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thetriggeredhappy · 3 years ago

Note

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently.  And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, ��seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”  “What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

#father-son bonding au #dad!spy #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #my fanfiction #everybody talks #really happy with this one even if it took Way Too Fucking Long

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interstellarflare · 4 years ago

Text

Bend and Break || Homelander

-PART SIX-

Warnings: Gore, violence, course language, angst.

Summary: People can only bend their morales so far before they break. Homelander is the world’s greatest superhero, and you, a tech analyst, somehow become entangled in his world when he learns that you provide intel to The Boys. He makes it his personal mission to find out exactly what you know, but he never expected such resistance from someone as damaged as you. But broken things can be mended, sometimes in the most unexpected ways possible.

Author’s Note: As a bit of a disclaimer, I have only seen snippets of The Boys. I haven’t actually watched all of it, so forgive me if there are some details that are wrong, as well as the many spelling errors that will undoubtedly be in this series. There is a tag list open for those who wish to be added. I apologise for the long chapters. Gif by @xmichaelmyers

After activating the pager hacking device after you had entered the building, you and Homelander went your seperate ways for the night.

You watched as Madelyn Stillwell hung off of his arm, smiling and pretending that she was actually interested in tonight’s events as Homelander indulged politicians and government officials in small talk. You however, stood in a secluded corner of the room, waiting for your device to break through Vought’s firewalls whilst idly sipping a glass of champagne. You didn’t know how long he had been there, but Black Noir stood by your side, his arms folded over his armoured chest as his suit blended perfectly with the shadows to your right.

You were growing more anxious as time went by. You expected to hear a small beeping noise when your device had finished its task, but the growing fear that the device wouldn’t work caused your palms to become increasingly sweaty. You loosed a shaky breath, taking a small sip of the champagne in your grasp. You found small comfort in the fact that Noir was by your side, grateful that at least someone else knew what you were up to.

From your position in the corner, you could hear various topics of conversation. However, the majority of them were about you. ‘Who was that woman with him?’ You heard someone question, that someone turning out to be the wife of the Secretary of Defence. ‘Who is she? I don’t think I’ve seen her around before’. ‘Her dress is beautiful, no wonder Homelander chose to escort her inside’. ‘He was probably being nice, she doesn’t really belong here’. You felt Noir step out of the shadows and move to your side, his arm brushing against yours as he stood defensive and tall. As soon as he appeared, the conversations about you stopped, everyone averting their gaze to anywhere else in the room but towards you and the Supe. No doubt he would have heard all of the negative chatter his stern stance giving off a pissed off vibe loud and clear.

“Is it normal for you to intimidate people who piss you off?” You asked teasingly, a smirk growing on your lips as you finished the last of the champagne. Noir nodded wordlessly, his helmeted gaze not leaving the gathered congregation before him. You rolled your eyes, laughing quietly as you anxiously peered down at the clutch in your other hand. Still nothing. You huffed through your nose, your anxiety being replaced with frustration. What if all of this was for nothing? What of at the end of the night, the device didn’t go off. What then?

Slow music began to play, a choir of violinists, cellos and various other instruments beginning a long classical piece which you knew would likely last the entire night. “Excuse me, can I have a word?” A toxically sweet voice spoke softly, causing you to turn your gaze and meet the emerald eyes of the blood red reporter from earlier. She smiled a viper’s grin, her eyes turning a shade darker as she towered over over your smaller frame. You blinked in surprise and confusion, unsure as to why this woman was even speaking to you. As if sensing your confusion, her grin widened “I only want to interview you in regards to your entrance with The Homelander himself, it was quite spectacular I have to say”. You laughed breathlessly, unsure of what to do or say. So you shrugged your shoulders “Oh, uh, thank you? To be honest it wasn’t really that-”

“Tell me, is there a secret relationship going on between the two of you behind closed doors?” She pried, her question catching you off guard. You choked, shaking your head in disbelief “I’m sorry? I don’t think I understand” You spoke lowly, standing as tall as your heels would allow. The reporter smirked evilly, knowing that she had gotten under your skin. She stepped closer toward you intimidatingly close with her hands propped on her hips. “Well one would assume that something was going was going on between you two with the way he escorted you inside” She spoke lazily, staring down at you with a bored expression “everyone has been talking about it, you know”.

Your eyes narrowed into a dangerous glare, one that even made the Supe at your side flinch with how much hatred and ice radiated from your form. “He was just being chivalrous-” “Oh, I’m sure he was...” The reporter interrupted sarcastically, picking at her red painted nails through her hooded eyelashes “then again, why else would he associate with someone as dull and uninteresting as you? I mean, look at you. You don’t fit in here, you’re hiding in a corner for gods sake...”

Dull and uninteresting...is that how people saw you?

You tried to maintain your composure, you tried not to take the bitch’s words to heart. But why did they hurt so much?

Dull and uninteresting, boring and plain. You averted your gaze from the reporter’s and casted your eyes across the room. Where your eyes met his. And you knew. You knew Homelander had been listening, given by the stern and unreadable expression on his face. Damn his superhuman hearing, damn him to hell. You could feel him staring after you as you weaved your way through the dancing crowd. You could feel him staring after you as you climbed the main marble staircase, disappearing down the hall and onto a stone balcony. You leaned against the balcony, breathing deeply to try and prevent the tears in your eyes falling.

Why were you hurt so much by this? What did it matter what people thought about you? Why did it matter what he thought about you?

Why? Why did it matter?

It was peaceful out on the balcony, the noise of the Gala inside was nothing but distant rumbles. The music still clear as day. A gentle but cool breeze caressed your skin, brushing strands of your hair out of its well-kept do. Footsteps echoed on the balcony. They were heavy, but taken in a stride that was light and cautious. You didn’t have to turn around to know who was standing behind you.

“Do you think I’m dull and uninteresting?” You asked him, keeping your gaze ahead and on the night cityscape before you. You heard Homelander sigh, but he made no attempt top move toward you. When no answer came, your chest tightened painfully. Of course, he thought you were dull. Of course, he thought you were uninteresting. He was The Homelander. And you...you were just a nobody.

“It’s John...” You heard him sigh out lowly, his tone of voice showing no sign of teasing or malice. With your eyebrows furrowing in confusion, you spun to face The Worlds Greatest Superhero with an expression of pure bewilderment. “What?”.

Homelander chuckled, a genuine sound resonating from deep within him as he stepped toward you, his cape billowing slightly in the wind. “Yesterday...” He began, standing beside you and leaning his hands against the stone railing “you asked if I had another name Homelander, otherwise you were going to call me prick or arsehole. My name is John”. You laughed lowly, nodding your head as you leaned back against the railing with an amused smile. So he did have a name. “It suits you” You responded, looking over at him with a soft smile. John nodded, giving you the same smile in return. “And you know what, any woman that can speak to me with such sarcasm, wit, and foul language, and live to tell the tale, is definitely interesting in my eyes”.

Your laughter echoed out from the balcony and across the city. It was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. It wasn’t like the small sarcastic chuckles, or the amused scoffs you would always give him. This was genuine, this was pure. And he loved every second of it. But why? Why did he enjoy your laugh? Why did he long to see you smile, why did he long to always see you as happy as you were now? You turned to face him again, the frown on your face now non-existent as you grinned. “You know, this is why I don’t leave my apartment” You joked lightly, causing the Supe beside you to scoff. “I don’t think I’ve seen you wear anything other than an oversized shirt and sweatpants” He teased, shying away slightly as you lightly slapped his shoulder. He laughed as you pouted, folding your arms over your chest as your eyebrows furrowed.

The music from downstairs floated up on a graceful wind, a slow waltzing piece that would have no doubt been played at a dozen luxurious events prior to this one. John stood up from his position by the balcony, moving to stand in front of you with a soft smile. “Dance with me” he spoke suddenly, holding his gloved hand towards you with a smirk tugging at his lips. Your expression became more confused as you looked up at him with an expression that couldn’t have been more confused if you tried. “What? You want to dance with me?”.

“Why not? It’s a Gala, we might as well” John tried to reason, rolling his eyes as you laughed loudly once again. Placing your clutch carefully on the balcony, you shook your head slowly as you placed your hand into his own. He immediately pulled you close, wrapping one arm securely around your waist, and intertwining his other with yours. The two of you began to sway slowly, your cheeks flushing a bright red at the amount of limited space between you. Your heart was beating so loud, that you were sure the man before you could hear your heart beating wildly in your chest without his superhuman hearing. The thought alone caused your stomach to flutter. Pushing down your nerves, you forced yourself to look up, and almost fell apart. John was staring down at you with an expression you couldn’t read. No one had ever looked at you like that before, with such emotion, with such raw-

Pain...there was so much pain.

For a split second, you couldn’t breath. The air was taken from your lungs as John flinched, his grip on your form tightening as his eyes widened in pure horror. Blood splattered the front of his uniform, tiny horrifying droplets coating his skin. A strange warmth suddenly spread over your chest, a deep rumbling cough caused the pain to increase. Blood dribbled from your mouth, your blood. You collapsed forward, the world suddenly spinning in dizzying stars. The ringing in your ears became louder and louder, drowning out the terror-filled shouts from downstairs, and John’s frantic cries. You could make out your name on his lips, his arms wrapping around your form as he lowered you to the ground. You were scared, terrified. What happened?

You suddenly felt tired, your eyes becoming heavier with every second that passed. It was cold, so very cold. Everything suddenly became numb, consumed by the agony and pain that everything slowly began to fade. You never saw the figure emerge from the doorway, you never heard what John said to that blurry image of a man.

But the last thing you saw was his furious expression. His blue eyes glowing a bright red in rage, hatred, and pure madness.

Tag List: @lauraaan182 @tardis-23 @freshmakertaco @shilsvampsinger @cynthianokamaria @delicatetimetravelarcade @coloursunlimited @clean-soap @themarch-oftheblackqueen @soft-hargreeves @kennedywxlsh @itskatrinahere

#homelander x reader #homelander #homelander imagine #the boys x reader #the boys #the boys imagine #antony starr

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onceinsomniac · 4 years ago

Note

Helloooo~~~ Can I request a JiU x fem!reader fluff scenario. Y'know, the classic rivals to lovers cliché (if your okay with it) 👉👈

Author’s note: Sorry for taking so long to answer this. I wasn't sure of how to make it a rivals to lovers story since Jiu is just too nice to have rivals so it ended up being more like one-sided rivals. Sorry. Also, I know Jiu, Sua, Siyeon, Yoohyeon and Dami were Minx before debuting as dreamcatcher with Handong and Gahyeon but as this is made up, let’s just pretend that they debuted as dreamcatcher from the beginning since I wasn’t sure of how to fit Minx in. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it :)

After All This Time

You were 16 years old when you first laid eyes on her. You were nervously pacing back and forth waiting outside the principal’s office for her to call you in. Your math teacher hadn’t told you anything other than the principal wanted to see you but you didn’t need her to explain to know why she had asked for you. After all, you had been waiting anxiously for this day for the last two weeks. Ever since the voting had closed for student body president.

It had taken you a lot of persuasion and, admittedly, some bribing but you were sure you had won. It also helped that the only other person running against you was Nick, the quarterback who nobody really liked, despite his popularity, because of his cockiness. However, no matter how sure you were of your victory, that knowledge didn’t help ease your nerves. After all, it had been your dream to be student body president since you first started your freshman year of high school.

“Hey, are you okay?” a voice asked, breaking you out of your thoughts. You turned to look at a girl who seemed faintly familiar. You vaguely recognized her as the girl who sat a few seats behind you in your history class. You barely heard her voice, to busy admiring her. She was quite taller than you, although almost everyone was considering your short height. She had long, straight hair and you suddenly wondered how it would feel to run your hand through it. She was smiling brightly at you and her smile made your heart start thudding. Her smile, however, started growing smaller as concern replaced it once your silence continued.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. You suddenly came back to your senses and started blushing furiously once you realized you’d been caught staring at the stranger. You resisted the urge to facepalm at your idiocy. “Sorry. I was just thinking. I’m waiting on some news”, you explained. The girls’ smile returned at your answer. “Oh, me too actually”, she said.

You opened your mouth to ask her what exactly was she waiting on when you were interrupted by Ms. Seungwan, the school secretary. “You can go in now”, she told you. Or at least you assumed she was speaking to you but it was the girl who’s name you still didn’t know who answered. “Thank you”, she told her before looking back at you. “Good luck”, she told you, much to your confusion before opening the door to the principal’s office and stepping inside.

You hesitated for a moment more, perplexed at the turn of events, before following after her. “Aah Minji, Y/N, it’s good to see you”, Principal Bae exclaimed. “Thank you, principal Bae”, the girl who’s name you know knew to be Minji responded brightly. “I asked you both to come as the news I’m about to give you affect you both”, she continued. “It seems that against all odds, the votes have come to a head. You both had the exact same number of votes. Your classmate, Nick, wasn’t as lucky. As thus, we have decided that instead of going over the whole process again, you will both be co-student vice body presidents. You will share the responsibilities that comes with the job. Congratulations”

She finished her statement with a flourish of her arms, obviously expecting a grateful response. Grateful, however, was the last thing you were feeling. “How exciting. Thank you so much”, Minji exclaimed, excitedly clapping her hands. The cute display, however, only made you even angrier. You couldn’t believe you hadn’t even been aware of the other girl running for the same position. You managed to thank the principal before walking out the door. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other now.” Minji said, once outside.

She smiled the same bright smile she had been wearing earlier but this time, your heart thudded for very different reasons. You saw past the smile to the manipulator that laid beneath it. “Yeah. I guess we will.” You mumbled before leaving the girl behind, feeling annoyed at knowing you would be seeing her again soon.

--------

Your math class had finished while you were in the office and it was now time for lunch so you walked into the cafeteria looking for your friends. You made your way to your usual table where they were sitting. They were discussing something that had happened with some senior but quickly shut up once they saw you sit. “So? Do I have to call you madam president now?” your friend Chun-hei asked. You rolled your eyes at her antics. “Madame co-president actually”, you said.

“It seems that the exact same number of people voted for two of us”, you explained once you saw the visible confusion in both their faces. “Wait, seriously? People actually voted for Nick?” Aera exclaimed. “No actually. Apparently, some other girl had been running and I hadn’t even known about it. God knows how she got so many votes without me even knowing she was running”, you explained, remembering the many long nights you’d spent working on your many signs in order to hang them all around school. Even Nick had hung dozens of posters even thought you were sure he had paid someone else to do them.

“Who is it?” Chun-hei asked. “Some girl named Minji”, you answered. Both your friends stared at you wide-eyed. “What?” you asked. “You aren’t by any chance talking about Kim Minji, are you?” Aera asked. You shrugged your shoulders, not knowing the girls last name. “Tall girl with long, beautiful hair and a constant smile?” Aera said. The description definitely described the Minji you had met. “I guess so”, you responded, not knowing where your friends where going with this.

“Well I guess that explains how she got so many votes”, Chun-hei said. You felt your confusion growing at the bold statement. “What are you talking about?” you asked her. “Don’t you know who she is?” Chun-hei asked. You shook your head, pushing down your bubbling annoyance, hating feeling out of the loop. “Should I know her?” you asked.

“Of course. Everyone knows her. She’s like the most popular girl in school. She’s supposedly super friendly and friends with everyone. That’s how she won. She has so many friends she simply asked them to vote.” Aera explained.

You felt yourself grow even angrier at the other girl, remembering how much work you had put into trying to win the election just so some popular girl could appear out of nowhere and get the same votes as you without even working for it. You were, what some would call, a nerd. You honestly didn’t care much for the social part of high school. You were happy with your two best friends and you were to busy anyways being top of your class to make any new friends.

What you did care about, however, was actually using your position as student vice president to make your school better. And you definitely didn’t appreciate some popular girl sweeping in and treating it as some kind of popularity contest. And now, you were stuck with her for the next two years.

--------

After school had ended, you approached Minji who was standing in front of her locker surrounded by friends. Aera was definitely not joking when she said Minji was popular, you thought to yourself. You did not want to deal with so many people so you decided to wait for them to leave. You leaned against the wall, waiting for the girl to be left alone. It was almost ten minutes later by the time Minji had finally said her goodbyes and started walking towards the entrance of the school. You quickly followed after her. “Hey Minji”, you called out. She immediately stopped in her tracks and turned to face you.

“Oh, hey Y/N. What’s up?” she asked. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at her, dislike rolling through you, along with something else you couldn’t quite decipher. “Give me your phone”, you stated bluntly. Minji simply raised an eyebrow at you, confusion clear in her eyes. “If that’s your way of asking me out…” she started but you quickly interrupted her. “Of course not. But if we’re going to be working together, we need to be able to contact each other”, you explained. “Oh” she answered. “Here.” She handed you her phone.

You entered your number into her phone, looking down the whole time while you fought of the blush that had formed at her earlier implication. You were sure she was just joking around and didn’t appreciate being made fun of. A feeling you couldn’t quite understand formed in the pit of your stomach but you ignored it, taking it to be annoyance.

You handed her her phone back a few seconds later. “I’ll text you”, she said but you were already walking away and didn’t bother responding.

-----------

As promised, Minji texted you later that night. You both agreed to meet up regularly on Mondays after school in order to go over any issues and all the things you had planned for the school.

It didn’t surprise you at that first meeting that Minji had no real ideas of her own and she simply hovered over you as you explained yours. Your annoyance at her grew every week after each meeting as she continued spending the whole meetings staring at you. It was made quite clear that your earlier assumption about her just wanting the job to prove her popularity was right.

You would be trying to come up with ideas of how to convince the principal to listen to your ideas when Minji would just start talking with you about something that had nothing to do with what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. She would start asking you about yourself and what you liked doing. It annoyed you to no end that you were stuck with someone who clearly didn’t want to be there and so you soon took to simply ignoring her.

She would pout at you but would then continue talking with you even when you refused to answer her. It looked like nothing you did brought down her mood. The feeling you couldn’t quite recognize continued to grow and as someone who was used to being very in control of her life, you hated the way her presence made you lose control of something as simple as your emotions. That just ended up in your annoyance at her growing and when the school year finally ended, you were relieved at not having to see her during the summer break.

------------

For some unexplainable reason, Minji continued calling you during the break, asking you to hang out. You continuously ignored her calls and soon they turned to messages. They would range from asking you to hang out to venting about something to simply wishing you a good day. You never answered any of them. You were confused about why Minji continued to bother you even when you weren’t being forced to see each other, sure that it was just her way of annoying you as payback for ignoring her.

You ignored how bothered you felt when the messages and calls stopped coming about half-way through the break. Once you were finally back at school, ready to start your senior year you realized Minji was nowhere to be found.

As much as you didn’t want to see her you reasoned that you had to since she was still your co-president. After looking for her the whole day, you finally made your way to the principal’s office to ask if she had any idea of Minji’s whereabouts. You were shocked when she told you that Minji had left the school. Apparently, she had moved to Seoul in order to become a trainee. You hadn’t even known Minji wanted to be an idol and your stomach churned uncomfortably when you realized she’d probably told during one of her long rants and you had simply ignored her.

You told yourself you were relieved at finally being able to do the job the way you wanted. Relieved at no longer having the annoying girl hovering over your shoulder, watching everything you did and trying to distract you from the job. You swore you were relieved.

You couldn’t understand, then, why you kept turning to ask Minji her opinion whenever you had an idea only to be disappointed when you remembered you were alone. It didn’t explain the loneliness that started growing inside you or the way you would look at her contact in your phone, your finger hovering over the dial option.

Your senior year passed quite quickly, the feeling that you were missing something never leaving you. Before you knew it, you had left Daejeon and had moved to Seoul, ready to start your first year at the University of Seoul.

You were majoring in Political Science and where quite enjoying it. You had quickly made new friends, something which had never been easy for you. It helped that you had met in one of your classes and you all had shared interests. You still kept in contact with Chun-hei and Aera, both who had stayed in Daejeon.

It was at the beginning of your second year when the feelings you had kept hidden for so long came rushing back in. You were studying for an upcoming exam in your dorm room when your phone pinged, signifying a new message. You opened your phone to see that Chun-hei had sent you a link, along with about a dozen heart emojis. You let out a small laugh at your friends’ usual dramatics before clicking on the link

The last thing you were expecting to see was the face you hadn’t seen in more than two years but was still present in your mind. Minji looked much the same, although her face showed a new maturity. She was dressed in dark robes along with six other girls and the title declared them to be Dreamcatcher, a new group who had just debuted. You felt the same annoyance you had felt so many times during your Junior year of high school although for some reason the feeling wasn’t unwelcomed. You actually found yourself to have missed it.

