#I know Booth is a fed and a Catholic

[silver-tangent]

While I acknowledge it has some poorly aged flaws in its writing, one thing I have to praise the show Bones for is handling the romance between its two lead characters without constantly trapping them in “will-they-won’t-they?” Limbo.

They have a kid.

They fall in love.

They get married with like 4 whole seasons left to go.

And they’re never broken up just to rehash them getting together a million times. They have ups and downs like a real couple but they’re loyal and stay together, and display amazing chemistry.

Waaaaay too many writers think only the pursuit and the pining are interesting, and that the fulfillment of that pursuit should only happen at the finale, because “oh, well once a couple gets their happily ever after theres no more drama or tension. It’s boring and uninteresting.”

And we need more couples like Brennan and Booth being shamelessly in love and anything but boring and uninteresting on screen together.

[seravphs]

I caught a moment to catch up with DDAO :)

"You leave a piece of yourself behind every time a child cries." rip mc...my beloved...I need Yaga to get on introducing therapy to Jujutsu High ASAP 😭

"It’s reaching that time of year you feel the most lethargic, where people and time pass by you in a blur. In the spring you’ll wake up fully, and it’ll the cold will have faded like a bad dream." Off-topic but I'm so sad summer is ending! Also rip mc please google seasonal depression for me thanks babe

Rip mc makes me so so sad with her willingness to prioritize others but not herself. She got up instantly when she was worried that Shoko was cold but she wouldn't do the same for herself and it's so heartbreaking to see.

I hate to see rip mc isolate herself even further from the world. I think this year of my life in particular has taught me about how quickly time runs - and runs out, in particular. Entire weeks disappearing of her life...where she's alone...I'm deeply worried. So often throughout DDAO I want to reach into that universe and wrap my arm around rip mc.

This is a HUGE tangent lmao skip the next paragraph to ignore me talking to myself

Rip mc isn't even catholic (afaik) 😭 but she's so self flagellating. I think part of the reason rip mc makes me so sad is she reminds me a lot of high school. It's such a deeply (often specifically teenage) girl mindset to punish yourself for your desires. This is not that relevant to DDAO but there's something painfully resonant about the way rip mc is going about this. Tbf rip mc is (in her own opinion because stsg are morons and terrible at communicating) a homewrecker so it isn't THAT applicable BUT in general it just feels like looking into my own past to see rip mc take on the weight of a literal apocalypse, her world collapsing, and blame herself for it. I read something once which I wish I could find again about how Jesus could never be a woman because female suffering isn't subversive, it's expected. Suguru was there! Suguru was very much in control of his own actions in that moment! But rip mc is laying the price of destruction at the feet of her greed and it makes me so miserable :( I feel like so often women are socially conditioned to want less, to be less greedy. Bitter over this forever.

Back to DDAO

LMAO SHOKO she's so real I love her. I'm also very pragmatic so I feel like that's how I would react. I think Shoko is my self-insert in DDAO haha: takes care of rip mc and is the voice of reason.

We know so little about Mimiko and Nanako, it's nice to imagine a world where they get to grow up as normally as they can. With friends, teachers, a social life etc. God. Life gets better, don't read JJK lmaooo not a single person (worth caring about) in this damned series is happy.

Something I really like about DDAO is how it's like JJK, since it's canon-adjacent, but also how much I feel like I'm talking with my friends about her toxic situationships like I really am watching rip mc interact with stsg with the fond horror of two girls sitting across from each other in a restaurant booth recounting what happened last week in their lives.

Megumi is such a good kid.

I can't seem to remember rip mc liking sweets. Maybe it was just a random choice but since she just saw Gojo, I also can't help but wonder if she bought one because of him.

HE'S SUCH A GOOD KID.

I think I've talked about this before, but I feel so strange about aging. I don't mean this in the conventional spoon fed aging propaganda sense because I'm not afraid of wrinkles/etc. It's more that recently, I've become so aware of the concept of 'youth' - and the fact that I'm losing it. At some point last year, I turned eighteen, and this year, nineteen, then the year after that, I'll turn twenty - how did I get so far from four and six and eight? What happened? It's terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible because change is inevitable and yet so scary. I'm evolving with the world, or perhaps it's evolving with me, but I'm at a loss for how to react to that.

Rip mc's monologue about returning to a place she knew with the sudden awareness of her lack of being a child really hit home. Many things I've loved are memories now. I loved stars, too. I miss my mom and dad, too. And no matter how much I miss them (my parents are alive I just spent my first year away from them at college lol), I can't go back to the past! I can scream and cry and beg but I can never, ever go back.

Both rip mc and I are going to have to learn to be okay with that. Somehow. Wow. If I keep relating to rip mc I will consider seeking professional help. Thanks Morgan!

Megumi's such a good kid, it makes me endlessly sad and happy. Nothing like Fushiguro Toji made me laugh, though. I think that would've made Toji happy too.

I can't stand stsg. They're so evil 😭. Stsg and rip mc really are such a dynamic because she's weak to their advances specifically. Like who else are they trying this on that it would work? Just her. Poor baby.

stsg being shocked by how easy it was to get rip mc to agree made me laugh.

One day I will see rip mc develop some sense of self worth. One day. I know it'll happen. DDAO chapter 289. I'll be there and I'll be celebrating with champagne.

The realization that the mission that traumatized rip mc so badly was just a grade 2 mission made me physically flinch. I'm really bouncing between jjk canon and 'girl he said WHAT' and it's so good. Whiplash between stsg being assholes per usual and fuck, I forgot that these are child soldiers who somehow made it to adulthood - with all the baggage of being child soldiers.

I should get used to rip mc pulling away from people who want to take care of her but I never do. JJK never goes into detail with how horribly traumatic the lives of sorcerers actually are. Gojo didn't blink in reaction to some of his oldest friends dying. It feels so good, even if it's so horribly sad, to get that experience with rip mc and see how this life of blood and curses has affected her.

Sorry I actually DO love that Gojo is feeding rip mc lmaooo. I got so excited to read that scene. He's terrible and it's so fun! Kiss tax hahaha. Love him. I actually think Gojo wouldn't like my personality irl because he's a terrible bully but I would play along too well and he wouldn't get the reactions he wanted. I think I’d actually get along better with literally anyone else haha

This one made me really introspective and moody. It might be the end of a season affecting me. Either way, it was incredible per usual. Hope you're enjoying Japan and having lots of fun!

dog days are over | chapter five

pairing: gojo satoru x fem!reader x geto suguru warnings/tags (for this chapter): mentions of virginity loss, threesomes, depression (the holy trinity lmfao), birth control, full on dissociative panic attack but not in detail, obligatory stsg warning. also cheating mention (but not really gojo is just jealous and geto likes the attention. they gaslight each other for fun btw) word count: ~9.2k

fic masterlist read on ao3

The nightmares start after Nagoya.

