#Herbert Zipper

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Herbert Zipper was an internationally renowned composer, conductor, and arts activist who was imprisoned at Dachau in the 1930s. During that time, he had had crude musical instruments constructed out of stolen material and formed a secret orchestra that performed on Sunday afternoons for the other inmates.

Released in 1939, he accepted an invitation to conduct the Manila Symphony Orchestra but was jailed for four months by the Japanese during their occupation of the Philippines. After his release, he worked secretly for the Allies, transmitting shipping information by radio. In 1946 he emigrated to the United States, where he conducted the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and promoted music education. In this photo, taken on March 10, 1949, he was conductor of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, and he makes some observations on an opera to violinist Sylvia Medford.

Photo: Associated Press

[bosinclairsgff]

Slashers Reacting to self harm scars Pt. 2

MAJOR WARNING FOR SELF HARM

Includes : Thomas Hewitt, Norman Nordstrom, Mark Hoffman, Herbert West

Warnings: Kidnap

You have been staying with the Hewitt family for a few months now. You had a daily routine, waking up early, doing your daily chores and spending your evening with Tommy. It had been a particularly hard week on the farm, Hoyt was being extremely difficult and hateful towards you. Tommy had been working super late every night and the heat was starting to make you feel sick. Everything combined just pushed you over the edge, so you did the only thing you could think of. You hadn’t relapsed in so long and really disappointed in yourself. Before starting dinner you went to change into a long sleeve top, even though you were burning up. Of course at dinner, Hoyt was the one to point out said long sleeve shirt. “Why the fuck do ya have on a damn long sleeve shirt in the middle of a Texas summer? I know damn sure ya ain’t cold girl.” He spits out making you cringe. Tommy simply grunted in response and that seemed to shut him up. After washing and cleaning up after dinner you decided to head to bed for a early bedtime. Surprisingly you found Tommy waiting for you in your shared room. “What are you doing up here love?” You question while making your way to the bed to sit next to him. He grunts in response. Being satisfied, you lean in and kiss his cheek. He leans into you. Getting up to take of your clothes, you start with your pants then shirt. Completely forgetting about earlier but it was to late you had taken your shirt off and by the angry grunt you heard you knew you had seen them. “I…I can explain!” No one did this to me I swear Tommy, I did it to myself.” You started frantically explaining. Immediately confusion and pain came to his eyes. Why? He questions with a tilt of his head. Tears start to fill your eyes as you try to find the words to explain to him. “I just was so stressed out and overwhelmed, I did the on,y thing I could think of. I’m sorry. I’lol try not to do it again.” You look down. Hearing the bed creak you knew he had gotten up from sitting down. When he got to you, he pulled you into a hug. Not being able to hold back the tears they streamed down your cheeks. The next day he made you let Luda May clean up the wounds. She scolded you but out of pure love for you. The next few weeks everyone was nicer and kept a close eye on you.

Norman had found you trying to break into his home a few days ago. Since then you’d been locked up in his basement, confined to a small padded area. Everyday he’d bring food, water and water his plants. Begging didn’t seem to work with him. You tried explaining you were hungry and needed money, that you didn’t mean him any harm at all. He never listened. Today he brought down a new set of clothes for you and a wash cloth. Even he must have noticed you were starting to stink. Your arms were tied behind your back, legs were free. You couldn’t fight back even if you tried, he was so much stronger than you. You were completely at a disadvantage anyways, having your hands tied. “I’m going to wash you off and change your clothes. If you try to do anything, I will hurt you.” He states in his low voice. You whimper in response. With that he comes into my little corner of the dark world. His hands travel up my legs looking for my jeans buttons and zipper. Once he found it he starts removing my pants, underwear with them. “Wait, wait, why my underwear please I need them.” You cry out. He says nothing. Reaching for the wash cloth he brought you, he began washing your lower half. Kindly, he avoided your most intimate parts, never going above your lower thighs. After he was done he pulled out a pair of boxers and some sweatpants. Norman also pulled out duck tape, bringing your feet together and wrapping them tightly with the tape. He then un did your tied hands, letting you finally stretch your arms out. Reaching for the new shirt he instructed you to take your shirt and bra off. You had no other choice but to obey. “I’m done, I took them off” you whisper. Taking the wash cloth he finds your arms but stops when he feels the light scars. They were to many of them to be a cat scratch or a accidental cut. “Why would you do this to yourself?” Norman questions. Staying silent and holding back tears, he grips your arm tightly. “Answer me. Now.” He barks out. “I was in so much pain, I just needed to get it out. Please your hurting me, let go.” You say slightly sobbing. Satisfied he let go. He didn’t say anything but finished cleaning you and dressing you. Getting up to leave, he turns back towards you. “You never have to do that again.”

You had been dating Mark for about a 6 months. Moving in with him after three months of being together. You’ve gotten closer to him than anyone has in a very long time. He cares about you so much, he’d die for you, kill for you. Mark knew you had struggled with self harm in the past, he’s seen the scars. You’d told him you had gotten better however and stopped doing that stuff. But, Mark had been neglecting you lately and things at work for you had been so hectic. With so much going on and feeling that you had no one to turn to, you cut again. You didn’t know how you’d hide it from him, you didn’t care at the time. As soon as you heard his keys Turing in the lock though, you cared. Frantically you looked for a long sleeve shirt. Just as he walked in you found one. “Y/n? I’m home, are you here?” He calls out. “Yes! I’m changing I’ll be there in a sec babe.” You respond. Fuck, why did you do that. What will you tell him if he see? You two have your normal after work conversations. He had brought Chinese takeout home for dinner. While reaching for plates to eat on your shirt revealed a bit of your arm, you didn’t notice but Mark did. “Y/n, what are those marks on your arm?” He questions but he already knows the answer. You freeze not knowing what to say. “Why would you do that. I thought we had moved on from such foolish behavior. You are an adult now, you cannot keep acting out like this, you know better y/n.” He shakes his head disapproving of your poor choices. “I’m sorry Mark, I was so stressed I didn’t know what else to do. Please don’t be mad I’m sorry.” You say holding back tears. He gets up and pulls you into a hug. “Either you control yourself of you’ll end up in some hospital where someone else will control you. That’s your decision. I love you, let’s eat.” He says letting go.

Herbert was always so busy with work. He would come home and go straight to the basement, to go and do more work. It seemed like he never had time for you, more like he’d never make time for you. To be honest you didn’t even know what you guys were. Sure you lived together and slept in the same bed but half the time he’d talk to you as if you were a dumb child. It was tiring always being talk down to. Yes Herbert was an extremely intelligent man but you weren’t dumb either. Anyways, with the stress of normal everyday life and having a man who constantly treats you badly you finally relapsed. You hadn’t planned on cutting again, it just happened. To be honest you didn’t even think he’d care if he saw it, you wanted him to though so badly. It was almost midnight when Herbert got home. You were still up watching tv in the living room. “Y/n? Why are you still up? It’s almost midnight. Go to bed.” He said calmly, more like ordered. “I wanted to see you and maybe we could go to bed together. You always come to bed so late, I miss you. Please?” You question. Herbert pauses for a moment thinking. “You know I have a lot of work to do y/n. You can’t be selfish with my time.” He states. You scoff at the comment he made. “How can I be selfish with your time? I never get any of it. You are always in that damn basement or at work. I go to bed, the bed is empty. I wake up, the bed is empty. We don’t even really live together.” You say as you feel the tears starting to form. He’s taken back by this sudden outburst. The living room was dark, only the tv lighting up the room. Herbert flipped on the light switch. That’s when he saw your arm. He’s whole demeanor changed. Walking up to you he grabbed you by the shoulders. “Why the hell would you do something so, so, stupid!? What if they got infected or what if you cut to deep, huh? Then what? Do you want to die y/n!” He shouts. You couldn’t stop the tears. You’ve never seen him so angry and hurt. “I need to clean these up.” He calmly states while dragging you to the bathroom. The room is silent aside from Herbert getting  alcohol to clean the cuts with from the cabinet. “This will burn, you probably won’t mind though considering you did this in the first place.” He says coldly. It did sting, you cry out and try to pull away but he holds you in place. “Nu huh, you don’t get to run from it. You wanted to feel pain, so feel pain.” He whispers in your ear. You’ve never seen him act so coldly towards you. After the burning went away he wrapped your arms with gauze to make sure it stays clean. Herbert walked you to the bedroom and made the bed for you. “I want you to go to bed now y/n. I’m very disappointed in you. I never want to see you do something so stupid again. Do you understand me?” He questions. You only nod in response.

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Herbert Zipper

Herbert Zipper was a conductor and composer who founded a secret orchestra at Dachau, and wrote a song that became an anthem for death camp inmates.

Born in 1904 to an affluent Jewish family in Vienna, Herbert was a musical prodigy who studied at the prestigious Vienna Music Academy with the great composer Richard Strauss. He found employment as a conductor and composer for cabaret shows.

Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and immediately started persecuting Jewish citizens. Herbert was arrested that year and sent by the SS to Dachau, where he became a “horse,” pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with heavy rocks for 12 hours a day. One of the most talented composers in Europe was doing the work of an animal.

Herbert was not the only music man in Dachau. All the Jewish members of the Munich Philharmonic – comprising most of the orchestra – were also incarcerated there. Herbert enlisted the other musicians in an audacious, even insane, plan. They would make instruments and create an orchestra, right there at Dachau.

How could anybody create musical instruments in a concentration camp? They combed the camp for discarded pieces of wood and metal and fashioned eleven primitive yet functional instruments. At least one guard helped the musicians; Herbert requested a piece of wire for a string instrument, and later found it under his pillow.

Herbert’s Dachau orchestra performed concerts for the other inmates every Sunday, in an outhouse. It’s hard to imagine the experience of listening to sublime music in a filthy environment, while knowing they could be all killed for their participation. Herbert said that the concerts were not for entertainment, but rather to bring purpose and even a bit of normalcy back to their lives.

Noted playwright Jura Soyfer, an old friend of Herbert’s from his cabaret days, was also at Dachau. Together they wrote “Dachaulied” (Dachau song), with Herbert composing the haunting music in his head and Jura penning the sad, sardonic lyrics inspired by the concentration camp motto “Work will make you free.” They thought that writing the song would help them maintain some dignity in an atmosphere of constant humiliation and demonization. Herbert deliberately made the song difficult to learn, so that his fellow inmates would have to use all of their concentration and thereby mentally escape from their horrific surroundings. Amazingly, the Nazis never discovered the secret orchestra.