Minji’s usual smile was nowhere to be found on the poster, a serious expression on her face instead. Considering it was the same matching expression on all the girls, you assumed this had something to do with their concept. You spent that whole night watching their pre-debut videos on youtube and all the interviews they had done since their debut. You found yourself constantly listening to Chase Me during the next few weeks but you justified it to yourself by saying you were just listening to it because it was catchy. Not because you had missed her voice or anything like that.

Soon, you had become a dedicated Insomnia, watching all their vlives and staying up late for each and every one of their comebacks. You brought a ticket for their next concert and spent the whole concert looking at the person who had once been your school rival, wondering how come the empty feeling that had been a constant in your life since she’d left felt like it was disappearing.

It wasn’t long before you found yourself buying another ticket for their next comeback and soon, it became a custom, to go to their first concert after each comeback. You wanted to go to more of their concerts but you were to busy with school. Without even noticing it, you had started buying each ticket closer and closer to the stage.

After being a devoted Insomnia for so long and watching the way she interacted with her members, you started thinking back on your time together. Her kindness and constant smiles seemed so genuine and you felt bad thinking back on how coldly you had treated her during your time together, assuming her to be just another typical popular girl.

It was right after they had released their second EP, Escape the Era, that everything changed. As always, you had brought a ticket to their first concert in Seoul, not thinking much about finding yourself in the second row. It wasn’t until Dami’s part in You and I that you felt a pair of eyes staring into you. You turned towards where you felt the gaze coming from only to find yourself staring right into Minji’s eyes. You could see the recognition flowing through her eyes and quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed at being caught by her. You spent the rest of the concert avoiding her gaze which you could feel burning into you.

The moment the concert ended, you pushed your way outside the venue, in a hurry to escape from the uncomfortable situation. You weren’t sure why but you felt extremely embarrassed at her knowing you had brought a ticket for her concert. You quickly made your way back to your dorm, feeling ready to go to bed and sleep the embarrassment away. That was definitely the last time you attended their concert, you decided sadly.

You opened spotify on your phone and clicked shuffle on your dreamcatcher playlist, knowing their music always made you feel better. While the music sounded around the room, you changed into your pajamas and got your things ready for class the next day. You were just about to turn of the lights when a knock on your door made you stop.

You looked at the alarm clock on your nightstand, noting that it was almost 1am and wondering who would be knocking on your door at such a late hour. You hesitated briefly before the knocking started once more. “I can hear you in there”, a voice which you immediately recognized as Minji’s called. “I can also hear the music”, she said. You then remembered you had your dreamcatcher playlist playing and hurried to turn it off. You wondered how the other girl had known where to find you. Then again, Minji had always been quite resourceful.

You could feel the other girl waiting on the other side of the door and you briefly weighted the pros and cons of jumping out your window in order to avoid the awkwardness that was about to happen, assuming Minji was her for an explanation on why you were in her concert in the first place. Unfortunately for you, your room was located on the top floor and as much as you wanted to avoid the situation you also didn’t fancy dying.

“You’re going to have to leave eventually and I’m happy to wait”, Minji called, making you sight in defeat before making your way to the door and opening it, coming face to face with the taller girl for the first time in years. Minji was wearing pants and an oversized hoodie, having changed after the concert. Despite her lazy wardrobe, the sigh of her still made you catch your breath. She was smiling at you brightly as thought her showing up at your dorm at one in the morning was an everyday occurrence.

Without a word, she pushed past you and made her way into your room. You wordlessly closed the door before turning to face her. “Um. Hi.” You said, breaking the tense silence. By the bright smile on her face, however, you guessed that you were the only one feeling the tension. She ignored you, walking over to your desk and looking through your collection of all the tickets you had brought, proof of all the concerts you had gone too. You had completely forgotten about them.

“So this wasn’t the first time”, she stated. “How come you never said hi?” she asked. You stared at her weirdly, having thought she would have been creeped out and thinking you were some kind of obsessed stalker or something. Instead, she looked quite pleased at your collection. “I don’t know. I mean, I assumed you wouldn’t even remember me”, you answered. Your answer was only the half truth thought. You’d also hadn’t wanted to talk to her because you found your feelings for her so confusing. Half the time, you weren’t sure whether you wanted to annoy her or kiss her.

Minji let out a small laugh at your answer. “Not remember you? That would be quite hard considering not a day has gone by when you haven’t crossed my mind”, she admitted. For a second you felt envy at how easy Minji could say what she was feeling, so unlike you who always tried to hide your feelings. But then her words registered and you surprise course through you. You were still trying to think on what to answer when Minji suddenly took a few quick steps towards you, quickly closing the space between you too. You stood there motionless as she invaded your personal space, so close to you that you could feel her warm breath on your face.

“Why now? Why after all this time?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper. The smile was long gone as a serious expression crossed her face. “What are you talking about?” you asked her, trying not to stumble over your words as your thoughts were a jumble at her close proximity. You found yourself resisting the urge to look at her lips. “Why bother coming to so many of our concerts. Why show up in my life again. Just when I was finally starting to move on. Why?”

Her voice got louder with each sentence. She stepped back, giving you space once again, as she ran her hands through her hair in frustration. She turned to look at you once again. “Why”, she repeated, her voice sounding unusually stern. This was the first time you had seen the usually happy girl so frustrated. Even when you had spent so long giving her the cold shoulder during your junior year of high school, her never-ending smiles and positivity had never wavered.

“I wasn’t trying to bother you. You weren’t supposed to see me”, you explained, trying to calm the slightly older girl down. Your words, however, only served to anger her even more. “Is that supposed to make it better?” she spat out.

You were extremely confused at what was happening. “Minji, I’m sorry if it seemed weird that I go to your concerts. I won’t do it anymore if it bothers you so much”, you told her, trying to regain control of the situation. Minji turned to glare at you, anger visible on her face. “What bothers me is why would you even come when you hate me”, she said.

You sputtered a few seconds, trying to find a reply to the sudden accusation. “I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you.” You said. Minji let out a dark chuckle. “Yeah right. Then how do you explain you ignoring me and clearly being annoyed by me for a whole year?” she replied. You felt guilt coil in your stomach at the truth in her words. You could understand why the older girl had thought you hated her but you didn’t. You never did. You were just to stuck on your misconceptions of her to see who she really was.

“I’m sorry. The truth is I was just annoyed at you for the way you seemed to always get what you wanted without even working for it.” You admitted. Minji looked confused at your words so you continued explaining. “I worked my ass off for that position and you just came in and got it without any effort. And don’t say it was because you cared about our school and wanted to change things. Most of the times you just stood there and did nothing. I was angry that it was just some popularity contest to you.”

You took a few seconds to catch your breath after your rant. You hadn’t expected to let all that out but you were just so confused by Minji. You hated the way you never knew what to say to her. Understanding seemed to dawn on Minji and you were surprised by the familiar smile that once again made its way to her face. “Seriously Y/N? I knew you could be oblivious but this is ridiculous”, she said.

You felt offended at being called ridiculous and where just about to say so when Minji surprised you by one again stepping into your personal space. This time, however, you took a step backwards only for her to follow after you. You were confused by the look in her eyes which you’d never seen before. You continued backing away until you hit the wall. She stood inches away from you, an almost predatory smile making its way into her face. She leaned both hands against the wall, caging you in.

“You’re right. I didn’t run for student body president because I wanted to change things. I ran because I wanted to get to know you”, she confessed. She didn’t give you time to respond as a second later a pair of lips met your own in a hungry kiss. Your lips started moving along with hers immediately, almost as if you had done this before. The taste of apples lingered on her lips and the smell of vanilla immediately filled your senses. You immediately forgot all your previous worries, too consumed by trying to get closer. The weird feeling she’d always caused you finally made sense.

She pulled away first, a small smile on her face as she looked down at you. “Do you get it now?” she asked and you finally did. You felt stupid for not noticing her feelings years before. Then again, you hadn’t even noticed yours. What surprised you even more than the fact that she had had feelings for you was that those feelings seemed to have remained. “Even after all this time?” you asked her. Minji didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned down and kissed you again. And for some reason, you felt as thought you were finally complete.

#request #Dreamcatcher #dreamcatcher scenarios #jiu x reader #kpop scenarios

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zwritestuff · 4 years ago

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Some Things Are Bound To Be (Chapter One) - Kyara

A/N: Okay, hear me out, I know this ship barely has a week of existing - I’m very aware of it, thank you very much. But this idea wouldn’t stop haunting me, and before I knew it I churned out 2.7K in the span of two days. Obssessions be like that, I guess. With that being said - I’m hoping that this will have between 5-7 chapters, because I can’t deal with long multi-chaps at the moment. A big, massive thank you to @fromthenorthernskies for beta-ing this 💓 And to Winter for always being on board with my shit and peer pressuring me to write this.

Summary: When simple office gossip snowballs, Kyne finds herself faking to be Kiara’s girlfriend, the daughter of the owner of the company she works at. Not that she has any complain, though.

***

Kyne had been working a little over a week at Schatzi Co. when she met Kiara, though she had heard rumors and hushed whispers about the only daughter of the owners of the company — some said she was a bitch, others that she was a spoiled brat; to Kyne, she was none of those things.

It might just be because she exchanged a total of four words with her, and Kiara treated her as politely as she could be before going on about her day. Either way, she never participated in the insulting comments some of her co-workers made about Kiara, because she didn’t have any bone to pick with her.

Priyanka, her best friend and the one that got her the job interview in the first place, had wisely suggested she stay out of the office drama, at least during her first weeks. She had been working there for a year now, so she knows what she’s talking about; she doesn’t mind when Kyne asks one too many times what did Kiara Schatzi actually do to earn so much hate from the employees, considering she rarely is at the company.

“I don’t know, existing?” Priyanka offers as an answer, while they’re having lunch together at her office. “She’s set to inherit the company once her father decides to retire, that much I know, but I’m not sure where this hate comes from — probably from something that happened before I worked here, but nobody would tell me.” She shrugs, biting her sandwich.

“Oh, c’mon, she can’t be that bad, can she?” Kyne asks, picking at her Adobo. Priyanka is about to answer when someone knocks at the door, and as soon as she tells whoever it is to come in, they see Julia’s head poke from behind the door.

She tells Priyanka that the head of the construction team needs to speak with her about a mistake in the planes for the new project, using that very nasal voice Kyne has become used to rather quickly, and saying in a pretty non-confrontational tone to not shoot the messenger.

Priyanka groans, excusing herself to Kyne before following Julia, who’s still apologizing on behalf of the contratist, and leaves Kyne alone with her Adobo.

Not even a minute goes by when the door is opened again, but this time, it’s Kiara that interrupts in the room.

“Miss Priyanka?” She says, looking around the room and finding Kyne instead. “Oh, hello. Isn’t this Priyanka Kapoor’s office?” Kiara asks, squinting slightly.

Kyne briefly thinks that the red suit fits her so well it should be illegal, but she just nods curtly.

“She just left with Julia, something about a plane for a project being wrong?” Kyne hesitantly replies, though she heard the conversation very clearly.

Kiara groans, rolling her eyes. “How could that woman outrun me when she’s wearing six inch heels?” She asks aloud, barely holding back a laugh. Kyne chuckles.

“I mean, I’ve been working here for a month and I’ve never seen her not wear six inch heels,” she says, though she’s not sure if Kiara pretended to get an answer from her.

She feels a weird flutter in her chest when Kiara giggles, shooting a smile her way.

“Yeah, I guess that’s probably it,” Kiara replies, “What’s your name again?” She asks, lingering at the door.

“It’s Kyne Aguilar, miss Schatzi,” she replies with a genuine smile. Kiara smiles back, and Kyne thinks the smile suits her very well.

“I’ll see you around, Miss Aguilar,” she simply says before leaving, and Kyne’s stare stays glued to the door.

When Priyanka returns, much later and with a very visible frown in her face, Kyne doesn’t mention her encounter with Kiara, because she doesn’t find it relevant when her friend is complaining about her professionalism being questioned by one silly mistake.

When the day is over, Kyne is just making her way to the parking lot to meet Priyanka when she runs into Kiara again. She’s walking with her dad, and it makes Kyne straighten her back and avoid looking directly at him. She mutters a good night sir as she passes by their side instead, and she’d swear neither he nor Kiara listened, but she nods politely and says a have a good night that echoes in the otherwise silent hallway.

She’s not sure why, but she barely pays attention to Priyanka’s rant about her day, answering with non-committal sounds, as her mind drifted off and replayed the brief moment she’d spent with Kiara.

Yeah, Kyne is definitely skeptical about the rumors surrounding Kiara.

***

Kyne quickly gets used to her routine at the company.

She’s always been good at math and numbers, so being an accountant was one of her first options going into college, though she would’ve been as happy getting an overall degree in math and teaching children.

Her job as an accountant isn’t as dull as she would’ve imagined, though; she’s the one that everyone comes for calculating budgets, how much would they earn if they invest on a certain project and all that jazz — all of this means people don’t necessarily see her as interesting, and therefore she never gets involved in any kind of office drama, which she appreciates due to the fact that her friends seem to be a walking target for drama worth of High School girls.

Priyanka was the one that introduced her to Scarlett and Bo, and though Kyne appreciates their friendship, she has to admit they’re a little bit messy. Just a little. Scarlett and Bo know everyone’s business at the office, primarily because Scarlett sleeps around more than they’ll ever admit to, and Bo is able to charm her way through people’s most pettiest complains about other co-workers. Oh, and Priyanka is there to de-escalate situations that come back to bite the pair in the ass.

So, overall, work isn’t monotonous at all; she has her friends that always have some sort of gossip to tell her — and there’s also Kiara.

Kiara started working full-time at the company shortly after she graduated from college, just one year after Kyne. This meant she saw her a lot more frequently, instead of sporadically running into her at the hallways once or twice a week — now, it’d be a pretty weird day if she didn’t see Kiara around, talking to people, collecting reports and having meetings with other important members of the company.

They didn’t talk much, though, only exchanging words when Kiara came to collect reports at Kyne’s office and they did small talk for a moment before Kiara went on with her day. Sometimes they’d greet each other if they happened to bump into the other at the end or beginning of the day. It was a cordial enough relationship.

That was until one day she comes to her office unprompted, asking her to follow the flow if her secretary, Lena, appears by looking for her.

“She’s more of an assistant that a secretary, you know? But she can be a bit too overbearing sometimes, though I’m sure I would have to blame my dad for that, he was the one that hired her for me,” Kiara rants, and Kyne just lets her, looking up from her reports from time to time to let her know she’s listening.

She’s pretty sure that this is the first time she’s exchanged more than a few words with Kiara, and there’s some sort of excitement — and a little bit of intimidation — bubbling up in her stomach.

“I mean, you’re the boss of the boss of my boss; if anything, you could just tell her to chill or you’ll fire her. That should calm her,” Kyne suggests, and she’d like to believe her deadpan delivery is what causes Kiara to giggle.

She feels a tad of pride in herself for making Kiara laugh.

“I would, but I’m not that mean — and she’d tell my dad, anyway,” she jokes with a shrug, and Kyne chuckles. “I have to go, I have a meeting to attend, but thank you for letting me hide here.” Kiara winks at her, and Kyne tries to ignore the weird flutter of her heart.

“You’re welcome to hide here any time, miss Schatzi,” she says earnestly, smiling up at her. Kiara hesitantly turns to look at her.

“You know what? Just call me Kiara.” She smiles back, and all Kyne can do is nod dumbly.

Kiara leaves and Kyne goes back to work, until it’s time for her lunch break, when Priyanka, Bo and Scarlett barge into her office and oblige her to accompany them to this new restaurant that opened two streets away.

She passes by Kiara in the hallways, and Lena is talking her ear off. Kyne catches Kiara’s glance and she shoots her a smile, Kiara returns it in the form of an eye roll as she briefly looks towards Lena and then back at her, a sneaky smile creeping on her face.

Kyne snorts, trying to focus on the ongoing conversation between her friends, but, much like the first time they met, Kiara doesn’t leave her mind for the rest of the day.

If her friends notice she’s like a deer in the headlights, they don’t bring it up, choosing to instead poke fun at Scarlett for struggling to get Ilona from Human Resources to text them back.

***

It’s becoming a common occurrence for Kiara to hide in Kyne’s office. Kyne’s not sure if Kiara should do that as often as she does, but she supposes she’s allowed to since she’s the daughter of the owner — Kiara gets away with a lot of things she wouldn’t get away with had she been someone else.

Such as interrupting in Kyne’s office in the middle of the day, because otherwise she’ll snap at the wrong people, and she doesn’t want that. Kyne doesn’t really mind, if anything, she’ll gladly let Kiara crash at her office if it means she’s doing the company a favor. Besides, she enjoys her company. Kiara is funny, kind and interesting in so many ways; there’s also the fact that sometimes Kiara brings her sweets to compensate for using her as a couch therapist, which is definitely a bonus in Kyne’s books.

It all makes her wonder what did Kiara do to not be so well-liked among the employees, because Kyne really likes her — as a friend, obviously.

Her other friends, such as Priyanka, Scarlett and Bo —but mostly Priyanka— are always asking her why does the daughter of their boss spend so much time with her, especially during work hours, and Kyne just shrugs and gives vague excuses. She won’t tell anyone Kiara talks shit about the other CEOs like it’s her actual job, she’s not a snitch.

Scarlett likes to joke that Kiara has a crush on her and Kyne should take advantage of that, seduce her and get all her money. Kyne just doesn’t pay attention to them, and flat out denies such thing being a possibility. Because not even in ten lives Kiara would like her like that for more than obvious reasons.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Kyne,” Scarlett says one day, on their way to the parking lot. “Like, your flirting is shit, but you’re not that bad looking,” they tease, earning a few chuckles from the girls and an eye roll from Kyne at that.

“Says the one that still can’t get Ilona Verley to go out with them,” Kyne quips back, intelligently derailing the conversation thanks to Scarlett going on a tangent about how they don’t care if Ilona texts them back or not, and how they’re water under the bridge.

Kyne just brushes off her friends’ constant teasing, and doesn’t really bring it up to Kiara, because why would she? It’s just playful nagging, and she doubts anyone else gives two craps about what Kyne does and not.

Well, so she thought.

Kiara comes to her office one day, and nothing seems strange, not even when she settles a cup of coffee in her desk and offers her a bagel. She figures it’s just Kiara thanking her for never complaining when she comes to her for venting.

“Do you have plans on Saturday?” She asks out of the blue, and Kyne cocks a brow, taking a sip from her coffee. She shakes her head no, and Kiara bites her lower lip. “So, uh, the charity ball is on Saturday, I think you know that. And I’m fairly sure you’ve heard the rumors--”

“Wait, what? What rumors?” Kyne cuts her off, knitting her brows in a frown and staring at Kiara, who looks absolutely mortified.

“Oh, no, you have no idea, do you?” She asks, and Kyne can swear this is the first time she’s seen Kiara blush. She looks cute with her cheeks crimson red, actually; it’s a nice change from the poised woman she’s come to know.

“Of what?” Kyne presses, trying to not get distracted by Kiara.

Kiara proceeds to tell her through gritted teeth how many people at the company think they’re dating — apparently her constant visits to Kyne’s office had caused some eyebrows to raise their way. Kiara never bothered to say anything about those rumors, because as the future owner of the company she shouldn’t dignify cheap office gossip with an answer, but then shit hit the fan when the rumors ended up arriving to her father’s ears, and now he expected Kiara to bring her alleged girlfriend to the charity ball.

Kyne sits still at her chair, owlishly blinking at Kiara for a moment too long. She tilts her head, waiting for Kiara to say it’s all a joke and she just wants her to calculate something for her.

But that doesn’t happen, and Kiara just silently stares back.

“That would explain the looks Susan from customer support gives me when I pass from her office on my way to get lunch,” Kyne muses absentmindedly. In fact, if she thinks about it for more than a second, it makes a whole lot of sense. Now she gets why Jenna from the architecture team went on a tangent about how much she hates people that sleep with their bosses for a raise whenever Kyne was around, raising her voice a tad too loud so everyone would hear.