You wake up bleary eyed and distinctly worn out, with a heaviness in your chest that you carry with you. It only gets heavier.

The auxiliary manager you worked with promised to share any more relevant information with you about the case. You should have left it at that.

It becomes harder to stay uninvolved in your assignments, you're beginning to find, especially when innocent lives are taken.

You leave a piece of yourself behind every time a child cries.

You sit up from your bed and glance at the clock above the doorway. 11:54 AM. Light streams in from your windows, and you close your eyes in the temporary warmth before it fades, leaving your room cold. Outside, the trees are barren and the overcast is gray in preparation for the upcoming winter. It’s reaching that time of year you feel the most lethargic, where people and time pass by you in a blur. In the spring you’ll wake up fully, and it’ll the cold will have faded like a bad dream. 

It's almost Satoru's birthday.

It’s cold. You feel goosebumps form on your arms. It occurs to you that you may have forgotten to turn on the heat in your apartment. Central heat. A rare luxury in these types of apartments. But you don’t want to leave the warmth of your bed, so you lie back down and curl into your bed.

Just as you’re about to succumb back to temporary emptiness, the door to your bedroom is thrown open. You wince as the door slams into the wall, raising your head.

“Something happened,” Shoko says plainly, crossing her arms. “I hope you haven’t been hiding from me on purpose.” 

You don’t recall giving Shoko a key. But you must have, if she’s inside of your apartment. Guilt churns in your stomach. You’ve been avoiding not just her, but Satoru and Suguru. You’re unsure of how to act around them anymore. You don’t know how much you can tell her. How much you should.

Then she lightly frowns. “Why is it so cold in here?”

You sit up, worried the cold might be bothering her. “Let me turn on the heat.”

Before you can stand, she waves you off, taking off her coat and lazily throwing it on a nearby chair. “Forget that,” she sighs, walking over to your bed and motioning you over. “Move over.”

You wordlessly comply, scooting to the far end of the bed as she settles next to you, lifting the covers over her body. 

The two of you look at each other, at the opposite ends of your pillow, sharing your comforter. At the warmth of her body, you almost close your eyes. You think if you fell asleep now, no nightmares would come to you.

“Shoko,” you say quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

But you had. Days passed in a blur. You didn’t give much thought to it, devoting all your efforts to routine. Luckily, there were no assignments after Nagoya. This bitter winter is a slow season for curses. You went from your apartment to Tokyo University and back, buried yourself in your studies, and blocked out the world. You hadn’t meant to. You kept on telling yourself you’d reply to that text, that you’d show your face again, that you’d pretend everything was alright even though it wasn’t. Now you’ve caused Shoko undue worry.

She simply looks at you. “Something happened at the party, didn’t it?”

You think of Satoru. Then Suguru. It’s the most you’ve thought about them in weeks. You don’t want to think about them because the longer you do, the more your thoughts stray in ways it shouldn’t.

You pull your covers up to your chin, troubled, and your silence speaking volumes. She softens. 

“Never mind. I’m not here to force you to talk,” she pauses. “But if something happened. Something you didn’t want , then I want you to tell me.” She exhales. “Even if it’s Satoru and Suguru. Especially if it’s those two.”

It wasn’t…They didn’t…They…

You’re conflicted. “They wouldn’t…” you trail off weakly.

She looks at you blankly.

“It…”

You bury your face into your comforter. You don’t have the words to explain. It’s okay, you want to tell her. You’re more worried about Satoru and Suguru’s relationship than anything else. They’re arguing about something, you want to tell her, and engaging in acts with you you know they’ll regret. You’ve never cared much for what they do with you. You’d do anything, give them everything if they asked. If she asked. You lower the blanket.

She eyes you, suspicion lining her face. “Did they—”

“No,” you blurt out before she can finish. “Yes. Maybe.” You hesitate. “It wasn’t…”

Bad.

It feels like an admission of guilt. It felt so good it was horrible. You shouldn’t have enjoyed it. You shouldn’t have succumbed to the pleasure, not when the future of Satoru and Suguru’s relationship hung in the balance. It’s your fault, you think once again. The world is collapsing on top of you, and you can’t help but think it’s punishment for your existence. For taking more than you should have.

“Are you on birth control?”

You stare at her. “What?”

“Birth control,” she repeats, deathly serious. She rises from the bed. “I should get you started now—”

You reach for her delicate wrist, stopping her. “It’s not like that!” Your face warms with embarrassment. “I promise, it’s not like that.”

It's not that serious, you're sure. Even the thought gives you pause, makes you apprehensively embarrassed. It's not...like that. 

Luckily, it’s something you don’t have to worry or think about. 

“...If you say so.” She says, not believing you in the slightest. She retakes her position on the bed. “So,” she says after a pause. “Shirokami visited the infirmary.”

Right. You forgot Hideo had gone and introduced himself to Shoko.

Your stomach flutters, nervous. “Did you like him?”

“I did,” she replies. “He’s…” a thoughtful pause. “Nice. A country boy.” A wry smile. “Nothing like those two. At all. It’s refreshing, actually.”

Relief. You suppose he did grow up in the countryside, so it’s not too far off from the mark. As for being like Satoru or Suguru…

You resolve not to be hurt. The two of them are under no obligation to meet anyone. You won’t be hurt. 

“He made it seem like the two of you are close friends.”

You’re sure he’s just being polite. Hideo is nice like that. Nonetheless, it makes you a bit happy to hear you made an impression on him. That he thinks of you fondly. He considers you a friend. Maybe there’s hope for you after all.

The comforter is warm with the shared heat of your bodies. Sleep calls out to you.

“He…scares me a little,” you say quietly. Hideo reminds you of a part of your life you don’t like to revisit. He makes you feel like a child again, afraid to be alone. “There’s a lot I don’t like to remember…about…back then. But I’m glad I met him again.”

“I see,” she says, smiling. “Then me too. I’m glad the two of you found each other again.”

You blink drowsily, smiling back at her. Shoko’s face is the last thing you see before heaviness drags your eyelids to darkness.

—

When you wake up, you are pleasantly revitalized and a little more alert. Shoko is gone, but there’s takeout on your kitchen counter. You take a bite of the Vietnamese noodles and realize that your taste buds have somewhat returned. You eat the entire meal, full for the first time in what seems like months.

