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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 17 days ago

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By: Gurwinder

Published: Aug 8, 2024

Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent, and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which cars were flipped over and buildings set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, pro-Palestine activists rioted in Columbus Square, vandalizing memorials and releasing a swarm of maggots and worms in his Washington hotel.

These are just the latest examples of a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance, and which has this year seen activists across the West spray-paint Stonehenge, squat on university campuses, block access to roads and bridges, occupy museums and government buildings, storm sports events and movie premieres, attack priceless artworks and historical artifacts, and even desecrate war memorials and holocaust monuments.

Ostensibly, these “nuisance-protests” are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as the environment, Palestine, trans-rights, or immigration. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.

This movement has its roots in the digital revolution of 2009, when use of smartphones and social media reached a critical mass, allowing strangers to easily unite and mobilize around shared views, which led to a rapid increase in the size and frequency of protests around the world. But protests didn’t just become bigger and more frequent, they also became more outrageous.

In infants, the chief causes of outrageous behavior — impulsivity, grandiosity, attention-seeking, and a sense of entitlement — are considered normal, but in adults they’re key symptoms of the “cluster-B” personality disorders. All four such disorders — narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial and borderline — are characterized by overemotionality and a need for validation. They’re also associated with heavy social media use, likely because dramatic cluster-B behaviors, such as playing the victim and catastrophizing, excel at getting attention on such platforms.

The ease with which dramatic behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn’t require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of drama. Many activists on both the Left and Right now hope to bring about their ideal world the same way a spoiled brat acquires a toy they’ve been denied: by being as loud and hysterical as possible. This is neotoddlerism: the view that utopia can be achieved by acting like a three-year old.

It’s an ideology for an age of instant gratification, activism for the attention-deficit generation. Just as convenience culture has led us from hours-long films, to half-hour-long TV shows, to minutes-long YouTube videos, to seconds-long TikTok clips; so the same dumbing-down is happening to politics: the arduous process of discussion and debate is giving way to the instant hit of shocking outbursts and other viral moments.

Instead of trying to produce the best arguments, neotoddlers try to produce the most outrageous video clips, which typically involves vandalism, desecration, or some other kind of public meltdown. Thus, they outrage others by embracing their own outrage and lashing out at the world. This surrender to their own impulses makes them first-order thinkers, meaning they consider immediate consequences but not consequences of consequences.

This chronological myopia was starkly illustrated after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel. Many pro-Palestine neotoddlers publicly celebrated the massacre because, trapped by their emotions in a perpetual present, they couldn’t think far enough ahead to realize that Israel was going to retaliate, and that its wrath would be catastrophic for the Palestinians. When the inevitable retaliation came, the neotoddlers’ joy turned to horror as it dawned on them that actions have consequences.

One young pro-Palestine activist, Riddhi Patel, learned this lesson the hard way. In April, she addressed councilors at a Bakersfield City Council meeting in California, and, outraged by their refusal to pass a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, proclaimed to the councilors that she’d murder them, adding: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherfuckers.” Later, she appeared in court on 16 felony counts, sobbing uncontrollably as she was confronted by the second-order effects that her first-order thinking had failed to foresee.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely she’ll learn much from her punishment. Not only do neotoddlers lack impulse-control, they also mistake their lack of impulse-control for morality, and mistake the impulse-control of others for callousness. “Where is the outrage?” they commonly yell, demanding everyone be as irrational as them. For the neotoddler, impatience is a virtue.

The Civil Rights movement succeeded because it was guided by leaders who had clear, specific, and realistic goals, and were able to negotiate to achieve them. Since neotoddlers “organize” mostly on social media, they’re decentralized, and don’t have leaders that can guide them or negotiate for them. They are therefore ruled by their loftiest ideals, in service to their basest impulses, and they don’t have the means to create, only to disrupt.

And so they disrupt, with the goal of spreading awareness. Yet their attempts to do so are misguided because, for all the issues they protest about, the problem is not a lack of awareness; it’s a lack of solutions. We don’t need to be told that war, crime, and pollution are bad, because we learned such lessons in primary school. What we need are clear, specific, and realistic plans of action. And the neotoddlers, being impulsive short-term thinkers, have only broad demands but no rational way to achieve them.

Anti-immigrant activists chant “Get them out!” as if there weren’t a host of legal and logistical challenges to doing so. Pro-Palestine activists chant “ceasefire now!” as if such a ceasefire wouldn’t quickly be broken by Hamas (as happened on October 7th). Climate activists chant “Just stop oil!” as if that wouldn’t cause Western civilization to regress technologically backwards into an age of famine, war, and superstition.

Neotoddlers are so shambolic they even try to disrupt attempts to meet their own demands. Many pro-Palestine activists call for peace in Gaza and yet support Hamas, the main obstacle to peace in Gaza. And many eco-warriors oppose fossil fuels but also try to stop viable alternatives such as electric and nuclear by, for example, storming Tesla factories and atomic energy conferences. And recent Right-wing protesters in Sunderland, who claimed to represent the unheard, burned down a citizens’ advice center, one of the few places to offer an ear to the unheard.

Unsurprisingly, nuisance-protests often end up alienating ordinary people. While the public supports climate action, it has a negative opinion of Just Stop Oil. And while the public supports a ceasefire in Gaza, it has a negative opinion of the campus protesters. The same is true of Right-wing nuisance protests: while the public generally believes immigration should be curbed, it overwhelmingly opposes the recent riots, which have achieved little except convince the public that Right-wing extremism is a serious threat. So, though nuisance-protests do get attention, little of that attention is converted to sympathy and a lot to spite.

But if nuisance-protests are counterproductive, why are they spreading? Because protests are usually motivated more by emotion than reason. Take the recent Southport riots. These have been driven not by any rational plan but by the frustrations of Right-wingers and ordinary working-class people that their communities have been forgotten and their concerns about immigration are not being taken seriously by politicians. These frustrations, stoked by fake news, have led them to engage in infantile actions like vandalizing mosques and setting fire to police cars, all of which hurts their cause more than help it. It does, however, make them feel good for the moment, and they live mostly for the moment.

As for Left-wing neotoddlers, their motivations tend to be more complex (but no less childish), because they’re generally much more affluent than Right-wing neotoddlers. For instance, an analysis by the Washington Monthly revealed that the Gaza campus protests were largely confined to the most expensive and elite colleges. And Just Stop Oil members are themselves quick to admit that their movement is “privileged” and living in a white middle-class “student bubble”.

This is no accident: it’s often the prosperous, not the downtrodden, who have a greater motivation to protest. As the philosopher Eric Hoffer explained in his 1951 book, The True Believer:

There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.

People need struggles. If their supply of problems dwindles too low, they begin to embellish the problems they already have, or invent completely new ones. As Hoffer writes:

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.

The young and privileged are particularly prone to this. They don’t have to worry about money, nor do they have homes or families of their own, so they have nothing to lose, and nothing to conserve. This gives them both the need to find struggles and the luxury to be radical.

Overall, Left-wing neotoddlers and Right-wing neotoddlers tend to come from different demographics — with the former being younger, richer, more educated, and more female than the latter — and this gives them different motivations, and different modus operandi. For instance, research suggests that the cluster-B trait of narcissism takes a different form in the two groups. In Right-wingers, it mostly manifests as a sense of entitlement, while in Left-wingers it mostly manifests as a need for exhibitionism.

This is born out in the different approaches Left-wingers and Right-wingers take towards their public tantrums. The nuisance-protests of right-wingers are primarily attempts to relieve their frustrations at not getting what they want. As such, they typically take the form of straightforward thuggery and hooliganism: starting fires, overturning cars, and hurling bricks.

In contrast, Left-wing nuisance-protests tend to be less about relieving frustration and more about getting attention directly. As such, they’re usually more calculated and creative: throwing soup over paintings, releasing insect-swarms into hotels, or, most recently, painting the hands of a statue of Anne Frank red.

Generally, the Left-wing approach is more effective at getting attention; it took mass destruction by hundreds of Right-wingers in Southport to make news headlines, but it only took two Just Stop Oil activists with orange paint at Heathrow to achieve the same.

Left-wing nuisance-protests are also treated more kindly by the mainstream. Right-wing protests tend to be roundly condemned by polite society, firstly because they tend to be more violent, and secondly because upholders of mainstream culture — such as liberal journalists, academics, and entertainers — are culturally programmed to dismiss concerns about Islam or immigration as “far-Right”, placing such concerns outside the bounds of polite discourse (and into the hands of actual extremists).

In contrast, Left-wing neotoddlers are generally viewed by Western cultural elites as well-meaning. When Left-wingers recently flooded the streets of Walthamstow to counter-protest the Right-wingers, they were lauded by many Western outlets — from the BBC to NBC — as spreading peace and unity, even though the Labour councilor Ricky Jones used the protest to demand that his fellow Left-wingers slit the throats of Right-wingers.

The West’s mainstream knowledge-producing institutions, from academia to the liberal media, tend to be populated mostly by Left-leaning people who see Left-wing neotoddlers as a force for good because they’re broadly ideologically aligned with them and judge them by their perceived intentions rather than their results. For this reason, the mainstream treats Left-wing neotoddlers as its golden child, always seeing the best in them, while Right-wing neotoddlers are treated like the red-headed stepchild, worthy only of scorn.

This is particularly true at universities, where conservative speakers are routinely shouted down, and students are overtly encouraged to campaign for Left-wing causes, while also being taught that speech is violence and it is therefore acceptable to shut down speech they don’t like by making loud noises. The universities’ decades-long encouragement of cluster-B infantilism reached a tipping point this summer with the campus protests. We saw the students put everything they’d been taught — exhibitionism, catastrophization, and hysteria — into practice. The protests quickly came to resemble a LARP. Whenever the protesters occupied a new part of the campus, they hung banners and declared it liberated. All this liberating eventually made them feel hungry, but when they demanded refreshments from university officials, and were denied, they claimed they were being deprived of “basic humanitarian aid” and might die of starvation.

This kind of grandiose fantasizing is emblematic of people with narcissistic traits because it makes their struggles seem bigger than they actually are. As such, we commonly see similar kinds of catastrophization among other flavors of neotoddler; every flood or forest fire is an omen of “climate catastrophe”, biological facts about sex are “erasing trans people” and immigration is “white genocide”. Such histrionics, whether propagated in error or with intention, serve to manipulate other hysterical people into becoming neotoddlers.

And the grim irony is that, by believing the world is worse than it actually is, neotoddlers make the world worse. Their disruptions and vandalism exert a huge economic and social cost on society, and they prevent ordinary people from getting to work, attending funerals of loved ones, and meeting vital medical appointments.

Unsurprisingly, the harm neotoddlers cause to liberal democracies has endeared them to foreign dictators. The Ayatollah developed a soft spot for the Ivy League campus protesters, cheerleading them on X, and even writing them a letter of support. It also recently transpired that Iran has been funding and directing neotoddlers across the US, and that they even masterminded an anti-Israel protest at McGill University in Canada. Meanwhile, the fake news that sparked the Southport riots was amplified by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and even Russian state TV.

So how do we end this age of neotoddlerism? The simplest way would be to cut off its main source of support. And that isn’t the Ayatollah or Putin, or even the universities. The neotoddlers’ main source of support is, in fact, you and I.

Neotoddlerism endures because it’s much more effective at making news headlines and going viral than traditional forms of protest. As a case in point, on 22 June, celebrity environmentalists like Emma Thompson and Chris Packham led a huge march of over 60,000 people through London, to raise awareness of habitat destruction and wildlife loss. It received little press coverage. Around the same time, a handful of Just Stop Oil protesters squirted orange paint on Stonehenge; it made the front page of every major UK newspaper and received coverage in the global press too.

Likewise, last week in London, there was a generally peaceful march against mass immigration, involving tens of thousands of people of all ethnicities, and led by figures like Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox. It was ignored by most of the press. One week later, when Robinson embraced his inner-toddler and stoked violent riots, they made global headlines.

At a time when competition for attention is fierce, it makes business sense for the press and social media platforms to boost stories that outrage people into clicking and sharing. Such platforms naturally form a symbiosis with people who seek to outrage their way to fame: demagogues like Robinson; vandals like Just Stop Oil “poster girl” Phoebe Plummer; and more bizarre figures still, like the “performance artist turned political activist” Crackhead Barney, who wears little but a diaper and seeks to save Gaza by being as obscene as possible.

By giving these figures platforms, we’ve not only allowed them to proselytize to huge audiences, but we’ve also turned them into idols — living testaments that you can get what you want by acting like a baby. Imagine how horrifically a toddler would behave if his every tantrum made world news?

And we can’t blame the media for this; they’re just showing us what we want to see. It is ordinary people who have made being a public nuisance pay. Neotoddlerism needs nothing more than attention to thrive — it is physical clickbait — and we just keep clicking.

The more we share and comment on clips of people throwing soup over paintings, or graffitiing on memorials, or vandalizing mosques, or blocking roads, or spraying orange paint at airports, or pitching tents on university campuses, the more we’ll see such events recur in real life.

The solution to neotoddlers, then, is the same as the one to regular spoiled brats: to ignore their outbursts and deny them attention. The media will stop reporting on their meltdowns when we stop engaging with them. They’ll stop amplifying — and thereby incentivizing — the neotoddlers when we do.

If we gave less attention to those who outrage us, and more to those who inspire us, it would incentivize young people to invest their idealism in, and derive their purpose from, finding practical solutions instead of merely restating the problem in ever sillier ways. So we should learn to react more slowly to news, to pay attention to what we pay attention to, and give more of our attention to behaviors we wish to encourage. It’s not just the neotoddlers who need to be less impulsive, we do too.

And if we take the time to consciously focus our attention, we find there are many people in this world who actually deserve it. While Greta Thunberg became world famous by yelling and blocking entrances to public buildings, the Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has been quietly removing plastic from the oceans through his startup, The Ocean Cleanup. His project recently hit a milestone of 15,000,000kg of trash removed from oceans and rivers worldwide, but it’s hardly been reported by the press.

We don’t yet have any start-ups to clear the oceans of rubber dinghies, but such a thing is possible, if addressing illegal immigration can be made more palatable to polite society. And that will only happen when the people who wish to “stop the boats” refrain from acting like the violent thugs they’re often stereotyped as, and start supporting practical, adult solutions.

Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviors validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.

#Gurwinder #neotoddlerism #neotoddler #neotoddlers #tantrum #actions have consequences #consequences #attention seeking #hysteria #religion is a mental illness

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kick-a-long · 4 months ago

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so let me get this straight. elon musk retweeted or tweeted an antisemitic comment (because he's an antisemitic asshole from a very antisemitic country south africa) and he was critizised to the point that he took a trip to israel to like reflect and learn about how jews don't eat babies or whatever. but...

Ta-Nehisi Coates, an antisemitic asshole who's antisemitic dad also publishes antisemitic books just one's he's too lazy to write, says in person, recorded on video, without retraction.... that he would join in on the rape, murder, infanticide, and kidnapping of jews, if given the chance... and trevor noah (from very antisemitic country south africa) agreed whole heartedly and adding that it's like the american revolution.... which implies that isreal rode into gaza and lebanon ans was dictating how those countries operate and taking taxes which is WHAT IRAN DOES THROUGH HAMAS AND HEZBOLLAH ALONG WITH THE RAPES AND MURDERS... but there's no media outlet saying that might be kind of fucked up and maybe they should apologize or some vague insincere bullshit... I'm sorry?

and also Christopher Columbus... THE symbol for Catholics in America (which is why we that monster even got his own day. literally catholics, the knights of columbus, wanted a celebration of how interconnected the united states and CATHOLICS are) the Christopher columbus with MASSIVE statues around the globe in portugal, spain, america, italy... that guy is now jewish, just like hitler, because .... he has some jewish DNA. and we are just disregarding his recorded actions, relationship to the church, his very catholic life, lifestyle, origins, and catholic life.

and all this during the jewish christmas/ramidan (because goyim don't know what the fuck our high holy days are even if that name alone should tell you exactly how important they are) ??

which idiots are these things for? who is watching the ta interview and saying to themselves, "boy i would love to read the book by the guy who loves murder and kidnapping and rape! what a leftist humanitarian!" or, "WOW! I hate christopher columbus I'm so glad i don't have to feel guilty as a christian that he was under orders by my church because he was obviously a jew going rouge. because i'm a leftist but also a devout catholic? which is a thing that is a totally consistent world view?"

Who asked for this? I don't think this kind of shit is even for antisemitic leftists anymore. this is for some kind of POC leftist white supremesist with white guilt but also an arab supremasist .... i guess that might describe one or two very mentally ill people but... like ... who? is this stuff to get rage clicks from jews? there aren't that many jews you guys. I have no fucking understanding of these people's world's view other than they hate jews. none of this makes sense in any other way than to attack and increase attacks on jews around the globe. it's so mentally confusing because none of these people are saying anything that benefits them in anyway, nothing that is smart or true, nothing that makes sense if it is not generated directly from the thought, "this will increase jew hate, so i should do it!"

these people are risking their careers, being hella racist about arabs generally and Palistinians specifically, making both jews and arabs less safe, saying inflammatory things they obviously spent very little time thinking about, for the chance to normalize antisemitism. what planet are these media orgs even living on? they don't sound like nazis, they sound like fucking delusional Qanon derps who are improving "the day of the storm" ironically like the segments they show on the daily show, with TREVOR NOAH.

it's like really... sad. like, these guys and scientist have wasted so many people's time and their own talents which people tell me they have i guess, but it's sad that this kind of libel from the media doesn't even make sense to people who don't live on twitter.

#jumblr #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #israel #jewish #hamas #palestine #gaza #judaism

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lukesvangelista · 5 months ago

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𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐀𝐘 𝐖𝐄'𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍ᵃᶠ¹⁹

in which adam’s deepest regret is loving you too deeply.

warnings; argument between a couple, angry adam, allusion to the events that happened about a month ago

Adam Fantilli had been in love with you for as long as he could remember. The two of you had met in New Hampshire, when Adam had decided to follow Luca to boarding school to play hockey. The two of you had hit it off immediately, meeting in history class his first year there. Within a few months, Adam had asked you to be his girlfriend.