At the end of 1938, Herbert and Jura were transferred to Buchenwald where they taught other inmates the Dachau song. Soon after, Jura died of typhus at age 26, and Herbert lovingly prepared his body for burial. At this time Hitler hadn’t yet began to implement his “Final Solution” to kill all the Jews, which started in 1941. Herbert’s father Emil was in London, desperately trying to get a visa for Herbert and his two brothers to escape Austria. Miraculously, Emil was able to secure his sons’ release from Buchenwald, and they joined him in Paris on March 16, 1939.

During all this time, Herbert’s fiancee, dancer Trudl Dubsky, was working in Manila, in the Philippines. She recommended him for the job of conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra, and he was hired, traveling there in September, 1939. Herbert and Trudl were married on October 1. Although it wasn’t a world-class orchestra at the time, Herbert enjoyed working with the Manila Orchestra and under his leadership it improved dramatically. Life was good for Herbert and Trudl until January 1942, when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines and occupied Manila. It was a brutal occupation and once again Herbert was arrested, this time for refusing to conduct the orchestra for Japanese military officers. He was incarcerated and harshly interrogated for four months before being released. For the next three years Herbert and Trudl survived hand-to-mouth, owning no belongings and traveling frequently in search of safe haven in a country at war.

The most difficult period was the Battle of Manila in early 1945. More than once the building where they took shelter was bombed by the Japanese artillery and they escaped with only seconds to spare. In the end of February they were living with hundreds of other displaced people in a seven-story building in Manila that had neither electricity or water. Herbert volunteered to get water every day, a dangerous and difficult undertaking.  On the early morning of February 26, 1945, Herbert was on his water run when he saw an opportunity to reach the American front line, and he rushed across a battle field to do it. While there he received a crucial piece of information: the apartment building where he was staying was due to be bombed by the Allies within fifteen minutes! Herbert desperately explained that 800-1000 civilians were inside the building! Due to his pleas, the bombardment was delayed for 45 minutes, giving him just enough time to get back to the building and rescue everyone inside including Trudl.

Until Japan was defeated on September 2, 1945, Herbert worked secretly for the American army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, transmitting valuable information about Japanese shipping schedules by shortwave radio. When Japan finally surrendered, Herbert organized and conducted a concert of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, a goal he’d set during the darkest hours at Dachau. The concert was performed in a bombed-out church.

Herbert and Trudl immigrated to America in 1946, joining the rest of his family. He co-founded and conducted the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, and organized another orchestra especially to give free concerts for public school children. Students called Herbert, who had no children of his own, “Papa Z.” For the rest of his life he volunteered and supported arts education for young people.

Herbert was close friends with poet Langston Hughes and they collaborated on an opera together, “Barrier.” Trudl worked as a ballet tacher. They moved to Chicago in 1953, where Herbert founded the Music Center of the North Shore, and then to Los Angeles, where Herbert directed the School of Performing Arts at USC.

Interviewed by a Los Angeles Times reporter at the end of his life, Herbert said “We have to see the world as it is, but we have to think about what the world could be. That’s what the arts are about.”

Herbert is the subject of a biography, “Dachau Song: The Twentieth Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper,” and a documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award. His beloved wife Trudl died of lung cancer in 1976. He continued his music for two more decades, conducting his last concert in 1996. Herbert Zipper died in Santa Monica in 1997.

For inspiring concentration camp inmates and inner-city schoolchildren with his music, and for saving hundreds of lives during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, we honor Herbert Zipper as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Lyrics of Dachau Song:

Barbed wire fraught with death surrounds our world

On which a merciless heaven visits frost and sunburn.

Far from us are all joys, far our home, far the women

When mute we march to work, thousands in the gray dawn.

But we learned the Dachau motto and it made us hard as steel.

Be a man, comrade, remain human comrade

Do good work, pitch in, comrade

Because work, work will make you free!

[the-goya-jerker]

you have no idea how happy it makes me that you like bride of reanimator. everyone talks about reanimator the first but i am a bride defender until the day i die she is an icon to me ✊

Bride of Re-Animator is earnestly my favorite of the two Re-Animator movies I've seen. I wanna talk about the Bride herself for a minute.

There's something about the way those two piece together this bride, the longing for a lost love Dan puts into her, the longing for science that Herbert puts into her. Her creation is both grotesque and beautiful.

It's the love Dan felt for his patient that gets them the head they need, and yet she's violently dismembered. She's stripped of all of her identity despite this care because Dan wants so badly to have Meg back.

She's covered in a shimmering and beautiful cloth as she's made, which is turned into her dress, but she's also open in parts, covered in swathes of exposed muscle and skin.

Is it love or violation that we witness? Creation or destruction? Is she beautiful or horrifying? Yes! All of the above!

She is, ultimately, an object. She is given almost no chance for personhood. She is a composite of parts stolen from dead girls by two men who hacked them up in the name of science. She is a discovery, not a person.

And the part that really gets me when you look at her is that despite her nudity I don't think she's truly intended as an entirely sexual object for viewers either. She's a corpse with muscles exposed. And, now, we here at Goya Jerker Inc. think that's hot as hell, but do most people? Is your average Bride of Re-Animator watcher gonna get all horny about that? Probably not.

I think this photo really exemplifies it. She's covered in metal and made of exposed muscle and sinew. You can see so many veins. Sure, there's a nipple just out in the open, but she's also got a big ol' zipper on her crotch.

Overall, I think she's an object like an anatomical model or a ballerina in a music box is. She's useful, she's pretty, but for the average viewer she isn't really all that sexual.

To me though? HOO BOY! I think she's so hot.

Miss Bride of Re-Animator, I would have done coke with you and kept you alive forever.

9/10 cause I get a little melancholy thinking about her.

[godlizzza]

Can we see Herbert 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 to be Dan’s teacher? 😳

"This C- isn't going to cut it for that scholarship, Dan."

"Oh, please, Mr. West. I really need this. Isn't there anything you can do?"

Herbert suppressed the urge to sigh through his own embarrassment. Dan just blinked up at him demurely from his desk chair. Herbert felt ridiculous just standing there in the middle of the room, hands on hips, while Dan batted his eyelashes at him, biting his lip to fight off a grin from overtaking his face. He didn't know what Dan was more delighted by, this whole roleplaying thing or seeing Herbert flustered.

"Dan," Herbert hissed under his breath, turning his burning face away. "This is stupid..."

"No, no. It's not- You're doing great," Dan scrambled to say, breaking character long enough to squeeze Herbert's hands reassuringly. "Just- Ask me for something. Anything." He grinned and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Make me earn that A."

Herbert tried to glower down at him, but it was hard to stay cross with Dan staring up at him like a little kid waiting to hear what he'd gotten for Christmas. So, Herbert sucked in a breath and tried to imagine himself as a pompous professor and Dan as some eager bimbo, ready to bend over backwards to get a passing grade.

It was surprisingly easy.

"Fine," Herbert said gruffly, pulling his hands from Dan's grip. He fumbled with his belt for a moment then undid the buckle. "If you want that scholarship, you're going to have to show me how much you want it."

"I want it," Dan agreed, bobbing his head vigorously. His eyes, wide and hungry, were glued to Herbert's hands on his belt. "So bad."

"Then...Then get over here," Herbert said, his voice wavering as he pointed to the patch of floor in front of him. He was finding it difficult to maintain the ruse of an authority figure when Dan was licking his lips and eying him up like a feast.

"Yes, Sir," Dan replied, eagerly scrambling onto the floor. He was down on his knees in front of Herbert, running his hands up Herbert's thighs and squeezing his ass. He stared at Herbert's growing erection straining at his fly and sighed prettily, "Won't you take your cock out, Mr. West? I promise I'll be good for you."

"Oh, my god," Herbert muttered, the skin of his face so hot he was sure he must've been bright red.

He dragged his zipper down with shaking fingers, and thankfully Dan took the lead from there, reaching into his underwear to pull his stiff dick out. Dan seemed to be enjoying his role as the ditzy cock slut quite a bit, particularly when he closed his eyes and wrapped his mouth around the head of Herbert's dick. He moaned obscenely loud, and Herbert had to bite down on his knuckles to keep his own choked groan at bay.

Herbert supposed Dan had okay ideas. Sometimes.

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7UqeeRCGr8

So I get the feeling that one thing that non-Jews don’t quite grok about the Jews is that we are extremely, highly skilled at being oppressed.  Antisemitism is such an old hatred that we’ve had literally millennia to perfect our responses.  One of our big things is mockery of those who would torment us.  I mean, yes, you can kill the Jews you have in your concentration camp -- you can, in fact, kill six million Jews.  But no one has yet managed to kill all the Jews.  If you try to do this, you will kill some of us.  And we will go down taking the piss out of you the whole way.

Herbert Zipper and Jura Soyfer were old friends who lived in Vienna in the 1930s.  Zipper was a composer and orchestra conductor, and Soyfer was a political journalist and a cabaret writer.  They were both imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp just outside Munich in 1938.  Dachau, like Auschwitz, had an “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work will make you free) sign over the gate.  Zipper and Soyfer saw this sign over the gate to a labor camp, and challenged each other to mock it.

The result is this, the Dachaulied, the song of Dachau.  We’ve found the perfect solution to Dachau, friends!  Work!  Lots of long, hard labor!  You’re not the person you were before you came into the camp.  Work, work, work!  Dachau was designed to break the spirit of its prisoners.  In this particular instance, it failed on an absolutely epic scale.  Soyfer composed the poem.  Zipper memorized it and composed the music, and then taught it to other Dachau prisoners, and it spread like wildfire through the camp.  Neener, neener, and fucking neener.

Soyfer and Zipper were both transferred to Buchenwald as Dachau got too crowded.  They were able to get released in 1939, though Soyfer died shortly afterwards of typhoid he’d picked up in Buchenwald.  Zipper survived the war and lived until 1997, moving to the United States and conducting orchestras in New York, Chicago, and Santa Monica.