No wonder why one time Priyanka scolded her for not interacting more with their co-workers, saying she’d benefit by being up to date with the office gossip.

“Have you thought of telling your father it was all a misunderstanding?” She proceeds after a few moments, and Kiara shrugs.

“He was excited that I was finally going out with someone, and I didn’t want to ruin his happiness,” she explains, and Kyne cocks a brow. She always assumed Kiara was constantly dating people — with how gorgeous she is, it didn’t seem that much of a stretch.

Kyne thinks it through for an entire minute, and comes to the conclusion that though it is definitely a bad idea (lies have short legs, they say), there’s something that drives her to say yes. It might just be that she’ll never get to be with a pretty girl like Kiara ever again, fake or not, so she decides to bite the bullet.

“If I don’t get a raise after this, I’m going to work for your rival company and sell them all your corporative secrets,” Kyne deadpans, and it takes Kiara a full minute to understand that is Kyne’s way of accepting to be her fake girlfriend for the charity ball.

Kiara lets out a sigh of relief, slouching in her chair and thanking Kyne profusely, promising to take her shopping on Friday to find a dress for the charity ball. Kyne jokingly says she’ll suck the money out of Kiara’s credit card if given the opportunity.

“As if that was possible, darling.” She winks at her, and something inside Kyne twitches. “I gotta go, but I’ll text you later to sort this out.”

“Wait,” she interrupts her again, before she leaves. “How do you have my number?”

Kiara smiles mischievously, and Kyne mentally goes over what she ate today, because her stomach twitches again.

“I have my ways of finding out things,” Kiara says, winking one last time before she exits Kyne’s office.

Once she’s alone, Kyne wonders out loud what the fuck had she messed herself into.

#my fanfiction #rpdr fanfiction #some things are bound to be fic #kyne #online kyne #kiara schatzi #priyanka love #scarlett bobo #boa #kyara #canada's drag race

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suffering-and-happy-about-it · 5 years ago

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Kids Getting Older (Sriracha, Part 30.)

Description: A problematic college student gets the worst summer job of the ‘83 - Jim Hopper, the Chief of police in your hometown will have you as his secretary since his old lady Flo has two months lasting holiday. It was agreed so Hopper could keep you far away from all the trouble.

Part Summary: Since you realized that Eleven is getting older and more distant from both you and Jim, you just seem to finally realize how quickly kids grow... And that maybe the kids are not just kids anymore.

A/N: I love this weird family dynamic so much. It is really relaxing to just write a... Normal family dynamic. But that is going to end with the next part. Stay tuned!

Word count: 1.7 K

Tagging: @nemodoren @creedslove @missdictatorme

Master list: H E R E

Christmas holiday spent like a family? The Christmas of 1984 were the best Christmas you had lived through. You spent Christmas Eve in the house of your parents, cooking the dinner with El and mom, and Aiden's girlfriend - you couldn't believe she is real - while you let the boys talk about stuff and drink some Whiskey. Even Aiden got some - just a little, though.

The other day, when you opened all the presents you found under the tree, you left for Joyce's - and holy moly, that house was living. Both Wheelers were there, both Byers boys came along, there were Dustin, Lucas, and Max, even Steve came by. Joyce had a big heart and her house was big enough to take in so many people.

You forced both Hopper and Eleven to pose on a photo with you, having Jonathan taking the picture of you. Each of you had the most disgusting Christmas sweater, just because Aiden bought and gave you these bad boys - Hopper's was too tight, Eleven's too big and your, no matter the size, was just disgusting. After that, kids took their new toys and went to play outside while the adults, along with Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan, remained in the house and had a cup of the special Christmas hot chocolate from Mrs. Byers herself.

Then, each of the kids got dressed up and went out for a snowball fight, snowman building and some sledding in the forest behind the house. And bet Hopper’s best shirt that you made him go too. Soon enough, you were there with all the teenagers while he stuck some snow under your jacket, hearing you laugh and scream out loud, having Will and Mike in total terror when you jumped around, trying to get the snow out. In the end, you formed a strong alliance with Eleven and Max, giving the boys exactly what they deserved, winning the fight completely. Then, to calm down, you proceeded to make some angels in the snow while Hop went back inside.

As the year progressed, Eleven started to have a few sleepovers here and there - sometimes, she stayed at Karen’s when boys had a movie or game nights, sometimes you had Max over for dinner. And let me say, since she was living with an asshat like Billy, her older brother, she loved spending time at your place. Especially when Hop had to stay at the station.

When talking about Hop, that man was experimenting. And you didn't know if you liked what you had at home or if you're afraid of what’s he going to come up with next. First came the mustache. Okay, he liked Magnum P.I., you could understand. Then, he put on a bit weight - he appeared taller and more like a bear than ever before. You didn't mind that at all actually because at least, you knew that he's happy with you. And... After that... The wardrobe and cologne experiments came by. Sometimes he pulled out such an outfit that you dragged him to the restaurant’s bathroom to kiss the living fuck out of him and to have a quickie on the bathroom.

Yet, sometimes, he wasn’t looking his best. At those mornings, you stood there, watched him with gritted teeth and walked around with your eyebrows raised. You tried to tell him gently that these maybe aren't working for him the way he would like to and that maybe, you could visit Starcourt with him to pick something else. But Jim was Jim and completely ignored your opinion when it came to fashion.

Starcourt. One of the best Bloomington-Hawkins inventions ever. You loved that place - from the big cinema to a variety of shops it had. Sometimes, when you knew that El won't be misbehaving after, you took there with you so she could choose some new clothes, sometimes you bought her an ice-cream, other times you just walked around the place and talked about boys and stuff. Especially about Mike.

Oh, you remembered the day when the three-inch rule came to your house. You were just watching a movie, curled under Hopper’s arms, being caught up in the chase. That was when a sudden burst of Eleven’s laughter could be heard, making Hop alarmed in a second. You tried to calm him down around this couple - it was the first love and it sure as hell was an intense one. You knew that these two were having make-out sessions behind the closed door... But were you two, you and Hop, any different when you met? No. You were kissing the living hell out of each other when any occasion came by, even after you moved back with him again, and since you were both adults, you even fucked every time and on every place, you got the chance to fuck on.

You were just like them - even at that time. But Jim was able to see incredible differences between you and him and Michael, as he called him, and Jane. He wasnt giving them any actual space, so there was no wonder, why Mike thought that Hopper is an old, insane bastard. You and Mike got along since you were normal when put in his words, and let them close the door. You built bridges of trust between you, Mike and Eleven and as long as you trusted them that they won't do anything insane, you let them have their time.

"Okay. That's it. That's it." - Hopper muttered out and got up, walking to the door. You tried to stop him from basically storming into the room, but it was too late. - "This door won't be closed as long as I'm in the house, do you both understand? Three inches at a minimum." - Jim told them with a pretty damn scary face as he showed them how to do it. When he got a nod from both Mike and Eleven, he left them be, still checking the door.

"You're too paranoid, Jim, I'm telling you." - You whispered once he sat down next to you again, cuddling you closer again. - "They're just kids." - You smiled and kissed his cheek, concentrating on the movie again. But Hopper was still very cautious about these two - his eyes were turning into their direction all the time, he was checking what they were doing until the very moment when Mike had to leave.

Over time, when Hopper had enough of constantly opening the door and checking on these two, you let the gang wonder around Hawkins with El, taking hikes in the woods and around the city. Sometimes they went to chill at the old sawmill near the town, but the all-time favorite was the hill about five miles from the city. They hanged there most of the time when spring and weather came.

You also did your best to spend time with Hopper, sometimes taking him for dinner at your favorite Spanish restaurant, sometimes you went for a walk too. But your favorite thing to do was still just hanging out with him at El. Of course, your mom made you visit them at least once a week. She wasnt too good at handling having both her children gone - both of them for college. Even Aiden had a girlfriend and sometimes, you just all went to their household to grill something and to chat. You loved Lena and you couldn't believe that she’s real. Your small bro was manning up rather quickly.

It was so weird since you could say when he and Steve ran naked around the swimming pool and where did he fell from his bike, telling Lena everything in the process, embarrassing the living shit out of Aiden. Naturally, she was first rather surprised about you dating such an older man, but as the time passed by, she got used to that tough guy and his douche jokes.

And Eleven had to say that she had everything she had ever dreamt of in the lab - parents, a family, a boyfriend, and friends. She even wasnt tugged in as a little girl anymore, she was going to bed on her will, with you kissing her whole face with laughter, hugging her tight every time. Her life couldn't be better. She especially loved when you and Jim didn't know she's watching and you put the gramophone on in the night, quietly, usually playing Sam Cooke or Ben E. King to dance in the living room. Jim was always making you laugh, he spun you around, whispered something to your ear, making you biting your lip as you smacked his shoulder - but for Eleven it was of sing that she can count on you.

But then, summer came by. You hadn't got any idea of why it was so weird. Eleven asked you if she can stay at Max’s on the fourth of July and even if you thought you’d celebrate it together, you let her have her time. You didn't have any idea of what was going on when Hopper suddenly disappeared without letting behind any message. Nobody gave you a clue that there are Russians set loose in and under Hawkins and that there is a fucking D&D monster who was possessing people with the help of Max’s brother himself.

On day two of loneliness, that was the fourth of July precisely, you had enough - you left to your moms and stayed there, waiting for anything. A call, a sign, for one of them showing up. But there was nothing. So you left for the shift that day - and that was where everything was set in motion without anyone of you normal people knowing.

#jim hopper #jim hopper imagine #jim hopper x reader #james jim hopper #hopper stranger things #eleven #eleven hopper #eleven stranger things #eleven ives #mike wheeler #the kids gang #joyce byers #jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #steve harrington #oh dear god

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thedailyimagines · 5 years ago

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Imagine getting into a relationship with Barbara Gordon.

Anon requested: “Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) x Male Reader, where the reader is the son of joker and is arch enemy of batgirl, but eventually they end up falling in love and they get into a secret relationship due to their allegiances but later they are found out and they’re relationships spread throughout Gotham and swear to each other to protect one another and come public with their relationship.”

This work contains swearing and some pretty heavy violence near the end. Also it is long.

When you see the red WARNING, it’s a sign that the violence is about to start. Skip ahead if you need to.

~~~~~~~~

Being the son of the clown prince of crime sucked. He was, to put it extremely lightly, an asshole. So you made it your job to undermine everything he did. Currently, you had your own gang and were getting ready to rob Gotham’s biggest bank.

With a loud crash, you burst through the doors of the bank with your crew, taking out the security guards posted in the room. In moments you had everyone gathered in the middle of the room.

“Alright everybody, listen up! We’re not here to hurt anybody, just to lighten the bank’s vault! So stay still and quiet, and nobody gets hurt!” Leaving two of your men to watch the hostages, you directed the rest to start emptying out the vault. Soon everything was ready to go.

“Oi, the boss said shut up! So either make the kid stop, or I shut them up myself!” You turned to see one of your henchmen, Pete, yelling at a woman and her child. The woman was trying to calm her child down to no avail.

“Pete, dear, could you come here for a minute?” The henchman looked confused, but did as you said. You took him out of sight of the hostages to where the rest of your men were emptying the last of the vault’s contents.

“What’s up boss?” You smiled sweetly at the goon.

“You know how I feel about threatening children.” Pete’s eyes widened, realizing now you had heard his threat.

“W-wait boss, please—!”

BANG. Pete fell over dead, and you put your gun back in it’s holster. Turning to the other men, you addressed them like you hadn’t just shot one of their coworkers.

“Let Pete here be an example. Don’t break my rules.” The henchmen all nodded. You rolled your eyes when they didn’t start moving. “That doesn’t mean you stop working! Grab everything and let’s get moving!”

<—>

How was it you had the worst luck? First you had to find some new henchmen (stupid Pete), then your getaway driver decided to bail—forcing your crew to steal a car—and now you had to find another window repairman. You should get a discount for the amount of times you called.

“You know, if you asked I’d give you a key to the front door. Or the roof. You don’t have to come crashing through every window.” Batgirl raised her fists, prepared to fight you if necessary.

“You’re going to Arkham clown-boy.” You placed one of your hands over your chest, feigning hurt.

“Ouch. Clown-boy. Listen, I can take being called lots of things, but that’s where I draw the line. I don’t think I can be your nemesis anymore. We’re through now.” Batgirl threw a punch but you dodged it.

“This isn’t a joke. Now are you going to come quietly or do I have to knock you out and drag you back?” You shrugged and gave her a smile.

“Oh come on, lighten up a little Batgirl! It’s not like anyone died!”

“Really? What about the goon in the clown mask?”

“Oh yeah. Forgot about him. He threatened to kill a kid cause they were crying. I don’t like people who do that.” She scoffed and threw another punch, this one connecting with your shoulder when you tried to move out of the way.

“Yet you work with your father.” You caught Batgirl’s fist and pulled her closer to you, tapping her on the nose before releasing her hand.

“Correction: I work against him. I’m currently in the process of blowing his current cash flow to pieces. Make it a little harder to buy bombs and other fun stuff.” She backed away from you and frowned.

“So you can what? Own them for yourself?” You shook your head and crossed your arms behind your back.

“Nope. I really don’t care about gang fighting and all that crap. But I’d rather not have a lunatic running the streets, you know?”

“You’re insane.”

“Technically, yes. But you know me Batgirl. When I ever committed mass murder or something like that?” Before she could answer, a knock came from the door leading out of your ‘office’.

“Boss? Is everything alright in there?” Henchmen. Always interrupting the important things. You rolled your eyes and answered.

“Everything is fine. What do you want?” There was a pause, and the goon replied with a nervous voice.

“Joker’s on the phone. Says he needs to have words with you.” Gah. Couldn’t the clown call at a later time? Preferably never?

“Ugh. Fine. I’ll pick it up in here. Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing.” The henchman confirmed this and left. Batgirl waited til the footsteps had gone before she spoke.

“Some secretary.” You raised your hands up in an ‘I guess’ gesture and walked over to the phone on your makeshift desk.

“What can I say? He’s good eye candy. Only for looking though, wouldn’t want to make you jealous.” She scoffed again, and you picked up the phone.

“Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome.” The voice on the other end screeched, causing you to hold the phone away from your ear. When you held it back, it was less loud but still as annoying.

“—And listen here you sarcastic little shit—” You interrupted the Joker before he could speak any more.

“I’m sorry, but it’s ‘Dr. Sarcastic little shit’. I have a doctorate in sarcasm.”

“You ruined everything! I had the perfect plan to drive Gotham mad laid out, and you ruined it!” You tapped your chin and turned towards the window, your back towards Batgirl.

“Oh yeah, I heard about that.” Your voice took on a mocking tone now. “Did the big bad Batman swoop in and disarm your little gas attack?” The Joker snarled and uttered several more expletives.

“When I get my hands on you, you’ll wish you were never born!” You chuckled into the receiver.

“Too late for that. Good talk, go take a walk off of Wayne Tower.” You hung up the phone and turned to face Batgirl once again, only to find she was gone. Huh. Maybe she got bored of waiting for you?

<—>

Finally, a night off. The bar was a little crowded but it was better than a cold warehouse full of people who probably shared one brain cell between all of them.

“Excuse me, is it okay if I sit here? Everywhere else is full.” You glanced up at the red haired woman in front of you and gave her a smile.

“Yeah! Let me just move my bag.” Once the seat was clear, you pushed it out so she could sit down. The redhead did so with a grateful smile.

“Thanks. My feet were killing me. Name’s Barbara by the way, what’s yours?”

“My name’s y/n. Nice to meet you Barbara.” Barbara tilted her head, trying to get a good look at you. For a moment you thought she recognized you from the news, but brushed that thought aside. You looked pretty different when you weren’t covered in face paint and your usual getup.

“Do you come here often? I don’t think I’ve seen your face before.”

“Nah, only when I’m not busy. Unfortunately those moments are few and far between. You?” Barbara waved down a bartender and ordered a drink.

“Usually I meet my dad here, but he’s working late tonight.” You nodded and took a sip of your own drink.

“Sounds nice. My dad would kill me if I suggested we have dinner together.” Or at the very least, put you in the hospital for a couple of months. That was assuming you would actually talk to him.

“Not a nice guy, huh?”

“That’s underestimating it, but yeah.” The two of you talked for a long time, and at the end of the night exchanged phone numbers. You probably wouldn’t call her, but it was nice to imagine.

<—>

“What the hell did you do to her?!?!” You were glaring in pure anger at your goons, all of whom were staring at you with wide eyes and pale faces.

“She snuck in boss! So we shot her—” Your hand shot out and grabbed the closest thug, the one who had shot Batgirl.

“Are you fucking idiots?!?! She works with Batman! We don’t need him breathing down our necks!” You shoved the man to the ground, running a hand through your y/h/c hair.

“Boss—”

“Shut up. I’ll deal with this myself. I swear if any of you do anything stupid while I’m gone, I’ll make the rest of your short lives hell. Is. That. Clear?” Your henchmen nodded, and you walked over to Batgirl. Picking her up bridal style, you carried her to one of the throwaway cars and loaded her into the passenger seat.

You were halfway to the hospital before you realized you couldn’t take her there. They would have to unmask her and that would most likely ruin her and any of her family’s lives. At the very least the GCPD would throw her in a jail cell.

...What was under the mask? Lots of Gotham’s thugs and lowlifes assumed the Batman was a robot or something, but what about Batgirl? You parked the car and looked at the unconscious superheroine. Surely a look couldn’t hurt?

The mask slid off easier than you expected. Your eyes widened as you saw the face of Batgirl—but you had seen her before.

“Barbara?” She groaned and opened her eyes. The first thing Barbara saw was you, your face painted and clothes covered in blood. Then she saw her mask in your hands.

“You bastard!” You raised your hands to stop her from murdering you right there and then.

“Wait Barbara, listen to me!” Barbara froze at the sound of her name.

“How the hell do you know my name?”

“Do I really look that different with face paint on?” Dropping the mask in her lap, you grabbed a towel from the backseat and scrubbed your face with it, until you were sure all the paint was gone. “Now do you recognize me?”

“You! You’re the guy from the bar!” Her surprise turned back to rage. “We’re you just spying on me? Trying to get information about me?”

“No! I didn’t know it was you, I just...I was curious. I wanted to see under your mask.” Barbara put her fist down, wincing at the pain in her side. She almost forgot, she had been shot. Her future really was in y/n’s hands now.

“So what are you going to do now?” You shrugged and drummed your fingers on the steering wheel.

“I’m not turning you in or anything. And you’re still bleeding. Do you have a place where I can drop you off, or...?” Barbara let out a sigh of relief, knowing you wouldn’t blab about her secret identity.

“I can contact Batman and he can pick me up. I just need to be dropped off somewhere.” You nodded and let her make the call, then dropped her off where she directed.

<—>

Five months.

Five months was all it took to start a relationship with Barbara Gordon. It was a rocky start, but it was easy when nobody knew your alter ego.

And it was almost a year after that, the night before your anniversary, when you received a call from the Commissioner that she was in the hospital.

A gunshot wound. The Joker has gone to her apartment and shot her. Tortured her father. All just to get back at the Batman.

You took a trip to the hospital to see Barbara, the sight of her hooked up to machines filling you with rage. When you left you drove straight to Arkham. You still had a few connections there and soon you were waiting in one of the various abandoned sub levels.

The door to the room you were in banged open and two Arkham guards dragged the Joker into the room. They threw him to the ground and looked to you for instructions.

“Leave. Call the Batman if you want. I don’t care. He stays.” The guards looked to one another, then nodded. When they left you turned to face the Joker.

“You know, I never thought you were so stupid. You may be crazy, but stupid was never really on the list. Yet you went after the commissioner’s daughter and the commissioner.”

“So what? It’s not like you had a personal stake in this.” You regarded your father with a cold expression, from his arms being restrained by a straight-jacket and to his face covered with bruises.

“You paralyzed a girl from the waist down, humiliated and tortured her father, and for what?” You grabbed his chin and leaned in close to the green haired madman. “Just so you could have the attention of the one person who you want to break? News flash asshole; He won’t pay attention to you beyond kicking your ass.” The Joker jerked his face away and gave you his signature grin.

“So what now? You drop me in Gotham Harbor? Feed me to Harley’s mongrels? Ooo, I know! Hand me over to some of Arkham’s nastiest to have a little one on one with me!” You turned away and grabbed something from the bag you brought with you.

“You might wanna close your eyes.” The Joker frowned now.

WARNING: VIOLENCE AHEAD

“What? Why—!” With a loud CRACK, the baseball bat you held connected with the side of Joker’s face. Over and over you rained blows down on him, not letting up until the bat finally broke from the stress.

You weren’t done yet. Going back to your bag you pulled out several metal spikes, their points barely sharpened. Ever-so-slowly you pinned the Joker to the floor, relishing in his grunts of pain. Once he was pinned down you pulled out your knife, a gift from (ironically) Harley for your birthday.

You carved into his skin, making sure each cut would scar permanently. But you left his face alone. You wanted people to see just who this was. That the Joker, the Clown Prince of Crime, wasn’t invulnerable.

By the time you let up, the Joker was a bruised, bloody mess. He would live. His injuries would take weeks, probably months to heal. And even then he would still be in pain for the rest of his life.

VIOLENCE HAS ENDED

The Batman found you not long after. You were sitting on a crate messing with your phone. The Joker laid nearby, beaten beyond a bloody pulp and unconscious, but still breathing.

“Why did you do this?” The Batman was shocked, but didn’t show it. He almost didn’t believe anyone was capable of doing this to their father, even if he was the Joker.

“You can’t tell me he didn’t deserve it.” You put your phone away and looked up at the Batman, his face unreadable beneath the cowl.

“Why?” Sighing, you ran a hand through your hair. You really weren’t getting out of answering his question, were you?

“He hurt my girlfriend.” Batman frowned a little more.

“Who—” You cut him off before he could finish the question.

“Barbara. She and I have been dating for about a year now. He fucking shot her. This is the least I could have done to him.” Shock silenced the bat, but soon he spoke.

“...You should go see her.” You raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Not going to arrest me?” He shook his head.

“She needs you now. We’ll talk later.” You took a moment, then stood up and headed for the exit. The Batman was right.

And you needed to see how Barbara was doing.