Over sophomore year, he had decide to take some advanced classes, graduating a year early before heading off to Chicago with Luca. You stayed behind in New Hampshire, finishing out your junior and senior year at the academy. Adam ended up playing with the Steel for two seasons, and despite the distance, the two of you remained strong. You'd come visit him over long weekends and holiday breaks, even visiting his family in Nobleton a few times.

Everything was perfect, and continued to be when he signed at Michigan.

You didn't follow him to Michigan, choosing to go to college in Chicago after falling in love with the city. And as much as it sucked, the two of you were used to the distance by then, so it didn't affect much. FaceTimes and phone calls were constant, and some of the boys would even tease Adam about how whipped he was. As much as he tried to ignore it, he couldn't deny it.

He finished the year out at Michigan, declaring for the NHL draft after just one season. You were extremely proud of him - winning the Hobey Baker award as a freshman was no easy feat and he deserved nothing more than to play in the NHL. When he was drafted to Columbus, he finally asked you to follow and move in with him.

So you did. As much as you loved Chicago, you would drop everything for him. Instead of transferring, you talked to your advisor and decided to go virtual for the remainder of your time at college. And as you settled into Adam's apartment in Columbus, everything was perfect.

But now, the apartment was suffocating with tension, the air thick with words unspoken and emotions bubbling too close to the surface. You stood near the kitchen counter, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself, trying to shield yourself from the storm that was building between you and Adam. You'd been through a lot together - much more than most couples your age - but tonight, things felt different. It wasn't about the little things you guys usually bantered about, like leaving clothes on the floor or who was supposed to take out the trash. Tonight's argument ran deeper.

You knew he was having a hard time with the start of the season, especially with what had transpired over the past few weeks. The air inside and outside of the locker room was different, and not in a good way. It was understandably taking its toll on Adam. You tried to be there for him, you really did. But he had shut you out, the distance between the two of you increasing even though you were standing right there in front of him. You guys weren't 15 hours away from each other anymore. Hell, you weren't even four hours away from each other anymore. But right now, it sure felt like you were.

"Why do you always have to make things so difficult?" Adam muttered, his back turned to you as he stared out of the window, watching the rain patter against the glass.

You stared at him in utter disbelief, "I make things difficult?" you echoed, your voice a little higher than you intended, "You're the one who's been avoiding me for days! I just want to know what's going on with you, Adam. Why won't you talk to me?"

Adam turned around, his face a mix of frustration and exhaustion, "Because I'm tired, Y/N! I'm tired of always being the one holding everything together. I can't do this all the time!"

Your heart sank at his words, "You think I don't feel the same way? You think it's easy for me?" your voice cracked, and you bit your lip to keep the tears from falling. "I get it, Adam, I do. You're under a lot of pressure with hockey, and I know you're grieving. But that doesn't mean you get to shut me out! All I want is to help you."

His jaw clenched, and his hands balled into fists at his sides, "I'm not shutting you out."

"Yes, you are!" you snapped back. "You haven't said more than ten words to me all week unless it's about something trivial!"

"Maybe I don't have the energy to talk about the heavy stuff right now!" Adam's voice rose, echoing through the apartment. His eyes, usually soft when they looked at you, were now filled with a fire that matched your own. "Maybe I just need some space without you always breathing down my neck, waiting for me to fall apart.

You felt like you had been slapped. The weight of his words hit you square in the chest, making it hard to breathe, "So that's what you think of me? That I'm just... waiting for you to mess up?"

Adam groaned, running a hand through his messy hair in frustration, "That's not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?" your voice was softer now, trembling slightly. You were tired of this, tired of the fight, tired of feeling like the two of you were on the verge of breaking.

Adam looked at you, his expression torn between anger and regret. His chest heaved as he tried to find the right words, but in the heat of the moment, he couldn't stop himself.

"I wish I loved you less!"

The words hung in the air like a weight neither of you could lift. Time seemed to stop, and the silence that followed was deafening. You stared at him, your heart shattering into a million pieces as his words echoed in your mind on repeat.

"You... what?" your voice was barely a whisper, but the hurt in it was unmistakable.

Adam's eyes widened, as if he hadn't fully realized what he's said until it was too late, "Y/N/N, I-"

"Don't Y/N/N me," you whispered, your voice dripping with pain as you shook your head, taking a step back from him. "No. Don't you dare. You don't get to take that back."

He tried to reach for you, but you pulled away from him, "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then what did you mean, Adam?" your voice broke, the tears finally spilling over. "Because it sure sounded like you meant every word."

Adam's heart sank as he watched you crumble in front of him. He wished he could take it back, but the damage was done. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the sound of your crying, "I'm so sorry."

You wiped at your face with the sleeve of your sweater, but the tears wouldn't stop. "Do you even hear yourself? You just said that you wish you didn't love me as much as you do. What am I supposed to do with that?"

He stepped closer, desperation lacing his voice. "I didn't mean it that way. I just... God, Y/N, I love you so much it hurts sometimes! And when things get hard like this... I don't know how to handle it. I feel like I'm failing you."

Your breath hitched at his words, but you still couldn't look at him. "You don't have to be perfect all the time, Adam. I don't need you to have all the answers. I just need you to be honest with me."

He nodded, his heart aching as he reached out and gently touched your arm. You winced, pulling away slowly. The hurt in his eyes mirrored your own, and he continued, "I am being honest. That's the problem. Loving you is everything to me, but it scares me too. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you. That's why I said what I said. I wish it didn't feel so... all-consuming."

You finally looked at him, your eyes red and filled with pain. "You don't get to say you wished you loved me less, Adam. If this is too much for you, then maybe-"

"No," Adam interrupted, panic flashing in his eyes, "Don't say that. Please. I don't want that."

You sighed, shaking your head at his words. "I don't want that either, Adam. That's the last thing I want. But I can't be here right now."

His face twisted in heartbreak, but he let you continue. "I'm going to call Odette and see if I can stay with her and Zach for a bit. Call me when you figure it out."

With that, you left to go to your guys' shared bedroom. Adam whispered your name over and over again in protest, but you ignored him. As much as you wanted to turn around and hug him, you couldn't be around him with that he just said.

You slipped into the shared bedroom, quietly closing the door behind you, your back resting against the cool wood as you took a shaky breath. The silence in the room felt suffocating, and stark contrast to the muffled sounds of Adam moving around in the living room. Everything between the two of you felt frayed, like a thread pulled too tightly, on the verge of snapping. You can’t bear to look at the room you’ve shared for so long — every inch of it filled with memories, good ones, but also the ones that now haunted you.

Your hands trembled as you unlocked your phone and scrolled through your contacts, hovering over Odette's name. You hesitated, the weight of the decision pressing down on your chest. Should you really leave? Could you even explain what happened to someone else when you barely understood it yourself?

But you needed space - space to think, to breath, to not have Adam's face constantly reminding you of everything you guys were struggling through. So, with a deep, unsteady breath, you tapped Odette's name and listened as the phone rang.

"Hey!" Odette's cheerful voice came through the line after a few rings. The brightness in her tone felt like a stark contrast to the dark cloud hanging over you.

For a second, you almost lost your nerve. How could you drag someone else into this mess? But you forced yourself to speak, your voice barely more than a whisper, "Hey, Odette. I, um... I need to ask you something."

Immediately, her tone shifted. "What's going on?" her voice was gentle now, concerned. "Are you okay?"

You swallowed hard, trying to push down the lump in your throat. "I... I was wondering if I could stay with you and Zach for a few days. Just until I figure things out."

There's a pause, a heavy silence that filled the space between the two of you, and you worried for a moment that you've overstepped, that you asked for too much. But Odette finally spoke, her voice soft but firm. "Of course you can, love. But what's going on? Why do you need to leave?"

You squeezed your eyes shut, a tear slipping down your cheek as you wrapped your arms around yourself, curling in on the bed like you could hold yourself together. "It's Adam," you admitted, your voice breaking. "We had this fight... I don't even know how it started, but it just kept spiraling. It feels like everything's been spiraling, and I just... I can't stay here right now. I need space, and I don't know how to get it when he's here, constantly reminding me of what's wrong between us."

Odette's sigh was audible through the phone, and when she spoke again, her voice was laced with empathy, "Oh, Y/N, I am so sorry. I know how much you care about him."

You bit your lip, trying to hold back the sob that was clawing at your throat. "It's so hard, Odette. It feels like I'm drowning, and I don't even know how to make it stop. I love him so much, it hurts. But I don't know who I am when we're constantly fighting."

"You don't have to explain it all right now," Odette assured you, "Just pack a bag and come over. You're welcome here for as long as you need. I'll be here, and we can talk whenever you're ready, okay?"

You nodded, even though Odette couldn't see you, a fresh wave of tears filling your eyes. "Thank you," you whispered, your voice shaking, "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You don't have to do this alone, Y/N," Odette said softly. "We'll figure it out together, okay? Zach and I will be here. Just come over whenever you're ready."

The call ended, and you stared at the phone in your hand, the silence in the room feeling even heavier now. Your eyes drifted to the framed photo on the nightstand - you and Adam, arms wrapped around each other, smiling like you didn't have a care in the world. It felt like a lifetime ago, like you were different people back then. Maybe you were.

With a shaky breath, you rose from the bed and started packing a bag, each item a reminder of the life you're stepping away from, even if just for a little while. Every drawer you opened, every glance at the room you shared, made your heart ache. But you couldn't stay. Not like this.

As you zipped up the bag, you paused for a moment, glancing toward the door. You know Adam is just outside, probably sitting on the couch as he pretended that everything was fine, that the two of you hadn't been drifting apart for weeks. Part of you wanted to go to him, to tell him everything you're feeling, to fix it. But the other part - the part that'd been breaking under the weight of the unresolved tension, the part that Adam said he wishes he loved less, knew that you needed to leave. You needed to find yourself again before you lost everything, including your own sense of who you were.

With one last glance at the room, you grabbed your bag and quietly opened the door, slipping out before the weight of it all pulled you back in. "I'm going, Adam. Call me when you're ready to have a civil conversation."

Adam just stared at you as you left. There seemed to be no reconciling what he had said.

He sat on the couch, his leg bouncing restlessly as the reality of what just happened hit him. He could still hear the hurt in your voice echoing in his head. He'd said things he didn't mean, and the look in your eyes before you walked away... that's something he would never forget.

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm the knot of panic tightening in his chest. His first instinct was to call Luca, but as he thought more about it, he realized he couldn't do that. Luca was too much like him - impulsive, emotional. He'd tell his younger brother to stand his ground, but Adam knew that this wasn't the time for that. He needed someone who'd be calmer, more rational. Someone who could actually help.

There was only one person he could think of.

Without overthinking it, Adam scrolled through his contacts and tapped on Kent's name. It was late, and for a moment, he wondered if he should even be calling him right now. But the phone rang, and Kent picked up, his voice groggy on the other end.

"Adam? What's up, man? You okay?"

Adam swallowed hard, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He felt like the air in the room was pressing in on him. "I screwed up, Kent. Big time."

Kent was quiet for a second, but Adam could almost hear him sitting up, fully awake now. "What happened?"

Adam took a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut like it might make the guilt a little easier to bear. "Y/N and I had this fight. I don't even know how it started, but it just... got worse and worse, and I... god, I said some things I shouldn't have. And now she's talking about leaving. Like, actually packing a bag and going."

He expected Kent to immediately start calming him down, to say something reassuring, but instead, there's just silence on the other end of the line. The longer Kent said nothing, the worse it made him feel.

"You're telling me she's leaving?" Kent finally said, his voice more serious than Adam was used to hearing. "Like, leaving for good?"

"I don't know," Adam admitted, his voice barely more than a whisper. "She called Odette to stay with her and Zach for a few days. I didn't mean for it to get this bad, Kent. I didn't think it would ever come to this."

"Well, what'd you say during the fight that could've made her leave?"

Adam paused, not wanting to repeat the words that caused so much damage.

"I said that I wish I loved her less."

Kent exhaled sharply, and when he spoke again, Adam could hear the disappointment and anger laced in his tone, "What made you think that that was ever okay? Adam, man, you fucked up. Big time."

Adam's heart dropped into his stomach, and he leaned against the couch, letting KJ's words hit him full force. He expected it, but hearing it out loud still stung.

"I know," he muttered, running a hand over his face. "But what do I do now? I don't want to lose her."

Kent paused again, clearly thinking through his words carefully before speaking. "If she's walking out like this, and understandably so, may I add, you can't just sit there. You need to do something. Sooner rather than later."

Adam's throat tightened as the weight of Kent's words settled in. He knew that Kent was right. You were not just upset. You were on the edge of something bigger, something that could end everything between you two. And if he didn't act now, he might lose you for good.

"But what if..." Adam trailed off, staring blankly at the floor, his voice barely audible. "What if it's already too late?"

Kent's voice softened, but it was still firm. "It's not too late if you don't let it be. You've got a window, but it's closing fast, dude. You need to talk to her - really talk to her. No more fights, no more letting things spiral, no more saying stupid fucking shit. If you love her as much as you truly do, you have to prove it, Adam. Right now."

Adam nodded, though he knew Kent couldn't see him. He knew what he had to do, but the thought of facing you right now, of admitting how badly he'd messed up, terrified him. The hurt in your eyes was burned into his memory, and the guilt felt like it was choking him. But if KJ's right—and he knew he was—then waiting isn’t an option.

“Thanks, Kent,” Adam said, his voice raw with emotion. “I’ll fix this. I have to.”

“Yeah, you do,” Kent replied, his voice softening again. “Just don’t wait too long, okay? You can’t afford to.”

With that, Adam hung up. His heart raced as he stood up, his feet feeling heavier than they've ever felt as he walked toward the bedroom door. His hand hovered over the doorknob, and for a split second, he wonders if he should give you more time. But Kent's voice echoed in his head - "you can't afford to wait."

His heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn't bring himself to walk inside your room. The weight of your fight, of everything he'd said in the heat of the moment, felt like it was too much to face right now. You had gone to Odette's anyway, and he knew that you needed time.

With a heavy sigh, Adam pulled out his phone and stared at the screen, the blank text message to you glaring up at him. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard, unsure of what to say. He wanted to fix it, but he'd never been great with words when it came to you. Maybe giving you the night, letting you breathe, was the only thing he could do right now.

i'm sorry. i know you need space, and i'm giving it to you. i don't want to make this worse. but when you're ready, i'm here. i'm ready to talk in the morning. i need to fix this. i love you.

He stared at the message, reading it over a dozen times, wondering if it was enough. He didn't want to sound desperate, but he also didn't want you to think he’s not willing to fight for you. With a shaky breath, he hit send.

As the message went through, Adam sat down on the edge of the bed, running a hand through his hair. The silence was deafening, and the absence of your presence was suffocating. He couldn't help but wonder if this is what it would feel like if you left for good.

All he could do now was wait for the morning, for you to text him back, for the two of you to finally talk civilly and try to fix the cracks that had been growing between you. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but the thought of losing you was more painful than any fight he'd ever had.

To his surprise, you texted back almost immediately.

i'll meet you at the apartment tomorrow night. don't screw this up, fantilli.

The next day, Adam waited impatiently for you to come back home. He knew you weren't going to be happy to see him, as Kent had repeatedly reminded him at morning practice. He could tell he fucked up badly when Zach glared at him through almost the entire practice, too.

But now, Adam's back was against the window as rain pattered against the glass, his eyes staring firmly at the door, waiting for you to walk through. It was as if you read his mind. Not even a minute later, you walked through the door, hair messy and dressed in a Blue Jackets hoodie.

He smiled softly at you, but you didn't return it. Instead, you took a seat at the kitchen counter, your eyes focusing on him as he slowly made his way over to sit down next to you.

"I'm sorry, Y/N. I am so fucking sorry for everything," he started immediately, emotion lacing his voice, "I don't want to break up. I don't want you to go."

You sighed, crossing your arms over your chest. You didn't want to go either, but the truth of the matter was that he had hurt you. His words had cut through you like a knife, stabbing you right in the heart. It felt like five years had been flushed down the drain.

"Then what do you want? Because I can't keep doing this if you're going to push me away every time things get tough."

Adam took a deep breath, his shoulders slumping as he finally let down the walls he’d been holding up for so long. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you, Y/N. I just… I’m scared. I don’t know how to balance everything.”

Your face softened slightly, though the hurt was still there. “Then let me help you. We’ve been together for so long, Adam. Don’t shut me out now.”

He stepped forward, pulling you into his arms. You resisted at first, but eventually melted into his embrace, your face buried in his chest. “I’m sorry,” Adam whispered again, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”

You nodded against him, your arms wrapping around his waist. “I’m scared too, you know,” you admitted quietly. “But I’m here, Adam. I’m not going anywhere. But you cannot do this again. I deserve to be treated better than that."

Adam nodded profusely, "It won't happen again, I promise. Kent drilled that into my head all of last night and today. I fucked up, and I realize that. I love you so, so, so much, Y/N. More than you will ever know."

You nodded, and he rubbed his hand along your back, trying to make sure you were really there in front of him.

"I love you too, Adamo."

For a while, the two of you just stood there, holding onto each other as the rain continued to fall outside. The fight wasn’t over - you still had plenty of things that needed to be talked about - but for now, you were okay. You had each other, and in the end, that was what mattered most.

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fannyyann · 5 months ago

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Matthew Tkachuk on friend, former teammate Johnny Gaudreau: ‘I’m going to keep his memory alive’

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Matthew Tkachuk, reigning Stanley Cup champion and prince of South Florida, was bouncing off the walls at the Baptist Health IcePlex on Tuesday. He delivered light cross-checks to his Florida Panthers teammates and led the pack in conditioning drills, and his mouthguard received its customary chomping.

It appeared to be business as usual for the young star who is always occupied with something, whether it be selling the sport in Florida or partying with the Stanley Cup all summer.

Right now, that might be for the best.

Tkachuk’s dream summer turned into a nightmare when he learned of Johnny Gaudreau’s death on Aug. 29.

Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew, were killed in a traffic crash in Oldmans Township, N.J., outside Philadelphia. Police said the brothers were riding bicycles when they were hit by a driver trying to pass an SUV on a two-lane road.

Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau played together for six seasons with the Calgary Flames, a couple of American kids taking western Canada by storm, often on the same line. The two left the Flames in the summer of 2022, Gaudreau signing as a free agent with the Columbus Blue Jackets, while Tkachuk was sent to the Panthers in a blockbuster deal.