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 3.20

Holidays

Alien Abduction Day

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Premieres

After Hours, by The Weekend (Album; 2020)

Armchair Apocrypha, by Andrew Bird (Album; 2007)

Avalanche is Better None or Snows You Old Man (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 33; 1960)

Back Off Boogaloo, recorded by Ringo Starr (Song; 1972)

Basic Instinct (Film; 1992)

Below Zero Heroes or I Only Have Ice for You (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 34; 1960)

The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), by Aleister Crowley (Tarot Book; 1944)

Bosko’s Easter Eggs (Happy Harmonies Cartoon; 1937)

Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell (Album; 2000)

Cannibal Capers (Disney Silly Symphony Cartoon; 1930)

The Cats Bah (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dumb-Hounded (Droopy MGM Cartoon; 1943)

Duplicity (Film; 2009)

Fractured Friendship (Chilly Willy & Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1965)

Hollywood Shuffle (Film; 1987)

Hothouse, by Brian W. Aldiss (Novel; 1962)

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, by Sinead O’Connor (Album; 1990)

I Love You, Man (Film; 2009)

The Impossible Possum, featuring Barney Bear (MGM Cartoon; 1954)

Insurgent (Film; 2015)

Knowing (Film; 2009)

Lady Chatterly’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence (Novel; 1928)

Man of La Mancha (Broadway Musical; 1965)

Meet the Temptations, by The Temptations (Album; 1964)

Neptune Nonsense (Rainbow Parade Cartoon; 1936)

Newman Laugh-O-Grams (Disney Cartoon; 1921)

Noises Off (Film; 1992)

Off to China (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1936)

The Pink Panther (Film; 1964)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Film; 1981)

The Romance of Betty Boop (Animated TV Film; 1985)

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Novel; 1850)

Sham Battle Shenanigans (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1942)

Straight, No Chaser, by Thelonious Monk (Album; 1967)

Symphony Hour (Disney Cartoon; 1942)

Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats (Hanna-Barbera Animated TV Film; 1988)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Novel; 1857)

Wacky Quacky (Phantasies Cartoon; 1947)

What Price Fleadom (MGM Cartoon; 1948)

Wild Things (Film; 1998)

Ye Olde Songs, featuring Farmer Al Falfa (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1932)

Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel (Philosophy Book; 1948)

Zombeavers (Film; 2015)

Today’s Name Days

Claudia, Wolfram (Austria)

Ivan, Nicet, Pavao (Croatia)

Světlana (Czech Republic)

Gordius (Denmark)

Malve, Malvi, Malviine (Estonia)

Aki, Jaakkima, Joakim, Jooa, Kim, Kimi (Finland)

Herbert, Printemps (France)

Claudia, Wolfram (Germany)

Claudia, Rodi, Rodianos (Greece)

Klaudia (Hungary)

Alessandra,, Claudia (Italy)

Irbe, Made, Magda, Magdalēna (Latvia)

Filomenas, Imgarda, Irma, Tautvilė, Žygimantas (Lithuania)

Joakim, Kim (Norway)

Aleksander, Aleksandra, Ambroży, Anatol, Bogusław, Cyriaka, Eufemia, Klaudia, Patrycjusz, Ruprecht, Wasyl, Wincenty (Poland)

Víťazoslav (Slovakia)

Alejandra, Daniel, Martín (Spain)

Joakim, Kim (Sweden)

Dillan, Dillion, Dillon, Drew, Dru, Dylan, Dylon (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 80 of 2024; 286 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 12 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 4 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 11 (Guy-Wei)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 10 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 10 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 20 Green; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 7 March 2024

Moon: 82%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 24 Aristotle (3rd Month) [John the Evangelist]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 2 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of March

Zodiac: Pisces (Day 31 of 31)

[curatorstudio]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vintage Jay Herbert New York White Shoulder Bag.

[researchbuzz]

Trudl Dubsky and Herbert Zipper, LGBTQ Methodist Newsletters, Apple, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 1, 2024

NEW RESOURCES Broadway World: The Colburn School Launches Digital Archive Of Herbert Zipper And Trudl Dubsky Zipper. “Herbert Zipper, for whom Colburn’s Zipper Hall is named, was a conductor, composer, educator, and a pioneer of the community music movement and held a deep conviction that every student should be able to participate in the performing arts. Trudl Dubsky Zipper, for whom the Colburn…

[brookston]

Holidays 3.20

Holidays

Alien Abduction Day

American Diabetes Association Alert Day

Atheist Pride Day [also 6.20]

Bibliomania Day

Big Bird Day

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Day

Culture Day and Creative Intelligentsia Day (Tajikistan)

Dibber Day (French Republic)

Dogs in Yellow Day

Durham Day (UK)

Extraterrestrial Abductions Day 

Festival of Extraterrestrial Abductions

French Language Day (a.k.a. International Francophonie Day; UN)

Ghode Jatra (Horse Festival; Nepal)

Global Message Makes Me Happy & Healthy Day

Great British Spring Clean Day (UK)

Hufflepuff Pride Day

International Astrology Day

International Day of Happiness (UN)

International Francophonie Day

Kiss Your Fiancé Day

Lajos Kossuth Day (Hungary)

Legba Zaou (Haiti)

Li-Fraumeni Syndrome Awareness Day

Macaron Day NYC

Mesopotamian/Sumerian Grain Festival (Honoring Ashnan)

Minion Day (Japan)

Mister Rogers Day

National Arts Advocacy Day

National Backyard Bird Photography Day

National Cherry Blossom Festival begins (Washington DC)

National Day of Italian Universities Day (Italy)

National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

National Jump Out! Day

National Marketing Day

National Plagiocephaly & Torticollis Awareness Day

National Vanessa Day

National Westie Day

Oil Nationalization Day (Iran)

Pigeons Return to City-County Building (Ft. Wayne, Indiana)

P320 Day

Smile Rejuvenation Day

Very Hungary Caterpillar Day

Won't You Be My Neighbor? Day

Won’t You Wear a Sweater Day

World Behavior Analysis Day

World Day of Theater for Children and Young People

World Frog Day

World Head Injury Awareness Day

World NIDCAP Day

World Oral Health Day

World Rewinding Day

World Rights to Water Day

World Sparrow Day

Zipper Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Bock Beer Day (New York) [also 2nd Monday]

Crawfish Cravers Awareness Day

Macaron Day

National Ravioli Day

World Flour Day

3rd Wednesday in March

Engineer’s Day (Belgium; Netherlands) [3rd Wednesday]

Kick Butts Day [3rd Wednesday]

National Carry Out Day (a.k.a. Carry Out Wednesday) [3rd Wednesday]

National Dietician’s Day (Canada) [3rd Wednesday]

National SBDC Day [3rd Wednesday]

Small Business Development Day [3rd Wednesday]

Independence & Related Days

Blackland (a.k.a. Kingdom of Blackland; Declared; 2015) [unrecognized]

Conzorica (a.k.a. Federal Republics of Conzorica; Declared; 2014)

Kirkuk Liberation Day (Iraqi Kurdistan)

Otango Province Anniversary (New Zealand)

Qootärlænt (Declared; 2008) [unrecognized]

Rezaxia (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Tunisia (from France, 1956)

New Year’s Days

Baha’i New Year

Nowruz (New Year) [Day 1, Around Spring Equinox] (a.k.a. ... 

Bahá'í Naw-Rúz (Bahá'í)

Naruz (Afghan New Year)

Navruz (Tajikistan, Ukbekistan)

Norooz (Iran)

Novruz Bairam (a.k.a. Persian New Year; Azerbaijan)

Nowrūz (Persian, Gilaki, Kurdish, Zoroastrians; California)

Rosicrucian New Year

Festivals Beginning March 20, 2024

Jazz & Rhythms Festival (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico) [thru 3.24]

Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show (Melbourne, Australia) [thru 3.24]

National Cherry Blossom Festival (Washington, DC) [thru 4.14]

Trans-Siberian Art Festival (Novosibirsk, Russia) [thru 4.7]

Feast Days

Alexandra (Christian; Saint)

Apple Magic Day (For Norse Goddess Idunn; Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Big Bird (Muppetism)

Blessed John of Parma (Christian; Saint)

Clement of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (Christian; Saint) [maltsters]

Day Sacred to the Goddess Fortuna, the Morrigan, the Norns, the Three Fates, and the Three Mothers (Lakshmi, Parvati, and Sarasvati)

Edward Poynter (Artology)

Extraterrestrial Abductions Day (Pastafarian)

Feast of the Supreme Ritual (Thelema)

Festival For Driving Out All Evils (Inca)

Festival of Isis (Ancient Egypt)

George Caleb Bingham (Artology)

Henrik Ibsen (Writerism)

Herbert of Derwentwater (Christian; Saint)

John Lavery (Artology)

John of Nepomuk (Christian; Saint)

Józef Bilczewski (Christian; Saint)

María Josefa Sancho de Guerra (Christian; Saint)

Martin of Braga (Christian; Saint)

The Martyrs of Mar Saba (Christian; Martyrs)

Michele Carcano (Christian; Saint)

Philo of Alexandria (Positivist; Saint)

Photina and Her Companions (Christian; Martyrs)

Quinquatria, Day 2: Wrestling Day (Pagan)

Spring Harvest Festival (Ancient Egypt; Everyday Wicca)

Wulfram (Christian; Saint)

Xena Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Zagmuk (Festival celebrating the Resurrection of Marduk)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Prime Number Day: 79 [22 of 72]

Shakku (赤口 Japan) [Bad luck all day, except at noon.]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [17 of 60]

Premieres

After Hours, by The Weekend (Album; 2020)

Armchair Apocrypha, by Andrew Bird (Album; 2007)

Avalanche is Better None or Snows You Old Man (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 33; 1960)

Back Off Boogaloo, recorded by Ringo Starr (Song; 1972)

Basic Instinct (Film; 1992)

Below Zero Heroes or I Only Have Ice for You (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 34; 1960)

The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), by Aleister Crowley (Tarot Book; 1944)

Bosko’s Easter Eggs (Happy Harmonies Cartoon; 1937)

Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell (Album; 2000)

Cannibal Capers (Disney Silly Symphony Cartoon; 1930)

The Cats Bah (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dumb-Hounded (Droopy MGM Cartoon; 1943)

Duplicity (Film; 2009)

Fractured Friendship (Chilly Willy & Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1965)

Hollywood Shuffle (Film; 1987)

Hothouse, by Brian W. Aldiss (Novel; 1962)

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, by Sinead O’Connor (Album; 1990)

I Love You, Man (Film; 2009)

The Impossible Possum, featuring Barney Bear (MGM Cartoon; 1954)

Insurgent (Film; 2015)

Knowing (Film; 2009)

Lady Chatterly’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence (Novel; 1928)

Man of La Mancha (Broadway Musical; 1965)

Meet the Temptations, by The Temptations (Album; 1964)

Neptune Nonsense (Rainbow Parade Cartoon; 1936)

Newman Laugh-O-Grams (Disney Cartoon; 1921)