You reply to a text from Hideo about the crowd at Shibuya crossing, smiling at the litany of exclamation points accompanying by his texts. You realize Megumi texted you earlier, about when you’d be coming by again and another pang of guilt hits you. You’ve been neglecting the kids too, lately. You wouldn't survive Mimiko and Nanako's wide eyes, gazing up at you, pleading at you to stay with them.

It’s six now, and the sky is pitch black. You know for a fact that Suguru and Satoru won’t be at the apartment until later. Yaga-sensei had mentioned Gakuganji visiting Tokyo accompanied by several other clan members for some annual conference. You didn’t pay attention to the details.

You…could visit. Suguru would have already fed the kids by now. Maybe you could take Megumi and the girls out for dessert. Or order something to the apartment. You feel lighter at the thought. Spending time with the kids always made you feel better. It’s something you can do, as small as it is. Small things.

Small steps.

You change and you’re out the door shortly. It doesn’t take you long to reach the apartment, greet the doorman, and take the elevator up. You knock. A few minutes later, the door swings opens, revealing Megumi.

“Hi,” you say brightly. “Have you been well?”

“Fine.” He lets you in. “Don’t you have a key?”

You laugh, still a bit breathless from the cold as you hang your coat up. “It doesn’t feel right to use it. I’m still a guest after all.”

Megumi doesn’t respond to that as the two of you enter the living room. It’s unusually quiet. “Where are the girls?”

“Mimiko and Nanako are with their friends. Tsumiki stayed after school for club.”

Just a couple of years ago, the thought of Mimiko and Nanako willingly spending time out of the apartment would have been a surprise. The two of them had been so recalcitrant about attending school. Suguru wanted to keep them homeschooled while Satoru thought putting them in school would be the best way to ease them out of their shell. It had taken time and patience, with several bad days, but eventually the two warmed up to their teachers and fellow classmates, Nanako especially. And where Nanako went, Mimiko always followed.

Mimiko had flowered into a sociable butterfly following her reintegration into society. It makes you happy to know that the two are alright now, so readily available to spend time with their friends.

“Just me and you, huh.” Megumi wouldn’t leave you though. Not yet. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah,” he states. “Earlier. I was just finishing my homework.”

You glance at the kitchen counter, finding Megumi’s homework spread around. “You don’t usually do your homework outside your room.”

“It’s quiet with everyone gone,” he says bluntly. 

You smile, taking a seat as Megumi slides in next to you. He resumes his homework, and you let him carry on, helping him when he asks, simply content to watch. A few pauses during this science homework which you help him through easily. He glides through his English homework, and you feel unnaturally proud of him as you proofread his work.

It doesn’t take him long to finish. Soon, he’s gathering his homework up and packing it into his backpack.

“I was thinking,” you start. You hear the door open in the distance. It must be the girls. Perfect timing. “That we could all go out for—”

You turn, every hair on your body rising in panic.

“Sato—s’guru,” you blurt out, frozen. “What are you guys doing back so early?” Your question comes out more accusative than you intended. Of course they could come back as early as they wanted. It was their home after all. You were the interloper. 

It’s just..

You thought that you’d have a little longer!

The two of them look at you. You shift uncomfortably, gaze bouncing from them to the floor to the wall behind to anything else. You’re a little more aware of the heat of their gazes on you, pinning you to the spot. Your collar feels warm, nerves jumping beneath your skin.

“The meeting ended early,” Suguru says amicably, smiling at you in a way that would be reassuring at any other given moment. “Satoru didn’t want to stick around.”

Satoru is oddly quiet, gazing at you. Even with his sunglasses on, you feel the weight of it, that prickle that tells you he’s focusing his attention on you. Your bottom lip twinges. You are determined not to meet his gaze. Or hold Suguru’s for too long.

Satoru cocks his head to the side. “You staying over?”

You think it’s Satoru’s way of telling you to leave. That you’ve outstayed your welcome. Suguru is too nice to say it outright.

“No,” you say, voice thin, throat growing thick. “I’m leaving now.”

“Can we talk?” Suguru asks quietly after murmuring your name. He gazes at you.

That’s the last thing you want. To be alone with the two of them. You don’t want to hear what they have to say. You want to imagine things to be okay, just for a little longer. Until you can’t.

“I’m sorry!” You say suddenly, antsy, hit by a sudden need to justify your presence at their home. You hope Megumi forgives you for the lie you’re about to tell. You glance down at him. “I just came over because Megumi needed school supplies!”

There’s a long silence.

A shadow of a twitch of an eyebrow falls over Satoru's face. "Since when does Megumi need school supplies?”

Suguru watches you carefully. 

Your face burns in silent shame. You stare at the floor, feeling horrible. 

“Since today,” Megumi returns testily. “We’ll be going now.”

Satoru looks mortally offended.

Megumi takes your hand and walks you out while you can't bring yourself to lift your head.

Outside, you bury your face into your knees. “Sorry,” you mumble. “Just give me a few…”

You squeeze your eyes shut and take a shuddering breath while your heart races in your ears.

“Are Satoru and Suguru okay?” You suddenly ask Megumi, who stays silent next to you. “Any issues?”

“They’re the same as ever,” Megumi says tonelessly, but his face is softer in its worry.

You smile. “I’m fine,” you tell him reassuringly.

He's right. If anything, at least the two of them don’t seem to be fighting. Not like they were during the wedding. But you still don’t think you can go back in there, and now you’ve forced Megumi out of the apartment.

You feel a mixture of guilt and horrible, horrible dread slowly spreading through you.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I shouldn’t have come. You probably don’t want to be out this late—”

“I don’t mind,” Megumi says. “I was going to take a walk anyway.”

That brings a small smile to your face. “It’s a bit late to take a walk, don’t you think?”

He shrugs. You feel a bit better at the fact that he’s not bothered at your impromptu outing. Rising, you take his hand once more. “Then let’s walk.”

You and Megumi walk around the neighborhood. The streets are dark, illuminated by streetlights in the mostly residential area. Other than the occasional dog walking passerby, the two of you walk in comfortable silence. Until the two of you find yourself all the way in Shibuya with its bright lights and noise. It’s easy to get lost in the lights of Tokyo’s busy nightlife. Throngs of people pass you by as you meander, following the crowd, with no particular destination in mind.

The two of you stop by a 7-11 tucked a bit further away from the bustle. You buy yourself a strawberry daifuku and ask Megumi if he wants anything. He isn’t hungry, so you buy him green tea.

More aimless walking takes you to Sakuragaokachō, away from the crowd. Streetlights and dark buildings greet you, but something about the area looks familiar. Nudges at muscle memory, the nerves in your foot. If Megumi notices your pace pick up, he doesn’t say anything.

You make your way down the street and slowly approach.

It’s a small, odd shaped building. With a curved dome of a roof that makes it look like a half moon.