Tkachuk, whose life has been a whirlwind for months, hasn’t had enough time to process Gaudreau’s death in the month since it happened.

“You put so much work into a season, that’s where all of your energy goes,” Tkachuk said. “Then you make the playoffs. You make the Final. And then, when it was over, we got to celebrate this summer. It was the greatest summer of my life, and some of the most incredible memories were made. But then, right at the end of this amazing summer, the unthinkable happened.”

Gaudreau took Tkachuk under his wing in Calgary, and a forever friendship was formed. Understandably, Gaudreau is on Tkachuk’s mind every day, but that was already the case long before Gaudreau was gone.

“Ever since I left Calgary and came to Florida, all I ever do is tell stories about Johnny,” Tkachuk said. “At one point, I was probably telling the guys down here a Johnny story once a week. I was always talking about him, about something funny he had done, something he had done in practice, whatever. He was the kind of guy that you could never get out of your mind, and I hated being away from him.”

Gaudreau and Tkachuk talked all the time after leaving Calgary, and while they badly missed playing together, they looked forward to having another opportunity to wear the same jersey and maybe even play on the same line.

The NHL 4 Nations Face-Off — a tournament among the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden — will be in less than five months in Boston and Montreal. Then, in 2026, NHL players will return to the Olympics for the first time since 2014. Between the NHL balking at its season being delayed and COVID creating havoc with the 2021-22 schedule, NHL players have not participated in the Olympics for a decade.

“You have to understand that Johnny and I talked about being in the Olympics together a lot,” Tkachuk said. “In 2022, when they canceled us from being in the Olympics, we were so upset. We were both playing really well together in Calgary and we thought we were going to be so good in the Olympics. We talked about it all the time. That was a tough one. He had played for Team USA in so many big events, and I know it meant a lot to him. Obviously, we would have been together this time. It’s tough to think about right now. But I know he would have been excited for those tournaments and he will be on my mind during those times even more than he usually is.”

Tkachuk doesn’t require nor ask for any sympathy. He simply misses his friend.

“Trust me, I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the NHL,” he said. “I get to play a sport that I love, and it’s my job. And I get to play it (in Florida), which, in my opinion, is the best place in the league. The lifestyle. The fans we’ve developed down here. The way our fan base is growing and growing every day. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere other than this place. It really is the best, and I’m so lucky to have this life. I came here to win a Cup. I looked at this group of guys and I knew it could be done. I knew something special could happen. I guess I was right.”

Tkachuk’s emotions will surely peak in a few weeks, when the Panthers play on Oct. 15 in Columbus for the Blue Jackets’ home opener. In lieu of typical opening night ceremonies, the Blue Jackets will honor the memory of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau.

“I really haven’t thought about that night too much just yet,” Tkachuk said. “But I have a feeling that it’s going to be pretty tough to play that night. It’s not just me that’s feeling it, obviously. The whole league is feeling it right now. Anyone who knew him is feeling it even more.”

Tkachuk is busy preparing his Panthers for a chance to claim back-to-back championships. Dynasties aren’t much of a thing in the modern-day NHL, but the Panthers have won the Cup once, have been to the Final two years consecutively, and their core remains in its 20s.

“We can do something special,” Tkachuk said.

Even still, a small part of his mind remains focused on the international tournaments, where he’ll never get the chance to play with Gaudreau again. But he does have a chance to honor Gaudreau during those tournaments.

“It’s been a really, really, really tough few weeks,” he said. “I still can’t even believe it. It’s just so sad. All of it.”

While sitting and looking down at the Panthers practice facility, Tkachuk’s face alternates emotions, his mind churning.

“You know, the thing that’s getting me through this is those stories I was telling you about,” he said. “Those stories about him I tell all the guys constantly. I’m going to keep those stories with me forever and I’m going to keep his memory alive in everybody by continuing to tell those stories.”

He hopes to generate another story involving Gaudreau when the Olympics arrive.

“He would have been there and wearing that Team USA jersey meant a lot to him,” Tkachuk said. “It means a lot to me, too. When I’m there, he will be on my mind the whole time. Even more than usual. And I’ll be telling stories.”

#since it's paywalled i've decided to just copy the whole thing over so everyone can know how much matthew loved johnny #i am so sad #'i hated being away from him' 😭😭😭#johnny gaudreau #matthew tkachuk #matthewjohnny #2425

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radiojamming · 9 months ago

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Hey guys! We're looking at another severe weather outbreak tomorrow evening/night and it's shaping up to potentially get nasty. Like, bad enough that storm chasers I know are already either leaving for southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma, or backing out entirely because they're worried about what's going to happen. Last time, the post I made got a little bit of traction, so I thought I'd go for it again on the off chance that it's helpful at all.

Here are the following regions currently set to be impacted, according to today's (5/24) outlook from the Storm Prediction Center:

MODERATE (MDT): Oklahoma City, OK; Tulsa, OK; Wichita, KS; Norman, OK; Lawton, OK

ENHANCED (ENH): Kansas City, MO; Overland Park, KS; Kansas City, KS; Topeka, KS; Olathe, KS

SLIGHT (SLGT): Lincoln, NE; Springfield, MO; Abilene, TX; St. Joseph, MO; Fayetteville, AR

MARGINAL (MRGL): Dallas, TX; Columbus, OH; Fort Worth, TX; Cleveland, OH; Omaha, NE

The SPC will update this forecast tomorrow (5/25) morning and will monitor it throughout the day and make changes if need be.

Here are my tips (as well as @fruitsmother's great advice!) from the outbreak two weeks ago.

Another great resource for right-to-the-minute weather updates is Ryan Hall, who will more than likely livestream tomorrow and is great about providing watches and warnings as they come in and giving advice about what to do. He also runs a 501(c)(3) non-profit The Y'All Squad that provides assistance and relief in areas hit by severe weather events.

Just to hit some key points for this forecast and reiterate the biggest pieces of advice:

These storms are forecasted to produce damaging winds, large hail, and potentially strong or violent tornadoes. These storms may hit during the night, meaning there will be low visibility. Do not just rely on sight to monitor the weather; rotation may occur right above you and not all tornadoes are immediately visible. Listen to NOAA weather radio, news stations, or any other resource you may have.

If the weather gets bad, go to a basement or the lowest level of a building. If the building doesn't have a basement, go to the most interior room (usually a bathroom or closet) with no windows. If in a bathroom, consider bringing in couch cushions, pillows, or a mattress to cover yourself in case of falling debris.

Stay away from windows, especially with the potential for high winds and hail. Do not open your windows (see: common tornado myths).

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE TO WATCH. Even if there isn't a tornado, flying debris and huge pieces of hail falling at incredible speeds are a real issue! If you've never gotten clocked in the head with an ice chunk, now is not the time to find out how it feels!

If you haven't already done so, now is the best time to consider your severe weather plan and set up your safe place. Some items you might want to have on hand are things like flashlights or lanterns, extra batteries, phone chargers, food, water, clothing, blankets, several days' worth of medicine if needed, and a first aid kit. If you have pets, it might be best to put pet carriers, extra food, water, leashes, or anything else you may need in this area as well.

Review some basic first aid skills and tips.

If you're on the road, do not go up under an overpass. This is very '90s advice and has been proven either ineffective or outright dangerous. Go into a ditch and try to get yourself as low as possible.

In the worst case scenario of a tornado or other destructive event (microbursts, derechos, etc.), be a help, not a hindrance! Don't clog roadways; allow emergency personnel to get where they need to go!

Just as well, this is not a day for amateur storm chasers. Chaser convergence has been a real problem this year and as we've learned (unfortunately) in the past, tornadoes don't always follow their usual rules, which can put even the most seasoned chaser in danger. This is going to be a great day to watch Pecos Hank or Skip Talbot videos while being as safe as possible.

I'll keep you guys updated as the models from the SPC change or if anything else comes up. Mostly, stay safe!

#severe weather #wx posting #long post #i'm in the enhanced zone and in enhanced i'll stay #i'm not going downstate no sir not getting out of this chair

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1800naveen · 7 months ago

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Empire of Storms...what the fuck?

"You could, you know," Rowan said, his tattoo stark in the lantern light. "Take it for yourself. Take it all. Use Maeve's bullshit maneuvers against her. Make good on that promise."

There was no judgement. Only frank calculation and contemplation. "And would you join me if I did? If I turned conqueror?"

"You would unify, not pillage and burn. And yes-to whatever end." "That's the threat, isn't it?" she (Aelin) mused. "The other kingdoms and territories will spend the rest of their existence wondering if I will one day grow restless in Terrasen. They will do their best to ensure we stay happily within our borders, and find them to be more useful as allies and trade partners than potential conquests. Maeve attacked Eyllwe's coast, posing as me, perhaps to turn those foreign lands against me-to hammer home the point I made with my power at Skull's Bay...and use it against us."

He (Rowan) nodded. "But if you could...would you?" For a heartbeat, she could see it-see her face, carved into statues in kingdoms so far away they did not even know Terrasen existed. A living god-Mala's heir and conqueror of the known world. She would bring music and books and culture, wipe out the corruption festering in corners of the earth...

She said softly, "Not now."

"But later?"

"Perhaps if being queen bores me...I'll think about making myself empress. To give my offspring not one kingdom to inherit, but as many as the stars."

WHAT IN THE FUCK??

YOU WANT TO BE A COLONIZER, AELIN? YOUR OWN HOME WAS COLONIZED AND NOW, YOU WOULD TURN CONQUEROR IF BORED?? NAH, THAT'S CRAZY. SJM, YOU WERE NOT COOKING WITH THIS.

I SAW PEOPLE BE OKAY WITH HER SAYING THIS AND YES, THEY WERE WHITE. WHAT POC WOULD AGREE WITH THIS?? "But she wouldn't be like other conquerors! She would be kind!" A CONQUEROR IS A CONQUEROR.

I DON'T WANT A MF IN MY COMMENTS TRYING TO SAY SOME BULLSHIT. I'M FROM A COLONIZED COUNTRY MYSELF, IT ENDS WITH THE PEOPLE NATIVE TO IT EITHER DEAD OR ENSLAVED. I HAVE A REASON TO BE WEIRDED OUT BY THIS.

THE CONQUERORS I FUCK WITH IS AEGON, VISENYA, AND RHAENYS.

AELIN COLUMBUS, HEAD ASS.

🎨: Art done by Mads Schofield!

First, it was Feyre Columbus dismantling the spring court and getting parts of the summer court too and now, Aelin Columbus joking about conquering Erilea😔

Bryce baby, don't let me down when I read Crescent City🙏🏾

#throne of glass #aelin galathynius #aelin critical #throne of glass critical #empire of storms #anti throne of glass #sjm critical #anti sjm #fuck colonization

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huuuuughes · 1 month ago

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Swaymas - Chapter 6

Summary: The dreaded holidays have almost arrived, and everyone says that there is always a bit of calm before a storm...

Word count: 4.3k

Warnings: fluff mostly, sprinkled with some angst. theres some real stuff comin up so i didnt wanna make it too heavy!! however jeremy "my wIFE" swayman!!!!!!

a/n: sorry for the lack of posting the last few days. the new year has not been kind to my house, to say the least. were still truckin tho <3

One last game before the holiday. One more game before you could turn off your microphone, shut down your laptop, and put your things away for 48 hours. Or at least until you had to board a plane to Columbus, but you were trying not to think about that for a moment at least. If your life had gone the way you thought it was supposed to, you’d be married to Brian right now somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean on your honeymoon. You’d probably be by yourself, doing the things you planned because Brian didn’t actually care. Funny how life could change so quickly and look so differently than it did before. Instead you looked down at the new ring on your finger, the one given to you by Jeremy. It gave you the warm fuzzy feeling you were supposed to have when you looked at your ring.

You had yet to contact your parents again. You didn’t really want to, you just wanted to enjoy a holiday for once and enjoy it for what it was. Being alone with your thoughts was never fun but at least it gave you time to decide that waiting until after holiday craziness would be the best way to deal with your own parents. You were in charge of your own life now, and you had tried to tell them before. They didn’t care about you for you, they cared about appearances. But now you had to focus, just one more day.

Having to be at the rink at different times kind of sucked some days but it meant you got to come home together at the end of the night. You got to see him come in for his arrival in his holiday suit that you helped him pick out with the socks he was so excited to show off. Speaking of showing off, you hadn’t slept together since that night in Vancouver. Your brain couldn’t decide if it was because he wasn’t actually falling for you and he only slept with you because he was just really in the mood and you were there, or if he was and now he was scared or if he didn’t want to cross some kind of invisible boundary or if his head was just too in the hockey-zone or something, but he hasn't touched you like that again. Cuddling at night sure, but nothing like that. It kept that tiny little part in the back of your brain that reminded you that this whole thing wasn’t real on paper.

Focus Y/N. You don’t need to think about that right now.

Tonight’s game was against the Washington Capitals, and the Bruins needed a win to keep their motivation going. You didn’t need to think about that right now. You were here to do your job, to help Jeremy and the team. You could figure everything else out later. You've found yourself saying that phrase a lot lately.

Tonight was all about the game.

As the players took the ice for warm-ups, you slipped into your usual rhythm. You caught the excitement in the air, the tension of the game that everyone could feel. The Bruins were in a good spot, but a loss tonight could throw them off course. You had a feeling they were ready for it, though—Jeremy was determined. You could see it in his eyes, his energy as he moved through his pre-game routine.

You sat at the side, typing out notes for your upcoming report, but you couldn’t help but glance over at him every now and then. There was something magnetic about him. It had always been there, but now, it felt different. You had become so used to him being around that it almost felt like he’d always been a part of your life. The routine of it was comforting, even if there were things about the relationship you weren’t sure of yet. You could become so sure because of how sure he was. It was infectious, his smile. It wasn’t perfect, but you weren’t expecting perfection. You were both figuring it out as you went. And that was okay.

You focused on the game as it began, the puck moving up and down the ice. The energy in the arena was electric, the fans on their feet, rooting for the team. Jeremy had a strong first period, keeping the Capitals from getting too comfortable. The tension in the air was palpable, but you could see the Bruins pushing, knowing how much this game meant. By the second period, the Bruins had managed to score a couple of goals, taking the lead. The team was hungry for this win, and you could tell they weren’t going to let it slip away. You couldn’t help but smile when Jeremy caught your eye from across the ice. You kept each other motivated throughout the night. His look was brief but filled with meaning, a little reassurance.

You had no idea what the future held, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. For now, you had the game, you had Jeremy, and you had something real—something that felt like it was worth fighting for. The rest of the game was a blur of plays, penalties, and cheers. In the end, the Bruins walked away with a well-earned win, the crowd roaring as they celebrated. The team skated off the ice, heading to the locker room for their post-game routine.

You stood up, feeling a strange sense of pride—pride for them, pride for the team, and maybe a little bit of pride in the fact that you were here, in this place, with Jeremy and so many of the people that you now cared about. It was hard to think that you even worked here with Brian at all. Had you ever enjoyed being here this much before? It didn’t even matter anymore, you were finally starting to believe yourself.

You weren’t the lead reporter that night, and that was fine by you. Everything was set and ready to be published on the website and where it needed to be, which meant you were now free. At least as free as the outside stressors of the world would allow you to be. For the first time in what felt like forever, you let yourself just be.

In the quick time it took to get home, Jeremy was practically carrying you inside the apartment from how tired you were. The weight of the day had finally caught up with you.

“I know we’re both exhausted, but just a few more minutes okay? Don’t open your eyes until I tell you to.”

You sighed. You didn’t have the heart to tell him that surprises honestly made you really anxious but for him, maybe you could learn to enjoy them.

“Just a couple of minutes,” he said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

You raised an eyebrow, a little confused but intrigued. “A surprise? You know I’m way too tired for surprises right now, right?”

He chuckled softly. “Trust me, it’ll be worth it. Just let me do this for you, okay?”

You gave him a weary but affectionate smile, deciding to play along. “Fine, but you’re lucky I’m exhausted, or I’d totally fight you on this.”

Jeremy grinned and led you to the couch, urging you to sit down while he went to grab whatever this surprise was. Your mind was already feeling hazy from exhaustion, but you couldn’t help but feel a flutter of curiosity.

A few moments later, Jeremy returned holding a small, carefully wrapped package. He placed it gently in your hands, his eyes warm with affection. “Go ahead, open it.”

You slowly unwrapped the gift, your heart skipping a beat when you saw what was inside. It was a framed photo of the two of you, taken during the Bruins’ family skate. It wasn’t just any photo—it was a candid shot of you laughing as you tried (and failed) to skate gracefully with Jeremy by your side, his hand on your back, steadying you. The joy in both of your faces, the carefree moment captured in time, made you smile. It was a snapshot of your life now, of all the things that had changed in such a short amount of time.

“Jeremy... this is perfect,” you said, your voice thick with emotion. It wasn’t just a picture—it was a memory, a reminder of the laughter, the love, and the way everything was slowly falling into place. It was real. It was something to show off the two of you, in a space you now shared. This seemed to be very real to him.

He smiled softly, his eyes tender as he watched you. “I thought it would be nice to have something to remind us of that moment. Of yesterday, and all of the craziness recently.”

You felt your heart swell, the gesture small but so meaningful. “It’s perfect,” you whispered again, brushing your thumb over the photo frame as if trying to soak in the memory of it.

“Good,” he said, before gently taking the photo from your hands and placing it on the coffee table, before sitting down beside you. He then turned toward you, his hand lightly resting on your shoulder, a comforting weight. “But that’s not all, okay?”

You raised an eyebrow in curiosity but also exhaustion. “Jeremy, you’re already spoiling me.”

His smile was soft as he looked at you. “Just trust me.”

He then stood up, moving around you to grab something from the other side of the room. You closed your eyes for a moment, trying to keep your energy up, but Jeremy came back a moment later with a tray—on it, a steaming mug of hot tea, a small candle lit beside it, and a bowl of your favorite chocolates.

“I figured,” he began, his voice a little quieter now, “after a long day, you might need a little more care. Something to help you unwind.” He set the tray carefully in front of you. “I know you’ve been working hard, and it’s been a lot lately and now you’re in a new space, so I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

You blinked up at him, touched. His thoughtfulness, even after a full NHL game, never ceased to surprise you. “Jeremy, you didn’t have to do all of this. I’m fine.”

