inside, pumping slow, curling, massaging. Thumb pressed against your clit, rubbing. He lays between your legs, coming face to face with your most intimate and blows gently. Warm air sticking to balmy flesh. Big blue eyes flick up to yours, then back to your sweet, licking his lips as a squelch fills the room.

His tongue darts out, slips along the inside of your thigh. Your hips react instantly, jutting upward as a sharp breath fills your chest. A long arm pushes up your body, fingers prodding your breast, tweaking a nipple before he palms the skin, but not for long. Within seconds, his fingertips are pushing into a willing mouth. Your tongue, swirling around thick digits as you grab onto his hand, holding it there.

Warm air tickles damp skin again as he blows on you, “Have some babies,” he offers quick, the words muffled by your flesh as he finally laps at you, tongue slipping through sticky folds, flattening against your slit as he massages the delicate, “How many you want, baby?”

Nothing but a bitten-off groan answers him. It comes for many reasons. His fingers somehow delving deeper, lips brushing over your cunt— the thought of babies. Little brown skinned, curly headed babies running in the backyard with that dog and cat. Wide smiles, complete with missing teeth, loud laughter, declarations of love as they jump into mommy and daddy’s arms.

“Oh yeah,” heavy words breathed into your ear, a hunk of man now laying on top of you, cock pressing at your opening, “My pretty girl wants babies,” the wetness makes it easy for him to slide in— all the way in— bury deep, “I’m gonna give them to you. You’ve been so good.”

He’s moving, hips pushing and pulling as he cups your face in his hands, presses his forehead to yours, “I’m gonna fill you up,” he mutters, swollen lips brushing against yours, “Stuff you— full of— my, fuck,” a deep moan, another quick hiss as he bites his bottom lip, overcome by the warmth, the wet— the tight, “Fuck, you feel good.”

Feverish lips are on yours again, teeth nibbling as his hips shove into you. Soft and swift. A palm covering your breast, fingers pressing, kneading and working sensitive, responsive skin. Nipples hardening, heat blooming across an ardent canvas of skin, pulsing hips eager to meet his.

Chris cups your chin, pushes upward so you're forced to keep slitted eyes on him and him only, “You want my babies? Hmm? Tell me baby,” you can only whimper in response, digging your nails into his sides, drawing your legs up and around him as he plunges deep, “Come on honey, use those words. Tell me how much you want my babies.”

He fucks into you hard, jamming his hips just once— the sound of skin on skin slapping out loud and off the walls. It arches your back, the sudden, quick thrust. Sends you right up into his chest. Chris pulls you into his lap as he falls back on his ass, extending his legs, heels digging into the mattress as he wraps his arms around you, holding you close and tight, fingers spreading out on your back.

Hips roll into one another. Fingers grip his calf as you lean back, hot, sloppy lips on your chest, over and between bouncing tits. A taut nipple pulled right into his wet mouth. Slippery tongue swirling and flicking, teeth nibbling before he sucks on the tight nub, teasing it further.

Then he’s holding your hips, forcing you down onto his cock. More rushed, sticky words falling from swollen, red lips, “You want me to fill you up? Hmm? Tell me.”

Tears slip down your cheeks, overcome by it all. The emotion of it, the physicality of you and him tangled together— the words, how many years you’ve waited to hear those words.

“That’s right, sweet girl,” he purrs, thrusting harder, faster, “You want me to come in you, don’t you? You’d love it if I came in you, huh? Knocked you up? Gave you a baby?”

You kiss him hard. Cupping his face, moaning sweet into his wet mouth, “I want it,” it’s breathy— desperate, “I want it, Chris. I want it.”

“Then I’ll give it to you. I’ll give it all to you.”

It’s feverish after that. Pushing and pulling. Grunting, smacking— lips on lips, skin on skin. Large hands gripping, fingers pressing into the meat of thighs and calves and ass and tits. His fingers grip the meat of your thighs, your ass, slide up your back— around your neck as your head falls back. Those fingers find your mouth, push just inside as he wraps his other arm around your waist, pulling your hips closer, helping them rock.

His fingers are out of your mouth, cupping your cheek now. Smoothing hair out of your face as it strains. You try not to get loud, slam your eyes closed, purse your lips as your toes curl and stomach tightens… heart flutters.

“Oh no,” he murmurs, brushing his thumbs over your closed eyes before prodding at your lips, “Don’t do that, honey. I know for a fact that you can be a hell of a lot louder than that. Come on, let me hear you.”

“No, I—“

“Don’t be modest,” his tone shifts, going stern and deep, and that’s all it really takes for the noise to flow, “I wanna hear you.”

But he knew that.

It’s a sweet little hum, and then a gasp before it’s clipped by an obscenity— a shaky, desperate, filthy word that dissolves away into a loud groan and then… it’s all downhill from there.

You couldn’t hold it in if you tried. It’s been too long. A pent up aggression, a nervous need all finally working its way out of you. You pull him close— crush your chest against his, wrap two liquid arms around his neck, press your face right against his. Chris loops an arm around your waist, squeezing your opposite hip, pressing his fingers right into the soft skin until it hurts.

But it’s good, the pain of the squeeze. It helps you right over the edge, makes you finally cum after seven hundred and twenty seven days. Slow at first. A warmth just taking its time as it spreads. The feeling sort of foreign because it’s been so long— your brain hasn’t caught up just yet.

When it does catch up, brain and body finding each other, dormant synapses kicking on with a jolt, it’s not just a warmth. It’s molten now, searing and stirring, passing through veins and muscles and skin and bone— it’s that deep. Toes curling so hard they go numb, fingertips digging into his shoulders as you throw your head back.

You’re sure the scientists and military guards can hear you three floors down.

Chris leans in, hot, wet, shiny lips pressing against your chest, over your tits with sloppy kisses, hips still churning into yours until they just can’t. Wet walls closing in, clamping down as they spasm, that molten enveloping him. His hips freeze quick with the first spurt, but find a haphazard rhythm as he comes. Fills you up just like he promised.

He pushes those warm blooms of silk deep with now pointed, long strokes. Not a drop escaping— it’s all for you, after all. Supply and demand and all that.

The mattress is a dream beneath you. Inviting and soft as he lays you into it, still rooted deep as he rolls you onto your side. An arm snakes around your hip, a palm and long fingers anchoring in the center of your chest. A hot, flushed cheek presses against yours as lazy wet lips drag along the back of your neck. Languid thrusts at random intervals keeps you gasping as he tucks his knees and thighs into the backs of yours.

“Say it again,” you whisper after a few quiet minutes, breath still heavy, chest still heaving.

Chris plunges into you again, soft and sweet and deep, “Say what, honey?”

“That you won’t,” the words break off, a moan replacing them as he kisses a trail down your arm, fucks into you once, twice, three times, “That you won’t leave me again.”

“I’m not leaving you again.”

-

When you wake up the next morning, that little whiteboard with the days scribbled on it is erased. All it says now?

Day one.