You stare. “I think I used to come here.”

You remember the pitch blackness of a room, the steady hum of the ac that had filled the room, and the slow blinking of the stars coming alight on the ceiling. You remember this building. 

The memory feels distorted. Incomplete. You feel like a clumsy child putting together a 500 piece puzzle, slotting pieces that don’t fit together. Your head hurts. 

There’s a sign taped to the window next to the entrance. You momentarily squint.

Closing for good. All bookings are final. 

Closing…for good…

Megumi calls your name.

“Sorry,” you blink it all away. “It’s nothing.”

“...Do you want to go in?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just…”

“It’s still open.”

“That’s okay.” You don’t want to force Megumi along with your whims even more than you already have tonight.

“I want to go in,” Megumi points inside. “We can buy tickets right now. It’s the last show”

He looks serious enough that you consider it, glancing at the building. If it were any other child but Megumi you might have worried that it would be boring. “Alright,” you say slowly, less troubled. “If you really don’t mind…”

He tugs you forward. The two of you enter the carpeted lobby and approach the usher who hands you two tickets without much fanfare and tells you that this is the last showing of the night. To your great relief, nothing looks familiar. It’s all different. It might not even be the planetarium you had regularly been taken to as a child.  

The two of you enter the dark room faintly lit by dim stars dotting the curved ceiling. There are three couples scattered across the room. You let Megumi pick your seats in the corner and slide in next to him on the reclining seats.

The seating is different. It used to be standard seating in rows. You think. You aren’t sure. Maybe you just aren’t remembering it right. You must not be remembering anything right, right now. You’re buffeted by a perturbed feeling that grows stronger with every passing second.

The room is enveloped in darkness. A recorded woman’s voice begins to play. One by one the zodiacs appear above you while the voice drones on about creation myths and history. Amanominakanushi, Takamimusubi, Kamimusubi.

Different constellations are projected onto the ceiling, constantly in motion, forming new shapes, fading in and out.

You used to come here. You were a child then. You aren’t a child anymore. Nothing is the same. You aren’t that naive child that had proclaimed this planetarium your favorite place in the world. You hadn’t cared about the planetarium as much as you loved being pressed against your warm father, and his steady hand on your head. Your mother’s hushed whispers pointing out more stars.

You suddenly can’t breathe. You are keenly aware of Megumi right next to you, the humming of the air condition in the background, the narrator on the speakers, and every single breath trapped in your chest. Your head spins.

You close your eyes, slowly fisting your knuckles until they’re tight, feeling your legs and arms go numb. It’ll pass. It’ll pass. Don’t bother Megumi. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

“—a’am”

“She’s occupied.”

Megumi’s curt voice.

When you open your eyes, the lights are on and you are on the floor, clutching your knees to your chest. You blink, readjusting to the light.

The attendant looks unsure. She looks barely out of high school. “The show’s over and we have to clean up so…”

“Right,” you say unsteadily, embarrassment slowly creeping in. You stand. “I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s alright…” She looks more relieved than bothered. “The exit’s to the right.”

You quickly gather Megumi and make a dash for the outside.

“Sorry,” you tell him breathlessly, once the two of you have made it far away enough that the embarrassment isn’t as painful. You squeeze your eyes shut, press your hands into your eyes, and take a big gulp of air. “Megumi,” you mumble. “I’m really embarrassed right now.”

“It’s okay,” he says quietly.

There’s a horrible, sinking feeling in your stomach. You kneel down, meeting him at eye level, and manage your best smile. “Hey,” you say, cupping his face with your palm to even your gazes. You meet the dark purple of his eyes, the sincerity in their depths, and think that Megumi has all Fushiguro Toji’s roughness and grit, but none of his meanness. He couldn’t be more different than his father. Your Megumi is a good boy. “I’m alright. Thank you for spending the night with me.”

His gaze lowers. “Yeah.”

You stand back up, brushing your pants off. “I should take you back to Satoru and Suguru now…” You take out your phone to call a cab, but Megumi speaks up.

“Can I stay with you tonight?”

Your first thought, guiltily, is relief. You can’t send Megumi to the apartment himself so you resigned yourself to having to face Suguru and Satoru once more. You have a late morning tomorrow. It’s Saturday so Megumi doesn’t have school either. It’s the perfect opportunity. 

You smile. “Of course you can.”

——

You text Satoru and Suguru that the two of you have arrived home, shut your phone off, and find Megumi already tucked underneath the covers of your bed. Thankfully Megumi had left some of his clothes the last time he had visited. You watch him for another minute, the steady rise and fall of his body, and the smallness of him. For once, he looks his age. Just another sleeping child.

A couple of years and he’d be as tall as you. You doubt the two of you would be able to comfortably share a bed as the two of you do now. You observe him, adjusting his sheets, smoothing out his hair, until you join him in slumber.

——

You wake up with a start, a scream building in your throat. 

Megumi isn’t in bed. It’s still dark out. Fear grips your heart as you look around your room. Maybe your shuffling had woken him up and he had gone into your guest room to sleep. The thought makes you feel marginally better. But you also feel bad. You should’ve delivered him back to the apartment, swallowing down your discomfort in exchange for Megumi’s sleep.

“I got you water.”

You startle. It’s Megumi standing in the darkness of your doorway. You blink, adjusting to how the shadows meld into him, almost swallowing him whole.

Your throat happens to be parched. “Thank you,” you rasp out as Megumi presses the glass into your hand and climbs back into the bed. You drain the glass. “Did I wake you?”

Megumi’s silence tells you everything.

You sigh. “I’m sorry. It’s not usually this…” Bad. You figure it’s all the stress of your life. And then with Nagoya…

Megumi looks at you. “You were…” he trails off, pulling the covers up higher, up to his neck. “Nevermind. It’s nothing.”

You hope you haven’t been talking in your sleep.

Megumi falls asleep easily enough again, while you thread your fingers through his hair.

When sleep claims you once more, you hope for the forgiving light of the morning to come quickly.

You’re about to head home from the campus of jujustu tech when you catch a glimpse of blonde hair in your peripheral, turning the corner to the courtyard.

“Nanami!” You call out, and the figure stops.

Your kouhai turns to you as you approach, a respectful downtilt of his head. “Senpai.” 

It’s been a while since you’ve seen him. He looks as good as you can normally attribute to him. Straight laced and responsible. Nanami’s always had a maturity to him that you’ve always thought highly of. It’s been years since the two of you were in high school, but sometimes you can still see the slight sullen downturn of his lips when Satoru does something particularly annoying. Some things don’t change.

“How have you been?” Judging from the overnight duffel in his grip, he must have just gotten back from an assignment of his own.