“I know you are,” he said gently, “but you deserve to take a break, too. It’s okay to take a moment for yourself.” He sat beside you again, his hand resting on yours. “Just let me take care of you tonight, okay?”

You smiled softly, feeling your heart settle with a sense of peace you hadn’t realized you were craving. “You really are something else.”

“Just doing what feels right,” he replied, brushing his thumb over your hand with a slowness he knew you would notice. He was looking at you in a way that said something, but you didn’t know what. You couldn’t read him like that quite yet. “Now, drink your tea and relax. I’m here. Whatever you need.”

As you sipped the warm tea and let the soft glow of the candle fill the room, you realized just how much his presence, his thoughtfulness, was all the holiday warmth you needed. It wasn’t about the big gestures or extravagant presents—it was the small things, the moments that made you feel seen, loved, and cared for. You’d never been good at accepting those types of things, you’d been doing them for yourself for so long.

He sat next to you, massaging out the knot in your shoulder you didn’t even realize was there. Each sip of the tea warms you from the inside out and helps the tension ease from you little by little. You thought it would make you more tired, but it didn’t. You hadn’t noticed at first, but he had put on your favorite movie. How he had even found out what that was, you’d never know, but at this point you weren’t going to question his superhero methods. You guessed it was his way of performing everyday miracles, and you were going to let him. Once you were finished with your tea and chocolate, you leaned into him and let the comfortable silence settle over you.

“Hey..psst. Where do you want to sleep? Your room or my, I mean our-” He whispered, but got confused in asking his own question.

“What?” You replied, a little out of it.

He chuckled softly at your confusion, his fingers still gently massaging your shoulder. “I don’t think attempting to sleep on the couch together would be very comfortable. Do you want to sleep in your room, or should we just stay in mine? I know we shared on the road and I know it’s a weird question, but I was thinking... You know, we’ve kind of been living together like this, and I just want you to be comfortable. You’re tired and I’m nervous, I’m sorry.”

You blinked a few times, your brain still a little foggy from the warmth of the tea and the calm of the night. The question wasn’t something you’d expected, but now that it was asked, it felt like a good one. The thought of where to sleep, of how the two of you had settled into this strange and new routine, was suddenly much more important than you realized. Being on the road and having a routine was one thing, being at home and having one was another.

"I mean… we’re kind of sharing the space already, right?" you said, your voice soft as you tried to gather your thoughts. "And it’s... been nice, the way things feel here. So maybe we should just stay here? Together, I mean. Not out in the living room. You’ve seen me naked Jer, I think we’ve gone there already haven’t we?"

You thought about the night you shared in Vancouver again, and how you hadn’t crossed that line since. Your brain is awake now, and on high alert. The hairs on the back of your neck were standing up, and it was almost like you felt a feeling move down your spine.

Jeremy’s hand paused on your shoulder, his fingers stiffening for just a moment before resuming their gentle rhythm. His laugh was soft, more of an exhale than anything else, but there was something charged in the air now, something unspoken.

“Yeah, Vancouver was… different,” he said quietly, almost like he was testing the waters.

He was the one who mentioned it by name. He called you wife and he wore the ring, but his hesitation told you that he was just as nervous as you were. He also needed reassurance.You could feel the weight of the memory creeping in. Vancouver had been unexpected—a night where boundaries blurred in the chaos of being on the road. It had been both too much and not enough, and since then, you’d both danced carefully around it, as if pretending it hadn’t happened would keep things simple.

Except things weren’t simple anymore. Everything that had happened since you’d been back had thrown the two of you for a loop.

“I didn’t mean to bring it up like that,” you murmured, suddenly unsure if you’d made things awkward.

“It’s okay,” he said quickly, his voice low and steady. “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it.”

That caught your attention. Your gaze snapped to him, finding him looking at you with an expression that was a mix of uncertainty and something else—something deeper.

“You’ve thought about it?” you asked, your voice quieter now, almost afraid of the answer. No, you were afraid of his answer.

He shifted, his hand falling away from your shoulder as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t. But I didn’t want to push or, like, make it weird. It’s just… you’re important to me. And Vancouver—it felt important, too.”

The room felt impossibly quiet. You could hear your own heartbeat, feel the way your hands fidgeted against your lap.

“Jeremy…” You hesitated, unsure if you were ready to cross that line again—or if you even knew where the line was anymore. “It was important. But I don’t know what it meant. Or what it means now.”

He nodded, his lips pressing into a thin line. “Yeah. Same here. But maybe we don’t have to figure it all out tonight?”

There was relief in his words, and you realized it mirrored your own. He wasn’t asking for answers, just honesty.

You managed a small smile, the tension easing just slightly. “Okay. No overthinking tonight. Just sleep.”

“Just sleep,” he agreed, though there was a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.

This time, when he stood and offered his hand, you took it without hesitation. “Come on,” he said softly, his voice warm and reassuring. “Our room, right?”

“Yeah,” you said, letting him lead you toward the bedroom. “Our room.”

The next morning, the light streaming through the curtains was soft and golden, a quiet prelude to the day ahead. The first time you and Jeremy would host a gathering together—officially, as a married couple. You enjoyed that you both celebrated different holidays, and being able to learn so many new things from him. At least hosting people gave you something to do rather than sit there and be alone with your thoughts, which was never a good idea around this time of year.

The weight of it hit you the moment you opened your eyes. The conversation from last night lingered in your mind, threading through the dreams you couldn’t quite remember. Jeremy’s words, his honesty, had settled somewhere deep, easing some of the tension you hadn’t realized you’d been carrying. Beside you, Jeremy stirred, his arm instinctively reaching out to rest across your waist. His hand brushed against your hip, and when his eyes blinked open, they softened at the sight of you.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep.

“Morning,” you replied, smiling despite yourself.

He tilted his head, studying you for a moment. “You okay?”

You hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Just… a lot on my mind.”

“Dinner?” he guessed, his lips curving into a knowing smile. He brought you in closer to him, so that you were backed up against his chest. His bedroom had an amazing view of the Boston skyline, one that you weren’t going to get sick of any time soon. You could lay here with him for hours if you weren’t careful.

“Dinner,” you confirmed, groaning as you sat up. “And everything else. It feels like a lot, you know? Like I have to prove something tonight.”

Jeremy sat up beside you, his hand finding yours. “You don’t have to prove anything,” he said firmly. “This isn’t a test. It’s just us, sharing the holidays with people we care about. No one is going to question anything, especially if Charlie told anyone about seeing us in the hotel—” He gave your hand a small squeeze. “We’re doing this as husband and wife. That’s it.”

You looked at him, his words grounding you. “Husband and wife,” you repeated softly, letting the weight of the phrase settle over you.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice lighter now. “And if we burn the food or run out of booze, they can deal with it. This is about us.”

The day unfolded in a blur of preparations. Between cooking, cleaning, and setting the table, you and Jeremy moved seamlessly together, your usual rhythm punctuated with the occasional shared laugh or playful nudge. You had even managed to send your parents a quick text, saying you would meet them but not until returning from Columbus. You would take your control back, whether they wanted you to or not and they were not going to take your first enjoyable holiday away from you.

By the time the doorbell rang that evening, the house felt ready—cozy and warm, the soft glow of the tree lights casting a festive charm. Jeremy shot you a grin as he opened the door, greeting the first couple with an easy laugh and a handshake.

As more guests arrived, the house filled with laughter and conversation. You floated through the gathering, keeping drinks filled and plates replenished, but the nerves still lingered beneath the surface. It wasn’t until Jeremy called for everyone’s attention that you realized how much he’d noticed.

“Alright,” he said, standing in the middle of the living room with his glass raised. “Before we get too deep into the night, I just want to say something.”

You froze, heat rushing to your cheeks.

“This is our first time hosting as a couple—officially,” he said, glancing at you with a soft smile. “And yeah, it’s a little nerve-wracking, but I’ve got to give credit where it’s due.”

He turned fully to you, his voice steady and sure. “She’s made this place feel like home. She’s part of me now—not just because she’s my wife, but because of who she is. I believe in her so much, and I hope she starts to believe in herself too. To Y/N!”

A ripple of agreement passed through the room, accompanied by warm smiles and clinking glasses. You felt the burn of unshed tears and shot him a look that was equal parts gratitude and exasperation.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you murmured when he crossed the room to stand beside you.

“Yeah, I did,” he said, his voice low. “Because it’s true.”

The rest of the evening unfolded in a swirl of warmth and joy, the kind that only comes from good company and the holiday season. Everyone filled the house with stories, laughter, and the occasional teasing remark that had everyone grinning. At first, you focused on the tasks at hand—making sure plates were full, drinks were topped off—but slowly, you began to relax, letting yourself enjoy the night as much as everyone else. Hockey didn’t make for the easiest holiday season, and not everyone was able to travel home or have their families come to them. You were happy to be the place that others were able to come to, and feel like they had a home as well.

Jeremy was everywhere, effortlessly hosting with a mix of charm and warmth that made everyone feel welcome. He seemed to be so good at it, blending in with groups of people but then being able to cozy up in the corner with you unnoticed and make you feel comfortable. You should have known he would be right and everything would end up being fine. The world didn’t always end in disaster, at least not when he was around.

After dinner, the group gathered in the common areas and the twinkle lights you had stolen from your apartment living room bathing the room in a low light that felt comforting to you. Someone suggested a game, and before long, the competition was in full swing. You would think that maybe a game would help them be a little more relaxed, but then again competitiveness between friends only increased when they were off the ice you had learned. Shouts of victory and exaggerated groans filled the air as Emily viciously defended her argument of the definition of the color turquoise in hues and cues. Apparently the lighting in the room needed to be adjusted for proper play.

During a quieter moment, Emily sat down beside you, nudging your arm. “You’ve outdone yourself tonight,” she said with a grin.

“Thanks,” you said, though a small part of you still wasn’t sure.

“No, really,” she pressed. “You’ve got this knack for making people feel comfortable, and tonight? You’ve made it feel like home for all of us. Who knew falling on a treadmill would get you exactly where you needed to be?”

Her words stayed with you, lingering even as the evening began to wind down and guests started trickling out. You stood beside Jeremy at the door, exchanging hugs and warm holiday wishes. With each departing guest, your nerves faded a little more, replaced by a growing sense of pride. When the last couple left, the house fell into a calm quiet. You leaned against the door, letting out a long breath.

Jeremy turned to you, his face soft with a mix of pride and affection. “You were incredible tonight,” he said, his voice warm.

You gave a small laugh, shaking your head. “We were incredible tonight.”

He stepped closer, his hands finding your waist. “Sure, we were a great team. But you made it something special. You brought everything together—you made it feel like us.”

His words hit you square in the chest, their sincerity impossible to ignore.

“Thank you,” you murmured, your voice quieter now. “For saying that. For believing in me.”

Jeremy leaned in, brushing a kiss against your forehead. “Always,” he said softly. “You’re my wife, Y/N. Believing in you? That’s just part of the deal.”

“Say that again.”

“What?”

“The second part.”

“My wife?” His mouth curved up on one side, catching on to your question.

“Mhmmm..” You leaned into his embrace, enjoying the space you had newly created. Tomorrow you’d host Jeremy’s family and that would be a whole different rollercoaster, but for now you just had this, and you wanted to enjoy it. His words carried a weight that felt steady and grounding, settling into the spaces you hadn’t realized were still raw.

For the first time in a long while, you didn’t just hear the words—you felt them. And as you stood there in the glow of the twinkle lights, arms wrapped around each other, you realized that tonight wasn’t just a successful dinner. It was proof that you were starting to believe in yourself, too.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Swaymas Masterpost

#danielle writes #nhl #hockey #goalie #jeremy swayman #jeremy swayman fic #jeremy swayman x reader #boston bruins #jeremy swayman x reader angst #jeremy swayman x reader fluff #jeremy swayman fluff #jeremy swayman imagine #jeremy swayman x reader fic #boston bruins fic #goalie fic #jeremy swayman angst #swaymas #swaymas 2024

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mpreg98 · 4 months ago

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The Secret Burden of Columbus

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic Ocean on a voyage that would change the course of history. His goal: to find a new route to the riches of the Indies. But Columbus carried more than just the hopes of Spain on his journey—he carried a secret that only a few close confidants knew. Against all odds, the famed explorer was pregnant, a mystery even to himself and those around him, defying the natural order of the world.

Concealing his condition under layers of heavy clothing, Columbus bore the physical and emotional weight of his pregnancy while commanding the expedition aboard the Santa María, alongside the Pinta and the Niña. Navigating through treacherous seas, fierce storms, and the unknown, Columbus’s body became a battleground. While his men believed in the promise of discovering new lands, Columbus was fighting a more personal struggle: balancing the responsibilities of leadership with the physical demands of his condition.

Despite the swelling of his belly and the strain on his body, Columbus remained determined, never wavering in his ambition to make history. He kept the secret hidden, knowing that any sign of weakness could undermine his authority among his crew. As they neared the shores of what would later be called the New World, Columbus pushed through exhaustion and discomfort, his vision of success pushing him forward.

Finally, on October 12, 1492, Columbus and his men set foot on what he believed to be the edge of Asia—unaware they had discovered a new continent. Even as he planted the Spanish flag and claimed the land, Columbus knew his journey was far from over. His condition remained hidden, a silent testament to his resilience, and his name would go down in history not only for his discovery, but for the unimaginable secret he carried across the ocean.

Columbus's legacy would be etched into history as the man who bridged two worlds, all while privately enduring the extraordinary task of carrying new life within him

Happy Columbus Day!

#mpreg #mpreg belly #male pregnancy #mpreg art #mpreg kink #belly kink #mpregnancy #tmpreg #pregnancy #belly #columbus day #christopher columbus #ai generated #ai art #ai artwork #mpreg ai #ai #myart #art of mpregworld

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wyattjohnston · 1 year ago

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need a little company - nick blankenburg

summary: morgan hasn't seen nick in years and her strongest memories of him are the crush he had on her in college. when he gets signed to columbus after years apart, morgan realises that maybe she should have given him a chance.

chapter word count: 4.8k

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In a moment of peak doom and gloom, Morgan wished she was at work.

The snowstorm outside was what she’d expected to wake up to; what she hadn’t expected was for her bedside lamp to produce zero light or for her house to be significantly colder than any other morning that month.

She used the last of her hot water to take a shower and then sat on her couch, pretending that she was a good Midwesterner and not affected by a little snow, and hoped that she got a good update on when her power would be back on.

As the morning got later and later, Morgan started to feel a spike of panic—the estimated time for the power being fixed was pushed back every half an hour until it was clear she wouldn’t be seeing light for at least another day, and the window for sorting out where she was going was narrowing.

She needed to get hold of Nick before he left for the airport.

It was becoming a little frightening how quickly Nick answered her calls. They were in their mid-20s, so it wasn’t weird for either of them to have their phone on them at all times. Morgan just usually waited until it rang a few times before answering.

Nick answered on the first ring every time without fail.

“Miss me already?” he asked in lieu of a proper greeting.

Morgan did, truthfully, but she wouldn’t tell him that. “I’m about to ask you something a little wild.”

“I’m listening.”

“So… the storms have, uh, they’ve taken out my power?” she said—asked—cautiously, unsure of how to even approach her wild idea without just blurting it out. “And—I was wondering if I could maybe stay at your place while you’re at home for Christmas.”

Just as quickly as he’d answered the phone, Nick said, “Come to Michigan with me.”

“That’s an even worse idea now than it was last week,” Morgan scoffed, glaring at the flickering shadows created by her candles.

“Why?”

“Because you’re leaving this afternoon. It’s Christmas, and there’s no way there’s any plane tickets left.”

“It’s a four-hour drive. I can’t, but if you don’t mind driving in the storm, we can leave whenever you’re ready, and be there before dinner. I’ll try to get you a ticket right now, though. I’ll call you back.”

“Nick—if you don’t want me staying in your house without you—”

“I don’t want you spending Christmas by yourself. I want to spend Christmas with you, Mo. Can I sort this out and call you back?”

Morgan relented, even if only because she had no clue how else to respond. She waited for him to call back, not knowing if the flight or the drive would be worse for her self-control.

None of it worried her too much from a work perspective, as she used half of her generous PTO to take a break over Christmas when nobody else in the company wanted it.

From a personal perspective… spending Christmas at Nick’s family home with Nick’s family was one of the more daunting things she could think of doing.

Her phone rang after an hour of silence. She’d been preparing herself for a total reversal of his suggestion and was trying to plan how she was going to keep warm until her power was back on.

“We’re going to have to drive,” he told her, sounding a little harried and out of breath. “So, if you can pack enough for four days and walk to mine as quick as you can, we can leave as soon as you get here.”

“Nick… Just get on the plane, I’ll be fine here,” she insisted, hating that he was changing all of his plans at the very last minute just because the universe and the weather hated her.

“No can do. I already told my mom you were coming, and she’s preparing Katrina’s old bedroom as we speak.”

“You can’t use your mom against me.”

“It’s working, though. Isn’t it?”

Morgan huffed, stared out the window at the ongoing storm and bounced on the spot for a moment as she thought over the idea, over Karin expecting her, and finally said, “I need to pack.”

She rushed through packing enough for four nights, including something nice for Christmas Day when Nick made out that it was an all-out, extended family affair that had Morgan returning back to the idea of just staying in her frozen house. She managed, though, and packed far too much for what was essentially a long weekend and met Nick in his garage where he was waiting at his car with a smile even bigger than she was used to.

Relief coursed through her when she saw that his car was still a very sensible Toyota and not an expensive luxury car that he expected her to drive without warning—she hadn’t even realised that was a possibility until she was there.

Nick started talking instantly, setting up the route on Google Maps and hitting play on Spotify. Morgan was actually quite distracted by the CarPlay screen that took up the centre of the console because her car interior had to be pulled apart to plug in an aux cord. The four-hour estimated travel time stared back at Morgan, the longest drive she’d done since driving to Columbus, and she took a steadying breath. Being in a car with Nick for that long was going to be the hardest part of the entire trip.