Noises Off (Film; 1992)

Off to China (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1936)

The Pink Panther (Film; 1964)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Film; 1981)

The Romance of Betty Boop (Animated TV Film; 1985)

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Novel; 1850)

Sham Battle Shenanigans (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1942)

Straight, No Chaser, by Thelonious Monk (Album; 1967)

Symphony Hour (Disney Cartoon; 1942)

Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats (Hanna-Barbera Animated TV Film; 1988)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Novel; 1857)

Wacky Quacky (Phantasies Cartoon; 1947)

What Price Fleadom (MGM Cartoon; 1948)

Wild Things (Film; 1998)

Ye Olde Songs, featuring Farmer Al Falfa (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1932)

Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel (Philosophy Book; 1948)

Zombeavers (Film; 2015)

Today’s Name Days

Claudia, Wolfram (Austria)

Ivan, Nicet, Pavao (Croatia)

Světlana (Czech Republic)

Gordius (Denmark)

Malve, Malvi, Malviine (Estonia)

Aki, Jaakkima, Joakim, Jooa, Kim, Kimi (Finland)

Herbert, Printemps (France)

Claudia, Wolfram (Germany)

Claudia, Rodi, Rodianos (Greece)

Klaudia (Hungary)

Alessandra,, Claudia (Italy)

Irbe, Made, Magda, Magdalēna (Latvia)

Filomenas, Imgarda, Irma, Tautvilė, Žygimantas (Lithuania)

Joakim, Kim (Norway)

Aleksander, Aleksandra, Ambroży, Anatol, Bogusław, Cyriaka, Eufemia, Klaudia, Patrycjusz, Ruprecht, Wasyl, Wincenty (Poland)

Víťazoslav (Slovakia)

Alejandra, Daniel, Martín (Spain)

Joakim, Kim (Sweden)

Dillan, Dillion, Dillon, Drew, Dru, Dylan, Dylon (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 80 of 2024; 286 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 12 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Fearn (Alder) [Day 4 of 28]

Chinese: Month 2 (Ding-Mao), Day 11 (Guy-Wei)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025)

Hebrew: 10 Adair II 5784

Islamic: 10 Ramadan 1445

J Cal: 20 Green; Sixday [20 of 30]

Julian: 7 March 2024

Moon: 82%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 24 Aristotle (3rd Month) [John the Evangelist]

Runic Half Month: Beore (Birch Tree) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 2 of 92)

Week: 3rd Week of March

Zodiac: Pisces (Day 31 of 31)

[sellordiet]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Vintage Jonny Herbert Original Dress Black Off Shoulder Women’s Midi Dresses.

[thedeathdoctor]

More Than Lab Partners (I Keep On Thinking About You)

Herbert West x AFAB! Reader

Contains: Pining, Medical Kink, Coercion, Breeding Kink, Dubcon elements, Possessive Herbert West

Inspired by the lovely @bisexual-horror-fan‘s previous fic 

God, was he distracted again. No matter how hard he tried to power through and regain the laser precise focus he usually had on his research, thoughts of you thoroughly saturated his mind, ones that never failed to make his pants feel tighter than ever.

For years, the medical student had believed himself to be immune to the carnal needs that seemed to drive everyone else around him. Never before had he understood how people could go to such lengths for the affection of another, why they would change, even in the slightest, to make someone else more comfortable. He was nothing but level-headed and objectively logical. 

Until now.

He sighed, leaving his laboratory basement, retreating to the one location he used as a sanctuary where he could relieve himself. Locking himself in his room, he allowed himself to slip fully into his private fantasies of you. The thoughts were free to pass through his mind anywhere, but here, he could indulge himself without the risk of you finding out. 

Eager, trembling hands pulled at his belt and tugged down his zipper. Generous, sticky rivulets of precum clung to his fingers as he pulled his cock free and began to languidly stroke along its length. Sensitive to the slightest touch, it pulsed in his hand with intense need. 

He wanted you, strapped down and helpless on his examination table. You would hear the crisp snap of him putting on the examination gloves, like any good doctor, and know that his work on you would be thorough. Clad only in a thin, white patient gown, your sweet, supple lips would be quivering from the chill of the metal. How gently he wanted to trace over them with a gloved thumb, leaving you with the faint taste of latex.

A tray of shining surgical tools would be prepared for him, and he would turn to it, selecting a scalpel, and holding it up for you to see as it gleamed under the operating light. The blade would dance against your skin, quickening your pulse as he held your fragile little life in his practiced hands. To you, he would be a god, capable of great cruelty, yet merciful in the restraint he showed in never once drawing blood. The demonstration was a promise that he would not harm you, nor would he allow any harm to befall you, and you would know that he was able to shelter you from the world. You could surrender your entire self to him and he would take care of you.

Surgical shears would make quick work of the thin fabric covering your body and you would be laid bare before him, ready for examination. Gloved hands would trace over the curves of your soft, smooth skin as he paid attention to your every reaction. He would study you thoroughly, learning where you were oh-so sensitive to his touch and committing it all to memory. There was nothing he wanted more than to be the only person who could make you feel such pleasure. 

He wanted to tease you until you begged him for more, and he would be more than willing to oblige. The sounds you would make would be breathy and desperate as he slipped one finger into you, pleasuring you as he eased you into taking a second, and then a third. He would make sure your body was well prepared to take his cock. 

You would be freed from the newly unnecessary restraints, weak legs trembling  with overstimulation as he placed himself between them. Your neck would fit perfectly in the curve of his hand between his thumb and forefinger; giving the lightest of squeezes to your carotid as he enters you, a perfect biological meeting of your sex and his. He thought about you moaning out his name, how beautiful it would sound coming from you with the most erotic tone -

“Herb? Herbie?”

His eyes snapped open as his whole body froze up. He had heard you, he was sure of it -

“Hey, Herbert? It’s me. Sorry for bothering you on our off day, but I need to talk to you about something.” 

Your voice came from the other side of the bedroom door, apologetic and timid. 

How long have you been there??

Glancing down at his messy crotch, his cock throbbing, painfully close to release, and painfully decided that it had to wait until later. Responding to you was priority number one.  He cleared his throat and responded, “I’ll be out in a moment.”

Frantically trying to pull himself together and make it seem as if he had not been doing what he’d been doing, he took a t-shirt from his dresser, hastily cleaning himself off before stuffing himself back into his trousers. He did his best to hide his erection in the waistband of his pants and straightened his clothes in his attempt to be more presentable. 

Opening the door, he heard you yelp in surprise, which evolved into sheepish laughter. He knew by now that you startled easily. You regained your composure, seriousness returning to your face as he invited you in. He held the door open for you to enter, and you brushed politely past him, the scent of your perfume lingering a moment longer. 

You sat on the edge of his neatly made bed, taking the time to smooth your skirt over your legs. Herbert pulled out his desk chair and sat down, facing you. 

God, if only things were different, if only you wanted me too, if only you would fall into my arms…

“Thank you so much, I caught your roommate on his way out and he let me in. I don’t want to bother you too much, so I’ll make this as short as I can. I… wanted to talk to you about our work so far…”

“Yes, what about it? There haven’t been any problems with it so far, and we are meeting every requirement on time.”

Your thumb traced over the fingernails on your opposite hand. 

“It feels to me like you are doing so much more of the work than I am, and that doesn’t seem fair to me.”

He tilted his head, puzzled. 

“More of the work? We do all our studies together, so you are spending the same amount of time as I am on everything. How could you be contributing less than I am?”

You didn’t want to tell him that a lot of the time you were working in between inappropriate distracting thoughts of him. You were trying your best to be a medical professional, no matter how badly your body wanted him between your legs. It didn’t help that this was the first time you had seen his bedroom, much less been alone with him in it.

“Well… it’s like I tend to do more of the report writing and you tend to do more of the calculations…”

“But we both collect the test data and analyze the samples? The calculations usually aren’t very difficult, just tedious, so it’s more efficient for you to begin writing the report with what we have so far until they are finished and can be added in.”

“I just don’t want you to be stuck with the math parts of it all the time, while I’m pretty much rewriting our notes into the right format. It would be nice if we could take turns between doing the writing and the calculations…”

“That could work… let’s see what we have due coming up…”  

Herbert pulled out his notebook and found the schedule of due dates he had copied down. 

“Starting with the next one, I’ll mark every other report we have to do with a star to remind myself to write the report instead of starting on the calculations. Does that work for you?”

You got up and stood next to him, watching him meticulously mark the schedule as he had explained. Your eyes looked over the schedule, but secretly, your attention was on his neatly manicured hands as they rested beside it on the desk. If only they would touch you, hold you and bring you intimately close to him. Thankfully, your hair hid your face from his sight as a light blush crept over your cheeks.

He was so close to you, wanting to be closer still, losing his sanity in your sweet scent around him. You had come to see him even when you could have waited until you next saw him to speak. Maybe, just maybe, you liked, no, enjoyed seeing him. There could be more to the way you saw him than you let on. 

More than anything, he wanted to be brave enough to test this hypothesis. If only he had the chance.

Leaning back in his chair, he asked coolly, “Was that all you came to talk about?”

“Yeah, like I said, it would be short. Don’t want to stay too long, I know you have other things to take care of. Just wanna take a look at it before I go.”

“Alright.’

The both of you reached out for the schedule simultaneously, your hand accidentally brushing against his, no different than the other times it had happened before in the lab, but this time, neither of you pulled away. You froze, staring at the paper, time seeming to stand still. Even through the curtain of your hair, you could feel his intense eyes on you. 

“Herbert-” you whispered, almost fearfully as the two of you realized neither of you could hold back anymore, teetering on a precipice constructed of each and every wish if only things were different and -

- your other hand reached out, seized the smart black tie he always wore and hauled his face closer as your lips crashed against his. Somehow, you had found him ready for your embrace, though he returned your fervor with impassioned inexperience. For a man who demonstrated brilliance in the medical field, you wanted to teach him about your anatomy. From all that you’d seen, he tended to be an astoundingly quick learner. 

With only the lightest of tugs, you collapsed gently into his lap, throwing your arms around his neck. One of his hands cradled the back of your head, fingers winding into hair softer than he had ever imagined, the other resting between your shoulder blades. 

If the man was hard before, having you in his lap made him acutely aware of how his entirety  ached with need. His kisses increased in desperation as his mind fixated on how only a few layers of cloth separated his sex from yours. Physically, he was closer than he’d ever been to filling you with his seed and making you his. 

Forever.