“The same as always,” he responds. “Thank you for asking.” A sensible answer you’d expect from him. He pauses, looking you over, the tinted eyepiece over his eyes offering you nothing. His gaze doesn’t pity you. He doesn’t offer you condolences. It’s an understanding that makes every single troubling thought resurface.

Oh, you think.

“I heard,” he says quietly. About Nagoya.

Your smile turns tight. You force it wider. “It’s over now.” You don’t know what else to say.

“The children…”

It’s a rare moment when Nanami is at a loss for words. You hadn’t expected Nanami of all people to bring this up in conversation. You’re not as upset as you could be about it. Talking to Nanami is and always has been…surprisingly easy.

“An aunt volunteered to raise them.” You think of the shell shocked son and the blank eyed older daughter. Your mouth turns sour. You stare at your shoes. Hopefully, they’ll get settled in soon. You will yourself to say the words but nothing comes out. 

Nanami understands. “Ah. I see.”

The two of you stay silent.

“Nanami!” A voice exclaims loudly.

Satoru.

You don’t have time to react before Satoru is there, in front of you, loudly slapping Nanami on the back. You wince, both at the noise and Satoru’s sudden unwanted arrival. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were ignoring—”

Wordlessly, Nanami inclines his head to you once more, before turning on his heels and walking in the opposite direction of where he had been headed previously.

“He hasn’t changed one bit!” Satoru sighs. “Just when I thought the shared bonds of adulthood brought us closer…”

“...”

You wonder if you can slowly inch away.

He turns to you, as if sensing your intentions. You brace yourself for impact.

Satoru cocks his head to the side, studying you in silence, gaze shielded. You swallow, pulse starting up as you stare back at him.

“Seven tonight,” he finally says, to your great confusion. “Wear that…” he twirls a finger, “dress.”

A slow smile pulls at his lips. His fingers smooth out the collar of your dress shirt, and you swallow nervously when his fingers brush the heat of your neck. “Suguru barely got to see it, you know?”

Oh.

You hadn’t even thought about it since you shoved it back into your closet, hadn’t touched it. It felt wrong to throw it out. Shoko picked it out specially for you. Despite it all, you wanted to hang on to it.

He takes a step forward. You take a step back into the wall. He leans into you.

“Don’t be late!”

–

You hadn’t planned on wearing the dress. Then you looked up the restaurant on Google and nearly dropped your phone at the price range. 

-

After taking your jacket, the hostess brings you to one of the private rooms in the back before leaving with a bow. You hover at the shoji, feeling anxiety grip you tightly, knowing that Satoru and Suguru are already inside. You wonder if you have to. You could lie, make up some excuse about an emergency as (un)well as it would be received.

The door abruptly slides open before you can decide.

“There you are,” Satoru simply says.

You aren’t given time to do anything else but take off your shoes as Satoru takes you by the wrist with an ironclad grip and leads you to the opposite of the table where Suguru is already seated.

He smiles at you as you slowly lower yourself onto the tatami matting floor. Even now, you still find comfort in Suguru’s smiles. It feels wrong.

“Have you eaten?” He asks as Satoru settles down next to him. “The wagyu here is famous.”

“I’m fine,” you say tightly. Hunger is the last thing on your mind as Satoru and Suguru watch you. Suguru with a carefully crafted smile, and Satoru with an unreadable expression. You’re so nervous you might pass out.

You stare down at your lap.

You are saved from the silence when a waitress knocks and enters the room with a tablet in her hands. Satoru begins listing off an obscene amount of food with Suguru occasionally chiming in with one thing or another. Wagyu, house smoked salmon, lobster, a colorful variety of more seafood, and more. They must be hungry.

Satoru goes quiet. You realize the waitress is waiting for your order. You raise your gaze with a small, polite smile. Had there even been a menu? “I’m not hungr—”

“Double everything,” Satoru says.

You stare at him.

“Add hot chrysanthemum tea to that,” Suguru adds.

“And that,” Satoru completes. “Put it all on my card, would you?”

You’re taken aback. You look to the waitress, hoping she hasn’t put in the order yet. “A-Actually—”

“That’ll be all,” Suguru says smoothly. “Thank you.”

The waitress bows and slips out of the room before you have a chance to say anything else. You don’t have time to comprehend her disappearance and you’re left staring at the empty space she had previously occupied, mouth slightly agape. You turn back to them.

“I ate bef—”

“Then you can eat a little more,” Suguru replies easily. A winning smile playing on his lips. “Right?”

You can’t meet Suguru’s gaze, but you feel it travel over you. “...”

When you chance a glimpse up, Satoru’s face is cradled in his palm. His gaze is centered a little lower than your face. You briefly wonder what he’s looking at when your hand automatically comes up to slap the memory of his teeth on your collarbone. The bruise is gone, but with Satoru looking at you like that you can’t be too sure.

The two of them share an infinitely amused glance.

Satoru opens his mouth. You beat him to it.

“I’m sorry!” You blurt out. You feel like it needs to be said before anything else. You clear your throat. “I’m sorry.”

Satoru raises an eyebrow. “Already?”

“What are you apologizing for?” Suguru asks.

Your fists curl, anxious to be speaking everything to existence. You struggled between acknowledgement and the relief of denial. You didn’t want it to be true, but it still happened, hadn’t it? “Everything,” you say plainly. “I didn’t…I don’t want to come between the two of you…I think that the two of you should talk things out more instead of…”

You think of Suguru’s face between your thighs. Satoru’s lips on yours. Your face feels embarrassingly warm. You want to crawl into the nearest closet, shut the door, and burrow into the floor.

There’s a knock on your door. Your waitress places your drinks down and leaves once more. Glad to have something to occupy your hands, your hands circle around the tea mug. It’s hot enough to burn, but the prickling of pain in your hands oddly enough, grounds you.

“It’s okay to be mad,” you say quietly. You should’ve stopped things before they escalated. Instead you let yourself be caught up in everything. “If the two of you want to be mad at each other then I’d rather you be mad at m—”

“Just a second!” Satoru raises his hand.

“Y-yes?”

He proceeds. “We’re not mad at you.”

Satoru meets your wide gaze evenly. Disbelief. You look to Suguru. You need confirmation. 

“I was never mad,” he says, regarding you with concern. “More worried.” A wry smile. “You started avoiding us so suddenly…”

The revelation stuns you. They aren’t…mad? They don’t hate you? The two of them know everything. More disbelief. Relief wars with confusion. You don’t know what to think. You thought the worst, and maybe that was all your fault. You’ve always gotten too caught up in your head. It’s easy to spiral when you’re left alone with your thoughts. You don’t like being alone, the loneliness, but it’s your most familiar friend. 