“So, my mom has set up Katrina’s room for you, and Nolan will be staying in Alex’s room.”

“Nolan?” Morgan clarified, even though she knew it would be Moyle. “Does your family just take in strays?”

“My mom can’t say no to feeding somebody, you know that.”

She did know. Intimately. While she had never been one to focus on her weight, the lack of running in her life combined with the increase in hearty food was making her aware of the scales for the first time in a long time. She would never decline a home cooked meal, though, so it wasn’t worrying her too much.

Nick gave her a quick rundown of his extended family, as well as some extra information about his siblings. Morgan tried to commit it all to memory as best she could, even if she knew she would forget it the second she was faced with an actual person to put to a name.

Two hours into their drive, when they were nearing Toledo, Nick asked, “Do you want to stop for a bit?”

Morgan’s brow furrowed as she looked at their estimated arrival time of just after two. They hadn’t stopped yet, and she wasn’t mad at the idea of driving without a break if it meant getting there sooner.

“I could use a stretch, and I think your knee could, too.”

It wasn’t until Nick pointed it out that she realised she’d been rubbing at her sore knee and couldn’t say how long she’d been doing it.

“Can we stop somewhere I can buy presents?” she suggested, not ready to admit that it was to give her knee a break. Nick wasn’t stupid enough to miss the deflection.

It wasn’t until they were inside a shopping mall that Nick asked who she wanted to buy presents for.

Incredulously, Morgan’s eyes widened, and she scrambled to remember the list she’d been creating in the car, “Your dad? Your siblings? Moyle?”

“Nothing for my mom?” he asked, teasing, and pointing into the Yankee Candle store they were walking past.

Morgan directed him away with a hand on his forearm. It was a very nice forearm, even through his thick sweater. That wasn’t something she had ever thought about.

“I already bought her something when I thought she might still be in Columbus. I was going to run it over to you before you left for your flight.”

She would have had to see him anyway to give him his present to open on Christmas Day. She wasn’t even sure he realised she had something for him tucked away in her bag.

“Nobody is expecting presents,” he assured her, still being easily moved in any direction she led him.

“Sure,” Morgan nodded in agreement, only to immediately continue, “but I can’t just hand one to your mom and not get anything for anyone else. That’s so rude.”

Nick conceded and agreed to help her find something small for his family, only if she promised to not buy anything for Nolan who, he assured her, would not have taken the time to get her anything. That at least made sense to Morgan—nobody had known she was even coming until that morning.

Morgan had never had a more rushed shopping experience—and the only person rushing her was herself. They did manage to get out with presents for Karl, Alex and Katrina. Morgan hoped they were worth it. Even in her haste she made sure to buy something nice, something usable, something they would want. Nick wasn’t always very believable when he was trying to assure her she wasn’t just buying garbage. She didn’t think he was as bad a liar as she was; maybe she was wrong about it.

Walking around and stretching meant that Morgan made it through the rest of the drive without too much pain. There was some ibuprofen in her future regardless.

Karin greeted them when they arrived, Morgan melting into the hug because she missed them even after less than two weeks since her last. Karin didn’t seem bothered by the length of it. Her hug with Nick was just as long, anyway.

Between the three of them—two, really, with Nick on crutches—they managed to bring in everything packed into the Toyota and carry it up to the second floor and the bedrooms. Morgan’s bags were dropped into what she assumed had been Katrina’s childhood bedroom, but she didn’t stay there for very long before she wandered back down the hall to Nick’s room.

“Karl will be home soon, and we’ll have some dinner,” Karin said as they passed each other in the hall.

Morgan knocked on the doorframe to the room Karin had walked out of and tilted her head around the corner when Nick acknowledged her. He was simultaneously packing and unpacking, switching out clothes that he’d brought back from Columbus for things still in his drawers, his bad leg kneeling on a chair that looked like it belonged in the dining room. Morgan sat down on the end of his bed to watch.

Nick looked between her and the door, his cheeks brightening suddenly, and he stumbled over his words, “If we’re in a room together—or if you’re in a room with Nolan—or I guess the three of us together—the door—she knows we’re adults it’s just—a married thing and—”

“It’s fine,” Morgan said slowly with her head tilted. “Doors open. Pretty standard.”

With still red cheeks, Nick’s shoulders fell, and he mumbled, “Feels a bit like we’re in high school.”

Morgan hummed, it did feel a bit unnecessary when they were in their mid-20s and, more importantly, not in a relationship. Them not being in a relationship, though, was all the more reason to let it slide. She had nothing to hide.

A thought crossed her mind, and she couldn’t help but tease, “You bring a lot of girls home in high school?”

“We had, ya know,” Nick mumbled, again, his cheeks growing impossibly redder, “assignments and stuff.”

“Some biology? Human anatomy?” she prodded, leaning forward.

Nick’s head shook, a nervous laugh bubbling out of his mouth, “My mom would have had my head if I’d pulled that.”

“You must have gone wild when you were shipped off to Alberta.” Morgan leant forward so excitedly that she nearly face planted off the bed. “And then to college? Nicholas Blankenburg, have you been holding out on me?”

His laughter stopped, and the mood in the room turned sombre rather abruptly. Morgan sat up straighter, worried about what she’d done to cause the sudden change.

“Was too busy pining over you in college to go wild.”

Morgan’s breath hitched. “You didn’t pine over me for four years.”

“Not four, no.”

Nick smiled gently as he spoke, the eye contact he was making with her, earnest and intense, had Morgan shifting with nervous energy.

“When is Nolan getting here?” she asked, deflecting.

“Right now!”

Morgan’s head snapped to the door at the loud, new voice. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Nolan who had shouted at them. He walked into the room with his arms held wide and made a beeline for Nick. Morgan couldn’t help but feel like she was interrupting something when they hugged each other, speaking to each other in low, excited voices, so she took to looking around Nick’s unexpectedly bare room.

She’d expected more trophies, more jerseys, more proof that he’d played hockey his entire life. There were a few things, some posters and hockey sticks—

“Mo!”

Morgan looked forward to Nolan standing directly in front of her, his arms stretched just as wide as they had been for Nick. She rose to her feet and was immediately swept into a hug as if she was a long-lost friend and not just someone who, for two years, had been in the same, very expanded group.

Regardless, she greeted him happily and warmly. It was a hockey boy thing she’d never forgotten, that they all very much treated everybody they liked as if they were family. Nick’s easy acceptance in her life had been proof enough, but Nolan dropping down onto the bed beside her and starting up his own teasing of Nick did a good job at solidifying it.

Morgan didn’t even think as she followed Nick up the staircase—it was just the two of them, Nolan nowhere to be seen. She stretched out on Nick’s bed after switching on his bedside lamp to light the room, watching as he hobbled around the room, hanging up his coat and removing his tie. The movement was getting smoother, without a doubt, but there was still a noticeable caution.

“Your family is really great,” she whispered. “You’re so lucky to have them.”

She held her breath as he laid on the bed beside her and ignored the swoop in her stomach as he faced her and put his hands under his cheek on the pillow.

“Can I ask why you don’t talk to yours? I guessed it was pretty bad when you didn’t spend Thanksgiving with them, and now you’re here for Christmas.”

Her shrug was awkward, but she tried to buy herself time to think of an answer he would understand.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, it’s… People who are tight with their families don’t always get it.”

The tension that fell over the room was what Morgan had been worried about, the sudden tightness of Nick’s mouth as he considered what she’d said and the inevitable conclusions he would jump to if she didn’t elaborate. Except, if anybody would accept her not elaborating it would be Nick. He very clearly wasn’t going to push her, even if he had started to frown and looked anywhere but her face.

“I haven’t—”

“You don’t have to, Mo, it’s okay.”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family since I left for college,” she continued, her voice firm enough to ensure Nick knew she was comfortable with continuing. “My parents and I never saw eye-to-eye, and they couldn’t stand the idea of me going to college, especially not for cross country.”

“What did they want you to do?”

“Marry Drew, and start popping out kids.” Morgan sighed, saying the real reason, “Stay where they could keep an eye on me.”

“I can’t imagine anyone ever needing to keep an eye on you.”

“I was too worldly for their liking. Made me a bad daughter.”

She smiled—to herself, mostly—forever amused by the idea that she of all people was too worldly, that leaving Ohio for Michigan was some dangerous and exotic adventure, that returning to Ohio was her hooking up with the devil. Nick found it just as amusing, or maybe he just found her amusement amusing because he started smiling, too, and, before Morgan knew it, they were laughing together.

It quickly got out of hand, laughing at absolutely nothing, but hard enough that neither of them was really making much noise.

The distance between them was slowly slipping away as they laughed, Morgan listing forward with every desperate attempt at inhaling. Nick wasn’t leaning away, either, though, not even when the laughter eventually stopped, and they were just lying beside each other again.

With just the bedside lamp lighting the room and a small stream of light coming from the staircase, Morgan was captivated by the angelic glow on Nick’s already soft expression. An admission tumbled from her lips without much forethought; she didn’t even feel panicked by it.

“I regretted saying ‘no’ when you asked me out. Not right away, but you were really good about it and limited the flirting, and by the time you weren’t a freshman, and I didn’t have to feel weird about it… you stopped flirting all together.”

A conflicted grimace morphed onto Nick’s face, not bad enough for Morgan to regret what she’d said, but enough that if she’d known she would have held onto it for another moment.

“It was two-fold: that sort of persistence usually gets creepy, but it also sucked to get shut down like I did.”

“I heard you got a girlfriend.”

“Sophomore year, yeah. After I stopped asking about you all the time other girls started to pay attention to me.”

Morgan didn’t spend much time around the hockey team in her senior year—Nick’s sophomore year. The cross-country team’s strong connection to them had disappeared with the graduation of Sasha and Brendan, and any other friendships that had formed were enough for a plus-one to a party but not for either entire team to show up and wreak havoc.

Those friendships and plus-ones were more than enough, however, to get all the gossip that floated from the men’s hockey team, including Nicholas Blankenburg and his lovely, blonde, rowing team girlfriend.

“Nothing to do with you being twenty-one and on the hockey team?” she teased, combined with a gentle poke to his ribs.

He smirked, even if it was unexpected and self-disparaging, before shrugging coyly and admitting, “It didn’t hurt.”

Silence settled between them, Morgan just choosing to smile at Nick knowingly while still wishing that he’d started at UMich straight out of high school.

Nick’s eyes flickered to the door, and he said, “Hi Mom,” without any reservations, without moving an inch.

“It’s getting late,” Karin said from the doorway. “It might be time to let Morgan get ready for bed.”

Morgan knew that they were being told because Karin didn’t want them sharing a bed. If Morgan was less happy about being there, she might have been offended by the insinuation that she and Nick would get up to no good—they wouldn’t because they weren’t together. There was nothing for Karin to worry about, though, and nothing for Morgan to feel caught about because, despite being quite close to each other, they were on top of the covers, not at all touching.

Nick pulled his phone out of his pocket, then revealed the time to the two of them. It said it was nearing eleven—later than she had expected.

“It is bedtime,” Morgan conceded, rolling to plant her feet on the floor. When she was standing, she stretched out her back—they’d been lying there for a couple hours, and she didn’t realise how stiff she was until she was upright.

“I’ll see you kids in the morning. Make sure you get some sleep; it’s going to be a big day.”

“Course, mom,” Nick said, sitting up against the headboard.

They all said their good nights, and Morgan lingered for just a moment to smile at Nick. She wondered, briefly, what it would be like to stay, to curl up under the covers beside him, but let the thought go.

She ducked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and take off her makeup before she changed into her pyjamas.

Nolan passed the bathroom and stopped in Nick’s door; Morgan only saw him out of the corner of her eye, and she must have been out of sight for him because he didn’t so much as poke his head in to say goodnight.

“I kept her distracted as long as I could, but I’m really bad at rummy, bro.”

Morgan could only assume that Nick responded, but she couldn’t hear; she was a little desperate to know if he had, to know what he’d said, but couldn’t very well ambush them and ask. She kept brushing her teeth and heard Nolan’s side of their conversation, though it was just them saying goodnight to each other.

She and Nolan entered the hallway at the same time, Nolan’s eyebrows raising just a little as they crossed paths. Morgan gave no indication that she heard anything—because she didn’t, really—just said goodnight, that she'd see him in the morning.

In the many years since Morgan had had a proper Christmas celebration, she didn’t think she’d missed it. Her family had been small—her, her parents, her dad’s parents and brother—so it had never felt like the huge affair she saw amongst her friends or on television. The madness around it always felt overdramatic.

Until she saw the Blankenburgs’ Christmas Day.

Despite talking to Nick until late and then lying in bed for far too long replaying their entire conversation, Morgan was roused before eight by a lot of noise coming from downstairs. It sounded like everyone had been awake for hours, they were so rowdy.

She popped her head into the hallway to get a read on if she had the time to have a shower and ran into Nolan at the top of the stairs. He’d been trying to sneak about, judging by the caught-out expression on his face. As soon as he realised it was a very awake Morgan, he grabbed her by the wrist and shouted down the stairs.

“She’s awake!”

Loud cheers resonated from the living room.

Gathered in front of the Christmas tree was Nick’s family—his parents, his siblings and their partners—drinking Karin’s delicious hot chocolate. They were clearly waiting for her to join them before they could start, and it formed a pit in the bottom of Morgan’s stomach.

She rushed to sit beside Nick on the couch, ignoring the skip in her heartbeat at the sight of him in his robe with his hair still in brushed. Everyone was wearing their robes except for Morgan as she’d been ambushed before she had the chance to grab it.

To make up for the lack of an extra layer, she sat so close to Nick she was practically on top of him. He didn’t flinch.

Panic set in when Morgan realised they were going to be opening presents. The process of how they would be opening them hadn’t really crossed her mind, and she was met with the prospect of everybody sitting and watching as each present was opened.

Alex had been given the task of handing out presents which meant Morgan, thankfully, didn’t need to leave Nick’s side. That meant, though, that she got a front row view of him opening her present for him.

There was a very unsubtle theme to her presents—the ‘lucky golf towel’, printed golf socks and a personalised scorecard holder which she honestly had bought blindly with her fingers crossed.

She chanced a look at Nick’s face when he’d opened everything, after seeing him run his finger over the monogram on the scorecard holder, and looked away instantly because she couldn’t bear the softness with which he was looking at her.

When Alex handed her a present from Nick, Morgan frowned at the size and weight of it. She opened it carefully, doing her best to ignore Nick’s close watch.

“Nick, this is ridiculous,” she protested, seeing the Nintendo Switch packaging.

“It’s selfish,” he assured her, his arm finally wrapping around her shoulders. “We can finally play games together when we’re not in the same room.”

She thanked him in a whisper and stared down at the gift. When she lifted her eyes for half a second, she caught Nolan’s eye just long enough to register the wink he sent her way.

And still it paled in comparison to the gift labelled from Mom + Dad. The label itself was enough to make Morgan want to cry, and, when she revealed the small Louis Vuitton bag inside, she just let the tears fall.

“Now I know where he gets it from,” Morgan managed to squeak out, referencing the ridiculousness she had accused Nick of.

Karin told her there was something inside the bag—Morgan couldn’t believe there was more—and, sure enough, Morgan unzipped the bag and pulled out the second part of her gift.

She was out from under Nick’s arm, on her feet and hugging Karin in a flat second.

All because of an apron.

Morgan knew leaving Washington was going to be hard as soon as she’d arrived. Nick was nice enough to let her delay their departure as long as she wanted, though. Their early morning departure time turned to midday, and by midday it was clear they wouldn’t be getting into Columbus until later that evening.

It didn’t matter to Nick when they were driving. He’d originally wanted to be home in time to watch the game against Buffalo on the television, but a snowstorm in Buffalo meant that the game had been postponed, so they no longer had to be back by a certain time.

Just prior to lunch, Karin asked to speak to Morgan privately. Nick was just as confused as Morgan when she looked to him for a clue as to what to expect; Nolan stood beside him wearing his best you’re in trouble face.

Karin shooed the boys away when they lingered. She gestured for Morgan to sit down at the bay window and went about making some hot chocolate while she asked Morgan about if she was going to be alright to drive back to Columbus and when she was returning to work. It didn’t take a genius to work out that it was the lead up to the actual conversation, so Morgan sat patiently until Karin put mugs down on the table and sat down with her.

“I just want to talk to you about your knee.”

Morgan sighed, ignored the instantaneous ache, and nodded because she didn’t know what else she could do.

“It’s fine,” Morgan tried to assure Karin. “It’s really fine.”

Karin hummed, not at all believing it. Morgan needed to get better at lying.

“Nick mentioned that you’ve been trying to run again, and it hasn’t been going so well.”

“Not as well as I want,” she conceded. “But it’s fine. I’m fine. Really.”

“Karl and I have been talking and we know that it must be incredibly hard to get the treatment you need to get better, and it must be equally as terrifying when it’s already not worked so well—we want to give you a loan to get you the medical care you need.”

“You—what?”

Across the table, with her hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, Karin didn’t look as if she’d just offered Morgan wasn’t anything life changing or even important at all. Morgan wrapped her own hands around her mug and drank out of it, the burning of her tongue barely even registered.

“I know that Nick has already offered, but I don’t blame you for saying no to that kind of offer from a friend. We wanted to offer as parents.”

Morgan didn’t tell her that Nick had briefly mentioned the idea of marriage.

She did stumble over some disbelieving thank-yous and some clarifying questions before she started to cry. She had to think about it, of course, whether or not she wanted to be indebted to Karin and Karl—be indebted to the parents of a guy who had quickly become her best friend, and if it was worth the risk of something going wrong and multiple relationships going to shit.

Karin agreed to let her have time to think about it, that nothing needed to be decided any time soon, and that the offer would not be taken off the table.

When the next questions were about the drive back and whether or not the weather was good enough for them to get back safely, it gave Morgan some time to work through it before she was faced with Nick.

#nick blankenburg fic #nick blankenburg imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey imagine #hockey fic #homemade fic #cbj fic #need a little company fic

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dantakeyoman · 1 year ago

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𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐘 | 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐭𝐰𝐨

♡ 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦! 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

♡ * 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒂 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈, 𝒔𝒆𝒙𝒚, 𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒍𝒆, 𝒛𝒐𝒎𝒃𝒊𝒆-𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑱𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏. 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒉𝒊𝒔. *

♡ 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐳𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦 (𝐳𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬), 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝, 𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐞, 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 (𝐨𝐟 𝐳𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬), 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐬, 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐱, 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐬, 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐞𝐭𝐜.