Herbert’s grasp on you tightened, firmly pressing your body against his as he seized a handful of your hair. “Mhmm,” you mused, enjoying his suggestion of dominance. You wondered if you could tease more of it out of him, tempt him into fulfilling his more depraved fantasies. There was nothing you wanted more than to feel all of the passion he had bottled up for so long and get fucked into next week. 

When the two of you finally broke away from each other, immediately you took the time to whisper in his ear. “I- I want you… I want you to do what you will to me…” As an additional tease, you let your bottom lip gently graze against his ear before pulling back to look at him with big, innocent, dewy eyes. 

The words settled deep into his psyche, seemingly lifted from his own dreams. How many times he had imagined you falling into his arms? Still, your eagerness surprised him; as reserved as you were around him, he couldn’t have anticipated your zealous submissiveness. It triggered a spark of dominance that smoldered in his core like a cherry red ember.

“What I will, hmm…? Then lie down for me, darling and I will show you.” 

You raised yourself off his lap dutifully, letting your fingertips sweep over his jawline as you stood. Sprawling out on his bed in a suggestive pose, you watched as he closed his bedroom door, locking it. The two of you were alone in the house, at least you were pretty sure of it, but now nothing would keep you from getting what you had wanted for all this time. 

He turned to face you, voice low but still audible. 

“Well, we can’t begin with all of these clothes still on you, can we?” 

You hiked the hem of your skirt higher on your thigh and purred, “I guess you’ll have to take them off me then…”

As he walked back to the bed, he loosened his tie, undid several buttons, and rolled up his sleeves, the way he did before starting on lab work. Similarly, the same single minded focus he reserved for his work presented itself on his face, but his eyes, deep and lust filled, now pored over you. The ease of your submission pleased him.

Starting with your top, he undressed you with surprisingly aloof care, almost as if it were another surgical procedure - removal of your clothes. He chose to leave you in your panties, kneeling beside you as the tip of his thumb brushed against your bottom lip. You couldn’t help parting your lips, sliding your tongue underneath the pad and gently suckling it into your mouth. 

You let your eyes flicker up to his, meeting his gaze, daring him to meet your unspoken challenge to take things further. More than eager to, Herbert wrapped his free hand lightly around your throat, expertly finding your carotid with his thumb and forefinger. A gentle squeeze made your eyelashes flutter as you looked up at him, unable to hide the dazed smile that spread across your face. 

“Now that’s a beautiful look… Sprawled out on my bed with my hand around your pretty throat…”

Giggling lightly, you hooked a finger into his belt loop, directing your gaze towards his bulge. “I could say the same, with the view you’re giving me.”

“I plan on giving you more than just a view.”

“Please do,” you whined, letting your hand drift over the front of his pants.

Your touch caught him by surprise and for a moment he frantically worried if his soul had left his body or, even worse, he had ejaculated prematurely. No. That couldn’t happen, he simply could not disappoint you, especially now. The thought of you taking pity on him, no longer seeing him as a virile, capable partner, and choosing someone else over him was maddening. You were too perfect to lose. He couldn’t have your assertiveness push him over the edge before everything was ready.

Grasping your extended wrist, he leaned over, pinning it above your head; once more his lips found yours. They didn’t stay for long, lingering for a moment before deeper, possessive need washed over him.  Ravenously pursuing an intensifying intimacy with you, he began to nibble and suck down along your jawline, delighting on how you continued the attempt to let your lips connect before realizing that their drift was intentional. 

You lifted your chin and tilted your head away, exposing the delicate skin of your neck for him, sighing wistfully. Desperate kisses left a trail of blooming crimson bruises down to your collarbone, each one a reminder of where his lips had been on your body. Lightly flicking his tongue over the marks elicited a subdued whimper of prey like submission from you. 

It couldn’t be any more obvious that your desires aligned perfectly with his. You were practically begging for him to give you a ring and his last name. He needed to make sure everyone knew you were his. Immediately, a familiar hunger within him awakened, one that he knew could only be sated by flooding your womb with his seed. 

Dark eyes, lidded with lust, looked up at you and his grip on your wrist tightened. When he spoke, his voice was noticeably huskier.  “I want to know every inch of your body, everything that makes you twitch and squirm, sweetheart.” With that, he released your wrist, taking note that you kept it above your head. 

Slowly, Herbert began making his way down your body, his breath ghosting over your skin with every word. 

“I’ve been wanting to have you like this for so long… You don’t know what a damn tease you are, keeping up your studious façade all this time… pretending you could never think of me as more than a lab partner…”

Gentle fingertips traced around your navel, slowly inching towards the hem of your underwear. 

“All the time we have spent in the lab, working together on mere reports when we could be performing experiments of our own, on every flat surface we could clear off instead. Imagine it - barely anyone else uses the room when we’re there, even if the door rarely is locked…”

He licked his lips and trailed off, mind conjuring up a vision of a hapless classmate stumbling in on him fucking you into oblivion on the lab bench. There were several male colleagues who weren’t as subtle as he was when staring at you, and short of permanently disposing of them, he wanted them to know who you belonged to. You would never be theirs. 

Mine.

You didn’t know it yet, but the word lingered on the tip of his tongue as he envisioned laying claim to your body with every inch of you he touched. 

The feeling of fabric under his fingertips brought him back from the daydream.

“Such sexy panties you have on, are these typical for you, or do you only wear these when you know you’ll see me, hoping that I’ll get to see you in them?” He didn’t wait for you to answer, hooking his fingers into the lace and beginning to tug them down your legs. “The idea of you secretly dressing up just to see your lab partner does thrill me… Though I must say, even a patient gown would be beautiful on you,” he added. 

A shiver ran through your body, but before you had any amount of time to consider what he’d just said, your panties were off and he was admiring your glistening sex. It was he who had made you this aroused, and his body ached to please you. For a man with a complex greater than God, his voice betrayed reverence.

“Oh, Darling…” 

He bowed his head in genuflection, held you by the hips, and brought you to his lips with the desperation of a tormented sinner at communion chalice. Any sense of decorum promptly exited his being once your sweet nectar graced his tongue. He had been a man starved and your body promised all of the nourishment he could ever need. 

It took you by surprise. You didn’t know anyone could be this eager for you, much less Herbert West, the man who seemed incapable of having emotions, much less considering anything outside his work. Fingertips pressed into your soft hips, holding you tightly, though not enough to bruise. Not that you particularly minded any lingering reminders of this.

Herbert’s mind flitted briefly back to his medical textbooks, trying to map out your anatomy with his tongue. For once, he cursed his eagerness, wishing that he had started with his fingers instead, but the thought soon departed once you twitched under him, letting out a heightened yelp of pleasure. 

Again.

Regaining some semblance of control, desperate flicks of his tongue lengthened into slower, calculating ones. Searching for your nexus, the little bundle of nerves more sensitive than his own frenulum, one of the few places on your body that could elicit such a reaction from you, he paid careful attention to even the minute changes of your breaths. This level of attunement had earned him much praise in his medical studies, and he now studied you with such rigor. 

These exploratory licks paid off, earning him another delicious response from you. This time, however, he had pinpointed where you wanted him. Centering his ministrations on your clit, he took his time dragging his tongue between your folds, pulling lengthy moans from deep in your core. 

“God- oh Fuck!... H…Herb…ert…”

The way that each syllable in his name dripped from your lips sent a shiver down his spine. Never before had he heard his name carry such raw desire. The way he’d imagined it in his fantasies simply could not compare to the real thing, the real you, spread out before him on his bed, audibly panting and squirming. 

Increasing the motion of his tongue, he found, made your legs twitch faster, and soon your thighs were trembling in time with his efforts. Your hands clenched onto his bedding for dear life, palms grinding into the plush down as his hands kneaded your inner thighs. Arching your back, you eagerly pressed your sex into his desperate mouth, letting coquettish ah’s and Oh God’s fall from yours. 

Every sound you made filled and danced around Herbert’s fevered mind. The feeling of you squirming beneath him with your panting breaths filled him with power. You were more receptive to him than he had imagined and the feeling of you pressing up against him was intoxicating. He was more capable than he had worried he was, either that, or you were just so drawn to him that you were putty in his hands. Either way, he knew that he was meant for you. 

“Herb…I….I…” you covered your face with your hands, whispering fiercely “I…I’m gonna….gonna….you know…”

The thought of ceasing and teasing you mercilessly by keeping you on the edge flitted through his head. As much as the idea excited him, it was overcome by the fear of you seeing him as withholding and incapable of giving you pleasure. Taking only a moment to speak, he commanded you to cum for him. 

His voice had taken on a rougher tone, and the lust in his voice was enough to send you over the edge, spilling messily into his hungry mouth. Greedily, he lapped up every drop that spilled from your lips, letting the taste linger on his tongue as long as he could. 

Glasses askew and misty with condensation, he peered up at you, trying to take in the blissed out expression of you coming down from your orgasm. His core churned with lust and delight, proud of how he had made you cum. Certainly you would never leave him if you knew he could make you climax whenever you wanted. He needed to give you more, more than anyone else could. 

Eyes lidded, you watched as Herbert took a moment to lightly kiss just above your clit before looking back at you, a familiar, faintly haughty smile playing on his lips. It widened into a smirk as he nimbly parted your labia and began to tease you, slowly sliding two fingertips from your clit to your entrance. 

“God, you make the filthiest sounds when you cum, darling… All of that noise after just a few licks from me and you haven’t even had anything put in you yet! If this had been the university lab, the entire department would know what we’re up to!” 

His words, filled with mirth, still brought a flush of embarrassment to your cheeks. Refusing to let any kind of shame take hold, you responded boldly.

“Good. I don’t care if they know.” 

He raised an eyebrow, daring to lightly interrogate you while remaining aloof as ever.

“You don’t, hmm?”

His fingers took up a new pattern, circling the hood of your clit as he spoke coolly. 

“Why don’t you look me in the eyes and tell me that again.”

You fixed your eyes on the bridge of his glasses. 

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about what? Say it to me.”

Part of you couldn’t take how damn smug he was being and it was worse now more than ever. You knew that he knew damn well what you meant, and that he just wanted to watch you squirm. God be damned if you had somehow expected his attempts to psychologically pick you apart to stay in the lab without also following you into the bedroom. Now, you wanted to see what he would do if you surrendered yourself to his ego.

“I don’t care if the entire department knows that we’re fucking. I don’t care if anyone hears us either. Hell, they can watch for all I care, the perverts. They can watch all they want as the salutatorian and valedictorian fuck each other silly in between completing coursework. You could say that all I care about right now is completing intercourse work with you, soon to be Doctor West.” 