~~~~~~~~

I don’t own the above gifs, all credits go to the owners.

#thedailyimagines #imagine #male reader #son of joker!reader #batman imagine #barbara gordon #barbara gordon imagine #barbara gordon x reader #barbara gordon x reader imagine #batgirl #batgirl imagine #batgirl x reader #batgirl x reader imagine #the joker #batman

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onewaywardwitch · 6 years ago

Text

Just A Typo (6/?)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Hacker!Reader

Summary: It was a simple challenge between a very competitive group of friends. A challenge that ended very differently than anticipated.

Warnings: Language

Word Count: 2275

A/N: I’m so happy to finally get to post this part! I’ve been most excited for this one. Thanks for all the love on the previous parts, enjoy part 6!

If someone had told me a month ago that I'd be spending my days working as the security analyst for Stark Industries and my nights chatting with the Avengers, I'd have asked how much they had to drink. It's amazing how an illegal act can completely turn your life around, and not in the ‘sent to prison’ sense.

Fortunately for me, Wanda took me under her wing. She was determined to have another female presence around in a tower overflowing with testosterone and I wasn’t complaining. I appreciated her company just as much as she did.

Everyone was far more welcoming. Well, almost everyone. Natasha still seemed adamant on ignoring me. But with Sam constantly joking around with me, it was easier to forget about it. I had become a common visitor of the residents upstairs and I loved getting to know their actual personalities rather than the superhero personas the world had grown so used to seeing. Like how Tony won’t speak to anyone before his morning coffee. Or how Bruce has to be brought food throughout the day, or else he would simply forget to eat.

But Bucky remained an enigma that I couldn’t crack.

It wasn’t that we didn’t spend time together. We did. And many times, I enjoyed being near him more than some of the louder Avengers. We were never hanging out alone, though. He was a lot quieter when I was around, but I didn’t take it personally. He was obviously still a bit nervous being around anyone other than his teammates, but I liked to think that I was growing on him. At least he sat down and talked to me with everyone else now, instead of just running out of the room. And I adored having more than just two friends. The top floor had quickly become a second home to me.

~~~~~

I ran my hand through my hair for what felt like the seventh time in five minutes. For some reason, the system I was planning on installing for Stark Industries was not cooperating with me. I was forced to keep changing around the algorithm and every new sequence was rejected, not working in the slightest. It didn’t help that I had already gone through a full pack of Haribo and had none left. Timothy, one of my co-workers with a strange love for the worst movies ever made, kept glancing at me every time I let out a frustrated groan. Whenever he looked over, he opened his mouth as if to ask me something, before closing it again. It didn’t take long for me to snap.

“If you’ve got something to say spit it out. You look like a fish doing that.” I should have felt bad for snapping at him. He was a nice enough person, and I had been informed by the secretary down the hall that he harboured a small crush for me. Unfortunately for him, I was prepared to pick a fight with anyone. He just happened to be on the receiving end of it.

“I, um, I was just wondering if you... if you needed a hand with whatever you're working on?” he asked me, nervously wringing his hands.

I stared blankly at him. My lack of response caused his expression to change from slightly hopeful yet nervous, to absolutely terrified.

Stop it, don’t be a bitch, he’s just being nice. You can do this, politely decline his offer. There's no need to make a scene.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Well, that didn’t work.

“Am I not capable of doing it myself now, huh? I can do it perfectly fine. The system is stupid, that’s all. I don’t need your help because you'll end up pissing me off even more than you already have.”

Wow, ok, enough. Close your mouth. Bite your tongue. Walk away. Do anything other than talking to him.

“And also, you are literally the only person in the world who actually likes ‘Sharknado’.”

Why? Why would you say that? You absolute idiot.

I turned back to the computer that I was incredibly close to smashing as I ignored Tim’s deflated expression. He moved back to continue on with whatever he was working on himself. I typed in new lines of code on my screen, praying that these would work. While I waited for the outcome, I started to feel a bit guilty. I was stressed about my job that I was really desperate not to lose and I was taking it out on whoever was closest to me, which just so happened to be Tim.

“Oh shit!”

The second I turned to apologise, I felt hand on my shoulder, scaring the absolute crap out of me.

“Sorry! I called your name and you didn’t answer. You looked deep in thought,” Bucky said uncertainly. I instantly relaxed in his presence and chuckled.

“It's ok, my fault anyway. I should have been paying attention to what was going on around me. It just gets interesting up here sometimes,” I tapped my head as I spoke.

Great, now he thinks you're a lunatic.

Bucky offered me a small smile, which I had come to expect from him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tim. I tried to ignore him. I really did. When he first saw Bucky come over to me his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. That look of awe turned to one of amusement when he saw me make a complete fool out of myself. I stared pointedly at him until he got the message and returned to his computer. Bucky raised his eyebrows at me, and I shook my head in reply.

So much for Tim’s apology.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Um, Tony sent me to get you. He wanted to talk to you about, er… something computer related, I think.”

“He could have called me, you know. You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”

“He wanted me to get you in person. Plus, I had to talk to someone down in communications anyway.”

I nodded and got up to leave with Bucky, completely forgetting about the system that had me wound up only minutes ago.

~~~~~

Why does elevator music always make everything so uncomfortable and awkward? I was desperately searching for a way to fill the silence but for once in my life my mind was blank. I heard Bucky mumble something, seemingly to himself. I brushed it off before he spoke up more confidently.

“I like your jumper.”

I swear, I had never turned red so quickly. It felt like my whole face was on fire. How did everything he say make me feel so giddy?

“Thanks! But it's actually my friend, Angie’s. She left it at my apartment a few days ago and I haven’t had a chance to return it yet. I don’t know why I said that, it's a lie. She forgot it at mine over a year ago and I really like it.” I didn’t think I could blush any harder. I was wrong.

“You're really close with your two friends, huh?” Bucky questioned. I relaxed quickly. I always found it easier to talk about anything that wasn’t about me directly.

“They're complete idiots, but I love them. They're my family. I'd be lost without them. I mean, Becca’s good fun and Angie is our designated babysitter most of the time.”

He let out a low laugh. “I guess I know how she feels. I'm always running around after Steve, trying to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.”

“Really?”

Bucky also seemed more at ease with the direction the conversation had taken. “It was worse back in the 40’s though. He was picking fights left, right, and centre. There was no super soldier serum to help him back then. He was just a kid with good intentions and twig-like arms.”

The ding of the elevator interrupted our chat. We stepped out, but I paused before we walked any further. Bucky turned to question me, and I stared open-mouthed at him.

“God, I was such a bitch to Tim!” I exclaimed suddenly, Bucky looking at me in surprise. “He was just trying to help me, and I-.“ I couldn’t even finish my sentence as I was overcome by fit of giggles. “I told him that nobody likes ‘Sharknado’ except for him!”

“Shark what?”

“Have you never heard of ‘Sharknado’? We have to watch it! It's a terrible film.”

“If it's so bad why do I have to watch it?”

“Because, it's a good bad movie. You watch it knowing it's going to be terrible and then you just give out about it afterwards. The full 21st century experience,” I explained to a very perplexed superhero. “Let’s go, best not to leave his royal highness waiting.”

~~~~~

Turns out Tony had summoned me to ask a single question about my work, before requesting advice on the nicest cafés in the area to bring Pepper to. We spent nearly an hour arguing over which is nicer, pancakes or waffles. He refused to accept the fact that pancakes are clearly superior and resorted to folding his arms and huffing like a child.

I finally made a move to leave when Tony told me he had some Avengers business to attend to.

“Next time you want a chat,” I said to him as I put on my jacket,” just give me a call. You didn’t need to send poor Bucky all the way down to me. He probably has better things to be doing.”

Tony snorted. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He volunteered to get you. The second I mentioned I needed to talk to you, he all but ran off to find you.”

I scoffed and chose to ignore what Tony had said. “Bye, Mario!” I yelled back to him, making sure to close the door on his sounds of annoyance.

~~~~~

Some people can sense bad things just before it happens. Hairs standing on the back of your neck, chills down your spine. Some sort of sixth sense, I guess. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those people.

I was sitting in my empty, broken bathtub with my laptop, as you do, when I heard the crash. My head shot up immediately, staring at my bathroom door that I had left slightly ajar.

“It's nothing, you're imagining things.” I tried to convince myself I was hearing things until I heard what I assumed was one of my mugs crashing to the ground.

I could feel my heart thumping in my chest, and I willed myself to calm down. Placing my laptop carefully aside as quietly as I possibly could, I crawled out of the bath and creeped my way towards the door.

I peered my head out, nervously chewing on my lower lip. It was only a matter of seconds before I gasped and closed the door in panic. I made sure to do so silently and I held a hand over my mouth to control the ragged breaths that I could no longer control.

With shaking hands, I locked the door and took out my phone that felt stuck in my pocket. My only focus was calling the first person that popped into my head.

“Come on, come on,” I muttered, begging for a small ounce of luck.

“Miss me already?”

I sighed in relief. “Tony, there’re people in my apartment. Can you- can you send someone over please. I'm kind of panicking.”

There was a momentary pause and a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the phone before-

“Y/N listen to me. You need to get out of there right now. We’ll be there as fast as we can. Can you get to your front door?”

“I can’t, they’ll see me.”

“Shit,” I heard Tony breath out. “Alright, odds are they’re looking for your laptop so hang tight, hopefully they won’t be looking for you.

I groaned internally and stared at my laptop that I had forgotten about in the bath. Just my luck.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work. My laptop is with me.”

“You bring your laptop to the bathroom?”

“Some people bring their phones, I bring my laptop. Stop judging me.”

Tony decided to ignore my last comment, instead informing me that they were on their way. He asked if I could still hear the people in my apartment.

“Um, no, I don’t think I- “

The bang on the bathroom door made me jump and I clutched the phone tighter. I covered my mouth with my hand, willing myself to stop shaking. A second bang, and I took a few steps backwards slowly. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the door that I knew wouldn’t withstand much more. It took me a few seconds to realise that Tony had been shouting my name.

“Tony,” I whispered,” please tell me you’re nearby.”

I could hear him talking to someone else, his impatient tone not doing anything to reassure me.

“Still 10 minutes out, kid.”

Before Tony could even finish his sentence, the door came crashing down. I screamed, trying to shield my eyes from the splintered wood.

A man dressed entirely in black tactical gear made a move to grab me, and I dropped my phone in a panic.

“TONY!” I screamed. My attempt to remove myself from his grip was futile. He had grabbed my body and dragged me to where the rest of his team were waiting in my now destroyed kitchen. I was so distracted that I didn’t notice the fist that flew towards my face before everything went black.

Taglist (open):

(if there’s a strike through your name it means I couldn’t tag you)

(if I forgot to tag you just send me a message)

@amybarter15 @imperialoath @throw-some-music-my-way @mamaraptor @marbleowl @lydklein1 @wantingtobekorra @alysawrites @uhholyhazza @ladymelissastark @sarcasm-n-insomnia @foxylupines @myrabbitholetoneverland @amazingficsthatididnotwrite @markusstraya @padfootormoose @worldofchoices @just-some-stuff-in-life @colie87 @catsandbooksinafarawayplace @littleblackdressxx @thequirkypeach @astronomicparker @asguardiansoftheavengers @awesome-alysia @sebbystanlover-vk @unknownwonder @wowstiless @d-eracine

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how-manygalileos · 6 years ago

Text

Yes, Minister - A BoRhap Politics AU

//Chapt 1//Chapt 2

A/N: ello, ello! c’est chapter 3! me and @rachelweiszs-areawoman hope you enjoy!!

Word Count: 1842

Chapter 3

“There have been reports of more arson attacks in the main refugee camp in Calais. The Foreign Secretary is expected to make a statement, along with the Prime Minister soon” The newsreader on the TV said. Gwilym quickly switched it off and sank back in his chair. The ongoing crisis in the refugee camps on the French coast had been playing heavily on his mind for a while. As Foreign Secretary, it was his job to liaise with his French counterpart, and work out what was going to be done. With the recent spate of arson attacks within the camps, time was quickly running out. He knew he had to do something, and fast, but he didn’t know what. There was a knock at his office door.

“Come in.” he called, Ben pokes his head around the door.

“Jesus, you look stressed,” he says, chuckling slightly, “seen Red’s new placard?”

“And that is?” Gwil asked,

“Elsie Stewart, you dipshit.” Ben retorted. Gwil looked at him, somewhat disgusted.

“Christ, Ben. A nickname?”, Ben shrugged in response.

“Y’know you might find out she’s a pretty cool girl if you actually spoke to her.”

“I’ve got slightly bigger things on my mind, Ben” Gwilym replied quickly, trying to concentrate on the paperwork in front of him.

“I know, that’s what I’ve come to you to talk about. The Prime Minister needs a response and a plan from the Foreign Office as soon as possible. He’s had the French President on the blower again this morning” Ben said, putting a handful of takeout menus in front of Gwil “Have these, considering you won’t be leaving the building until this is sorted.”

Gwil all but threw the menus in a drawer of his desk, before he started pacing around the room. He had no idea what he was meant to do in this situation. He’d never been in it before. He’d never been in a situation as serious as this as a Secretary of State. He soon found himself walking in to Kick’s office.

“What do I do, Kick?” He asked as he sank down into the chair opposite the Junior Minister.

“I don’t know. We can’t use the Rhodesia solution again.” Kick replied.

“Well what options do we have?”

“The usual six, Minister.”

“Which are?”

“One - do nothing. Two - issue a statement. Three - lodge an official protest. Four - cut off aid. Five - break off diplomatic relations. Six - declare war.” Kick says, sipping her cup of tea. Gwil just stared at her.

“And which one are we going to do? You seem to know what to do, Kick. Help me out.”

“Well, if we do nothing it implies we agree with what’s happening. If we issue a statement we’ll just look foolish. If we lodge a protest it’ll be ignored. We can’t cut off aid because we’re not giving the french any, and this is technically a row with the French because they came whinging to us about it because we won’t let these refugees into the UK but it’s actually their problem because it’s on french soil.” Kick took a deep breath before she continued “We can’t break off diplomatic relations because we can’t negotiate trade agreements and considering they’re our link to the continent that would be fairly fatal, and if we declare war it’ll look a bit like we’ve overreacted.”

“Which means we do what?” Gwil asked again.

“Tell the French President to fuck off?”

“Seriously Kick, this is the biggest diplomatic crisis I’ve ever had to deal with and I have absolutely no idea what to do.” He almost pleaded.

The next four days were spent in a whirlwind of meetings and chinese takeaways. Lucy was sent to both Gwil and Kick’s houses to get extra clothes and to buy more coffee. Nobody in the Foreign Office slept. Kick and Gwil didn’t leave the building except to go to No. 10 to talk with the Prime Minister. The Secretary of State and his Junior Minister hardly left each other’s sides. An extra desk was brought into Gwilym’s office and Kick set up camp there, her office used for stress-pacing away from everybody else as so not to make them more stressed.

Eventually, after 96 long and arduous hours, they came up with a solution. The solution was sent off to the Prime Minister and implemented. It wasn’t option 6. Kick and Gwilym promptly collapsed.

Gwilym ran over to No. 10 to speak briefly with Prime Minister May, but on his return he found Kick curled up in his desk chair, fast asleep. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her hands were clasped tightly around her sides. Gwilym took off his suit jacket and layed it over her shoulders, before sitting on the floor against his desk. He leant his head back against the hard wood and was asleep in seconds.

Ben walked into Gwilym’s office, and had to bite his tongue to stop himself laughing. Kick, curled up in Gwil’s chair, with the man himself on the floor. Ben silently pulled his phone from his pocket and snapped a photo, sending it to Kick.

‘Saw you finally slept with Gwilym x’

Ben walked back to Parliament from the foreign office, he lit a cigarette and began walking his regular route. A familiar voice grabbed his attention.

“Hey, Harrow!” Elsie shouted, the nickname poking fun at the fact he was a boarder at Harrow School. She was sat on the curb next to the Winston Churchill statue with a placard that said “REFUGEE CHILDREN BURNING, LEE DOES NOTHING!” written on it.

“Not climbing the statue today, Red?” Ben called back

“Nah, the pigs won’t let me do it anymore. Apparently I’m ‘encouraging vandalism’.” she replied doing air quotes. Ben walked over and sat next to her.

“Want one?” he asked, taking the pack from his inside jacket pocket. Elsie took one, getting her own lighter out of her coat pocket.

“Fuck you, Harrow,” she said, lighting it, “I was trying to quit.” Elsie let out her first breath of smoke and put her lighter back in her pocket. Ben laughed slightly.

“You didn’t have to take one you know.” he said, tapping some ash off the end of his cigarette

“Aye but it’s peer pressure, isn’t it.” she commented, zipping up her jacket and adjusting her beret slightly so it covered her ears a little more.

“So you consider me a peer of yours?” Ben joked, leaning back on the podium slightly a smug look on his face.

“Shut up, pal.” she started, “you know what I mean.”

“So… I’m your pal?” Ben said back, looking even more smug.

“I swear to god, Harrow, I will put this out on that bespoke suit.” he laughed slightly in response, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Anything new happening at the foreign office?” she asked

“Well,” Ben said, taking his phone from his pocket. “Our most beloved Foreign Secretary-”

“That supreme prick, Lee.” Elsie interrupted, taking another drag.

“Our most beloved Foreign Secretary and his equally fantastic junior minister-”

“Shawcross.” Elsie interrupted again.

“Are you going to let me finish, Red?” Ben asked, exasperated as he opened up his photos. Elsie raised her eyebrows and leant over to look at the phone. She saw the photo of Kick and Gwilym asleep in Gwil’s office, and burst out laughing.

“Oh, that’s class. I knew Shawcross was effectively running the Foreign office but at least I have some proof now.” she smirked mischievously.

“You’re not allowed to use this against the Foreign Secretary, Red. This stays between us.” Elsie scowled slightly, Ben rolled his eyes playfully.

“Harrow…” she pleaded, fully aware of the amount of damage this could do, should it get out with the wrong spin.

“I mean it, Stewart. You are not allowed to use it.” Ben warned now in a serious tone of voice, he replaced his phone into his pocket and put out his cigarette.

“Okay, fine.” she reluctantly said, “but when they want to go public, you have to let me break the story.”