♡ * 𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒚: 𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒌 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒖𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒍 *

𝐎𝐍𝐄

The last six years had been the best years of your life, including pre-Z day.

...

Okay, maybe not best, but very high up there.

Never, in this life or the next, would you have guessed that these people would become such an important part of your life.

Or that your relationship would begin to feel nothing short of familial.

Save for Tallahassee, of course.

You had taken on a sort of motherly figure towards Little Rock, and for Wichita and Columbus...

Maybe one of those laid back aunts?

Anyways, your East Coast tour with the apocalyptic Brady Bunch had brought you to the White House...or whatever's left of it.

The five of you decided to hole up there for a little while and rest in style.

But after a month or so of being cooped up in the mansion, you decided to take up your own form of relaxation by working on one of the limos left in the White House Garage.

It actually worked as a sort of bonding activity for you and Tal, seeing as he was looking for something to fill the Cadillac Escalade sized hole that had been left in his heart.

"I love you so much, baby," Tallahassee cooed, lifting his welding mask with a look of pure admiration, "You're gorgeous."

You rolled out from under the car and lifted your grease smudged goggles, shooting him a glare.

And as if he could feel your gaze, he turned to you, changing his tune.

"Of course, not as much as you, darlin'," he assured, flipping his mask back on and getting to work, "The Beast here's a close second."

"Lucky me," you sarcastically smiled, standing up and grabbing a rag to wipe your hands, "Ya hear that, Little Rock? I'm a narrow first to a car."

She laughed, sitting herself on the table and handing you your toolbox.

You and Tallahassee still hadn't hashed out exactly what you were, or labelled it in any sort of way.

You two had kissed, made out, fucked, but never actually talked about what it meant to one another.

Shoot, you two hadn't even said the L word yet.

But it was just known within the group that you were together exclusively, no names attached, and that was the way it would most likely stay.

"Just goes to show that romance is a bust. There'll always be a tricked out car ready to replace you."

Little Rock looked like she was thinking for a moment, before a smile stretched on her face.

"Well, maybe being first to a car wouldn't be so bad...if we find someone for me," she suggested.

Just as you were about to respond, Tal lifted his mask with an obnoxious laugh.

"Shouldn't be a problem," he chuckled, "As long as you're open to dating zombies."

You facepalmed.

Sometimes you wondered if he had the bone that helps you sympathize just completely taken out his body.

"So you're saying what? I'm never gonna find a boyfriend? Or get married? Have a family?" She asked.

"We're your family, so one outta three ain't bad," he shrugged.

You sighed, covering your face.

That was the worst possible answer.

In an upset huff, Little Rock stormed off, leaving the garage.

And when she was completely gone, you hit Tal in the head with a bolt.

"Ow!" He winced, sharply turning to you as he rubbed the area, "The hell was that for?"

"You need to stop babyin' her," you scolded, starting to pack up your tools and such for the day, "She's eighteen, and she feels a little cooped up at the moment. It's normal. We just gotta find her some people to hang out with."

"We're people," he scoffed, muffled by his mask as he turned off his blow torch.

"Other people her age, Tally," you clarified, turning to him with a tired look.

He let out his own sigh, climbing out the tiny cock-pit of the Beast and taking off his mask.

"I don't understand why she's so antsy. We got everythin' you could ever want right here," he shook his head, undoing his welding apron.

"She's an adult, and she has needs," you started, putting your toolbox in its assigned cabinet, "Needs which, believe it or not, will not be satisfied by killin' zombies or fixin' up cars."

He tilted his head, confused about what you were talking about.

Until you raised your eyebrows with a knowing look, and the realization hit

"She's too young," he immediately denied.

You scoffed.

"How old were you when you had your first?"

...

"That's not important."

"I rest my case," you smirked.

"Even if that was something that was...needed...there isn't a soul for miles," he waved you off.

"Well then maybe soon, we might wanna travel some miles to find her somebody," you huffed, starting to get frustrated with his stubbornness.

"Who? Some random twenty somethin' that wants ta get his wick wet? Or a desperate teen that doesn't know his own ass from a hole in the ground?"

Fair point.

You scoffed.

Annoyingly fair point.

You rolled your eyes, turning away from him to finish cleaning up.

Tal smiled to himself, happy he had won the argument, but after a minute or so, he noticed that you were still icing him out.

And he'd rather have lost then face your cold shoulder.

So he rested his hands on your waist and gently turning you around to face him.

You cocked an eyebrow, and he placed a kiss on your hairline.

"I just wanna do what's best for her. You know that," he said sincerely, leaning his forehead into yours.

In your head, you cursed at yourself, pissed and embarrassed that you were already melting for him.

You knew he hated the cold shoulder.

He knew you liked it when he got soft all of a sudden.

You knew that he hates it when you don't react.

And he knew you went crazy for his accent.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object.

...

You caved.

"You love playin' me for a sucker, donchu?"

He chuckled.

"My favorite pass-time."

"I hate you."

"Wasn't what you was sayin' two nights ago."

"You're sleepin' on the couch."

"An' you're comin' with me," he smirked, pulling you in for a kiss.

You rolled your eyes, but eased into it, throwing your arms over his shoulders.

'This man's gonna be the death of me.'

𝒛 𝒐 𝒎 𝒃 𝒊 𝒆 𝒍 𝒂 𝒏 𝒅

"Hello? Ho, ho, ho!" Tallahassee smiled, popping out from behind his Christmas tree, "Merry Christmas!"

He was dressed in a red blazer with a Santa hat and cotton balls he'd glued in the shape of a beard.

'Oh, no.'

"Hey, Tal," Little Rock sighed.

"Santa," he corrected.

Columbus and Wichita were trying desperately not to laugh, and you pinched the bridge of your nose, tired.

He plopped himself down in a chair, patting his knee for Little Rock to sit, "What would you like for Christmas, little girl? A pony?"

"No, I'd actually really like you to stop calling me little girl," she shook her head.

"Well, technically, you are little and you're a girl," he corrected again.

"Well, uh, I am not a little girl, Santa," Columbus chimed, handing his gun to Wichita and sitting down on Tal's knee, "But do you know what I would like?"

"I don't give a fuck what you like," Tal denied in his Santa voice, shoving Columbus off his knee.

"I'm getting a drink," you sighed, walking over to the President's desk and grabbing his mug, pouring yourself some bourbon.

"That reminds me," Wichita perked up with a smile, "Gifts. We have gifts."

Everyone took a seat on the couches as she grabbed a brown paper bag out from under the tree and handed it to Columbus.

"Oh my God," he went wide eyed with a smile as he pulled out a book, "It's a first edition Tolkien. And you wrote in it. There's my name right there, marring this perfectly preserved paper. And yours, too."

"I actually drew the portrait of you in the back," you smirked, kicking up your feet on the table.

He flipped the book over, opening to the back page to see you had made a horribly drawn stick caricature of him that had an odd emphasis on his hair.

"You didn't stop. Thank you so much," he smiled, giving you a thankful nod before moving to Wichita's couch and giving her a kiss.

"Touching," Tal nodded, going over to the tree and picking up a present, handing it to Little Rock, "I couldn't find any wrapping paper but don't worry, just tear it open. It doesn't matter. S'only Taft."

He literally wrapped the present with a painting of Former President William Howard Taft.

"He was our fattest president, so there's actually quite a lot left over. If you need some wrapping paper," he sighed, "Columbus, I didn't get anything from you."

"I didn't get anything from you," you added, taking a sip of your bourbon.

"Your gift's later," he assured, giving you an awful wink-smirk combination.

You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose as the others caught on to what he was implying.

"With Santa..." Columbus shook his head disapprovingly.

"No one wants to know that," Little Rock shivered.

"Do you ever get sick of sleeping on the couch?" You wondered out loud.

You weren't against the present, not one bit.

But the concept of time and place is something that Tallahassee just couldn't grasp.

Little Rock had torn through the Taft wrapping paper and opened the box to see that it was a fancy looking revolver.

"Just what I wanted. Another gun," Little Rock sarcastically smiled, visibly sinking at the sight of it

"Oh, hey, well, not just any gun. A Colt .45," Tal corrected, pulling out the weapon, "And not just any Colt .45, the King's."

"England? Denmark? Lichtenstein?" Columbus guessed.

"Here we go," you sighed, already knowing what was coming.

He'd talked your ear off so many times about him that you might as well have known the man personally.

"There's only one king," Tal held up a finger, posing like a certain 50s rockstar, "Elvis Aaron fuckin' Presley, the greatest who ever lived. The king of kings."

"Yup," you popped the p, taking another sip of your drink.

"He gave this gun to Nixon when he visited the White House, and I give it to you locked and loaded," Tal smiled, handing it back to her, "Yeah, he used to shoot that Colt in his backyard. King's palace. Memphis, Tennessee. I tell you about Graceland?"

"Only like a hundred times," Little Rock quickly answered.

"We'll go there together someday," he nodded.

"Actually, I'm gonna go shoot this right now," she stated, standing up, "I think I saw some Zs down by the reflecting pool."

"I'll go with," he suggested, but more like insisted.

"I'll go by myself," she assured, frustration showing plainly on her face.

'Oh, shit.'

"It's Christmas," he gasped, offended.

"It's not fucking Christmas, it's November 17th," she scoffed, walking out and slamming the door behind herself.

Tal looked shocked at her sudden outburst, and also slightly hurt.

You groaned, letting your head fall back for a moment.

'It's like shit just goes into one ear and right out the other with this man.'

"Tallahassee, what did we discuss a couple days ago?" You rhetorically asked.

He paused for a moment, slightly nerved by the use of his full name and the sudden question.

...

"I need to stop babyin' her," he answered, the wheels starting to turn.

"And what did you just do?"

".............Baby her."

"Thank you," you smiled, "Now give the damn girl her space."

𝒛 𝒐 𝒎 𝒃 𝒊 𝒆 𝒍 𝒂 𝒏 𝒅

"I mean, it's not like I started wedding planning or anything. I'm not crazy," Columbus vented, now going on month two.

"Who wants to get married in winter? Spring, sure."

You, Columbus, and Tallahassee were currently riding motor scooters around a mall, trying to get over the events of last month.

Tal's Santa display was the final straw for Little Rock.

She was sick of him treating her like she was still twelve, and was sick of having no one her age to talk to about it.

And on top of that, a horribly timed proposal from Columbus to Wichita, which made the woman incredibly uncomfortable.

So they took the Beast and hightailed it.

Again.

So for the last two months straight, the only thing Columbus was willing to talk about was Wichita, Wichita, Wichita.

And it was driving you and Tallahassee up a wall.

Until, he eventually broke.

"I mean with my hair and the humidity-." "Oh, my God, man! I cannot listen to this shit anymore! It's been over a month!"

"Yeah, I'm bereft," he agreed.

"I'm giving you one more day to mope around, and then you gotta snap the fuck outta it," Tal sighed, "This whole finding a home idea of yours has made us soft, and by us, I mean you."

"It's high time that we nut up and hit the road again. And by we, I mean me. That's where I belong. Lone wolf. You are welcome to tag along."

You sighed, massaging your temple.

You had the feeling that Little Rock was going to crack soon.

You knew something like this was gonna happen.

And yet you had done nothing to prevent it.

Now, you were paying the price.

The girls gone.

The guys arguing.

And one skull-splitting headache.

The snarls of a zombie snapped you out of your self-reproaching thoughts, and you let out a sigh of relief.

It was huddled near the mirror of a destroyed clothing store, dressed as if she was once a shopper there.

Tallahassee lifted his gun, about to shoot it when you held your arm out in front of him.

"I'm taking this one," you stated in a tone that left no argument, hopping off your scooter.

The two men turned to each other, one with a look of worry and one with a look of pride.

The zombie continued to hiss, staying in its place as you walked closer, a pissed look on your face.

Noticing a halfway broken bottle on the ground, you kicked it into the monster's face, it letting out an agitated roar and sprinting towards you.

You quickly unsheathed the crowbar from your pants loop and wound up your swing, slamming a full force hit right into the zombie's face.

It fell to the ground, gurgling and spitting up blood, but you pressed on, bashing the poor thing in any and every spot you could reach.

Until eventually it looked like a pile of mushy, bloody ground meat.

"That's gotta be, like, a thirteen-tuple tap," Columbus chimed, feeling sorry for the zombie as you were still beating the living shit out of it, "I'm pretty sure it's dead."

Landing a final hit on her face, you stopped, panting as you looked down at your work.

...

'Yikes.'

Okay, maybe that wasn't entirely about Little Rock.

In all honesty, Tallahassee's talk about striking out on his own made something pang in your chest.

Something sharp.

Something that had never happened before.

You were self-aware enough to know that you'd gotten seriously attached to the man over the last six years, and while he was a major pain in the ass, it would be incredibly hard for you to press on without him.

So, seeing and hearing him say so easily that he should just go off on his own, made you feel like shit.

And a little ashamed, too.

"Got it all out your system?" Tallahassee cockily asked, practically glowing.

He was proud to say that you were his gal.

His sexy, zombie-beating gal.

"Yeah," you caught your breath, tossing the crow bar, "Just needed a punching bag."

"Y'know, I never told y'all this before," he started, your display suddenly reminding him of something, "In fact, I never told anybody."

You turned around to face him, cocking a brow.

Columbus was also intrigued.

"But I have Native American blood coursing through my veins."

...

You did your best to suppress a snicker.

"Like, right now?" Columbus asked, fighting back a smile.

"Yeah, right now. Blackfoot Indian to be exact," Tal nodded, stepping off his scooter and walking over to one of the stores, "The freest men in history. Mid-1800s, roamed the plains, no houses, no laws, no possessions, no chiefs to report to, no wives to listen to."

'Wonder how long they lasted.'

"They listened....to the call of the Buffalo," he smirked, starting to push a bunch of jewelry off a table, "And the hunted those buffalo by herding them off the cliff to their deaths. The Great Buffalo Jump."

You rolled your eyes and turned around to go look for another blunt force object, already sensing a rant coming on.

And Columbus did, too, whipping around his scooter to look for a candle store.

"I don't know why I never told anyone about my Blackfoot blood. I guess it's just a sacred little secret. Honestly, you two are the first non-tribesmen I have genuinely trusted because you've always been there for me. You care and you listen. You really listen."

𝒛 𝒐 𝒎 𝒃 𝒊 𝒆 𝒍 𝒂 𝒏 𝒅

#tallahassee x reader #tallahassee #zombieland x reader #zombieland #zombieland double tap #zombieland double tap x reader

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kemetic-dreams · 8 months ago

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Children of the Ocean God – Head Flattening

Head flattening is a painless, gradual cranial modification procedure, which involved binding a newborn’s head between two wooden boards which were wrapped in a cloth which would be tightened by hand. The pressure of the boards, gently and consistently applied over time, would cause the child’s forehead to elongate, creating a nearly flat silhouette extending from the tip of the infant’s nose to the crown of their head. It is also important to note that head flattening appears to have had no adverse effect on a child’s mental development. Black Caribs were indeed widely reputed to be very crafty huntsmen as well as highly skilled military strategists, both of which suggest that they knew how to put their noggins to use.

Head flattening was practiced by the Black Carib women (many of whom were Arawak) since flat, backwards sloping foreheads were seen as a sign of beauty and perfection. However, they were also other ancillary benefits, in particular for their sons, who would later become warriors. The Black Caribs, as well as other Amerindian tribes, believed that a flat forehead was advantageous in combat since if an arrow struck their head it would bounce back harmlessly. Another added benefit is that flat foreheads were supposed to better able to withstand blows from enemy war clubs.

Interestingly many Europeans who observed the practice of head flattening found it very barbaric and abusive, especially since mothers applied it to their fragile newborns infants. Ironically, in Black Carib culture head flattening was actually seen as a sign of good parenting by a loving mother.

The practice of head flattening was not unique to the Black Caribs and other Amerindian tribes in the Caribbean, such as the Arawaks. In fact, it was widely practiced in the Americas (e.g., by the Mayans and Incas) as well as in other geographies around the world including Europe (e.g., France, western Russia and Scandinavia ) and Central Asia. Intentional cranial modification predates written history and is in fact still practiced to this day in Vanuatu. This makes it one of the oldest continuously performed human customs. Fascinating stuff!

What is the Tainos appearance?

The Arawaks or the Tainos, as some of them were called, were not tall people; they were of medium height or short and generally slim. Christopher Columbus in his journals described them as neither African nor European. It is believed that they had an olive complexion. They also had long, straight, coarse black hair.

The men wore loin cloths and married women wore a nagu , which was like a skirt. They painted their bodies with designs in bright colors.

The Taino people were polytheistic, worshiping a pantheon of many different gods, ancestors and spirits, which they called Zemi. The word zemi was also used to refer to icons and fetishes of the gods, most often made from carved rocks. Atabey was the Taino mother goddess, and goddess of freshwater.

Taíno spirituality centered on the worship of zemis (spirits or ancestors). Major Taíno zemis included Atabey and her son, Yúcahu. Atabey was thought to be the zemi of the moon, fresh waters, and fertility. Other names for her included Atabei, Atabeyra, Atabex, and Guimazoa. The Taínos of Kiskeya (Hispaniola) called her son, "Yúcahu|Yucahú Bagua Maorocotí", which meant "White Yuca, great and powerful as the sea and the mountains". He was considered the spirit of cassava, the zemi of cassava – the Taínos' main crop – and the sea.

Guabancex was the non-nurturing aspect of the zemi Atabey who was believed to have control over natural disasters. She is identified as the goddess of hurricanes or as the zemi of storms. Guabancex had twin sons: Guataubá, a messenger who created hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, who created floodwaters.

Iguanaboína was the goddess of good weather. She also had twin sons: Boinayel, the messenger of rain, and Marohu, the spirit of clear skies

Taínos, a term coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1836.

Taíno is not a universally accepted denomination—it was not the name this people called themselves originally, and there is still uncertainty about their attributes and the boundaries of the territory they occupied.