“Good girl.”

Words you didn’t know you wanted to hear. They bloomed in your core, filling you with a liquid warmth. As he said them, his fingers left your clit, pushing forth into the dip of your entrance. Sliding the first, then the second firmly into your dripping pussy, you sighed out as his fingertips pressed against the nexus in your core where his praise had settled. 

“My, my… I’m only able to fit two of my fingers in you… You’ll need much more preparation before taking my cock, you’re still so tight…”

Before you could reply, his face had dipped between your legs again. Still sensitive from your first orgasm, you let out a loud, involuntary moan as his lips found your clit with a startling ease. Applying the lightest amount of suction drew high, pitchy whines that he found to be erotically delicate. How beautifully dainty you sounded, just trying to do something as simple as breathe normally while his lips lavished your clit. You were oh, so fragile, he thought, and more than anything he wanted you to shatter. After all, he was more than prepared to pick up your pieces and put you back together. 

With attention befitting a practiced surgeon, he noted every minute response of your body as he carefully led you from one orgasm into another. Every single one took just a bit more of the haughty fight out of you and left drooling, syrupy submission in its place. You, he concluded, could be conquered in the same way that he had succeeded in his medical research - with tireless patience and persistence, though the hands on work was markedly different. 

No matter how tightly your walls squeezed his fingers during climax, your fluid still dripped from his straining knuckles and ran down his forearm in rivulets. After orgasm four, he began to carefully slide another in, murmuring gentle praise as you felt the stretch of three fingers. 

“Yes, that’s it… Breathe with me, darling, you’re being such a good girl for me… That’s right…”

Trying to sync your breaths with his took all of the awareness remaining in you. Thankfully, it was just enough for your pelvic floor to relax and comfortably let his fingers slip inside. 

This time, he rested the pad of his thumb on your clit as he played with you, focusing mainly on stimulating you internally, preparing your body to acutely respond to feeling his cock slide in and out of your tight little hole. Had it not been for his strict self control, his imagination would have had him spent right after the moment of anticipation. God, he was holding on for dear life, but even with everything that he was and needed to be, he could sense himself beginning to fray around the edges. 

Mine, forever.

“Please…I…I want you in me…”

Dazed, you murmured the words, struggling to speak. 

“Do you now?”

“Please, Herbert…”

Truthfully, he wasn’t planning on doing much more teasing, not with his already heightened arousal threatening his plans for you. 

“Only since you beg so nicely for me…”

His fingers slipped out of you, leaving you feeling hollow with their absence. Herbert rose to his knees, licking the taste of you from his digits. He appeared before you, almost dreamlike, as his hands reached down to his belt, glasses askew and typically neat hair disheveled. It could have easily been an alternate man, one who showed that he was capable of passion outside of his research. 

Once more, he took himself in hand. This time, he used his precum to coat his shaft, spreading a copious amount from tip to base with careful strokes. Neglecting to undress any further, he positioned himself between your thighs, nestling the head of his cock in the divot of your entrance. Firm hands took hold on either side of your soft hips, kneading the ample flesh beneath his fingers. Childbearing hips, he mused briefly, before sinking into you. 

He let out a guttural moan, one that you almost mistook for being orgasmic as he fell onto you, lips crashing ravenously against yours in a barrage of desperate kisses. Before you had time to adjust to the stretch of his girth, he’d begun moving. Long, deep strokes stimulated you thoroughly, each thrust slamming against your cervix, the pleasure mixing with the pain in a heady combination. Your nails dug into the fabric of his now wrinkled dress shirt as you pressed your chest tightly to his, bracing yourself against the familiar warmth building in your core. 

Nearly delirious with overstimulation and drowning in your panting moans, the line between fantasy and reality for Herbert began to blur at last, feeling as if he were rapidly approaching both divinity and impiety. Two little words danced maddeningly around in his head, ones that had tormented him since first laying eyes on you. 

If only, if only, if only, if only -

He felt the internal flutter of your muscles contracting around him first, followed with the arching of your back that pressed your hips against his, the gratuitous gush of fluid from your nexus with your release, accompanied by the sound of your desperate, choked moans, eyes struggling to meet his from under weakly fluttering lashes; all of it, all of you, so perfect, so beautifully broken, and all his. The fantasy had blossomed from his daydreams and sprung forth into his reality. 

Stars burst from the periphery of his eyes, dazzling his vision as his body trembled in unfathomable ecstasy. He came with a violent shudder, feeling each surge of ejaculate with exquisite sensitivity, tip pressed firmly against your cervix in hopes of flooding your womb. Energy quickly draining from his exhausted body, he let himself collapse gently onto you, nestling his face into the curve of your neck. 

As you began to drift off into sleep you thought you heard him mumble something, but couldn’t be sure about it.

“You’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

[lyrenminth]

Insecurities

Warnings: Jealous Justin (more or less), smut, pretty vanilla.

Sorry for any grammatical mistake.

After a great dinner with the team, you went to your hotel room. While you were waiting for your car in the valet, Justin had to comeback inside for his phone so you were standing alone when a young man approach you.

 "Hi, why are you leaving so early?" He was attractive, tall and slim, dressing very casual but elegant at the same time. Smiling at you with friendliness. By his smell you could tell he was drunk.

"Oh, I'm just tired" you replied with a shy smile.

"And are you driving? My name is Tyler, by the way" he said giving you a handshake.

"No, she isn't driving " you heard Justin say, standing next to you. Tyler saw Justin, speechless.

"Man..."

"Do you find your phone?" you asked him. He nodded.

"... you're Justin Herbert, oh my god, my dad loves you, he's a big chargers fan" 

Justin gave him a polite smile but you could tell he wasn't pleased. Tyler then realized his mistake.

"Oh, are you dating him?' he exclaimed, surprised. You frowned. What does that even mean? 

"Lucky guy in and out the field" he commented, staring atu your body. You were wearing a tight black dress.

"That's kinda inappropriate" Justin said, annoyed "I would really appreciate if you keep your distance" 

"Come on man, it was just a joke"

Luckily, your car appeared and Justin told you to go inside. He walked around and got inside too.

 "There is always someone flirting with you when I'm not close" he says, half laughing half annoyed.

"He wasn't flirting with me" you stated, trying to brush it off.

"I think he was" 

"He was being friendly" you commented.Justin raised his eyebrows, incredulous. Yeah, you always thought all men were friendly when they weren't. 

"Well, you know I struggle with flirting and being flirted" you confessed.Justin hand touched your knee, sending you shivers down your spine.

"It's ok, baby. I know is not your fault" he reassured you. 

It was almost midnight and you were kinda tired even though Justin seemed to be fine. Just entering the room you took your heels off and tried to reach the zipper of your back but you couldn't so you asked Justin for help. He entered the bathroom and your eyes lock through the mirror, you noticed he took off his tie and suit. You shy away and he smiled at you with confidence. When Justin and you were alone, he was all confident. He unzipped your dress and caress your back. He got closer to you pushing you towards the sink and then you felt his erection against your ass. You grinned feeling excited.

"You were looking extra nice tonight, I would approach you too" he whispered in your ear "I really really wanted to touch you in front of everyone"

You left out a sigh, feeling hot. That's was so inappropriate and hot at the same time. His hand wandered from your thighs yo your breasts, touching every place like he has done before. His hands all over your body make you squirm. He started kissing your neck and shoulders while massaging your breasts through the fabric. You were becoming shaky and breathy, feeling your muscles tense between your thighs. One of his hands went south, touching that spot.

"Mmmm" he murmured when he noticed how wet you were "take this off" said helping you to pull your dress off. You weren't using bra or pads so you were only with your panties on. You turned around to kiss him eagerly, he responded the same way. You ran your hands through his soft hair, wanting more and more. Your started to unbotton his shirt to kiss his well sculptured chest. He lifted you, putting your legs around his waist and guide you towards the bed. He covered your body with his and started giving kisses all over you, taking time on each breast his tongue caressing your nipples, biting them sofly. You could only enjoy his attentions. Until he reached the place between your thighs. Your could feel his breath there. You moaned wanting to close your legs but he didn't let you, touching your knees and spreading you open. He stared back, and you nodded in permission. He took your panties off.

"You are so..." He didn't finish, diving in and licking you like a starved man. Taking care of you so damn well, touching with his tongue the correct spots with the correct pressure. You were a moaning mess, grabbing his hair strongly. Pulling him closer. The sensation of his tongue down there sent you to the moon, wanting to stop but no at the same time. Rocking your hips involuntarily, lost in your own pleasure until you came apart with wrenching convulsions. You caught you breath and recover consciousness. Justin smiled and gave you a kiss.

 "You can fuck me now" you said. He snorted but started to unzip his pants. You have saw Justin naked many times before but is body was very impressive each time. Justin was a sculpture, well defined, right size and well proportionated. You were grateful with his parents for putting such effort creating him. "You're so damn hot" you said out of breath, touching his chest "And mine"

He grabbed your hips and put you in four, slapping your ass and touching your back all along.

 "Yes, I'm yours and you are mine" he bite your earlobe. You loved possessive Justin. "Let me show you...how much...." You felt him pushing inside, and almost you stop breathing. It was so good having this connection with him. He started to thrust, fast and deeper each time. The only noises you could heard were your moans and his groans. "Oh, you feel so good" he said out of breath. You clenched on him feeling like you were about to explode.

"Justin" you call him, pleading.Justin slowed down and almost laid on your back. You feel him cover you and you pressed yourself against the mattress completely laying down on the bed as a sign of submission. He started moving his hips again. The pace continue after a few minutes until he reached his orgasm. He fell on one side of the bed, and you looked at him.

 "Come here" he said, reaching for you and brought you closer to him. He gave you a kiss on your forehead and you gave him a kiss on his chest. "Justin..."

"Uh?"

"We're you jealous?" You asked.

"A little bit" 

"Why?"

"Maybe one day you would find someone better" he confessed sounding insecure "I don't know if it would be the same story for me"

"You know I never do that" 

"Yes, I know"

"You can trust me as I trust you, Justin"

 "I do, but is more about myself than about you" you stared at him, spechless. You gave him a long kiss, wanting to transmit your feelings, all you love you felt for him. He reciprocated, holding you closer between his arms. When you were out of breath you broke the kiss. 

“No one is better than you, Justin, no one” you said by heart.

He held you tighter this time.