Ben dropped his cigarette, stubbing it out with his shoe as he made his way back inside the Houses of Parliament. He was queueing for a coffee when a familiar blonde came up behind him.

“Saw you talking to that bloody protester again.” she said, sneering slightly, with a hint of playfulness. Ben turned around to see Miss Martha Bexley MP, conservative Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar. The opposition.

“At least I have friends, Bexley.” Ben teased back.

“Your friend...a communist?”

“Anarchist, actually. At least I have a position within my party, unlike some people” Ben corrected.

“Have you seen what she said about the new ambassador in her latest column? Some of the allegations she was throwing out, I don’t understand how you can listen to her by choice, or how she gets away with it for that matter.” Martha commented

“I haven’t had chance to read it yet, but I imagine it’s as outrageous as always,” Ben replied, “Also she’s actually very interesting to talk to” he added

“Right… suit yourself.” Martha said, beginning to walk away from him “Goodbye Hardy, have fun consulting with criminals” Martha called as she made her way to the opposition offices, he smiled as she walked away, there was something about her but he was yet to figure it out. Ben saw a newspaper sitting on one of the cafe tables, open to Elsie’s column. He picked it up and began to read as he walked towards the Government side of the Houses of Parliament.

Joe Mazzello: The Boy-Billionaire of New York, the title read. It made Ben chuckle slightly.

Following the retirement of Louis Susman last summer, it was the turn of boy-billionaire Joe Mazzello, or to give him his full title Staff Sergeant Joseph Francis Mazzello III, to take the position of American Ambassador to the UK. Being “unprecedentedly young” is often a quality I endorse in political figures, however we must take into account that with youth does come lack of experience. Before now, Mazzello has held no office; diplomatic or political. He is a 30-something with a business degree and more money than he knows what to do with…

“Not even a paragraph in and already two solid insults.” Ben said to himself, Elsie had exceeded herself. He continued skim reading until he made it back to his office. He sat down, leaning back and swinging his feet up onto his desk.

…A young, rich, socialite with a fantasy of being a hotshot politician; donates a sizeable amount of money to a presidential campaign and when that campaign succeeds, the position of ambassador to a major allied nation is handed over on a silver platter. It just doesn’t sit right.

They were quite a grandiose set of accusations, admittedly not too dissimilar from her normal works. But something felt different this time, more personal and less fact-based. Ben wondered if she’d had an encounter with Joe, who’d seemed to him enthusiastic and mild-mannered, and put her spin on it as she was want to do. It was Elsie Stewart after all.

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roastyoualive-archive · 6 years ago

Note

Penny has died.

“…..has died.” finish it in my ask. || Accepting

… when turned fifty degrees past calibration, will result in a polari–

Snap. Warren frowned down at the broken pencil lead. Ah, well. That’s what he had extras for. He grabbed one of the two spares from the corner of his workspace and resumed his note-taking. Every now and again, he’d glance up at the blackboard. While some people might question his teaching methods, nobody could say Medulla didn’t know what he was talking about. He was a supergenius, after all.

He’d been in the middle of double-checking his spelling of the inventor of the first shrink ray (Russian phonics were different than any he’d worked with, before) when a knock on the door stopped the lecture. Warren only spared it the barest glance.

“Yes?” Medulla sounded annoyed. Warren could relate, but decided to salvage the situation. As Medulla stepped outside to speak with whoever it was - offering a ‘one moment, class’ over his shoulder - Warren reached down to rummage through his bag. He’d scrounged together enough spare cash to buy a set of highlighters from the dollar store, so, depending on how long this took, he might be able to get a head start on colour-coding his notes–

“Mister Peace.” He looked up. People were looking at him, now. A glance to the side showed him Will quickly averting his eyes. As Warren sat up, he returned his own gaze to the door. Mr. Medulla stood with a decidedly unreadable expression on his face. Beside him was one of the office attendants. The, uh, the jumpy one, what was her name… Mrs. Springer.

“… Yeah?” He said when the silence stretched.

“You’re being requested at the office.” Warren rolled his eyes almost before Medulla had even finished speaking. Of course he was. He shot an irritated grimace at the desk as he pushed himself to stand, bracing his hands on the smooth wooden surface.

“And, Mister Peace?” Medulla spoke again. Warren straightened with a huff of breath and an arched brow.

“Yeah?” He repeated. Mrs, Springer shot an anxious glance to Medulla. Warren felt like he wasn’t supposed to notice, but he did.

“You- Might want to bring your bag, dear.” She said it in the sort of tone you’d expect a grandmother to have. That didn’t make this any less of a headache. He was fluent in teacher, by now. That meant ‘don’t expect to come back, kid’. He shoved his book into his bag, briefly wondering who he’d have to ask to copy their notes. Probably Will. Speaking of-

“What did you do?” He asked, voice barely over a whisper. Warren shrugged and shook his head, doing his best to convey ‘I don’t know!’ in a gesture. He hauled his bag up by one strap and walked through the silent classroom and out into the hall. As he passed, Mr. Medulla looked like he wanted to say something. Warren paused. A beat of silence, before Medulla shook his head and closed the door. As it clicked, Warren could faintly hear him returning to the lecture with an apology for the interruption. Damn. He hoped this wouldn’t be on the test - or maybe he could ask for a make-up lecture at lunch? … Probably not. Especially not if he was in trouble. Guess he could always check the library.

The walk to the office was silent. So silent, in fact, he could hear his sneakers against the tiled floor just as well as her heels. Springer seemed more nervous than usual. She wouldn’t stop fiddling, either with her glasses, a stray piece of hair, or the manila folder of paperwork she seemed to have perpetually clutched to her chest. … She seemed scared. Of him? Did she honestly think he’d attack a teacher? (Or- secretary?) …. Scratch that. Baron Battle’s kid. Of course she’d think something like that, never mind the fact he’d never done that kind of thing in his life. (Thanks, Dad.) He decided to think about something else. Like what they could possibly be pinning on him, this time. He honestly had no idea. He hadn’t gotten into any fights, or even any arguments lately, didn’t make a headache of himself in class… Didn’t cheat on tests or plagiarize his work, and ever since sixth grade had made a point of keeping his rough drafts and research notes to prove it… Didn’t destroy any more property than normal in STC (and had not, thank you very much, set Boomer on fire again). Yeah, he had no idea. He figured he had to be getting blamed for someone else’s handiwork. Again. Whatever. The nice thing about having friends (or, one of the nice things) was that, hopefully, at least one of the others would be willing and able to vouch for his innocence. That should speed things along. Maybe he’d be able to catch the tail end of the lecture, after all.

Springer opened the door for him, and he gave her a small nod of thanks. Received a watery, shaky smile in return. Geez, she looked like she was about to cry. Was she really that scared of him? They’d barely ever even spoken, before! It didn’t put him in the best mood as he stepped into the office. Principal Powers was at her desk. For some reason, she looked older than she had when he’d passed her in the hall, that morning. He wasn’t really sure why. Didn’t think about it long after he saw the person sitting beside her. A man, broad in the shoulders, in a formal black suit. Short hair, dark glasses, ear piece. A Fed, by the looks of it. It took a concentrated effort not to scowl. Had to be about Dad. Because, you know, a fifteen-year-old highschooler in California absolutely had control over what happened up at NAPSE. He’d handled this before. Just give him your statement, get your alibi verified, get back to class. Hopefully it wouldn’t take as long to process as it had, last time. The suit started to ask a question - ‘Are you–’ but clammed up as soon as he saw Warren’s face. Just nodded to himself in silent confirmation. Warren warily set his bag down by the door and crossed his arms over his chest, hovering by the door.

“Uhm-” Mrs. Springer broke the silence. All three sets of eyes - Powers, Warren, and the Suit’s sunglasses - turned to her. She gulped, stared at the floor, and shut the door with a nervous laugh before scurrying off down the hall. Warren furrowed his brow. Sheesh, and he thought he was bad with social situations.

“Warren?” Principal Powers spoke, and he looked up. First names? Weird. “This,” she continued, gesturing to the suit, “is Mr. Stern, from the Agency’s head office.” Warren’s brows raised, and he blinked. The Agency? What the hell did they want? No Agent had tried to get in contact with the Peaces since Mom went inactive. Were they trying to hire her, again? To hire him? He wasn’t even licensed, yet. That couldn’t be it. … It looked like they were waiting for him to say something.

“Hey.” Warren greeted lamely. He kept studying the Agent, trying to get a read on him. No luck. Not surprising.

“Would you take a seat, son?” The Agent - Stern - said, nodding to a chair opposite the desk. Warren glanced to the chair, leaning away to get a better look at it and swallowing a comment about how Stern wasn’t his dad. Probably better to not make this worse. Instead, he said nothing and did sit down, but kept his eyes on the two adults. This was so weird. It only got weirder when Stern reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a huge, white rectangle that almost reminded Warren of an overgrown bar of soap. He flicked a switch on the side, the box made a short whirring noise, and Powers gave the Agent what Warren thought would have been an exasperated look, if she’d had the energy. (Why was she so tired? Did the staff coffee machine break, or something?) She didn’t stop him, though. There was a brief moment when the air felt charged with static. It faded quickly enough, but not before piquing Warren’s curiosity. He wanted to reach over to the box and see what it was. He decided against doing so and kept his arms crossed, hands tucked in. Stared silently at Stern, waiting for an explanation.

“Son,” Stern began again, shifting to a more comfortable position in his chair. Warren leaned back slightly in his. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.” A part of Warren very much wanted to be sarcastic. It was drowned out by the chill that raced down his spine.

“… What kind of news?” He sat up slowly. His hands gripped the armrests of his chair a bit tighter than he realized. Stern sighed.

“It’s about your mother.”

Warren felt the school rock beneath him. Mom?

“What…?” The air was suddenly too thick for him to get any other words out. In the corner of his eye, he could make out Powers standing up, but he was too focused on Stern to care. No, no, no no no….

“This afternoon, at 1:45 PM, your mother was on her way home from work.”

No.

(It was so cold.)

“… Am I correct to assume you’ve seen the news? About Voltage?”

No.

(Yes.) (He didn’t answer.)

“We have reason to believe that your mother intervened in one of their attacks.”

No.

(Please, no.)

(This wasn’t real.)

(Not Mom.)

“And…” Stern trailed off. Warren kept staring, unaware that he was shaking his head in silent denial.

Please.

Stern sighed.

“I’m so sorry, son.”

Sorry?! What did that-?! He didn’t even remember standing up, but the chair that clattered to the ground behind him let him know that he must’ve. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t. It was some sick joke, some sort of- Some- It wasn’t-! It couldn’t be, not Mom-!

“You’re lying!” He wasn’t aware of the break in his voice. He was aware that there was no fire in his hands. Tried again. Nothing. Powers and Stern were standing now. If he’d been more coherent, he might have realized his lack of abilities came from that box. But he wasn’t thinking about that. Only about getting the truth out of Stern.

To the Agent’s credit, he didn’t flinch when Warren shoved him against the wall. Didn’t fight back, didn’t struggle, didn’t even react aside from re-adjusting his glasses when they got knocked askew.

“Where is she?!” Warren demanded, yanking on fistfuls of Stern’s jacket collar. “Where’s my mom?!” His vision blurred. It had to be from adrenaline, right? Not from how much he was crying. (’Boys aren’t supposed to cry, Warren’ a voice from first grade whispered.)

“Diana.” Stern held up a cautioning hand over Warren’s shoulder. Warren glanced back - Powers. It looked like she’d been reaching out to them. He exhaled a shaky breath, then roughly dropped Stern and took a step back. His lungs drew in air at a ragged, irregular rate and he sniffed but didn’t wipe his eyes. Only stared, hands still flexed against the humming white box, as the Agent calmly dusted himself off.

(’It’s okay, sweetheart.’ Said a voice he’d never hear again. ‘Everything’s gonna be okay. We still have each other, right?’)

Wrong.

He tried another gulp of air and failed. Squeezed his eyes shut, His voice sounded so small when he spoke.

“Where’es my mom…?” A hand on his shoulder. Warren flinched back. Stern was in front of him, looking down through impassive glasses.

He didn’t even care.

“Come with me.”

…

He felt numb.

They’d taken him off in an Agency aircraft. They’d sent someone to collect his things and he hadn’t said a word since they’d left the office, only clung to himself desperately like it might offer some form of comfort and it didn’t. (She was gone. She was gone she was gone why was she gone?) They’d landed in a secure location and he’d asked if they were going to a hospital but Stern had said there’d be no point. No point? Nobody would even tell him what happened. What did ‘no point’ mean? Sure, hospitals were expensive, but- But he would’ve given the shirt off his back if it meant she was okay. He’d have spent every day for the rest of his life at work, he’d cut down on food, he’d- He’d take a page from Dad’s book and rob a bank, anything as long as she’d be around at the end of the day, but- But there was no point. He should’ve been there. He should’ve saved her. He should’ve died, instead. She’d always been there for him. She’d done everything for him, and he couldn’t do one damn thing for her. Walking home from work, they’d said. She wouldn’t have needed that job if he hadn’t been around. She wouldn’t have lost her old one if she hadn’t needed to take care of him. It was his fault she was dead. It was his fault he lost the only person who ever really gave a damn. His mom was gone because of him.

“We’ve contacted your next of kin,” Agent Stern said. Warren numbly looked up from the chair he was in. At some point, someone must’ve put a blanket around his shoulders. He didn’t remember it getting there. “Your uncle has agreed to take you in.” The gentleness sounded alien and forced in the Agent’s voice. A thought broke through the grief:

I have an uncle?

Warren didn’t say anything, though. Only stared.

“Nicholas Peace?” Stern said, as though expecting that to jog some memory. “Your mother’s brother?”

Mom had a brother?

Had. Past-tense. Mom had a brother. Just like Warren had a mom. Where had this ‘uncle’ been for the past forever? Why was he stepping in now? A man came into the room behind Stern. Neatly combed brown hair, blue eyes, a suit that looked like it cost more than Warren’s entire apartment. Dress code aside, he looked a lot like Mom. Warren’s chest constricted painfully and he looked away. Swallowed a lump in his throat that might’ve been a sob if he let it. Mom was gone. His mom was gone and it was his fault and now he was being shoved off on someone who wouldn’t want anything to do with the kid who killed his sister. Warren wouldn’t want anything to do with himself, either. He just wanted everything to stop.

The funeral was small and quiet. The sun was shining, and Warren, from where he stood alone, idly thought that Mom would’ve liked it. She’d loved the sun. The marble headstone could’ve covered the Peaces’ food budget for a month, easily. A simple epitaph graced its surface.

Penelope Anne Peace

October 12, 1972 - November 4, 2005

Beloved mother, sister, friend.

What a joke, Warren thought bitterly. He stared silently at the freshly-turned earth, blinking against tears that had long since been spent. Nobody else had come. Just him, and his… Uncle. Cousin and Aunt, too, but they were doing a poor job of disguising how bored they were. How dare they. How dare the three of them make light of this-? Mom deserved so much better. She deserved a better family than them and a better son than him and better friends than the ones who couldn’t be bothered to make an appearance. Not here, and not when they cleaned the apartment. Nicholas had sent people to do it, but Warren had insisted on being there. Had made sure to gather every single item of importance himself. … It had always seemed like such a cramped space, before. But now- It felt huge. It felt empty. It felt cold. It felt lonely. It was a feeling that followed him no matter where he went.

Not school, though. Mainly because he didn’t go back. Not the next day. Not the day after that. (He couldn’t take it, any more.)

(Sorry, Mom.)

“Hey, guys!” Will said, weaving his way through the cafeteria to their usual table.

“Hey, man!” Zach reached up a hand for a high-five, and Will obliged, making sure not to drop his tray. He slid into a seat between Ethan and Layla.

“How’d the history test go?” Layla asked, popping a kale chip into her mouth. Will shrugged.

“I think I passed?” He offered. “I mean, I did study, and I think I did well, but-” He glanced around, looking for a change of subject (the last thing he wanted to do was stress even more about that test. He’d been worrying all week). “So, uh- Has anyone seen Warren? I’ve still got his science notes from the last few classes, and…” The table went silent. Will looked around. “What?” Everyone seemed to be staring at their food. Layla put a hand on his arm.

“Will…” She began. Will frowned.

“Yeah…?” It was Magenta who answered. (She’d heard the news, first.)

“… His mom died.” She said, putting her fork down. Will felt the colour drain from his face.

“Wh-? Oh, my god…”

That was the first piece of news that would reach Sky High regarding the disappearance of Warren Peace.

The second fact was that the lavish estate of Nicholas Peace, practicing attorney, had burned to the ground completely. Thankfully, no casualties had yet been discovered, but a few of the staff were suffering serious injuries.

Next, the student body learned that, some time ago, Baron Battle had escaped from NAPSE, leaving a trail of immolated corpses and chaos in his wake before apparently vanishing off of the face of the Earth. Nobody knew how he’d gotten out. Nobody knew where he’d gone.

All they knew was that, wherever he was,

it looked as though he’d taken his son with him.

#death //#death mention //#ask to tag #;school gossip (ａｓｋｓ)#;ignited (ｉｎ　ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ)#;r: strongest hero I know (Ｐｅｎｎｙ　Ｐｅａｃｅ)#;holy blank blankman (ｄｒａｂｂｌｅｓ)#;r: miss you more than I should (Ｂａｒｏｎ　Ｂａｔｔｌｅ)#;v: but hey; that's high school (ｐｏｓｔ－ｍｏｖｉｅ　ｃａｎｏｎ)#;r: of some assistance (Ｍｒ．　Ｍｅｄｕｌａ)#;r: can't get them to stop talking to me (Ｓｔｒｏｎｇｈｏｌｄ　Ｓｕｐｐｏｒｔ　Ｇｒｏｕｐ)#;r: not wonder woman (Ｐｒｉｎｃｉｐａｌ　Ｐｏｗｅｒｓ)#Anonymous #So I redid this four times like four years ago according to my old tags #so i guess fifth time's the charm??#this is literally the first time warren's cried since he was seven jeezus #i should also say that baron is refusing to say where he took warren to besides 'somewhere in italy'#but for those concerned; don't be baron is oddly enough the safest person for warren to be around rn

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i-know-you-can · 7 years ago

Text

Love to Hate You - Chapter 1

Summary: AU - There is something about the way she looks at him. The way her cheeks flush and her beautiful green eyes sparkle. Like she wants to wrap her hands around his neck and strangle him, but she thinks better of it. It amuses him like nothing else. No other woman has been able to fire him up like Betty Cooper. And yet he hates her.

Rated: T

Chapters: 1/11

A/N: My first Bughead multi-chapter is finally seeing the light of day. All the chapters are already written and I’ll try to post them every Monday and Thursday (so the second chapter should come tomorrow). I hope all of you will enjoy my take on an enemies to lover fanfic and leave me your thoughts.

The biggest thank yous go to @birdlovesafish and @ladybughead my wonderful betas and to @ladybughead for making the edit above.

read on AO3

read on fanfiction.net

Betty rushes into the shared office of Clickfeed ten minutes after nine, pieces of hair falling from her usually slick ponytail. She has only been working there for about six months, but she has never been late. Betty Cooper is not the kind of person to be late for work. But this morning her alarm didn't go off and ever since then her day has been a mess. She didn't have time for her usual morning workout, nor a proper breakfast and since she was late, she didn't even have time to stop for coffee on her way to work like she usually does.

So now her stomach is rumbling and she feels her anxiety levels are higher than they should be at this point of the day. To be quite honest, she’s not exactly late. Her boss doesn't care when she comes in or even what she does when she’s working as long as she meets the deadlines. But this is Betty's first job since graduating university and while it's far from what she actually wants to do, she believes that putting in the hard work will eventually pay off. But over the course of time she has spent in this company it hasn't brought her many benefits. Instead of slowly climbing up the career ladder. She’s now basically known as Clickfeed’s very own girl Friday. Much like she did in high school. So now apart from her job of writing articles for the least interesting and visited corners of the website she also helps the editor when she gets overwhelmed. On top of that she’s currently standing in for her boss's secretary who left for maternity leave two months ago and has yet to be replaced. She strongly suspects her boss, Mr. Weatherbee, has never even made the effort to look for someone.