The term nitaino or nitayno, from which "Taíno" derived, referred to an elite social class, not to an ethnic group. No 16th-century Spanish documents use this word to refer to the tribal affiliation or ethnicity of the natives of the Greater Antilles. The word tayno or taíno, with the meaning "good" or "prudent", was mentioned twice in an account of Columbus's second voyage by his physician, Diego Álvarez Chanca, while in Guadeloupe. José R. Oliver writes that the Natives of Borinquén, who had been captured by the Caribs of Guadeloupe and who wanted to escape on Spanish ships to return home to Puerto Rico, used the term to indicate that they were the "good men", as opposed to the Caribs.

Contrarily, according to Peter Hulme, most translators appear to agree that the word taino was used by Columbus's sailors, not by the islanders who greeted them, although there is room for interpretation. The sailors may have been saying the only word they knew in a native Caribbean tongue, or perhaps they were indicating to the "commoners" on the shore that they were taíno, i.e., important people, from elsewhere and thus entitled to deference. If taíno was being used here to denote ethnicity, then it was used by the Spanish sailors to indicate that they were "not Carib", and gives no evidence of self-identification by the native people.

According to José Barreiro, a direct translation of the word "Taíno" signified "men of the good". The Taíno people, or Taíno culture, have been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawak. Their language is considered to have belonged to the Arawak language family, the languages of which were historically present throughout the Caribbean, and much of Central and South America.

In 1871, early ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton referred to the Taíno people as the "Island Arawak", expressing their connection to the continental peoples. Since then, numerous scholars and writers have referred to the indigenous group as "Arawaks" or "Island Arawaks". However, contemporary scholars (such as Irving Rouse and Basil Reid) have recognized that the Taíno developed a distinct language and culture from the Arawak of South America.

Taíno society was divided into two classes: naborias (commoners) and nitaínos (nobles). They were governed by male chiefs known as caciques, who inherited their position through their mother's noble line. (This was a matrilineal kinship system, with social status passed through the female lines.) The nitaínos functioned as sub-caciques in villages, overseeing the work of naborias. Caciques were advised by priests/healers known as bohíques. Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called guanín, living in square bohíos, instead of the round ones of ordinary villagers, and sitting on wooden stools to be above the guests they received. Bohíques were extolled for their healing powers and ability to speak with deities. They were consulted and granted the Taíno permission to engage in important tasks

The Taíno had a matrilineal system of kinship, descent, and inheritance. Spanish accounts of the rules of succession for a chief are not consistent, and the rules of succession may have changed as a result of the disruptions to Taíno society that followed the Spanish intrusion.

Some Taíno practiced polygamy. Men, and sometimes women, might have two or three spouses. Ramón Pané, a Catholic friar who traveled with Columbus on his second voyage and was tasked with learning the indigenous people's language and customs, wrote in the 16th century that caciques tended to have two or three wives and the principal ones had as many as 10, 15, or 20.

The Taíno lived in settlements called yucayeques, which varied in size depending on the location.

The Taíno played a ceremonial ball game called batey. Opposing teams had 10 to 30 players per team and used a solid rubber ball. Normally, the teams were composed of men, but occasionally women played the game as well. The Classic Taíno played in the village's center plaza or on especially designed rectangular ball courts called batey. Games on the batey are believed to have been used for conflict resolution between communities.

Taíno spoke an Arawakan language and used an early form of proto-writing in the form of petroglyph,as found in Taíno archeological sites in the West Indies.

Some words they used, such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), sabana (savanna), and juracán ("hurricane"), have been incorporated into other languages.

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rabbitcruiser · 4 months ago

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Hispanic Day

Hispanic Day is celebrated every October 12 to mark Christopher Columbus’ first landfall in the Americas. Did you know that Columbus was seeking a direct route to Asia when he discovered the Americas? Spain Hispanic Day, also known as Fiesta Nacional de España or Día de la Hispanidad, is an official holiday in most Hispanic America under different names. All government administrative buildings and offices, banks, and stores are closed for the day. The day shines a light on Spanish identity and heritage — the bond between the old European country and Spanish-speaking Latin America. Learn about the historical significance of this day in Spain.

History of Hispanic Day

Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas significantly changed the continent and Europe, making Spain the first modern superpower and shaping the Americas’ ethnic, cultural, and political landscapes. Columbus’ first voyage to the New World began on the evening of August 3, 1492. He left the harbor of Palos de la Frontera with three ships: Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña, with Christopher Columbus traveling on the first ship.

On October 12, 1492, the crew on the Pinta sighted land and informed Columbus. Then, Columbus and his men landed on an island and were received by the indigenous Arawak people. He later named the island San Salvador, though it was called Guanahani by the locals. He also referred to the indigenous people as Los Indios, creating a generalized term that will be used to describe the indigenous people of North, Central, and South America.

Columbus later continued his voyage, exploring northeast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. In December of that year, Columbus founded the settlement of La Navidad in present-day Haiti and left 39 men there, after the permission of the local chief. On March 15, 1493, Columbus arrived in Spain with native prisoners. His discoveries were received with great celebration and quickly spread across Europe.

On September 24, 1493, Columbus set sail for the New World with 17 ships and about 1,500 men. During this voyage, he encountered the islands of Dominica, Maria-Galante, Montserrat, Antigua, the Virgin Islands, and more. In November 1493, he returned to Hispaniola and established a temporary settlement in La Isabela, present-day Dominican Republic.

The Spanish settlers soon introduced the encomienda system, where indigenous people provided labor for the Spaniards in return for food, shelter, and protection. That, along with the introduction of European diseases and the exportation of enslaved locals, led to a drastic reduction in the indigenous population.

Columbus set sail again on May 30, 1498, locating the regions of modern-day Central and South America. In 1499, Columbus was accused of tyranny and corruption. He and his brother were arrested, shipped to Spain, and spent six weeks in jail. The Columbus brothers were later absolved of all charges by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and got sponsored for their fourth voyage to the New World.

On May 9, 1502, Columbus returned to the Americas with a fleet of 30 ships, but only one made it back to Spain. During this voyage, Columbus explored the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. However, he was impeded by a storm and shipwrecked in Jamaica, where they remained stranded for six months. In a desperate attempt to induce the natives to keep providing for him and his men, Columbus used the lunar eclipse of February 29, 1504, to scare them. He accurately predicted the event using Abraham Zacuto’s astronomical charts. On June 28, 1504, he and his men were rescued, and they arrived in Spain on November 7, 1504.

Spain’s National Day today is a celebration of the country’s heritage. The day is an homage to over 400 million people across continents united by a common language, history, and culture. The quintessential Spanish lifestyle is fully displayed – concerts, street shows, dance, people in regional costumes, and excellent food and wine. The National Day of Spain has faced many changes throughout the 20th Century, but many still regard it as one of the most important days in Spanish history.

Hispanic Day timeline

1492 — 1493

The First Voyage

Columbus sets sail in search of Asia, exploring San Salvador in the Bahamas, the northeast coast of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Haiti.

1493 — 1496

The Second Voyage

Columbus returns to the New World, encountering the islands of Dominica, Antigua, Montserrat, and more.

1892

A National Celebration

Under queen regent Maria Christina, Spain officially commemorates the fourth centenary of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas.

1935

Hispanic Day Celebrations

Madrid celebrates the first ‘Día de la Hispanidad.’

Hispanic Day FAQs

Is Hispanic Day a national holiday in Spain?

Yes. It’s also an off day when government offices, banks, and stores are closed.

How does Spain celebrate Spain Hispanic Day?

Solemn acts of tribute to the Spanish National Flag take place in the capital, Madrid, under the king’s supervision. That is followed by the Armed Forces and State Security Forces parade.

What does Spain call Columbus Day?

Spain Hispanic Day, National Day of Spain, and Día de la Fiesta Nacional.

Hispanic Day Activities

Take a trip to Spain: The day’s celebrations usually extend up to a week, giving people an opportunity to travel to the countryside and explore historical places in Spain. Common destinations for this trip include Aragon and Zaragoza. Book your flight early so you don’t miss out on the celebration.

Soak in the art and architecture: Several Spanish historical sites and museums have an Open Doors Day today. From the Baroque and Renaissance to Gothic influences, Spain’s contribution to art and architecture is immense.

Try a Spanish dish: Dishes such as tortilla Española, gazpacho, paella Valenciana, and fideuá are some of the best the Spanish nation has to offer. Check for a nearby Spanish restaurant and indulge your taste buds with these delicious Spanish cuisines.

5 Interesting Facts About Spain

No lyrics: The ‘Marcha Real,’ Spain’s national anthem, is one of four national anthems in the world with no lyrics.

Border with an African country: Spain is the only country in Europe to have a border with Africa through Morocco.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Spain has the third-highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites globally — 47.

Spanish speakers: There are about 440 million native Spanish speakers globally, making it second only to Mandarin Chinese.

The world’s oldest restaurant: El Restaurante Botín in Madrid, opened in 1725, is the oldest restaurant in the world.

Why We Love Hispanic Day

It sparks a revision of history: Spain’s impact on the New World was huge, and dates like this one both shine a light on it and inspire reflection on how the times have changed. It is an excellent opportunity to learn.

Spanish legacy: Aside from the Spanish discovery of the Americas, Spain Hispanic Day also celebrates its impact and influence over the Americas, especially Hispanic America. Learn all about Spain’s legacy today!

Unity: Spain Hispanic Day is also a celebration of Spanish culture and language. It commemorates the shared history between Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, deepening social, political, and economic ties.

Source

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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 year ago

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By JENNIFER PELTZ

September 11, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

Commemorations stretch from the attack sites — at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — to Alaska and beyond.

President Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage.

His visit, en route to Washington, D.C., from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote.

The hijacked plane attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.

"On that day, we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling — that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,” said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland County.

It’s more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Pentagon and more than three times as far from New York.

But a sense of connection is enshrined in a local memorial incorporating steel from the World Trade Center’s destroyed twin towers.

The predominantly rural county of 25,000 people holds not just one but two anniversary commemorations: a morning service focused on first responders and an evening ceremony honoring all the victims.

Other communities across the country pay tribute with moments of silence, tolling bells, candlelight vigils and other activities.

In Columbus, Indiana, 911 dispatchers broadcast a remembrance message to police, fire and EMS radios throughout the 50,000-person city, which also holds a public memorial ceremony.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts raise and lower the flag at a commemoration in Fenton, Missouri, where a “Heroes Memorial” includes a piece of World Trade Center steel and a plaque honoring 9/11 victim Jessica Leigh Sachs.

Some of her relatives live in the St. Louis suburb of 4,000 residents.

“We’re just a little bitty community,” said Mayor Joe Maurath, "but it’s important for us to continue to remember these events. Not just 9/11, but all of the events that make us free.”

New Jersey’s Monmouth County, which was home to some 9/11 victims, made Sept. 11 a holiday this year for county employees so they could attend commemorations.

As another way of marking the anniversary, many Americans do volunteer work on what Congress has designated both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

At ground zero, Vice President Kamala Harris is due to join the ceremony on the National September 11 Memorial & Museum plaza.

The event will not feature remarks from political figures, instead giving the podium to victims’ relatives for an hourslong reading of the names of the dead.

James Giaccone signed up to read again this year in memory of his brother, Joseph Giaccone, 43. The family attends the ceremony every year to hear Joseph’s name.

“If their name is spoken out loud, they don’t disappear,” James Giaccone said in a recent interview.

The commemoration is crucial to him.

“I hope I never see the day when they minimize this,” he said. “It’s a day that changed history.”

Biden, a Democrat, will be the first president to commemorate Sept. 11 in Alaska, or anywhere in the western U.S.

He and his predecessors have gone to one or another of the attack sites in most years, though Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama each marked the anniversary on the White House lawn at times.

Obama followed one of those observances by recognizing the military with a visit to Fort Meade in Maryland.

First lady Jill Biden is due to lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.

In Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked jets crashed after passengers tried to storm the cockpit, a remembrance and wreath-laying is scheduled at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown operated by the National Park Service.

Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is expected to attend the ceremony.

The memorial site will offer a new educational video, virtual tour and other materials for teachers to use in classrooms.

Educators with a total of more than 10,000 students have registered for access to the free “National Day of Learning” program, which will be available through the fall, organizers say.

“We need to get the word out to the next generation,” said memorial spokesperson Katherine Hostetler, a National Park Service ranger.

#9/11 #New York #Twin Towers #World Trade Center #Pentagon #Pennsylvania #hijacked plane attacks #Heroes Memorial #Patriot Day #National Day of Service and Remembrance #Flight 93 National Memorial #National Park Service #National Day of Learning #National September 11 Memorial & Museum #11 September 2001 #United States #terrorist attack #terror attack

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kingedmundsroyalmurder · 2 years ago

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Fanfiction excerpt, because I had so much fun writing this bit. Welcome to Valancy’s Blue Castle.

Nibbling contemplatively at her cold meal, Valancy sank into the safety of her mind, walking into the royal box at the grand tournament field outside of the castle walls. From there, she would judge the duel to come.

She spent a delightful twenty minutes negotiating the choosing of the champions. It was a beautiful day in Spain -- it was always beautiful in the Blue Castle, unless the day's story called for a storm. The sky shone bright azure blue overhead, and the sun sparkled on the lake near the tournament grounds. Valancy had chosen a rich blue velvet gown for the occasion, with long sleeves to protect her skin from the sun and delicate, intricate embroidery in golden thread across the entire skirt. As she ascended to her position in the royal box, the trumpeters sounded and the assembled crowd cheered her name. She allowed the fanfare to continue, then raised a hand for silence. She got it immediately. Valancy always got what she asked for at the Blue Castle.

She thanked the assembled lords and ladies for their attendance at this most serious of matters, and led a short prayer for the swift resolution of this affair. Overhead, the last of the puffy white clouds dissipated, as though God had heard her prayers and cleared His eyes to better observe the duel to come. "We begin," Valancy proclaimed, and the assembled crowd held its breath in anticipation, "with the choosing of the champions."

Lady Emerald de Fortune, as the victim of the plot, had the first pick of champions. She wore a gown of lavender silk, which set off her chestnut-colored hair and creamy skin perfectly. She was still pale from the attempted poisoning, and she had with her a page boy, ready to attend to her if she should start to feel ill once again. Lady Emerald, after a brief deliberation, chose Sir Christopher Noble, the fairest and most skilled of the knights. He bowed gracefully, first to Lady Emerald then to Valancy, and accepted Lady Emerald's token with a short but beautiful promise to protect and avenge her honor.

Next came the accused poisoner, Lady Davenport. She glided onto the field in a dress of emerald satin, cut almost scandalously low, and regarded Lady Emerald with ill concealed contempt. Lady Davenport was a long time resident of the Blue Castle, a schemer whose plots had both helped and hindered Valancy over the years. This was the first time in which her scheming had been for herself, and Valancy felt she was not enjoying the spotlight. Well, she should have thought of that before she started poisoning other ladies.

Lady Davenport took a long time to choose her champion, considering each of her choices in turn, studying them minutely and, seemingly, finding each one wanting. In the stands, the assembled nobles began to grow restless, and Valancy was forced to deploy many a stern gaze to quell the murmurs. At last, Lady Davenport selected Sir Marco Columbus, an older knight known for his great experience with duels. He had a long scar on his left arm from where he had been sliced open by a one-time opponent, and all the knights knew that they underestimated him at their peril.

#blue castle book club #let me know if people would rather i post these to a different tag and save the book club one for analysis

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twoblueheartslocked · 2 years ago

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SEBLAINE- PRESENT DAY (Late December/End of Year One)-I Still Remember the First Fall of Snow

Para/Phone Call: I Still Remember the First Fall of Snow- Part 1 of 2.

Rating: PG-13.

Sebastian: @colorsicantsee

Blaine: @twoblueheartslocked

Time: Year One: Present Day. December 30. 2 and a half months after No Stopping Your Plans (Present Day, End of Year One. Blaine 22 (as of October 22), Sebastian 21 (as of August 27)

Location: Ohio/Blaine’s Apartment- Brooklyn, New York

Info: Sebastian attempts to travel back to New York after visiting his parents in Ohio during a snowstorm. Blaine panics.

Warnings; please read: This para has themes of alcohol addiction, depression/anxiety, mentions of past domestic abuse, and mentions of death. This RP in general has themes of past abuse(Physical, mental and sexual), previous unwanted sexual situations, anxiety, depression, negative body image, drug use, alcohol use, cussing, and death(parents).

Extra Warnings: (This RP is not Kurt Hummel friendly. He is not a nice man at all. Never will be in this RP. You’ve all been warned.)

Title Taken From: All Too Well (TMV) (TV)-Taylor Swift

Under Cut for content. As usual, the para is mostly unedited.

(And how it glistened as it fell,

I remember it all too well)

Blaine’s POV:

All over Brooklyn large snowflakes fell in tufts of fluff so soft and delicate that Blaine was almost certain he could hear them whisper like fluttering wings against his window. Everything looked magical around the city and Blaine wanted so badly to love the glowing white blue hue the same way he had five years ago but his stomach was in nervous knots as he watched it fall steadily from a darkening, light polluted sky. The sight was visually beautiful but it terrified him all the same. He tried not to reach for his phone to check in with his loved ones once again. He’d already bothered them all this afternoon when the impending forecast of a snow storm turned out to be accurate.

He was mostly, as usual, worried about Sebastian as he was supposed to have been back from his Christmas break visit with his family this morning, but too much snow and bouts of blasting winds had stopped all flights temporarily and his boyfriend was stuck in an airport in Columbus, Ohio for who knows how long and service all over the Midwest, east coast and more was spotty at best so he was stuck just waiting to hear when he’d get to come home. Blaine had to believe that he’d get home and he’d be safe though and that had to be enough. The short time he got to talk to him today Blaine had made sure to keep his voice calm and as supportive as possible even though he wanted nothing more than to tell him how very worried he was about the weather.

Sebastian had been angry that they might not get to spend New Years Eve together, but he’d told his boyfriend that the date didn’t matter and they could mimic their own ball drop if they missed the night anyway. In reality the thought of not getting to celebrate their year back together on that specific date made Blaine feel a little lost. It was their anniversary after all. One year since that not so chance rooftop meeting and that perfect snowflake on Seb’s cheek beckoning Blaine with a reason to touch him again after so long apart. Filling them both with a wave of familiar feelings and the pull of a mythical string drawing them back together where they belonged. All the pain and happiness they’d been through the last year together was thanks to last New Years and Blaine really wanted him home, but he could wait if it meant Sebastian was stuck somewhere safe.