[girlactionfigure]

Conductor of Dachau

Gave the musicians a reason to live

Herbert Zipper was a conductor and composer who founded a secret orchestra at Dachau, and wrote a song that became an anthem for death camp inmates.

Born in 1904 to an affluent Jewish family in Vienna, Herbert was a musical prodigy who studied at the prestigious Vienna Music Academy with the great composer Richard Strauss. He found employment as a conductor and composer for cabaret shows.

Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and immediately started persecuting Jewish citizens. Herbert was arrested that year and sent by the SS to Dachau, where he became a “horse,” pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with heavy rocks for 12 hours a day. One of the most talented composers in Europe was doing the work of an animal.

Herbert was not the only music man in Dachau. All the Jewish members of the Munich Philharmonic – comprising most of the orchestra – were also incarcerated there. Herbert enlisted the other musicians in an audacious, even insane, plan. They would make instruments and create an orchestra, right there at Dachau.

How could anybody create musical instruments in a concentration camp? They combed the camp for discarded pieces of wood and metal and fashioned eleven primitive yet functional instruments. At least one guard helped the musicians; Herbert requested a piece of wire for a string instrument, and later found it under his pillow.

Herbert’s Dachau orchestra performed concerts for the other inmates every Sunday, in an outhouse. It’s hard to imagine the experience of listening to sublime music in a filthy environment, while knowing they could be all killed for their participation. Herbert said that the concerts were not for entertainment, but rather to bring purpose and even a bit of normalcy back to their lives.

Noted playwright Jura Soyfer, an old friend of Herbert’s from his cabaret days, was also at Dachau. Together they wrote “Dachaulied” (Dachau song), with Herbert composing the haunting music in his head and Jura penning the sad, sardonic lyrics inspired by the concentration camp motto “Work will make you free.” They thought that writing the song would help them maintain some dignity in an atmosphere of constant humiliation and demonization. Herbert deliberately made the song difficult to learn, so that his fellow inmates would have to use all of their concentration and thereby mentally escape from their horrific surroundings. Amazingly, the Nazis never discovered the secret orchestra.

At the end of 1938, Herbert and Jura were transferred to Buchenwald where they taught other inmates the Dachau song. Soon after, Jura died of typhus at age 26, and Herbert lovingly prepared his body for burial. At this time Hitler hadn’t yet began to implement his “Final Solution” to kill all the Jews, which started in 1941. Herbert’s father Emil was in London, desperately trying to get a visa for Herbert and his two brothers to escape Austria. Miraculously, Emil was able to secure his sons’ release from Buchenwald, and they joined him in Paris on March 16, 1939.

During all this time, Herbert’s fiancee, dancer Trudl Dubsky, was working in Manila, in the Philippines. She recommended him for the job of conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra, and he was hired, traveling there in September, 1939. Herbert and Trudl were married on October 1. Although it wasn’t a world-class orchestra at the time, Herbert enjoyed working with the Manila Orchestra and under his leadership it improved dramatically. Life was good for Herbert and Trudl until January 1942, when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines and occupied Manila. It was a brutal occupation and once again Herbert was arrested, this time for refusing to conduct the orchestra for Japanese military officers. He was incarcerated and harshly interrogated for four months before being released. For the next three years Herbert and Trudl survived hand-to-mouth, owning no belongings and traveling frequently in search of safe haven in a country at war.

The most difficult period was the Battle of Manila in early 1945. More than once the building where they took shelter was bombed by the Japanese artillery and they escaped with only seconds to spare. In the end of February they were living with hundreds of other displaced people in a seven-story building in Manila that had neither electricity or water. Herbert volunteered to get water every day, a dangerous and difficult undertaking.  On the early morning of February 26, 1945, Herbert was on his water run when he saw an opportunity to reach the American front line, and he rushed across a battle field to do it. While there he received a crucial piece of information: the apartment building where he was staying was due to be bombed by the Allies within fifteen minutes! Herbert desperately explained that 800-1000 civilians were inside the building! Due to his pleas, the bombardment was delayed for 45 minutes, giving him just enough time to get back to the building and rescue everyone inside including Trudl.

Until Japan was defeated on September 2, 1945, Herbert worked secretly for the American army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, transmitting valuable information about Japanese shipping schedules by shortwave radio. When Japan finally surrendered, Herbert organized and conducted a concert of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, a goal he’d set during the darkest hours at Dachau. The concert was performed in a bombed-out church.

Herbert and Trudl immigrated to America in 1946, joining the rest of his family. He co-founded and conducted the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, and organized another orchestra especially to give free concerts for public school children. Students called Herbert, who had no children of his own, “Papa Z.” For the rest of his life he volunteered and supported arts education for young people.

Herbert was close friends with poet Langston Hughes and they collaborated on an opera together, “Barrier.” Trudl worked as a ballet tacher. They moved to Chicago in 1953, where Herbert founded the Music Center of the North Shore, and then to Los Angeles, where Herbert directed the School of Performing Arts at USC.

Interviewed by a Los Angeles Times reporter at the end of his life, Herbert said “We have to see the world as it is, but we have to think about what the world could be. That’s what the arts are about.”

Herbert is the subject of a biography, “Dachau Song: The Twentieth Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper,” and a documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award. His beloved wife Trudl died of lung cancer in 1976. He continued his music for two more decades, conducting his last concert in 1996. Herbert Zipper died in Santa Monica in 1997.

For inspiring concentration camp inmates and inner-city schoolchildren with his music, and for saving hundreds of lives during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, we honor Herbert Zipper as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Lyrics of Dachau Song:

Barbed wire fraught with death surrounds our world

On which a merciless heaven visits frost and sunburn.

Far from us are all joys, far our home, far the women

When mute we march to work, thousands in the gray dawn.

But we learned the Dachau motto and it made us hard as steel.

Be a man, comrade, remain human comrade

Do good work, pitch in, comrade

Because work, work will make you free!

Accidental Talmudist

[captaincravatthecapricious]

Collapse- Prompt Fill

Jon is a Dune fan. How can picking up one book change things? Idea from a tumblr prompt and a post by @roseunspindle (permission was granted for writing this)

cw all the typical episode 160 stuff and references to nausea and of course manipulation and fainting. Some dialogue from 160, and a quote from Dune, of course!

I am still accepting bingo prompts (card by @celosiaa​) Pick a prompt from the card and a character and let me know if you want art of fic! (I am much faster at art). I have several outlined that I need to write, and I will get to those... Soonish?  Have an excellent day and I hope 2021 treats you well!

Jon isn’t sure why he grabbed the book.  He’s read it before so it doesn’t hold the same interest it once did.   He had to work on that reading habit of his in school, and now he’s managed a few rereads, but he still prefers the unknown and interesting.

But he did love this book when he read it.  He was too young for it, of course.  But that hadn’t mattered.  He sucked the whole world into his young and greedy mind.  

And now that glossy, second hand cover.... makes him pause over it.  He doesn’t know how it survived evictions and his absences.  He must have subconsciously stored it out of the way.  But he grabs it, with a few statements, and his small collection of clothes into a very battered backpack that he’s sure once belonged to Melanie.  

He wishes he had more books.  Maybe once he and Martin reach the train station, he can pick up something else to read.  Or maybe he can borrow some books from Martin….

He stuffs Dune into his backpack.  It’s on the top, distending the fabric slightly, straining the zipper as his grandmother had always reprimanded him for when he shoved too many pleasure books into his school bag, (always to read under the desk and he was always inevitably caught and reprimanded again, but what could you do with an inattentive student who still pulled good marks?).  

He boards the train with Martin.  Battered and aging backpacks filled with worn clothes and statements and books and granola bars.  The station had been loud and busy enough to send Jon reeling with the information spilling off a crowd of people as well as the less eldritch sensory overload.  His head aching dully as they settle into their seats.  

Medicine for motion sickness sends him drowsy as soon as it is effective.  He spends the time before it works staring queasily out the window, clammy hands holding tightly to Martin as much to sooth his uneasy stomach as to hold Martin in this plain of reality.  He nods off, hands still clasped with Martin’s.  Wrapped up in the elation of having Martin with him, around him, talking to him…. almost safe.  

He wakes up in a storm of hurried breaths and crashing thoughts…. precarious as the crashing waves that haunted the lonely, but far closer and more oppressive.  Statements tumbling with his own crashing thoughts.  Fear on his breath.  His fear making him Hungry in the nauseous way of autocannibleism.  

He presses his face into Martin, only just then realizing that he’s been using Martin as a pillow.   Martin, who is dozing.  Martin, who is still a little foggy.  The last of the haze burning off with the contact.  Jon can see the steam rising between them, mainly and gentle.  The sun burning the fog off a meadow in the early morning.  

Jon sits himself up, but stays pressed against Martin.  The imprint of Jon slowly thawing Martin as the train gently sways them both.  

Jon doesn’t want to sleep more.  He would much prefer to read, but it is still more than a bit of a gamble for him to even medicated.  But…. he’s bored.  

Dune.  

Right on the top of his bag.  Leaning over starting to make him queasy (which doesn’t bode well for reading attempts), he pulls it out and straightens up.  

He turns it over in his hands a few times, until his stomach settles.  He’s fine.  Just a few more minutes before the medicine works… probably anyhow.  

He flips through the pages, still waiting for his breathing to calm as well.  

Oh.  

He remembers this words… in a half remembered haze of childhood and tracing those words on his limbs and his walls.  With his eyes, and markers, and pencils.  On the inside of his eyelids.  Carved into the air about his bed as he repeated them to himself.  

‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’

Reading those words again makes his hands shake like they had when he first read them… with Mr. Spider fresh in his nightmares.  Still missing the life he could never have with his parents.  

Jon fumbles for a pen.  

He traces them again on his forearm.  

Poorly written, of course.  Hands far from steady with the rocking of the train and the rocking of his stomach and the rolling of his world after the day he’s had.  But he is once more too tired to focus on anything much, so he tucks his book away again, and shoves the pen in his pocket.  

He tucks himself up against Martin again, using an old jumper as a blanket.  He knows he is taking a bit of a liberty, but he buries his face in Martin’s neck and breathes deeply.  He’s asleep again in moments.  

The trip isn’t eventful.  Lots of track clicking past.  Lots of drowsy hours.  A disappointing sandwich and a tasteless cup of tea.  Jostled shoulders.  Cramped restrooms.  Cramped necks.  Jon’s bad leg protesting the seating arrangements.  Then the slightly uncomfortable walk to the safe house.  Weighed down with hasty shopping and their lumpy bags.  Jon limping more heavily by the time they drag themselves over the threshold.  