But Betty is a people pleaser. She can't say no when her colleagues ask her for help. Despite everything, she still believes that one day someone will notice her hard work and she will actually get promoted to something better than writing articles like “10 things every housewife needs to know”. She has always dreamed of being an investigative journalist, but even graduating top of her class at Columbia couldn’t guarantee her the offer of a lifetime right off the bat. So she tries to do the best she can, hoping her hard work will be rewarded eventually.

She finally slides into her chair in the corner of the big office that she shares with ten other people, only separated from them by a half wall. The words on the big wall she’s in front of are mocking her. When we all work together, we all win together. In reality, most of her co-workers have headphones on 90% of the time, buried either in their work or in whatever they're doing to avoid working. Sharing the office is more of a nuisance than help.

Deciding that the growling of her stomach and the lack of caffeine in her system would be an unwanted distraction, at least until lunchtime, Betty decides to head straight for the kitchen. That place is usually stocked with a bunch of unhealthy snacks and coffee that is nowhere near as good as the one she tends to get at Starbucks, but it will have to do.

The moment she enters the kitchen she regrets sleeping in once again. Because there he is. Jughead Jones, leaning against the kitchen counter as he sips from his huge cup of coffee and scrolls through something on his phone. Today he’s wearing his usual outfit. Checkered flannel shirt over a pale grey shirt, suspenders hanging down his legs and the beanie that never leaves his head covering the mass of black waves. Betty has to admit that there is something about that dark brooding look of his that makes him incredibly attractive to her, but she quickly pushes those thoughts away. For a second she considers just walking away from there and waiting until he leaves, but she's pretty sure he has noticed her by now and she doesn't want him to think she's avoiding him. It's not like she's scared of him or embarrassed by the situation. She just hates him. More than hates him.

Jughead Jones, with a name she's sure is made up and makes her wonder how bad his real name must be for him to prefer such a stupid nickname, is a fellow journalist for Clickfeed. He seems to be about the same age as Betty, but he has been working there since before graduation and therefore acts like he owns the place and she’s an unwanted bug he can’t get rid of. She isn't very close with any of her co-workers, but at least they have been nice and friendly since her very first day. Jughead, on the other hand, didn't even acknowledge her for the first month, probably assuming she was just one of the many interns who came and went. According to their co-workers, Jughead is a loner who doesn't really make much effort to talk to anyone in the office. A self-proclaimed weirdo, a title nobody is fighting to take away from him, who always stumbles into the office late, looking like he hasn't slept for weeks, if the dark circles under his eyes are any indication. Sure, he has a way with words, his witty articles in which he reviews and criticizes local food places bringing a lot of traffic to their website, but that doesn't make him a good colleague. Betty always tries to see the best in people, so she could just look past all that and assume he’s simply very introverted or antisocial and let him be.

However, his attitude isn’t something she can get over. Ever since he realized she was not just another intern to ignore, he couldn't stop himself from sending the occasional snarky remarks her way. She was the “preppy”, the “suck up” or even the “brown noser”. “I see you've been promoted to secretary,” he said to her once after witnessing her trying to juggle her boss's correspondence, while planning the next board meeting. Sure, he was right that she was now devoting more time to managing their boss's activities than actually writing articles for the website, but the condescending tone he used made her blood boil. Being her well behaved self, she just shot him a dirty look. She knew that the best way to deal with bullies was to ignore them and they would get bored. But this was not the kind of bullying she was used to from high school. So eventually, instead of just ignoring him, she started shooting insults back at him. They weren’t always the most thought-through or creative, but it felt good to let her anger out on someone she didn’t have to worry about impressing since he already made up his mind about her anyway.

After a moment of hesitation she steps further into the room, trying to avoid eye contact with Jughead. She rummages through the cabinets and the fridge for a few minutes, finding a bag of nuts, slightly stale bagel and a very brown banana. Not really close to the protein pancakes and a smoothie she’s used to, but she assumes it will have to be good enough. However, when she reaches for the pot of coffee and finds it empty, she can’t avoid letting out a grunt of frustration.

“Seems like someone got up on the wrong side of the bed,” Jughead mutters into his mug, well aware of the fact that he poured himself last of the coffee, not bothering to make a new pot.

“Says someone whose bed doesn’t seem to have the right side,” Betty bites back quickly. Not the wittiest reply, she admits, but she is in no mood for games. She, like many others, became a coffee addict during college and not getting her usual dose of caffeine makes her forget all about being nice. Or in this case, about coming up with a better reply.

“Don’t you know how to make your own coffee?” he asks mockingly and raises his left eyebrow. “Besides I thought you’d be more of a pumpkin spice latte kind of girl. We don’t have anything that fancy here. Just plain old coffee.”

Betty rolls her eyes at his response, wondering why she actually tried to befriend him for the first few weeks on the job. She read his articles, attempted to find a shared interest and start a conversation with him, she even brought some food to the office, trying to match the criteria that she discovered from his reviews. But even though the pie she left for him was gone by the end of the day, he never said a word to her about it. Neither thank you, nor criticism. Which, looking back on it now, was one of the nicer things he has done. Eventually she just decided to give up and pour her energy into something that could actually have a future. Even if it was playing a secretary for the time being.

“It’s April. And I know how to make my own coffee. But I’m pretty sure your stupid face made all the milk here go sour.” She scowls at him, but he doesn’t seem offended. Self-deprecating jokes seem to be his thing and he never fights her back on her insults for him. If anything, her attempts to insult him make the corner of his lips turn up. Betty wishes she had such a careless attitude. But years of her mother telling her to be perfect make her not take mean remarks all that lightly. “What people think about you means everything,” Alice Cooper used to say to her regularly and while Betty tries to break free of that mindset, it’s not always easy. She values other people's opinions even in situations when she shouldn't.

“I’m sure your super sweet personality can fix that right up.” Jughead gives her a cheeky grin and takes a big gulp of his coffee, making sure his face shows just how much he’s enjoying it. “But I guess even little miss perfect can’t fix everything.”

Betty’s hands start curling into fists, but she stops herself before her nails have the chance to cut through her skin. A habit she has been battling since her early teenager years and she isn’t going to break her progress for some stupid emo’s comments. “I hate you. You… jerk,” Betty spats, grabs her snacks and storms out of the room before she has the chance to do something stupid.

“I hate you more,” he calls after her as a smirk spreads across his face.

#bughead #betty cooper #jughead jones #bughead fanfiction #riverdale #my fanfiction #love to hate you

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inhalareexhalare · 6 years ago

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“Let Him First Cast a Stone at Her”

Two occurrences in this early morning:

(1) I brushed off Ms. Len when she asked if I could deal with her bank deposit on my way, since yesterday I experienced the worst long wait ever. That particular bank has poor manpower and technology. Now I regret letting that opportunity to help pass me by.

(2) Reyna’s all anxious again from her mistakes at work. She thinks they’re minor and careless, but it’s exactly the simplicity of the mistakes that makes her feel bad about herself. Simple mistakes that she could have avoided, she thinks.

To Reyna:

Kung may mag-judge man sa iyo, sabihin mo walang kwenta siya JK HAHA

[If anyone ever judges you tell them they’re fucking useless JUST KIDDING HAHA]

Sabi nga ni Jesus sa Christianity, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

[Jesus of Christianity did say,...]

Remember, walang may karapatan na husgahan ka. Ginagawa mo ang pinaka-best mo, at alam mo yan.

[Remember, nobody has the right to judge you. You do the very best that you can, and you know it.]

Pero kung gusto mo ng improvement anyway, pwede mong i-note nalang yun para new habit na haha "always doublecheck" :) Malamang magkakamali ka pa rin kasi di naman tayo robot, pero magiging mas konti na probably ang frequency! :D

[But if you want to work on self-improvement anyway, you can note it instead to turn it into a new habit haha “always double-check” :) You will certainly still make mistakes since we aren’t robots, but you’ll probably less frequently miss it! :D]

I still feel bad about Ms. Len hahahuhu

Oh wait! She responded in e-mail! Yay she would like to take my re-offer of doing that deposit (as long as it’s on the wayy)

From Ms. Len:

Wait for a moment.I will go there.Thank you very much.

To Ms. Len:

Thank you so much for taking the trouble! Noted!

2019-02-28 08:40 Philippines Thursday

I..

I am seriously trembling, fuck.

I am overwhelmed with excitement as I crave for this social development.

Ms. Len and I hugged. She said sorry for the trouble, but that she also really appreciates it, because two secretaries that sit adjacent to her cubicle like to pick on her schedule. They spread weird rumors about her taking too long with errands (and are suspecting that Ms. Len is busy chatting with people and having fun despite it being the time for work.)

So this is quite a help in saving her time. I told her not to mind them. I love them as individuals, but they’re letting their perspectives run over Ms. Len this time. Those two are known for having less responsibilities as Ms. Len as people also say that they are unreliable or slow. Which makes them not understand how Ms. Len can possibly have so much errands/responsibilities to be running out and back to office the whole day.

For people who some others belittle, they should understand what Ms. Len must be feeling if they just try. :<

People just like to pick on other people. Especially if they don’t think getting to know others better is worth their time. Let’s try to break the cycle, shall we?

2019-02-28 09:32 Philippines Thursday

I ran into Richel, one of my cousins, who is now in her early college years. I was able to properly express my pleasant surprise. It’s been so long that I thought we’d have a lot of troublesome ice to thaw between us but hey, we were good. I told her that I missed her (and I didn’t know that until I said it), and she met me with similar enthusiasm and told me that she and her family would actually love to have lunch together with me someday.

I thought I’d be allergic to her since ever since I left home, I hid from my relatives ( I didn’t like to be talked about or pried on, and I didn’t want unnecessary burden on my dad and everyone although I think this absence of mine might have just worsened the gossip fuel haha) But we were cool. She didn’t know how to talk to me but in the spur of the moment I initiated so that was a surprise.

I wonder if I should take them up on that offer? I dislike feeling like I have to explain myself, but isn’t that exactly what socializing is about? Helping each other understand each other?

Okay, a part of me still doesn’t want to, but I guess I should. If they initiate of course. I am technically sent the invitation through someone else’s intention, but I don’t want this gathering to be started by me because then it would be as if I want to push my ideas onto them.

Nevertheless:

Mission: Share Your Opinion.

2019-02-28 11:27 Philippines Thursday

Waaah. I couldn’t share my opinions at our meeting. I couldn’t even speak up or make a sound. Even when Dr. Virg started lightening up to me with jokes on my silence.

I just didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t relate to them. Worse, I couldn’t find my voice. My voice was also weak even when it was Dr. Seth asking. I guess the whole, general air can give so much effect on comfort. I saw them somewhat as a group of people I couldn’t relate to.

Retirement? Salary? Nationwide competition? The only thing I could relate to was that scandal they talked about around a certain graduate who lied for years to their parents regarding studies and even graduation. That student made up a lot of stories which sounds so familiar to me because my brother did that before.

So I could only empathize. Troubled, repressed individuals who don’t know who to go to for help. Or just plainly can’t because they’re no t used to asking for help.

I couldn’t speak because I’d just be adding fuel to their gossip.

I had no idea what to do at all, although I did my job right when it’s about business.

I don’t understand what Dr. Virg and some others in the room expect from me. If they were in my position, I wonder what they would talk about? I could be the clown/joker and say some pretty stupid things just to get a laugh and a level of comfort, but that wouldn’t be me.

Hm. Whatcha think, reader?

I really believe now that small talk is important, but what could I possibly talk about? I’m clueless here...

All I can think of for now, is improve the volume of my voice. Be adventurous with it. Don’t let their expectations intimidate you.

But I’m severely lacking in improvisation in this case. Strange.

Do I really just lack information? Is that it? But their topics are too irrelevant to me.

Seriously, what do you say to:

“Ey, Lobo. You and Phoebe should be hosts to this event. Haha!”

Don’t worry it wasn’t an attack. Or at least that’s how I heard it. Phoebe is an apparently soft-spoken staff member. I could only smile or chuckle along.

I have no idea what to say. Hm. If I do have to give an opinion though, I’d ask if the event was undercover because I’m too quiet to host it. I wonder if they’d relate though. I have pretty weird contextual language, just like anyone does when there’s a huge gap in culture.

What if, instead, I say, then the event would be chaos, because I'd make a pretty speechless and therefore powerless host. Hosts exist to control the flow. I exist to observe the flow.

...

...too serious? This has always been a kind of problem haha

I like this part of me, but most don’t relate.

But I think I’ll try my second idea next time. My way of showing affection is adding some flavor and insight into things.

WAIT. I think I found another hole. I’m too busy looking for a short response, since I know they don’t think of me highly yet for me to steal more than a minute out of one turn.

(1) Do they actually think that? If so, there’s nothing to do about it. I can only shut up, or be fake.

(2) Maybe they don’t think that. If so, then I should give myself a push and try.

(3) The truth is that I really just don’t know what they think; So I must try, and keep trying. Unless it’s really evident that (1) is true, then that’s the time I drop it.

I should give it tries.

Mission: Steal Time, Test Waters!

But I still think I wouldn’t have gotten this idea at the time, since I keep thinking about the comfort levels of the other speaker and what they are probably expecting out of me. So, a revision of the previous mission:

Mission: Share Your Opinion (Think Underlying Concepts)

2019-02-28 15:14 Philippines Thursday

Huh. I don't feel so attached to Karu now, even though it's nighttime.

I'm actually pretty happy and excited on my own.

I'm genuinely excited for his gig tonight and for his net gigs, and for his new flute!

Even though I won't get to hear it until maybe a weekend morning.

You know what? I don't feel bad at all. I watched a few short films, snd then manga, and then pondered for a bit on what I could develop in that collab story I have with Nynaeve.

And I'm going to bed pretty darn happy.

I am absolutely comfortable right now.

Hm.

It feels so free to rid yourself of unnecessary reins.

Chains that shackle unnecessary burdens like self-expectations, obsessions, self-depreciation, etc...

Why did I want Karu home at night before again?

The anxiety was triggered by extreme loneliness and envy. Unforgiving to myself for having such feelings, I would beat myself up and fixate on things about myself, and then I wouldn't be able to stop with the obsessive thinking if I didn't remember to do my calm spell and breathing exercise.

Now, I just have peace. Freedom. So much freedom that I find it easy to set other people free. Set Karu free.

I guess it's hard to find peace if you're looking for it. Peace is in everything around you; in everything that taught you important lessons; in everything that you love to do; in everything that you discover new.

You don't do tricks and hacks to get the peace of mind that you crave for; you just do things for reasons that actually matter to you—you do things for getting better, and for growing up.

Don't rush it, but don't delay it.

Don't resist it.

Literally be yourself and always find ways to enhance yourself.

This was Pa's truest words, when he wasn't held down so much by the pressures of society: (I was crying tears at the age of 19, having experienced my first of societal/social failures—flunking a subject.)

"I don't need you to be the best out of everyone. I want you to be the best of yourself."

2019-02-28 22:41 Philippines Thursday

What is this. I'm still not afraid of getting up in the morning!

Because how do I know it’s all gonna work out? I don’t.

Focus. IT'S A LEAP OF FAITH.

2019-03-01 06:00 Philippines Friday

PS watch Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse!

#chrono7 #social #progress #mission #goal #relative

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olympiansrpg1-blog · 7 years ago

Photo

BASICS

Name: Sunyoung “Sunny” Yoo Age: 22 Affiliation: New Olympus Occupation: Drug Dealer Faceclaim: Lee Joo Young Status: TAKEN by Koko

THE STORY

They call you Artemis, the light shining in the darkness of the night. You have always been the child in the background, unassuming and quiet, so much so that everyone misunderstood your observant nature. For as long as you could remember, your family was always splintered. Your father introducing countless people to you, all of which echoed broken promises to your eager ears. You learned not to trust them as you grew older, knowing better than to echo hollow words to yourself. That was, until you met Apollo. They promised you an eternity while you were so used to being in a sea of meaningless proclamations, took your hands in theirs and made you believe again. Perhaps you should have seen it, Apollo waning throughout the years, their light extinguished by the very vices you both sold. You were a fool to believe that anything good could come from this, but it is far too late now to leave, too deeply rooted into the new family that has protected and sheltered you since the sun went down over the horizon in a flood of blue and red lights.

CONNECTIONS

APOLLO - You followed each other to the ends of the earth: the sun chasing away the shadows of the night and the moon guiding the lost home. You remember how much you adored them when their bright eyes swore to love you when your father and step-mother introduced the two of you, you also remember watching the life leave their eyes every night when you tried to stop them from going on a bender. Most importantly, you remember how much it devastated you when you realized their forever was only temporary.

DIONYSUS - They have become part of your ragtag family, of sorts, enjoying their many quirks and eccentricities. After Apollo’s arrest, they were there for you during your hardest nights, a startling reminder that you would never be alone. For that action alone, you know that you would do anything for them. Even if it means allowing them to circle the rabbit hole they desperately want, enabling them in order to make them happy.

MORPHEUS - Co-dependency is not an unfamiliar term to you, so much of your life has revolved around the company of others that you are not certain who you are outside of them. You can see the same yearning in Morpheus, simply two wandering souls in need of solitude with each other. The inability to be alone is crippling, a part of you knows this, but you cannot find it in yourself to overcome it.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS

Diego Boneta, Booboo Stewart, Cykeem White, Kiersey Clemons, Courtney Eaton, Kelsey Chow

PARA SAMPLE

MONDAY THE ONE WHERE DAD WORKS THE HARDEST OF ALL

He’s late. She says it in such a serious voice, resolute and deadly, that one would have forgotten just what it was that was taking place; her hands keep clenching, tighter, tighter, tighter still that the the knuckles, nearing translucence and edging brokenness, could give the white sheets of the bed a run for their money. Maybe it was that not-so-subtle reminder that she could break them all without breaking a sweat that caused it, but the tension in the room has not been as palpable as it was then, the people surrounding the middle of the room exchanging furtive glances and voiceless whispers, nudging one after the other until, to everyone’s surprise, the smallest and most nondescript of the group piped up in a tone uncharacteristically steady, perhaps seeing the opportunity to escape from the suddenly sweltering room. “I’ll go out and dial his office again for you, ma'am. You… hang in there.” With only the briefest of looks to her superiors, the woman turns to leave, making to peel the mask off her face as she does but is abruptly startled by the hand that darts out to grab her wrist, firm and tight and threatening to cut off all circulation in a minute or two. You tell him… A hitch. A deep breath. A release. You tell him to get his goddamn ass to this delivery room… and catch his daughter if he has to, alright? … you tell him I don’t give a fuck if it’s Monday and he’s working… A laugh, spluttering and strained, spills from her lips and fills the room that seems to have collectively held its breath, both listening and trying not to listen to the words that she was saying. Call it a force of habit: the woman is, after all, their superior, their mentor, the terror of their young lives. Dr. Park Hye-sun, Head of Obstetrics, but for today she was simply Park Hye-sun, woman giving birth and refusing service because the - her crude words exactly - bastard was still nowhere to be found. Hard at work, apparently, but nobody knew better just what the truth to that statement was better than she did, and though she didn’t really mind either way, it’s not like they were married after all, she’d thought that at the very least he would be there to hold her hand as she delivered the child he’d convinced her to keep. He can go back to working his secretary after I get this thing out of me… You tell him that and you get your ass back here and help me push!

TUESDAY THE ONE WHERE THANK GOD THEY’RE NOT MARRIED

Your wide, round eyes are brimming with tears, but you never let them be shed and run down plump cheeks, tiny teeth biting down on your lip to choke the sob fighting to make it out of your mouth. In the back seat of the car, there is no room for weakness, though nobody has ever really stopped you, no; you stopped yourself, existing with this conceived notion in your tiny brain that not being seen, not being heard, it could help quell the muted anger that surrounded you whenever the two of them were in your presence. The lack of inquiry on their path serves to reassure your demons and fed them, giving way to an increasing gain in anxiety that soon overcomes you. There’s a schedule when it comes to dealing with you: one day it’s dad, next day it’s mother, and on and on it goes, repetitive and forgettable, a chore in its very essence. Your room, however, is a world entirely unto itself, the place where you can bury yourself underneath the covers, imagination running wild as you yourself did the same, over mountains and fields, an adventurer who knows and sees no boundaries, a traveler picking up from here and going as far as your legs can possibly take you. The house you live in is big enough to play a good game of hide and seek: you hide from the world, from your father who, though affectionate in his own way, could never quite make it enough, stay in place enough for you to really bask in his love or question his choices; from your mother who is more critic than parent, pointing out areas that ‘you can improve on’, making comments here and there that she plays off as jokes but the punchlines always hit your gut a little too strongly for you to enjoy. When it all gets too much - the deafening arguments one day, the deafening silence of solitude the next - you can be found on your back, sprawled across the grass, shoes kicked off, arms outstretched and eyes staring straight into the heavens. This is you in your natural, this is you in your element, and every time you feel yourself willing to become rooted into the ground, to become a plant that never has to feel or be, only exist as you are.