“I thought the two of you hated me,” you admit, fingers clinging to the warmth of the tea in your hands in lieu of fidgeting. “I thought the two of you would never want to see me again…” It doesn’t feel real. They aren’t mad. They aren’t mad at you. You could cry from the relief.

You eye them warily. “Are you still fighting?”

It’s Suguru who answers you, expression soft. “You could say we’ve come to a compromise.”

You straighten, feeling lighter than you have in what seems to be ages. They’ve called you here to forget about everything. Everything is alright. Everything is going to go back to how it was. Well, not exactly. Satoru and Suguru may get married in the near or far future, and you'll naturally, slowly, take your leave from their everyday lives. But you’ll still be friends. Suguru will still look at you fondly. Satoru will still afford you the same considerations that everybody else thinks he lacks.

“I’m glad,” you say earnestly with a wide smile. “Then I’ll forget about everything. I’ll pretend nothing happened.”

Everything is going to stay the same. You take immense comfort in that fact. Your nerves settle. You take a long sip of your tea.

The two of them share another look.

Suguru reaches out, his fingers brushing one of your hands that you laid palm down on the table sometime after Suguru told you he was never mad at you. His thumb sweeps over your wrist and you startle, pulse spiking. “Did it feel good?”

You blink. You don’t need to guess to know what he’s referring to. You glance from Suguru to Satoru and then back again, wordlessly opening and closing your mouth. You can’t escape from the question, or their combined scrutiny.

You press your legs together. “It…did…” There’s no need for you to have felt as if you shouldn’t have enjoyed it, but you still feel a pang of guilt. Satoru and Suguru aren’t mad at each other, or at you. They still love each other. Everything is going to be alright. Everything is going to stay the same.

“That’s good,” Suguru says warmly. “I wanted to make you feel good.”

“Oh,” you reply, breathless and unsure. “Thank you.”

Satoru exhales with a laugh that shakes his shoulders. It’s not derisive like you expected. It’s fond and amused. “How about all three of us feel good?”

You blink.

The implications aren’t lost on you. You open your mouth and then close it. Maybe Satoru and Suguru’s odd actions towards you had nothing to do with their argument in the first place. Maybe you were overthinking it all from the start. It’s just sex.

If you could help them feel good, then you don’t mind. “Okay.”

The two of them stare at you.

You wonder why they look so...surprised. It’s not as if you’ve never seen an occasional third breach their bedroom. A man or woman you've never recognized. It’s just sex. It’s normal. You think that maybe, like you, they want the comfort of something familiar. And if anything, you are familiar. But—

You’ve never had sex before.

You hesitate, feeling oddly self conscious about it as your gaze drops back to your lap. You’ve entertained some thoughts about it all, but you always figured the ugly scar on your abdomen would be discomfiting to most. And explaining it…

“I’ve never been with anyone before. I hope that’s alright.” You fidget. “I’ll try my…” you reluctantly meet their gazes, ”best.”

There’s a brief silence.

“That was easy,” Satoru remarks, squinting at you as if you’ve been replaced by an identical lookalike. He glances at Suguru. “We should’ve just done this earlier.” His gaze joins yours once more. “That easy?”

Earlier…

You stare at them, almost dumbfounded.

The two of them should’ve just asked earlier, to save you the emotional turmoil if anything! 

It was only ever sex. It only is sex.

You hesitate. You don’t mind. You really don’t. It doesn't need to mean anything, especially with you. You prefer to look at it in simpler terms. Sex can be pleasurable, and with you, that’s all it would ever likely be. You doubt there are any other intentions involved.

Then you say, quietly, meaningfully, “I like…spending time with the two of you…”

A bark of laughter leaves Satoru’s mouth. “Well, we’re not exactly going to be watching movies —”

“You don’t need to,” Suguru suddenly says. “If you don’t want to, then you don’t need to.” He gives you a soft smile despite the sharp jab of his elbow into Satoru’s abdomen. Satoru hisses. Suguru doesn’t miss a beat. “Don’t let this guy pressure you.” There’s a pause. “Everything would stay the same.”

Maybe a part of you had been waiting for those words. Everything would stay the same. Suguru always knows what to say, you think, because his words feel like a confirmation.

“Are you two alright with me?” You ask. “I’m sure there are plenty of other people…” who know what to do.

You are gripped with sudden anxiety and your stomach twists into knots. You don’t know what to do. You wouldn’t know how to make them feel good. You’ll be terrible and they’ll wish they never asked you in the first place. You swallow the knot in your throat. “I’m sure Sasaki-san would love—”

“No,” Suguru’s fingers momentarily tighten over your wrist. “Only you,” he says at the same time Satoru says, “Who the hell is Sasaki?”

You blink. “5’4, brown hair cut into a bob, hazel eyes. She was wearing a silver colored kimono…” You pause thoughtfully, recalling the shapes and patterns. “There was an embroidered crane on it.” Running down the side of her left leg. “She smelled like apple blossoms and had soft hands…” She smelled good. You remember that, along with the heat of her fingers when they brushed your own. You stare down at the hand that had touched her, momentarily lost in thought.

Satoru stares at you blankly while Suguru looks vaguely resigned.

You try again. “The matchmaking ceremony you ditched…?”

Satoru is characteristically unrepentant. “Which one?”

“...”

Suguru looks like he’s trying to stifle laughter.

All those poor girls…

“Masaru Sasaki,” Suguru murmurs. Satoru makes an annoyed face.

“ That girl. She was practically hanging off your arm—” Satoru bites the rest of his sentence off, blue eyes narrowing at Suguru. “You cheatin’ on me?”

Your palms immediately turn sweaty. It could be a joke. It could also not be. Sometimes, with Satoru (and even Suguru at times) it’s hard to tell.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” Suguru replies blithely. “Maybe you’ve been neglecting me.”

You busy yourself with your lukewarm cup of tea, unsure of what to do. A second’s glance upwards and you’re met with an amused glint in Suguru’s eyes and a lazy grin curling at his lips.

If Suguru was lonely maybe that was why he sought you out in the first place. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. You’re not one to comment on things that aren’t your business in the first place, but it seems more and more likely.  You knew their boundaries. They knew you’d never push for anything they don’t want. If Satoru doesn’t like Sasaki-san, maybe they compromised on you.

You think back to Suguru’s words. They’ve settled on a compromise. That’s what you are, a compromise. The thought consoles you. In the end, it’s nothing serious. Nothing you should have given more than a second’s consideration. It’s as insignificant as a loose lipped comment. The two of them will have stopped fighting now. You’re glad for it.