In the domestic bliss, time stretches.  Lazy afternoons on the couch Jon and Martin entwined stretch into years in the golden light of afternoon.  Two weeks of cups of tea.  Of trips to the store.  Of statements that Jon goes through way too fast, try as he does to ration them.  Frantic phone calls to Basira as Jon can’t make the trip to town anymore.  More cuddling on the couch.  Bickering over who does the dishes, over who makes the best eggs.  Over what to have for dinner.  Discussions of what counts as a sandwich and whether cereal is a soup.  Jon being appalled that Martin eats cereal from the box directly with a spoon.  Martin being horrified that Jon eats dry cereal from a bowl with a glass of milk.  Playing footsie through dinner.  “Yes Martin, another soup.  Means less cooking.”  Sloppy kisses over glasses of wine.  Jon being too dizzy to go on walks.  Jon retracing Frank Herbert’s words on to his arm.  Over.  And over.  And over again.  

“I must not fear…”

“I must not fear…”

“I must not fear…”

“I must not fear…”

Until a package arrives.  

It’s unassuming and labeled in Basira’s careful penmanship.  If Jon expects to see tear-staines over a lost partner, he doesn’t see them.  

Martin kisses him soundly, and leaves to take pictures of good cows.  

Jon has been tucked up on the couch.  Under a thick blanket.  Finally in better spirits now that he has statements again, ready …so ready for his limbs to feel like his again.  

He tastes copper as he started to read.  The words don’t sit right in his mouth.  Before he can even properly start… before his mind is lost to him, he can feel the wrongness building.  And when the betrayal occurs, he can’t find it in him to be surprised or hurt.  All he can feel is a hollow fear…. a hungry fear.  Gaping and endless.  Tearing into his skin as he tears at his clothes, his skin, the statement that does not belong to Hazel Rutter and has nothing to do with a fire.  Aside from the fire in his throat and in his hand, and leaping from mark to mark as Jon learns what they actually are.  A map of manipulation.  A tool to make the actual tool.  The wood and hammer and nails that make him the door.  The door that he… that he.  “ Come to us in your perfection.                         

                                                                                               Bring all that is fear and all that                    

                    is terror and all that is the awful                    

                    dread that crawls and chokes and                       

                    blinds and falls and twists and                        

                    leaves and hides and weaves and                        

                    burns and hunts and rips and bleeds                    

                    and dies!                                              

                                                                                               Come to us.                                            

                                                                                               I-“

“I…”  Jon chokes.  His eyes sliding helplessly over the room.  Over many tokens of a happy life that he is never going to have.  Because of this…. this… he can’t even call it a betrayal.  His entire life has lead to this.  Every unhappy moment.  Every instinct he has ever had.  Every poor choice.  Every step another step towards the inevitable.  His eye catches on a familiar cover.  Somehow still glossy.  Despite Jon having carried it around like a safety blanket for the last few weeks.  And he catches those smudged and traced over words on his arm and he tears at himself, trying to stop.  

“I…”

He chokes again.  Around those last few words.  The words that will wrench the thunder from the sky and rend it asunder.  

“I…”

He breathes.  Possibly for the first time since his hands ghosted over the unassuming manilla folder.  

“‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’”

His vision cuts out.  He must have stood at some point, because he is falling.  Stings cut.  Nothing to manipulate.  The puppet is broken.  

He wakes with a head full of cotton, but a heart devoid of fear.  There is a clarity in his limbs.  But exhaustion sits heavily on his chest.  He feels… clear.  And real.  And… like utter shit.  

But the arms around him are solid and warm and smell like tea and toast and all the good things Jon can think of in the world.  And even if Jon could bring himself to move… he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing so.  

There is burnt ink in the air.  

“Wha’?”  Marble-mouthed.  Heavy with the exhaustion of years of poor sleep, of running and fearing and the adrenaline crash of something horrifying being…over.  

“It’s alright, Jon.  Everything’s fine.  I…. I don’t know how you did it, but you stopped reading… and I burned it.  It’s gone.  We’re okay.”  

And Jon isn’t sure he understands…. but he doesn’t care.  Because he is not afraid, and Martin told him that everything is okay.  And he thinks… just Maybe.  Just… maybe… that it might be.  

He lets himself be tucked in.  He lets himself sleep.  

Jon takes up calligraphy.  He hates it.  Utterly despises it… but he becomes decent enough to write one thing for their mantel.  In the safe house.  Miles away from fear and Jonah Magnus… if the bastard is even still alive…  

Framed in gold, traced out in neat and flowing calligraphy:

‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’ - Frank Herbert, Dune.  

[godlizzza]

Hi!!!! Ive been reading your ai3 stuff like CRAZY lately and i really love the NSFW stuff you put on there, my favorites being ‘Beg For It’ and ‘Is That Good?’

Anyways, I would love to see more bratty bottom Herbert content 👉👈 pls and ty have a great night!!

"Wouldn't you rather, uh, go upstairs?" Dan asked.

Herbert glared at him over his shoulder from his position bent over the table. "Suddenly putting the breaks on after rubbing up against me? Really, Dan?"

Dan flushed angrily, which Herbert thought was rich. He'd been perched on his stool, writing out his notes when Dan wandered down into the lab, talking idly of dinner. He'd circled the table a few times and it didn't take a genius-level intellect for Herbert to notice the way Dan was looking him up and down, like he hoped Herbert was on the menu tonight. Then he'd settled behind Herbert, wound his arms around him and began pressing kisses to the back of his neck. Herbert had immediately felt Dan's interest against the small of his back, rubbing insistently.

At first, Herbert had ignored him, something he was well-versed in doing when Dan got like this, and continued scribbling away at his notes. Dan had been determined not to be ignored though, and doubled his efforts, sucking under Herbert's jaw, running his hands up and down his stomach and groping him between his legs. Eventually, the words on the paper grew fuzzy as the blood rushed from Herbert's brain to pool in other parts of his body. With an aggrieved sigh, he'd stood up, kicking the stool away and submitted himself to Dan's attentions.

Now, though, they'd hit a snag in things.

Dan was looking cross for a man with an erection tenting the crotch of his pants. "I just want you to be comfortable."

"I'll be more comfortable when you're not pestering me," Herbert snapped. "Now, hurry up and fuck me so I can get back to work."

Dan's jaw tightened and Herbert suppressed a grin as Dan ripped his belt open. If there was one sure-fire way he knew to get Dan moving, it was to poke and needle him. Nothing seemed to get him moving quite like being mad, and Herbert found it easy to work him up into a state.

He gasped at Dan's hands grabbing his hips and roughly pushing him up against the edge of the table. Dan shoved Herbert's pants down and made no further preamble before slicking his fingers up and pushing them inside him. Herbert bit his lip as Dan made quick work of stretching him out, pumping in and out of him. He usually liked to take his time with this part, kissing Herbert's neck or sucking him off while he did it, but that anger Herbert had lit against his fuse seemed to be burning hot, urging him to get right to it.

"You're such an asshole," Dan bit out, three fingers deep in Herbert.

"And yet," Herbert panted, pushing his ass back against Dan's hand, "you're the one who came to me."

"Yeah, and I question myself why after every time," Dan grunted, pulling his hand free. There was the sound of skin slopping against wet skin, and Herbert relished in the mental image of Dan slicking up his hard cock. "There must be something wrong with me."

"There is," Herbert said, his breath hitching as he felt the head of Dan's cock rub against his entrance. "It's why I like you so much."

Dan thrusted into him in one clean stroke, sending Herbert scrabbling at the table, his blunt nails scraping against the smooth wood. He let out a choked noise as Dan began moving, fucking him hard and fast. Pencils rattled across the tabletop and Herbert's stomach was pressed painfully tight against the hard lip of wood, but his eyes rolled back in his head regardless. He braced his elbows on the table and kept steady as Dan continued to pound into him.

He could feel the zipper of Dan's pants brushing against the back of his thighs from where they were shoved below his hips. His fingers were digging into Herbert's hips so hard he was sure they'd leave bruises. This just turned Herbert on more and he let out a cry at a particularly sharp snap of Dan's hips.

"More," Herbert gasped, ducking his head between his shoulders.

"Jesus," Dan cursed, sounding winded. "You're crazy."

"Just do it," Herbert hissed. "This is about the only thing you're- ah!- good for, anyway."

Dan let out a wordless yell of outrage before planting a hand between Herbert's shoulder blades and shoving him down on the table. The roll of his hips became erratic, thrusting out of the blinding pace Dan had set and settling for fucking Herbert in single, spine-tingling thrusts. The grunts Dan let out behind him were deep and animalistic.

Yes, Herbert thought gleefully, his mind so pumped full of endorphins, his brain felt like sex-addled soup sloshing around in his skull. Take me. Fuck me like an animal. Fuck me until I can't walk and you have to carry me away.

"Yes," was all Herbert said aloud. "Yes, Danny, yes."

Dan made a high, broken whine behind him as he buried himself to the hilt inside him and came. Herbert fumbled to reach beneath the edge of the table to grasp his own cock. With a few quick pumps he was coming too, moaning into the wood, one of his notes squished beneath his cheek. Dan slumped over behind him, molding his chest to Herbert's back and pressing his forehead into Herbert's shoulder. His long, heavy breaths puffed against Herbert's skin, leaving the spot wet and hot.

After a minute, Dan peeled himself away, his spent cock slipping out. Without his weight pressing against him and holding him up, Herbert's knees buckled and he had to catch himself against the table.

"Woah," Dan said, reaching out to catch Herbert by the arms and help steady him. When Herbert finally had his feet planted firmly beneath him and he was stood up, Dan tucked his chin over his shoulder and said into his ear, "You good?"

That was the thing about Dan. He never could hold onto his anger for long. It always fizzled out as quickly as it had flared up. Herbert smiled and reached up to pat Dan on the cheek.

"I'm just great. Though, the bedroom does sound nice right about now."

Dan snorted and pulled away to zip himself up. Herbert turned around, not even bothering to pull his pants up, and held his arms out to Dan like a little kid wanting to be picked up.

"Won't you carry me upstairs?" Herbert asked sweetly.

Dan just looked at him, with his pants around his knees, come dribbling down his thighs, and his soft cock hanging between his legs. His eyes flicked back up to Herbert's face and his mouth twisted into a wry smile.

"Carry yourself," he said, then was turning away and bounding up the stairs, leaving Herbert to glare after him.