WEDNESDAY THE ONE WHERE THE BEATLES HAVE A SONG ABOUT THIS

Music blasts through your Urbanears headphones.

wednesday morning at five o'clock

as the day begins

silently closing her bedroom door

leaving the note that she hoped would say more

she goes downstairs to the kitchen

clutching her handkerchief

quietly turning the backdoor key

stepping outside, she is free

(Trying to make this easier? Is this a joke to you? Adding insult to injury? ) Mother dearest’s favorite Louise Vuitton luggage, the most concise of belongings and the spattering of hope in your chest. (What a lovely way to go. Are you sure about this?) Cut the scene where you sneak a peek into their bedroom, gazing upon their sleeping bodies in bed, wipe a tear away as you mumble goodbye under your breath. You know your father didn’t even come home last night… or else you would have heard the soft sobbing of your stepmother when he makes his way through the front door, swallowing down questions of ‘Where have you been? Who was with you? What were you doing? Who were you doing?’ in favor of silent suffering. She loves him, he loves her, it’s never enough. It’s a scene straight out of a movie, and you can say that with certainty because you had picked up the idea from one. Cut the scene where guilt racks your body and you second guess the life changing event you’re about to set in motion. There will be none of that here. You will not list out the could-have-beens: you could have gone to an Ivy League university in the fall, finished your pre-med degree in three years, taken the MCAT as soon as you can, gone Ivy League again, finish in four years, internship for three, another three for residency, become an attending, become Chief Obstetrician, buy a mansion of your home, the whole nine yards… if there’s a time to puke, this is it. The title doesn’t matter now, not much does anymore, a numbness had settled into your bones that you try, to cling to: the moment that it dissipates, you know that everything will come crashing back down into reality, and that is a burden much too heavy for you to bear. If you start thinking of what you’re giving up, of what you’re losing, of what you’re facing, each disheartening aspect stacks up to a tower that threatens to crash, to crush and flatten you and strong as you are, the heart that you have is not prepared for that failure.

(not yet anyway)

Cut the scene where you take one last look at the house you grew up in, take a whiff of the nostalgia lingering in the air, before you turn away for good. Once you walk out, you walk out for good: eyes straight, face serious, hands steady and steps calm. At the end of the short path sits the car and even before your eyes rest can rest upon their face, you’ve already traced the silhouette of Apollo against the tinted windows, the soft glare of the newly dawned sun obscuring enough to make them look like a headless driver waiting patiently for their passenger. “You saved me, you know.” How do you mean? “I mean, I was dying and you brought me back to life.” … did Dionysus give you brownies again? “I’m serious.” (Pause. The tension can be cut with a knife. Artemis is staring intently at Apollo, Apollo is avoiding her gaze. This is a milestone for her and they’re too high to recognize it.) How? When? “When we met. I went to shake your hand, you went to give me a hug, and there was this awkward moment where I jabbed your rib and you leaned forward too far and almost bowled me over. We laughed, you more than me, and you took both my hands after just to be safe that time because I was in a daze. Your skin touched mine and it was… electric. I was dead and you shocked me back to life. (Longer pause. Apollo starts sobbing silently, Artemis finally turns away to look out the window of their apartment. The look on her face is unreadable, her thoughts the same. In a week’s time Apollo would be caught and jailed, but neither of them know that or anticipate it. This is just one of those moments where something great comes before the fall.

I love you.

Never leave me.

THURSDAY THE ONE WHERE WORST IS FIRST

“And… they’re off! Look at them go, ladies and gentlemen, doesn’t watching them just make you hold your breath in… anticipation?” And so do you, surrounded by the panting and heaving lungs of the others, but there you were, calm and steady and could’ve sworn that the last breath you’d taken before the finish line was the one at the starting point, preparing your wiry legs for the 400 meter sprint in front of you and faltering under the beautiful warm sun never even an option you consider. The prestigious school (“Highly selective independent, preparatory, co-educational day school for grades K-12 located in New York City, USA, and a member of both the New York Interschool and the Ivy Preparatory School League” … or whatever that means, you never really pay it much attention) you’ve found yourself stashed in offers a wide variety of athletic programs, and you take advantage of them all once once coach approaches you with words of flattery and promises about your promise. Like a drowning person gasping for air, you’d jumped at the opportunity to be saved from the relative mundanity of your life, passing through corridors and going through classes hiding in the back of the room. In the fall you’re playing soccer, in the winter you’re taking laps in the pool, and in the spring you’re running full pelt down the track, leaving all your competitors eating your dust and rolling their eyes at the relative ease with which you did it, the shy smile that spread across your lips when the marker takes your hand and raises it above your head to the claps of the spectators and the cheers of your teammates. So this is what friendship feels like. And support. Huh. Little by little, you make a name for yourself, minimal as it may be, and spend more and more time in the company of others, sporting your varsity jacket as you switched between your skateboard, your bicycle, or your legs to meet them at the park, at a diner, in school. Though you never really fully stepped out of your shell, soft spoken and intense to the very end, a change had clearly taken over you and with it comes a disregard for the reproaching quips of your mother that you should be more like other girls, sporting dresses and heels, hair past your shoulders and framing your pixie face. When you accidentally step too close to her, a hand reaches to stroke your arm, fingers clenching around your triceps before she remarks: This should be all bone and little flesh, now it’s all muscle! What good girl has a body like yours? Who’s going to want to marry you now? Run faster. Swim faster. Kick faster. A fire sparks inside you and it’s unforgiving to everything in its path, rewarding you with trophies and certificates and medals that you all just shove in a corner of your room because nobody else acknowledges their existence: do accolades even matter if there’s no one there to pay attention? Fueled by years of frustration, the realization that even just the slightest deviation in a rigid plan that your mother made for you will not be acceptable: this is what you are meant to be, and anything else, even if you are the best, is failure by default. Despite yourself and your best friend, apprehension, within you resides a mother hen that takes all the younger athletes under your wing, little girls questioning and doubting that turn to you for reassurance, and you’re quick to give what you don’t even have, desperate and wanting to cultivate a group that will hopefully do better, have better than you. Run faster. Swim faster. Kick faster. You’re not just a you. You are a we.

FRIDAY THE ONE WHERE BRANDY COMES TO LIVE IN THE HOUSE

Walking home alone becomes a habit… or at least that’s what you tell yourself when they start implying that you’re old enough to take to the harsh streets of New York, a little six year old girl with her little backpack and her little shoes, coming home from a day of school where bullies ran rampant and you, tiny, silent soul that you are, wafted through the corridors like a ghost, unseen, unheard, unfelt. They’re too busy, they say, too busy working for a living, too busy living their fun, too busy having fun to be tied down by a child, that it’s a relief independence so becomes you. By the end of your first week, you’ve done enough lazy afternoo after school navigating that the streets don’t seem so daunting, paths become familiar, the shortest, the longest routes home etched into your mind that your feet could practically take over your body. Surprisingly it’s the latter that you take to the most since you’ve come to accept, even love that you can have such wandering moments to yourself, pretending that the faces that meet you along the way hold any sign of familiarity, gazing at every big and small house that you pass by to envision what kind of lives lurked within. If they passed by yours, you know the thoughts that would race in their head, the green monster of envy that would rear in their chest with the expectation that only happiness and contentment resided there. Wealth could not buy you what you wanted, wealth could not buy you what you needed, wealth was a homewrecker and a soulbreaker and you would give it all away for a life of simplicity and minimality. Three years pass in the blink of an eye, uneventful and monotonous, until one day you find yourself in front of an unfamiliar shop in a, newly opened and dead empty except for the shop clerk sweeping up outside the door: hair cropped, black apron on and wearing the most battered pair of Chuck Taylors she had ever laid her eyes on. But that smile, god their smile, you could’ve sworn all the lights in that store were powered up by that thousand watt smile, making sheepish you all the more docile when they started to speak, a lilting voice so sweet and so kind. “Hey, little boy.” It’s summer, you just had your haircut. You’re all jutted bones and harsh corners, pants torn, knees scraped, fingernails dirty. You can’t blame them for the mistake. You don’t correct them either. "You want a puppy? They’re rescue. You’ll be saving a life.“ Combine the following: Forged signatures. Allowance scraped and saved. Guilt trip laid on thick. Innocent voice used. A tear or two. And you get home with a year old golden retriever on a leash, tail wagging and tongue hanging out as she looked at you with the most adorable face you’ve ever seen. It takes three days of not-even-careful hiding in your bedroom before your dad finds out, to which he just shrugs his shoulders. As long as you’re cleaning up after it, what do I care? Your mother has a heart attack. Oh, Brandy, you’re a fine girl! What a good wife dog you would be.

#artemis #lsrpg #lsrp #gang rp #skeleton rp #all #new #taken

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xoleahbeanxo · 8 years ago

Text

Sing! A side Story: Chapter Three

Song: Giving it All Away Artist: Leo Sayer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mz-v-km-zw

Giving It All Away

Lee and Ellie arrived shortly after 9 o’clock, parking in a nearby alley parking lot. The line already stretched out the door and around the block. It was impossible to believe that so many people showed up to audition for this competition, especially when there was already a half a dozen of these types of shows on television. Lee assumed the 100k prize was the real reason they showed up. With no other choice, the two of them shuffled to the back of the line to wait.

Lee looked at Ellie and smiled. Her cheeks were still pink with thoughts of the things they’d done the night before. Seeing her looking so beautiful in the morning glow of the sun calmed him. He’d never been so glad that she’d insisted on coming with him than he was right now. She was his best friend, after all, and being with her always made even the worse situation better.

“Nervous?”

“I feel like I’m going to vomit.” Lee smiled, despite telling the truth.

Ellie giggled. “You’ll be fine, take deep breaths of this…fresh downtown air.”

They both laughed. Ellie’s fingers found Lee’s and they laced together. As strange as it had been to see many people show up, it was even stranger at how fast they were moving through the line. Before Lee knew it, he was standing in the lobby of the old theater house.

At first, he’d assumed it was a theater that showed movies on a screen. It wasn’t until he got inside that he realized it was the type of theaters where they put on musicals and plays. He’d never been inside a real one before. The décor was showing its age but still didn’t fail to impress. Even under the dingy old smell, there was the scent of something once great.

“This place is going to kill my allergies.” Ellie coughed into a wad of tissues she held.

“I think it’s charming,” Lee smirked.

“Yeah, I guess it is if you like asbestos poisoning.” Ellie shot him a sideways glance.

Lee laughed while playfully nudging her with his elbow. The two beavers standing behind them looked around in quick dismay before slowly shuffling out of line and out the door. Lee stared at them with wide eyes.

“Good job, honey,” He said excitedly. “You’re scaring away my competition, keep it up.”

“You know me, hon; I always come to bat for my man.” She puffed her chest out, looking all tough before laughing at her own facade.

Lee and Ellie kept their snarky comments quiet and genuinely enjoyed spending their time in line together. Though, the others around them didn’t seem all that interested in their jokes.

It hadn’t dawned on Lee until they’d actually got into the theater house that he’d prepared nothing. He’d brought nothing with him for his audition. All of his songs were in his head and he didn’t bother bringing any music sheets for any accompanying musicians to play. What was he going to do?

Panic set in, making his chest tight and his shoulders tense once again. How could he have overlooked something so simple, so basic, so very necessary? They could just leave, he thought. It would only cost them a few hours, which, in retrospective, turned out to be very pleasant one on one time with his wife.

Ellie could sense his quiet panic and she did everything she could to sooth him. A soft series of kisses behind his ear was followed by her warm breath and even warmer words.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetie. You have nothing to lose by trying out. Just imagine we’re in the shower and you’re singing for me.”

The words were comforting but did little to shake away the self-admonishing for forgetting something so important. Why was he so forgetful? Why? The answer never came, at least, not before he was standing on the stage under the hot lights that hung over head. The theater was lit in such a way that he could see a Koala, a sheep, and a chameleon sitting in the front row with a table before them. It seemed like the opening line to a bad joke. There were stacks of papers laid about in front of them, including a fresh sheet that Ellie had been so kind to fill out for them. She’d even given them a picture of him, not a flattering picture at that.

“So, Mr. Anders-” The koala began.

“Lee, please call me Lee.” The hyena interrupted nervously before he could stop himself. His knees were trembling to the point that they could buckle at any moment.

“Lee it is then, my name is Buster Moon. This is my secretary Miss Crawly and my friend and colleague Eddie. Take a deep breath and let’s hear what got.” He had such an easy demeanor that helped Lee to relax even if it was just a little.

“I didn’t bring any music.” Lee blurted out, swallowing so hard that he and everyone could hear it through the microphone.

He smiled and drummed his pencil on the sheet. “That’s fine; I’ve always been a fan of acapella, so please begin.”

Lee swallowed hard and took several deep breaths. It felt as if his heart was going to stop at any moment…then everything zeroed in on Ellie who was seated a few rows behind Mr. Moon. Her eyes shifted coyly from the left to the right as she quickly lifted one side of her t-shirt to flash a sing bra covered breast at him. There was a youthful smile on her wide muzzle. Lee laughed in spite of the situation and it helped calm the torrent of emotions that rage inside of him. ‘Just imagine you’re in the shower, singing for me.’ Ellie’s voice rang crystal clear in his mind. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, hearing it catch the acoustics of the old theater house.

“I paid all my dues so I picked up my shoes. I got up and walked away.” His voice was trembling at first, the rusty malaise from years of being out of practice showed.

“Oh, I was just a boy, giving it all away. Worked hard and failed, now all I can say is I threw it all away.” Each word that left his lips came out easier. His voice became stronger the more lost in his thoughts he became.

“Went out in the world, too much for my nerves, only myself to blame. Oh, I was just a boy had nobody else to blame.” The tense muscles in his shoulders relaxed, letting him stand a little bit taller then he thought was possible. “I’ve done all I can, now it’s out of my hands, stand on my head and say, oh, I was just a boy, giving it all away.”

Instinctively, he grabbed the microphone and leaned against it as if it were a cane there to support him. “Sail away, sail away. Ooh, I know better now, I know better now, giving it all away.”

Lee allowed himself a few more soulful repeats of the hook and chorus from one of his favorite songs before he finished with a shaky nod and a smile that was far from confident. Ellie was up from her seat clapping furiously. The koala, Mr. Moon, turned and looked at her before joining in on the applause excitedly. When he finished, he wrote something down on the sheet before him before placing it atop the pile.

Had he performed well? Maybe not by theater standards but he gave it his all and he was very proud of himself for grabbing a bit of his past glory and brought it back into his life. But it was more than that. Lee found Ellie again who was shifting her weight excitedly as if she might pounce on him at any moment.

“Wonderful job, Lee, please step back stage and wait for me to call you back for my decision.” Mr. Moon motioned to the side of the stage with one hand.

Lee nodded and started off stage. He looked back to see Ellie again, who smiled and gave him a thumbs up. She looked as though she may have been crying, though, it was hard to tell because of the lights overhead.

Once backstage, it didn’t take the hyena long to find a corner to settle down in and wait. There were animals of all walks of life milling around and talking to one another. Anxiety played prickles down his back as he tried to make himself as small as possible. He was so nervous that if he opened his mouth to talk, he was libel to throw up on someone and that was an embarrassment he could afford. Right about now, he was wishing Ellie could come back to sit with him and keep him from falling apart.

A quiet pig came and sat close to him. She seemed lost in thought, a nervous pink tint on her cheeks. It only took a second for Lee to recognize her from her audition. Fireworks wasn’t the first thing he thought of when he saw her but she had such a beautiful voice.

“Hey, Lee.” She remembered his name. “I’m Rosita.” She touched her chest as if she were introducing herself to a child.

“Rosita, right. Hey, you did an amazing job out there.” Lee smiled nervously.

“What? No. I was as thrilling as a wet paper bag.” She offered a shy chuckle.

“Seriously, you have a really good singing voice,” Lee admitted. “You weren’t jumping off the walls, sure but you seemed so composed. My stomach was in my throat. How do you do it?”

“Composed? Oh my god, no. I was a mess. Honestly, though, this stuff is a cake walk compared to raising kids.”

“I agree.” Lee chuckled.

“You have kids?”

“Just one, Ashley. She’s three.”

“Lucky you, I have twenty-five.” She smirked triumphantly.

“Twenty-five?” Lee gasped, his mouth hanging open.

“Yep.”

“You’re not a mother, lady, you’re a superhero.” They both laughed.

“I wouldn’t go that far.” There was a fond glint in her eyes.

“How do you keep it together? I only have one and I feel like I’m losing my mind most of the time.” Lee rested his chin on his hands.

“Oh, Lee. I’ve lost my mind and found it again more times than I can count. You just have to pick your battles, buckle down and push through.” Rosita fished her phone out of her purse before flipping to her photo album. “Just remember, as frustrated as you are at the things they do. They’re frustrated by the things you do, they just can’t articulate it the same way so they act out.”

Lee huffed a laugh. “I…ah, never thought of it like that.”

“No parent ever does until someone tells them the same thing I told you.” Rosita laughed, she leaned close and started showing pictures of her little piggy children.

They laughed together and shared stories of stuff their kids did. Rosita was good company and she helped pass the time quickly but it only made Lee miss Ellie more. He suspected she felt the same way, by the fond look in her eyes when she stopped on a picture of her and her husband, Norman, standing together.

“I hope this doesn’t take too long.” She said and Lee couldn’t agree more with her.

#Sing #Hyena #Go Ellie #Meet the piggies #Giving it all away #Leo Sayer #Telling stories about your kids is the best way to pass the time

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valkirsif · 6 years ago

Text

Unthinkable CH 12/???

Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Word 3200

Warning nothing

"How did fly Silly?" Chris asked, turning on the jeep and taking a dirt road that looked like anything but passable,

"Perfect trip and without jolts .." the woman answered holding tight to the rollbar, ".. I can not say the same now, but you have to take all the holes?" She laughed worried as jumped at each bump,

Chris burst out laughing, put his arm around her shoulders and hugged "Sorry but we're shooting scenes in the woods and the streets are a bit 'rough, the production tries to prevent the curious discover where we work so no road is been adjusted or reported",

"So we're going to the set?" She asked curiously, the idea of being in the middle of the filming surrounded by people set her anxious, she stopped thinking when looked out the window was beautiful, the road bordered a river and the other side it opened a forest among the greenest she had ever seen, there was only nature as far as the eye could see,

"We do not go to the set but to the village built for the crew and actors, each of us has a kind of house we will have all the privacy we want" the man answered turning and stopping in front of a gate, the guard checked who he was and looked the guest before opening and letting them pass,

"Now you're down so nobody will notice you," he whispered to the woman in spy tones, Y/N stifled a laugh and lowered head resting on the man's knees, she heard many voices, people waving and Chris answering, the road had improved at least she did not hit all sides, a few minutes after the jeep stopped heard the creak of a door sat up looking around, they were in a garage,

"Welcome to my den" the tone of the bad movies made her laugh,

"In what trouble i hunted" the woman took the backpack shaking her head and followed him, the kind of house was a huge camper, she had seen one similar to the sea, it was more spacious than it seemed from the outside Chirs put the keys on the shelf and made her way, there was a living room with a sofa that seemed very comfortable a tv the PS and a dvd player, a grass effect carpet as big as the room that made her want to roll, the kitchen corner was essential but there was no lack of coffee, she felt at home as if he were at home

"Do as if you were at your home, Silly" took the backpack from her and leaned on the sofa and smiled and, before Y/N could protest, he put her on his shoulder and headed for another room,

"Come put me down!" she laughed kicking, the man tightened his grip to not let it fall, "I hate being moved like that, i follow you with my legs"

"If you make all this noise they will find us" he answered opening the door of the room, put it on her feet and pushed it on the bed, Y/N began to be nervous started to sit down but Chirs stood above her,

"Christopher Robert Evans what are your intentions?" she asked as the man took off his t-shirt and looked at it with mischievous eyes,

"You are trapped Silly, tell me where you hide my treasure and you will not be hurt" he asked in a bad voice of the old movies, the woman stared at him bewildered and then understood what he meant,

"I do not know what treasure you're talking about, the only things i have with me are in my backpack, take what you want but let me go" tried to play the innocent girl as best she could but she ran away laughing, that situation was too absurd, the man stood up without saying a word and went to take the backpack, opened it and spilled its contents on the bed,

"Here is!! My TREASSSSSURE !! " he shouted victoriously holding the t-shirt Y/N had stolen, turned to the woman who still laughed, "I was sure you would remember this" he said, hugging her,

"I must have confessed for a second you scared me," Y/N replied, taking off shoes and resting comfortably on him, "I would have minded ruining our friendship by putting you out of the game",

"Scared for what?" Chris asked, moving just to stare at her, "Do you really think i could do something like that Silly?"