Satoru snorts. “Neglecting you right into her open arms,” a derisive twist of his lips, “or should I say le—” 

“She seems very nice!” You exclaim, sweating. “It’s not very nice of you to say things like that, Satoru.” You chide lightly, before you smile brightly at Suguru. “She’s very pretty.” You hope you come off encouragingly so that you can convey to Suguru that you are on his side. “She seems wonderful.” 

Suguru blankly smiles back.

Luckily you’re saved from having to salvage the conversation when there’s a knock at the door. Your waitress returns with a cart of food, quickly laying down platter after platter. It doesn’t stop until almost every open space on the long wooden table has been filled with seafood. You stare at it. The abundance of it all. Maybe Satoru shouldn’t have doubled everything…

Your tea is refilled as Suguru murmurs his thanks. When the waitress takes her leave you’re still staring at all the food, unsure of where to even start when Suguru sets a stacked plate down in front of you.

You stare at the colorful array of sashimi and uni and the perfectly cooked wagyu. Your stomach already hurts at the coming richness of the meal, but now that the load of potentially ending Satoru and Suguru’s relationship has been lifted off of your shoulders you’re a bit hungrier than you were when you arrived.

Satoru keeps on loading your plate with more and more food. You pick up your chopsticks, intent on slowly shaving down the precariously tilting seafood tower on your plate when he conversationally asks, “So how was Nagoya?” as he places a large piece of uni on your plate.

You think of a sobbing, blood stained child clutching his mother’s severed hand in his arms. Then you think of Megumi.

Your appetite dies, stomach curling inwards.

They don’t know, you think as you look at the both of them seated across from you, waiting for your response. It was classified as a grade 2 mission after all. Two worlds shattered, and it hadn’t even merited a full time auxiliary manager. It’s considered beneath them now, eliciting the same mundane response as Suguru asking Satoru to check the week’s weather so that he can put umbrellas in the kids’ backpacks. The other week Suguru captured a curse that could have easily leveled Tokyo with a crushing tsunami. Satoru had been away in Malaysia.

It was just another child alone in the world, another corpse, another casualty.

You stare at your cup of tea. You hear Nanami’s gentle, quiet murmur in your ears. I heard.

You wonder if this is something you should even bother them with. There are always more important things to worry about than one of your bad days. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. Not really. You don’t matter. You never have.

“It was fine,” you hear yourself say. It was horrible. You’ve been having nightmares again. It’s been a long time since an assignment hit you this hard. “Just another assignment.”

“Did something happen?” Satoru stares you down.

“Not much.” You reply easily, wondering when it had gotten so easy to lie to them. Just about the small things.

You silently pick at a piece of hamachi. It’s not your place to get involved. You can’t get involved in the tragedy of all the assignments that make you feel as if everything you’ve ever done is redundant, even if you can logically acknowledge you’re unlikely to make a real difference. Not on a real, tangible level. It still makes you feel horrible. 

You are suddenly, very, very tired.

“Are the kids home?” You want to see Megumi, wrap your arms around him, and squeeze him tightly just to reassure yourself he’s okay. You want him to never have to worry about jujustu society or the responsibility of being a jujustu sorcerer. You want him to be able to choose. It’s wishful thinking. It’s already late and the four of them should be getting ready for bed. You wish you could just hold Megumi, Tsumiki, and the twins. The four of them are so young, and already too old.

Suguru’s smile turns affectionate. “The twins are asleep by now. They had a late night yesterday. But Tsumiki’s probably still up doing her homework. I’m not sure about Megumi…”

“Probably sleeping,” you confirm. An early sleeper, and early riser. The boy had his habits.

“You wanna stop by?” Satoru asks casually.

You blink. You must be imagining the suggestion in his voice. 

“I was just wondering about the kids,” you rush out, embarrassed for having even thought it in the first place. Of course not. It’s not as if they were expecting anything from you right now. If anything, you should bring the night to a wrap so the two of them can get back home instead of having to entertain you. “It’s getting pretty late out though, isn’t it? Maybe we should call it a—”

“You haven’t touched your food,” Suguru lightly frowns and although his displeasure isn’t aimed at you, you still feel somewhat chastened. “Still not hungry?”

“A-ah…” You pick your chopsticks once again. “Thank you for the meal,” you murmur, taking a bite of the first thing your chopsticks come into contact with. Octopus. You realize that it might have been rude of you to not eat anything when they’ve so graciously invited you to an expensive restaurant like this. Now that you’ve taken a complimentary swallow, you look up at them expectantly. “I don’t want to keep you two—”

“Maybe we should order some drinks,” Suguru takes a couple of bites out of his own food. “Satoru needs something sugary or he’ll be too restless to sleep tonight.” He sighs forlornly, despite his lips pulling into a teasing smile. “When he gets in a mood, he likes to push me around in bed.”

You blink.

Suguru looks at him, fond. “He’s a horrible sleeper.”

Satoru huffs. “And you love me for it.” A thoughtful pause. “I could use a drink.”

“Great.” Suguru presses the button on the table. It doesn’t take a full minute until your waitress appears in the room. “Your most sugary nonalcoholic drink and a cup of sugar. I’ll take a bottle of your most expensive Junmai Daiginjo. Two cups.”

You open your mouth to object, but Suguru beats you. There’s a concerned look on his face. “Is there something wrong with the food? I thought you would have at least finished your plate…”

Your waitress almost imperceptibly freezes, the smile high on her face. You look to her in a panic. “It’s delicious!” You look to Suguru and say once again, “It’s delicious!”

Satoru looks a few seconds away from breaking into loud laughter. He succumbs, snickering into his elbow.

Suguru breaks into a smile. “I’m glad. You’ll eat some more, won’t you?” Then to the waitress, he says, “Two cups.”

The waitress hightails it out of the room after a bow. You stare at your plate in silence as Suguru and Satoru have a pleasant conversation about how although Satoru hates going to the Zenin compound, he had found something interesting there the last time he visited (two weeks ago). Your ears perk when Suguru says heavenly restriction.  

You take another bite of the food on your plate, intent on finishing half of it before your waitress comes back in an effort to make her feel more comfortable.

This time, your drinks are delivered by a waiter. You feel bad for your waitress who had probably asked to be transferred to a different room. Suguru pours you a cup as Satoru takes a long sip of what looks like a strawberry cream float. It looks like something out of an amusement park cafe, but Satoru looks satisfied.

You’re about to ask about the heavenly restriction, when Satoru eyes you.

“I should feed you,” he announces.

You stare at him. “What?”

He stands up abruptly. You watch as he makes his way to your side of the table in three long steps, and plops down next to you. He takes a large piece of uni and holds it up to your lips. 