Good god though Blaine fucking missed him. He missed him more than he cared to admit to anyone- let alone himself. It was a sort of aching that left him feeling sore and it scared him a little. They’d talked and texted while he was away and Seb said he missed him, of course, but Blaine wondered if it was this much. He wondered if this was normal. It had only been nine days and it wasn’t like they didn’t go days without getting to see each other, they spent time apart all the time. This felt different though, perhaps it was because Sebastian was miles and miles away. It felt like his arms were stretched too far with wanting Sebastian closer and he didn’t know what to do with that. He just wanted to pull him back towards him and it worried him that maybe he was feeling too much. He felt untethered- unmoored from himself and he didn’t like feeling this way.

Sebastian had, of course, asked Blaine to come with him so they could spend Christmas together and Blaine had been so ready to say yes, but then he let himself sit and think too hard about it and it just didn’t seem like the right time. Sabine had been supportive of their relationship, if a bit tenitive but Seb’s dad was just… well, the worst trigger and Blaine wasn’t sure it was a good time for him to be there, especially considering the date he’d be there…

There was also the money aspect, Blaine still wasn’t comfortable with Sebastian’s easy and almost careless way with it and he wasn’t ready to let him pay for a trip that might lead to disaster anyway. Sebastian had promised him before leaving that he was okay though, that the therapy and the AA meetings were helping and that he’d call him if he felt like drinking or doing anything else that he might regret. So far his boyfriend had been just quiet about the whole trip, sort of changed the subject if Blaine asked about his dad, it worried Blaine but he didn’t want to pry or bother him with it, he’d learned that Sebastian would come to him when it was time to talk about what was bothering him. . Sebastian’s main concern the whole time had been coming home. Blaine didn’t think he’d have gone back to Ohio at all if it weren’t for how much he loved his mom..

It really was probably for the best that Blaine stayed in New York. He hadn’t wanted to mention it to Sebastian and remind him of what time of year it was even though Seb knew, he had shown that he knew in the way he kept lingering on Blaine face with concern when they said their farewells at the airport, that and the subtle check ins on that day as well let Blaine know that Seb was thinking about it- Sebastian had went through a hell all those years ago, too. Different, but just as damaging. Yet Blaine still couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud to his boyfriend. Not only was two days ago the anniversary of that last time Blaine felt happiness as a teen, but it was the date he lost everything good in his life. He wasn't sure how he’d handle living that day over while trying to win Thomas Smythe over.

December 28, a date burned into his brain for the rest of his life, had always loomed and haunted like a ghost. This year wasn’t any different except that he was free now. He could spend it how he liked and he spent the five year anniversary of his parents deaths quietly on facetime with Cooper. He was in California still- hadn’t gone home to visit their graves, neither of them had in years. Something about the eerie way the snow dusted their stones was far too pretty of a picture for all the tragedy and grief it left them so it was best they didn’t go. The image of their lonely, cold graves with their names forever etched in gray still fills him with a sorrow he knew he’d never get over. He’d miss the two of them forever and nothing would ever fix that. Not his happiness with Sebastian, not being free of Kurt. Nothing- not even time.

Neither he or Coop really knew how to talk to each other anymore yet neither of them were quite willing to just hang up. They’d shared old pictures they each had saved, digital and physical and sniffled and laughed a little bit over them and Blaine was okay with that until they got to the ones that were from that last Christmas they were together as a family- right there in the last photo of the bunch was one of his mother covering her smile as Blaine opened up his guitar while his dad looked on with what must have been pride. It was his last ever gift from them and the very guitar that Kurt still had his claws in. Blaine hadn't seen it since he’d been brave enough to leave, and probably never would again. Kurt had hidden it away or really had sold it off in a gesture of cruelty that only he could produce. One last thing to hold over Blaine. That man managed to keep his nails dug into Blaine somehow and suddenly he didn’t want to look anymore and what was first cathartic turned sour and when they finally did hang up Blaine let himself pull Soot into his arms and cry over them.

He cried and at first it was marred by memories of Kurt’s mocking, nightmare blue eyes but then he let himself really remember his parents- his beautiful, sweet mother with her gentle hands and his serious but sometimes very silly dad and he cried harder than he had in years for them- full gulping sobs. It felt almost good to freely mourn them without Kurt interfering and making him feel small about his feelings. He cried all the time, he knew that and he was often ashamed over how sensitive he was, but his cat purred against his face and it felt right and that was something Kurt couldn’t take away anymore.

He spent the rest of that day keeping himself busy- he’d talked with Seb on the phone and hearing him say I love you over the speaker over 500 miles away made him feel giddy. He’d exchanged some ridiculous yet funny messages that made him actually laugh out loud with Sam and cleaned his whole apartment. He’d even let Soot dip her paws in the powdery snow that had fallen on the windowsill that day. She seemed to enjoy herself but soon fell asleep burrowed in Blaine’s sweater, cold paws pressed against his chest…

But now, two days later, he really just wanted to kiss his boyfriend's hands and face and watch something stupid on the television. Wanted to celebrate their Christmas and New Year’s with him the same way they’d celebrated Blaine’s twenty-second birthday in October- in his apartment, just the two of them pressed together and giggling like they were all that mattered.

He sighed and reached for the phone, the time read 7:36 p.m. and it was dark out. He groaned in annoyance with himself as he pulled Seb’s name up because of course he couldn’t stop himself. Just one little call to keep the other man busy while he waited and then maybe he’d walk down and get himself some dinner from the corner store before the snow really took off and then he’d settle down on the couch to work on his advanced music theory and composition work. Classes started back up soon after all. To his surprise Sebastian’s beautiful, mischievous face was already flashing at him in an incoming call before he could press the proper buttons to call him. He almost declined the call in his haste to answer, maybe he’d make it back in time for tomorrow night after all.

“Let me guess, they’re delaying you until next week?” Blaine meant it as a joke but his heart sort of sank at the prospect.

Sebastian’s POV:

If it weren’t for his mother, Sebastian wouldn’t go home for the Holidays. He wasn’t much for the BER months and all of the family oriented activities everybody felt guilted into attending. Ever the realest, he knew that the chill in the air towards the end of September meant that wine soaked arguments and gift receipts were around the corner. For him, it wasn’t all warm scarves and the scent of cinnamon, laughing with family like a perfect commercial. Sebastian didn’t need gifts or the judgemental looks in his aunts and uncles faces. But, he did need his mother and she loved to decorate and celebrate and show off her home. So, every Christmas he showed up and tried his best but always seemed to fail somehow. Even if she said she loved him and not to mind what the other Smythe family members thought, he could still see how tired his mother was, the sad tilt of her red lips when he snapped back or poured another cup.

This year was going to be his first sober Christmas in a long time. He hoped that he could keep it together without Blaine’s gentle golden gaze. He knew that Blaine was a phone call away and the other man had already encouraged him to reach out if he needed to.

Sebastian had wanted B to join him on the trip. In the back of his mind he had known that the answer would be no. Ohio was complicated, he understood that. His own father was still quite cold about Sebastian and Blaine reconnecting. He knew his mother would welcome his boyfriend in with open arms but that wouldn’t stop his aunts from gossiping or thaw his father’s frosty demeanor. This time of year was hard for both of them but even more so for Blaine. The anniversary of his parent’s deaths was only a few days after Christmas. The yuletide season was marred for his boy and all he wanted to do was hide under an old quilt with him until New Years Day.

The days of winter break passed by as the snow fell. Sebastian faked his way through dinners and spoke on the phone with B on the phone as much as possible. His mornings were spent with his mother over french press coffee and cigarettes. These were his favorite moments anytime he came back home. The two of them in her clean kitchen lit up by the winter sun. The scent of her familiar lavender soap mixed with the rich tang of tobacco and her red lipstick print on her porcelain mug brought him comfort. He silently wished he could bottle up all of the goodness these little things she did brought to him. Sebastian could take the bottle back to New York and keep it just for himself.

The nights in his childhood bedroom felt cold and lonely. It almost felt like he was a teenager again, wrapped up in his dark green sheets, dreaming of Blaine, willing him there. They would talk on the phone late at night, Seb’s voice hushed. ‘Just like old times.’ Blaine had joked. He would tell him about how his aunts got messy wine drunk, about the 5 identical sweaters he was gifted by various family members, and how much he missed him, Soot, and his tiny apartment. Sebastian lamented about how he didn’t want to miss New Years but the midwestern weather just wouldn’t give.

He felt like he had jinxed himself. There he was, sat in an airport by his lonesome. He was going to miss their day. Sebastian felt agitated as he stood at a large window and watched the wind whip snowflakes across the tarmac. B had assured him that everything would be okay and they could still celebrate together.

Sebastian chewed on his nails and pondered his options. He felt like he'd go crazy stuck in this airport with crying babies and the temptation of the lounge he had access to. He had to get out of there. He’d rent a car. Yeah, he’d just rent a fucking car. He grew up in midwestern winters, he’d driven in them before. He could do it.

Blaine picked up and made a joke. Seb chuckled and cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as he signed the paperwork for the car. “Actually, No. I’m going to rent a car. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I’ll be there before you know it and we can watch the ball drop together.”

The other side of the line was quiet.

“B?”

Blaine’s POV:

Blaine almost lost his hold on his phone as his breath hitched and caught in his throat. It was all he could do to let it back out again.

Breathe in and back out again, Blaine.

Come on- count to ten. You’ve got this, it’s okay. He’s still safe.

One, two, three…

It had taken Blaine a moment to really hear what Sebastian was saying to him. He could hear the triumph and annoyance with himself and the hint of relief in his boyfriend's voice but none of it really registered right away. All Blaine could focus on was that Sebastian wanted to rent a car and that meant he was going to drive. Blaine’s eyes blurred white and then a blue black that buzzed in his head as he watched the fat snowflakes slip down his city window leaving streaks like tear tracks down mourning cheeks. Was he crying too? He reached up and touched his face and was surprised to feel that his cheeks were dry. He felt seventeen all over again stuck in a never ending loop that started five years ago. He felt real fear for Sebastian’s life creep down his body for the second time since August.

All he could hear now was Cooper struggling to tell him the worst news- There was ice on the r-road. God, they’re gone, Blaine. I-I don’t know how else to say it. Mom and dad are gone… Who would think to call Blaine if something happened to Sebastian? Would he be forgotten? Or would he have to listen to Sabine Smythe heartbroken and struggling to tell him like his brother had? He had to force himself to speak, though his voice felt like it was stuck in his throat, his tongue felt heavy and his fingers felt numb as they regained their grip on his phone.

“Baby- please don’t.”

He was all too aware that Sebastian, or anyone else that he cared about could be ripped away from him at any given moment, he’d been through it and knew in his heart that it could happen again and probably would- but the thought of Sebastian out there on the road on a night like this for the next nine or so hours was enough to send the mental progress he’d done over the last year into regression.

“I know how hard it is for you to be idle and how much you hate not having control of what goes on around you. I know that you’re probably overwhelmed and anxious and that’s not a good place for you to be in, I know, okay? But I’m asking you not to do this.”

His heart felt ready to break all over again. His thoughts ran wild with unwanted scenarios that all ended with Sebastian dead- his beautiful, mischievous face frozen and reduced to just a picture in someone’s old newspaper. Gone. He licked his too dry lips and pushed on, afraid that if he stopped talking that it’d already be too late. He tried to keep his voice as steady and clear as could given his emotions,

“I hate asking this of you because I know you’re struggling to be still right now. I know you want to be here and not stuck there, trust me, I want you here too, but you have to stay there for now, okay? I’m sure they’ll reinstate your flight soon. I’ll stay up and keep you busy all night. I know you brought a notebook with you so you could write or something to pass time, too. Between the two of us we can keep your mind occupied.”

At this point he felt like a drowning man grasping at whatever he could to keep himself afloat. His voice was starting to break and crack while he stumbled to put into words how desperately he needed Sebastian to understand what he was feeling. He was fighting panic and it looked like he might lose.

“I know it’s not fair of me to beg, but I fucking can’t, Seb. I- I can’t go through another phone call like t-that. It would destroy me… I never properly healed from before and-I just... Please don’t drive. I need you to promise me you won’t, I need to hear it. P-please. I’ll do anything.”

Sebastian’s POV:

Sebastian felt embarrassed. Heat crept up his neck and cheeks and his stomach turned uncomfortably. He had been so focused on getting back to New York that he hadn’t really considered how Blaine would feel about the situation. It all suddenly felt so obvious as the other man’s broken voice begged him not to drive.

“Okay, okay.” Sebastian hoped his tone sounded calming. He picked up the rental contract he had just signed and tore it in half before walking away from the kiosk. The clerk looked confused but he just shrugged and turned to find somewhere to sit.

“I feel horrible and so fucking stupid, B. I should have known better. God.”

He listened to his boyfriend speak and rubbed his forehead. There was nowhere quiet to sit. Blaine was right. It was going to be hard for him to stay put but, he wasn’t going to betray him. He sat down on a hard plastic chair and pulled his luggage up onto the free space next to him.

“I won’t drive, I promise. I won’t do that to you and I appreciate the offer to stay up with me but you need sleep. I’m not going to make you stay awake just because I’m bored or anxious or whatever. I can like, play a game on my phone or something.” Seb cradled the phone against his shoulder and picked at his nails. B knew him well, he was struggling to chill out. “I really am sorry. I don’t know why I thought this would be okay.”

They stayed on the phone for a bit and Sebastian tried to focus but he heard somebody near him mention a hotel. “I wish I could stay at a hotel. I don’t think anything is close enough to get there safely. Guess I’ll just have to buy a fucking Monster or something from a vending machine. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anyway but I’m afraid I won’t be alert, you know?” Seb wanted to be selfish and keep the other man awake with him, that would be the easiest way to quell the anxiety coursing through him. “I should let you get some sleep. Soot is probably annoyed that you’re still awake.”

Blaine’s POV:

Blaine let out a slow breath as the thick ball of anxiety slowly tried to unfurl in his gut only for it to be replaced by a guilt that he remembered far too well. Guilt for having inconvenienced someone else. Rationally he knew Sebastian wasn’t angry at him for asking him to stay put but the irrational part of his brain, the one part that Kurt had damaged with his huffs of annoyance and sharp claws anytime Blaine felt any emotion other than faux happiness, told him that he was wrong for asking. He wasn’t though because this is what people in healthy relationships did, they talked to each other and helped each other through the difficult things. He had to take another breath and press his forehead to the cold window of his apartment before he could speak again.

“Please don’t feel bad, you have done nothing wrong and you are not stupid, Seb. I’m not faulting you for not realizing how it would affect me. You’re not responsible for my triggers. I am. I just…” He sniffled but managed to keep his emotions in check, breathing his way through it like he was taught and willing his guilt to ebb away because he knew Sebastian loved him and that he wasn’t cross with him for this, sure, he may be anxious but it wasn’t because of Blaine.

“Imagining you driving right now- I just can’t. I know I can’t keep you safe in a bubble and I’m not asking for that, I just- this month? This time of year…I-” He struggled with himself to find words, still stupidly worried he’d somehow messed up before settling on the simplest thing,,

“Thank you for understanding, and I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you, okay? I promise.”

Blaine shook his head as he listened to Sebastian try and reason away why he couldn't keep Blaine on the phone and allowed himself to settle down on his little couch, his feet tucked up under him. He made the soft clicking noise with this tongue that sure enough got his fuzzy little feline to hop up on his lap, she nuzzled into the phone like she just knew her papa was on the other line.

“Please, Seb, you don’t need to apologize, it’s sweet that you wanted to get here so fast, and a normal person would have embraced your gesture, but I’m not, well- you know, normal. But, I have a feeling that you’ll be in my arms by tomorrow night and we’ll be swaying together on my roof listening to the bang of pots and pans, kissing the New Year into existence.”

He felt the beginnings of a tentative grin trying tug on the corners of his lips in anticipation, wanting nothing more than to hold his boyfriend to his chest and kiss the worry and anxiety out of his faraway voice. He let himself take a deep breath, and finally the guilt was slowly replaced with hope and want. He pressed further into the couch, making himself comfortable with Soot curled up on his shoulder, surely curious about why her dad’s emotions were all over the place.

“Sebastian, I’m not hanging up, not a damn chance.” His voice was gentle as he tried his best not to laugh at the thought of letting Seb go for the night, the thought felt absurd to him, “Soot is actually worried about you and wants to see your face, put your earphones in and facetime us so she can see that you’re safe and then you can tell us about something good that’s happened over the last few days and then something you’re looking forward to when you get here.. We’ll be up as long as you need us. Besides, I don’t need to sleep nearly as much as I need to see your face right now.”

Sebastian’s POV:

“Since Soot is asking so nicely...”

Sebastian tried to pay it casual but he could feel the grin overtake his face because how the fuck was Blaine still so sweet after his mess-up? He obviously wanted to see Blaine’s face, too. More than anything. He knew the joke would make the other man smile. He slipped in his Airpods and accepted the facetime option. He was tucked away in a somewhat quiet corner and the two of them kept each other busy until the time blurred. At around 5:05 a.m. they announced that the flight would board at 6:30 AM. The wind had died down and conditions were safe. A surge of relief flooded through him, he was so ready to be back in the city, back with Blaine.

Sebastian had pretty much slept the entire plane ride with little interruption. His body felt exhausted but his mind was elated to be that much closer to his favorite everything- his safe spot.. Nothing exceptional happened until he was bounding up the stairs to his boyfriend’s apartment. It was only about 2 in the afternoon and they would have the whole of New Year’s evening and day together. As soon as Blaine opened the door they were in each other’s arms, he wasn’t sure who reached for the other first. His exhaustion seemed to almost melt away as he felt B’s hands rub the small of his back, as he felt the soft whip of Soot’s skinny tail rub against his shin in her own special greeting. He was back with Blaine.

He was home.

/tbc.

(Part two of two will be posted in the next couple of months. We’ll see you soon!)

#seb #seblaine #seblaine canon divergence #Para: First Fall of Snow #twoblueheartslocked #colorsicantsee #para #seblaine para

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