"I do not believe it but put yourself in my shoes, we've known each other for two days i'm sorry if i do not understand when you're joking" she replied guilty of having had that thought, "Forgive me?",

the man ruffled her hair, "Excuse me, i seem to know you for a lifetime i did not think what it might look like.." he laughed, "..wait a minute, you would have landed?!" asked unconvinced,

"Of course i would have landed you, do you have any doubts?" the woman leaned on her elbow, "I was properly trained",

"If you put it that way..i challenge you!" he said getting out of bed and reaching out to help her get up,

"I think this is not the place to fight, i get dressed and i'll take you to my favorite place" he put on an old overalls and sneakers, turned to her and put a hat on head, "So nobody will do questions if we meet people ", Y/N looked at the mirror, with the official Marvel cap could pass for any intern or secretary and the only person who could know it was Tom, lowered visor over her eyes and went out with Chris,

"My idea of a relaxing day was not just that, i thought more to film and cuddle on the couch" the woman said as they went up a ridge of rock, the day was perfect for walking, she loved the woods and climb with Chris was pleasant, reached the top opened before her eyes a flowered park with benches and wooden tables typical of picnic areas, there was all the space they wanted to fight,

"Here we are Silly, what do we bet?" Chris asked lying on the grass,

"You're the one who's going to be pounded by a woman, you decide the prize" Y/N laugh taking off the sweatshirt, the man laughed

"Let's see, if i win you stay here a couple of days," he said, "In the remote hypothesis that you win instead you will accompany me to the premiere in Italy" the hand to seal the bet,

"Ok" the woman answered, clenching in turn, "I'll have to buy a dress suitable for the evening" mocked her helping him get up, they were facing each other,

"Come on over Captain" Y/N challenged him, the man smiled and moved towards her with head down, put his arms around her shoulders blocking her, the woman put a foot behind Chris's ankle and pushed without effort, the man fell on his back grunting,

"I stumbled , it was just luck" he laughed, getting back on his feet and loading Y/N again, he grabbed her by the neck without too much tightening and pushed with all her weight, the woman gave a couple of steps then took the thumbs of her assailant and twisted too hard, she wanted to beat him not to break his bones, Chris let go at once,

"All ok Sassy?" the woman asked, laughing,

"You do not mind badly to be a girl, if you see me arrive you can prepare the shot" the challenge tone did not escape Y/N who smiled and beckoned to refer back to him,

"Do you want to make it more interesting? Just because you are you allow me to attack behind" even the voice of the woman exuded challenge, turned her back to Chris and waited to make his move, the man came up and tightened his arms around her chest, Y/N folded and took his leg making him lose balance, the two fell laughing, Chris hugged her and with a click the block on the ground,

"And now how do we put Silly?" he said breathlessly while holding her shoulders pressed on the ground, the woman did not try to wriggle, he was much bigger and stronger than her, did what Gian had taught her, waited for him to approach and took the carotid with two fingers clenching, when he saw that was about to lose senses let go, Chris looked at her in amazement,

"Ok ok i give up, i knew that many women attend courses of self-defense, but you seem to have been trained for war" he looked at her smiling almost admiring, lay down next to her and took a breath,

"Gian, the friend who trained me, it is of the idea that all women should know how to defend themselves and the techniques of the army are excellent, more than anything else for self-esteem, when you know what your body can do you feel stronger and consequently become stronger" Y/N answered leaning on him,

"I will enroll my sister in the field of the marines then" laughed tightening her, "I will never use -fightt like a girl- like mockery, if i were an assailant you would have torn me in pieces",

"Nobody will never know" laugh "Let me know the day and what time it takes to pick me up for the premiere," they were lying on the grass talking, it was an amazing sunny day and it was a really nice breeze,

"What do you say we come back? Beginning to get hungry," Chris suggested, getting back on his feet, Y/N nodded, reached out to pull her up and set off to return to base camp, the woman had not noticed the view from the top and was left speechless,

"Chris it's beautiful, i understand why it's your favorite place", she could see the whole forest in its majesty the river crossed it like a silver tongue, could see the base camp and the area where they were shooting, the paparazzi would have gone crazy with joy, the two went quietly talking and laughing,

"I think i understand why we go so well," the woman said, Chris looked at her curiously waving to continue, "We are both of Gemini",

"You say?" the man did not seem convinced,

"It happened to me sometimes to know someone and feel so good with him immediately and in the end i discovered that we were the same sign, it is a kind of empathy" concluded Y/N smiling,

"Now that i think some of the my best friends i'm of my own sign, it's really a strange thing" he replied, taking her by the hand, "Are you telling me that the Gemini recognize each other?!",

"I think so and i do not mind at all" she turned and hugged him , they were almost at the camp when they saw Tom and Rdj training, Y/N was tempted to hide behind on the first tree but it was late they had seen them and were reaching them, tried to keep control and smiled,

"Caught in the act," Chris laughed going to meet friends.

"Hey Evans who is this lady?" Rdj came forward to introduce himself , "Pleasure dear" he said stretching out his hand,

"My pleasure Mr. Downey jr., Y/N" the woman answered, she was thrilled, she followed Rdj for years it was a real honor for her to be in his presence, felt Tom's eyes on her and the butterflies in the stomach for being discovered,

"Mr. Downey was my father, Rdj will be fine" he laughed, shaking her hand, "Can i have the pleasure of introducing you Loki?" he said looking at Tom,

"We already know each other" step towards to embrace her, "It's a pleasure to see you again darling" was smiling as always,

"For me it's a pleasure to see you again, you're in great shape" Y/N smiled back, she wanted to throw arms around his neck and kiss him but just smiled,

"If you do not have much for training, you could join us for lunch," Chris said cheerfully, had no idea what Y/N was passing at that moment,

"Sure we do not bother?" Rdj sly tone, "We do not want to make the third uncomfortable",

"What? We are just friends do not make strange ideas" Chris laughed,"We wait for you ", the man took Y/N and went to the camper,

"Let's see what's in the fridge," he said as soon as they entered, the woman sat trying to keep her emotions in check, she was happy to see Tom again but was not sure could be near him without collapsing,

"Silly help me?" Chris's voice shook from her thoughts, she reached him in the kitchen,

"Of course 'do you have in mind for lunch?” she asked, looking back to the fridge,

“We almost always eat in the field cafeteria, there's not much in the house,” the man replied,

“Make room for me” Y/N laughed pulling out eggs, bacon and cheese, "Tell me you have some pasta and we're fine", the man opened the door above the fridge and pulled out spaghetti,

"Perfect we have everything i need for carbonara, in Rome i would spank if i they saw the bacon but it's the same" she immediately went to work and cut and brown the bacon, prepared the eggs with the cheese and put on the water, Chris looked at her happy,

"I feel like i'm home in Boston with my mother cooking," he whispered hugging her, the woman leaned against him and smiled,

"Insinuating that I'm old?" she asked curiously,

"No i'm saying i feel at home right now" kissed her and set the table in the garden, the woman heard the others had joined them and they were laughing in the garden, she took a breath deep, put a smile on her face and went out to take a drink.

Y/N was fascinated by Rdj no one else could play Iron Man, he WAS Tony Stark, was a charming man, sociable and open and loved to have an audience, the woman returned home to throw the dough, had tears and stomach ache for laughter was passing a dream day, took out the dishes not to overcook the dough, too familiar hands touched her hips,

"I like watching you cook " Tom's voice made her legs tremble, "It's one of the best memories of the holiday from Rice, you dance while you prepare breakfast.."

".. the first morning" the woman finished the sentence, untied the embrace and drained the pasta, "You would pass the dishes.." Tom had preceded, she did the dishes and followed by the man served lunch,

"It looks delicious Y/N" Rdj took a picture at the plate, "I send it to Susan just to entice her "

"Thanks, after Bolognese sauce carbonara is the most Italian thing ever" laughed sitting down,

"For the meat sauce i can testify, it is one of the best things i have ever eaten" Tom added, had lunch chatting , Rdj wanted the recipe of carbonara and Y/N was happy to share it,

"Coffee for all?" Chris asked, getting up, everyone nodded,

"I'll take care of that" the woman standing up and removing the dishes,

"You cooked, be comfortable, you're my guest" the man replied, Y/N was not convinced that an American was able to make an Italian coffee worthy of that name but smiled and passed the dishes, she was alone with Tom, Rdj was on the phone with his wife was explaining the recipe for pasta, smiled looking at him gesturing as if Susan could see him ,

"So you and Chris go there" felt a sort of jealousy in Tom's voice but it was probably her imagination,

"We are friends, he invited me and i accepted" she answered sincerely, "I feel good in his company, it's like home", she wanted to stretch hand and tighten the one of Tom, instead continued to torture her fingers under the table, remained silent until Chris returned with coffee, Y/N was amazed he was really good complimented the man,

"If not it's a problem i think i'll take Y/N and i'll collapse on the couch," Chris said as finished his coffee,

Rdj burst out laughing, "After a similar lunch i'm going to do a run to dispose of, it was a pleasure Y/N" shook her hand and took the way to the hill,

"I think i will follow him" Tom hugged her, "Thanks for lunch dude" greeted and ran after the friend waiting for him, Chris and the woman went into the house and got on the sofa, as Y/N had imagined was soft and enveloping,

"Let's watch a movie Silly?" asked holding the DVD in his hand, the woman nodded, "Mmm something funny..let's see..here it is!" he put the DVD in the player, turned on the TV and lay down hugging Y/N,

"Omg Space Ball!!" the cheerful woman chirped, "It's one of the my favorites!" hugged him more and tried to concentrate only on the film.

She opened her eyes as the credits passed, they had fallen asleep and it was now evening, she saw the sunset from the window, moved slightly to get up from the Chris's arms and went out into the garden to call Rice,

"Hi Lucifer..yes, everything was ok, i returning tomorrow morning i wanted to warn you after the last time do not want you to be worried" laughed hearing the group in the background asking questions, gave a good night and turned off the phone again before returning, Chris had woken up and was making coffee ,

"After dinner i make the return," said passing the cup,

"Actually i would stay if it's all right for you," the woman said drinking coffee, "By the way, great coffee Captain" winked,

"Of course it's okay Silly, i'm happy if you stay, tomorrow i'll take a ride on the set before letting you go back to your friends" was beaming and took her hips making a jump, the two laughed as children, dined on the sofa with a kind of salad mixed made up of everything they found in the fridge, they fought one against the other with the PS,

"This time i beat you Silly, here we are not in a field" Chris tried to make her wrong by tickling,

"Hey it's so wrong!" Y/N shouted while her character was thrown into the air and exploded with a rocket, she had lost three games in a row and Chris strutted for the room,

"After this humiliation let's go to bed that's better" she said turning off the game and the TV, the man pointed the alarm clock and went in the shower that he found already occupied,

"Sorry" said closing the curtain embarrassed, "I swear i did not see anything!",

"When i did the massage in the hotel i was naked, now it's a problem?" Y/N laughed pulling head out of the shower,

"When i reached in the pool you immediately dressed i thought i had problems with nudity.." he replied

"In that case the situation was different. soap my back Sassy" she said throwing the towel, they finished the shower and went to bed, the woman curled next to Chris who held her protective,

"Silly you want to talk?" the friend asked kissing her head, Y/N shook the head, if had opened mouth it would be explode and did not want to end up like this a perfect day, "Do you want to have sex?!",

"You're a stupid Chris" the woman laughed and punched him, heard the friend laugh in turn,

"Hey you never know, even if it would be like doing it with a sister..but if that's what you need i would try to please you!" he said candidly, Y/N clung to him, she wanted to get lost in that hug, "I'm just stupid" she whispered before falling asleep.

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oldguardaudio · 7 years ago

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Rush Limbaugh Explains how H.R. McMaster is removing Trump Loyalists

rush obama shadow government against trump at HoaxAndChange.com

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Alarming: H.R. McMaster Brooms Conservatives and Trump Loyalists from NSC

Aug 3, 2017

RUSH: The H. R. McMaster stuff. Folks, this to me is troubling. We have heard, I mean, you and me, the American people, people paying attention, have heard that there are factions inside the White House and in the deep state that are trying to undermine Trump. You are very well aware of this. So am I.

Some people are worried and have expressed their concern that it’s even people Trump has nominated who may actually be sandbaggers because of all of this leaking. All of this leaking cannot simply come from Obama or Clinton holdovers, like the transcript the Washington Post had of these phone calls to the president of Mexico and the president of Australia. These calls happened within Trump’s first two weeks. The full transcripts were sent over to the Washington Post, and they have published them today. And how does that happen?

I’m just gonna tell you this. You’re Donald Trump, you’re president of the United States, you can’t conduct genuinely productive conversations with anybody if you think that it’s all gonna be made public at some point. You just can’t. You know, even ordinary citizens not in politics who are not celebrities, not in public eye, I sometimes get email from people who put a joke addendum like a disclaimer at the bottom, “If this email is ever made public, I didn’t say what it says here.”

Because everybody’s now worried that what they say in an email to anybody might someday be made public. The moment you believe that, no matter who you are, it is going to limit your openness and your honesty to people you’re having conversations with. It’s no different than putting a camera someplace.

The moment you deposit a camera, say, in a corner in a busy neighborhood or bring a camera into the board of directors meeting or anywhere, you put a camera where people know it’s there, whatever happens after that is artificial. At least for a while. It takes awhile for people to become accustomed to its presence and forget that it’s there. But when they first know it’s there, you wouldn’t believe how self-conscious everybody gets. It’s natural, part of the human existence. There’s a camera there, people looking at me. There’s pictures there.

So you become self-conscious of the way you look. You become self-conscious of who you’re sitting next to. You become self-conscious of your clothing and your attire. You become self-conscious of the way you look when you speak. You become self-conscious of what you’re saying. And the moment you, anybody, becomes dominated by self-consciousness, you’re finished. That’s the end of the real you.

That’s why actors get paid big bucks. Actors are able to broom all self-consciousness. If they’re not able to do that, they’re not able to act. And the average human being cannot do it. The average human being, in truth, cannot stop thinking about him- or herself. The average human being is always thinking about him- or herself and thinks everybody else is thinking about him or her. They forget, you forget that everybody else is not paying attention to you because they’re still all focused on themselves like you are focused on yourself.

But the human ego is an amazing thing. It forces you to be so self-conscious and self-aware, and then you tell yourself that everybody else is paying attention to you too. Now, they might be critical of you, they might be approving, but most people think people look at them critically, with disapproval. It’s amazing how often human beings attach perfection to the people they think are judging them, rather than realize everybody’s a mess, everybody’s screwed up. It’s one of the fascinating things about human nature to me.

I’m just telling you, if you’re Trump, and you can’t even pick up the phone and call the president of somebody with the freedom of knowledge that nobody else is gonna hear it, then how open are you ever gonna be? You’re gonna immediately start talking and saying things not based on whether they are smart or wise or need to be said, but rather you’re gonna say things in case it goes public so that you look good or don’t make a mistake or what have you. I don’t know how anybody can conduct true official business like this. So it is another attempt at paralyzing Trump, all of these leaks.

Now we get to the news that H. R. McMaster, who runs the president’s National Security Council, H. R. McMaster, military guy, bald-headed, I remember when Trump appointed him. Flynn had this gig first and they got rid of Flynn because Flynn had supposedly lied to Mike Pence about what he had said to the Russian ambassador at lunch. When Trump chose H. R. McMaster, it happened to be during — I think it was January-February, because Trump was at Mar-a-Lago, and the announcement was made at Mar-a-Lago. And I will never forget the Drive-By Media and the Washington establishment celebrated, “Oh, this is wonderful.”

I mean, even some in the Republican establishment, “This is absolutely phenomenal. This reassures us to no end. H. R. McMaster. This is great. This proves that Trump is knowing what he’s doing.” I was alarmed. I mean, any time the swamp stands up and approves something Trump’s doing, that, to me, is a disconnect.

But I went with it because what are we gonna do? Not gonna be able to talk Trump out of it so he chooses H. R. McMaster. There have been leaks about what’s going on in the National Security Council, but yesterday leaks became reality. H. R. McMaster fired, it turns out, three Trumpists. The big name that got fired yesterday was Ezra Cohen-Watnick.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick is a thoroughbred. He’s a young Millennial thoroughbred conservative, and it was Ezra Cohen who led Devon Nunes to the intel in the White House that demonstrated some of the chicanery that was going on. He’s a totally devoted Trump loyalist and a conservative and an Iran hawk. H. R. McMaster fired him yesterday. Before that he had fired somebody else named Rich Higgins who was seen as an ally of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. He was let go on July 21st.

Another person has been let go. This person, I think, is Victoria Coates. I’m not sure of the first name, but she was Ted Cruz’s foreign policy strategist during his campaign for president. So (it’s hyphenated name) Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Rich Higgins, you could say, were allies of Steve Bannon. They were solid conservatives. Ezra Cohen was the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council. As I say, he was described as a hawk on Iran. He wanted to rework some of the laziness that has existed now in our dealings with Iran vis-a-vis the Iran nuclear policy.

He also… This is a big one. Ezra Cohen wanted to focus on outing whoever these embeds are in the deep state and get rid of ’em, and H. R. McMaster, from what I’m told, doesn’t think that’s a problem. I’m also told from little birds that H. R. McMaster doesn’t think Susan Rice or Samantha Power pose a problem and this unmasking thing is much ado about nothing. Now, there is a triumvirate here. You have H. R. McMaster and Mattis (the secretary of defense), and maybe General Kelly (chief of staff). They could well be a team. McMaster is also a protege of David Petraeus.

The reason all this may matter is that these guys have their own ideas of military and foreign policy regarding the Middle East, and I think it’s H. R. McMaster, if I’m not mistaken, who if he had his druthers, there wouldn’t be a Syria. He’d wipe ’em out. Or maybe there wouldn’t be a Bashar al-Assad. But a lot of people are scratching their heads now over H. R. McMaster getting rid of Bannonites and conservatives and Trumpists from the National Security Council. These are guys that believe that the deep state has got a bunch of rogues in it and need to be cleaned out.

And pardon me for saying so, folks. But it appears here that there’s a cabal that is being set up among Trump supporters that really doesn’t think the deep state’s any big problem — and doesn’t think that Susan Rice or Samantha Power or any of this unmasking is any kind of big problem — and are getting rid of people who are deeply loyal to Trump. And you have to think (this is common sense) in the entire national security foreign policy establishment — and it is an establishment.

In fact, it is a huge part of the, quote-unquote, “ruling class establishment.” You have to believe there’s some people in this group that think Trump doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, “I mean, he’s a construction guy from Manhattan by way of Queens! I mean, for crying out loud, the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and who might be inclined here to, well, use the power of their closeness to Trump to influence foreign policy and so forth.

Reportedly Trump is livid. Now, again, these are things I can’t personally confirm. But apparently Trump is livid over some of these changes McMaster’s making. But I don’t know if that means McMaster or anybody else is in trouble. It was rumored a couple months ago that McMaster was on thin ice. Over what, I forget now. But there’s all kinds of intrigue going on behind the scenes that we still don’t know quite how to interpret.

Rush Limbaugh Explains how H.R. McMaster is removing Trump Loyalists Rush Limbaugh Explains how H.R. McMaster is removing Trump Loyalists Alarming: H.R. McMaster Brooms Conservatives and Trump Loyalists from NSC…

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