“Open up!” He says cheerily.

You do not open up.

He’s making fun of you, you’re sure of it. “You don’t need to feed me,” you say pointedly. You look to Suguru for help, but you only get a grin in response.

“Indulge him,” it almost sounds sympathetic. “He’s in a mood.”

Up close, his eyes are piercingly determined. You relent, opening your mouth as Satoru places the uni in your mouth.

“Now be good and finish your food,” he says smugly. “Or you can finish the rest on my lap.” 

You stare at him in unabashed horror.

"At least try to look somewhat interested," Satoru deadpans.

Suguru snorts.

Under the threat of Satoru’s continued intervention, you slowly make your way through your plate as Suguru refills your cup. Time passes in a blur. Satoru is warm next to you, shoulder pressed to yours, and you resist the urge to lean on his shoulder. It’s almost reflexive, to sink into him. The two of them quietly talk about a child called Zenin Maki. You force your shoulders straight while their voices drift in and out, feeling your eyelids slowly dragging shut.

You blink when Suguru says your name. The two of them are looking at you.

“Sleepy?” Suguru inquires.

You slowly nod. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I should go.” You gather your things, but when you rifle through your bag to find your keys you realize they aren’t there. You pat your pockets, search your bag once more, and still. “My keys…”

Satoru lifts a finger to your face, the ring of your keys looped around his index. You reach out to grab it but Satoru lifts it away. You’re confused. Those are your keys. You reach for them again, but Satoru swiftly moves away. You’re debating on stopping him with your cursed technique. Infinity isn’t on, you can tell.

“Satoru—”

“How about a kiss first?” He murmurs, leaning in, lips hovering close.

Your bottom lip throbs, as if remembering the shape of Satoru’s teeth and the way it had drawn blood.

…

…

…

You’re already putting on your shoes. Satoru must have sneaked a few sips of Suguru’s alcohol. He’s drunk.

“I’ll stay somewhere else tonight,” you say quickly. Shoko would probably still be up. If not, there were always hotels around. In the morning you’d ask your building’s super to open your door. You have a spare key inside.

Satoru sputters. “Hold on!”

Suguru laughs, long and loud. You relish the sound, despite your back being turned against him. He says your name.

You pause, meeting his gaze over your shoulder. To give him the benefit of doubt if anything. Suguru pats the floor next to him.

You eye him. Suguru’s expression is full of innocuous intent.

“At least let me look at you before you leave,” Suguru sighs out. “Before you leave us again.”

Suguru looks sad. It makes you feel…kinda bad. You have been busy lately, haven’t you? (Avoiding the two of them.) You don’t like it either. You’re glad this dinner has resolved most of your worries. You crawl to him, intending to say your goodbyes to his face, but Suguru takes your hand.

You aren’t sure how you end up on his lap. You really aren’t. You were on the floor and now you aren’t, and Suguru’s chest pressed to your back. You open your mouth and then figuring against it, you close your mouth. You opt for staring down at your own lap and trying to stay still enough to rival a statue. 

Suguru’s arms wrap around your waist. “Much better,” he murmurs, playing with the hem of your dress that reaches down to your ankles. “I like this color,” he says conversationally, as if your mind isn’t white blanket quiet in your panic. “Did Shoko get this for you?” His lips brush your ear.

You nearly bolt but Suguru’s arms hold you down.

“Pfft.”

You give Satoru a wide eyed look pleading for help from where he’s made himself comfortable on the floor in front of you, lying on his side, head propped up to the side by a hand. 

…You hadn’t expected Satoru to help.

You really didn’t.

You feel your will to flee slowly drain out of you. Prey resigning itself to be dinner.  

“Shoko…picked it out.”

“She likes dressing you,” Suguru says with a small laugh, releasing your hem and hiking your skirt up high enough for his hand to slide up your thigh in a caressing gesture. “How about you give Satoru and I a turn next?”

You blankly burn a hole into your lap, deathly mortified. “That’s…” a little embarrassing, you think. Why would they ever want to do that? Satoru is looking so intently at you that he could be jealous, and you think you might be sick. After all that talk about Suguru feeling neglected…

“Like…another dress?”

Suguru hums.

“...Shoes?”

Suguru laughs. You can feel his smile. "Among other things."

“S-Suguru,” you start, putting your hand over his arms locked around you. “I should really get going…”

He sighs, and you can feel it in his chest. “Right. Of course.”

You wait for him to loosen his arms, to free you, but he doesn’t move.

“...Suguru—”

“Kiss tax!” Satoru interrupts, suddenly in front of you. He’s insistent, leaning into you once again with a hand on your thigh, except you have nowhere to back away but into Suguru. “Just one and you’ll be on your way!”

This is humiliating. You want to die.

Satoru’s face hovers closer and closer. Without thinking you intercept his lips with a hand, muffling his mouth.

“We shouldn’t,” you blurt out. “Not in public.”

Satoru doesn’t deign you with a response. Instead his gaze exaggeratedly sweeps the room, as if to emphasize the lack of other people. 

Someone could come in. Anyone could see. They don’t want to be accidentally seen with… you. “Nobody can know.” Then for good measure you say it again. “Nobody can know.”

Satoru isn’t happy. You can tell by the press of his lips. Suguru’s gaze bears into the top of your head. But you’re worried about their prospects. About everything they might regret. It’s best to keep this a secret. They’ll thank you for it later, you’re sure.

“Who car—”

“Please.”

Satoru momentarily glances upwards. He’s still unhappy. “Fine. Right Suguru?”

“That’s right,” you hear him say from behind you. His tone is carefully measured. You don’t want to look at him, and you can’t discern his feelings either. “A secret.”

You exhale. “Thank you.”

After a second of agonizing hesitation, you lean forward and press a small, short kiss to Satoru’s waiting lips. When you pull back, you shyly say, “kiss tax paid.”

“That was nothing,” Satoru says immediately. “Ten more.”

You frown.

“You forgot someone.” Suguru’s voice is light, almost chiding.

You didn’t forget. You just hoped it wouldn’t have to come to this. You turn your head to the side and lean in. Suguru meets you halfway, lips soft on your own. Almost immediately, Suguru’s arms go lax, as a hand comes up to cup your face, thumb running along your cheek.

It lasts a second longer than Satoru’s kiss, which is already enough to get him whining about timing the length of your kisses which means more kissing.

All that matters is that you’re finally free. You jump to your feet, swipe your shoes, and run out the door without a second thought.

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Here to Misbehave (Pt. 4 | S.R.)

Summary: Spencer and Reader go on their first date. Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Smut (NSFW 18+) Content Warning: Adults w/ Age Gap (10yr), exhibitionism, masturbation, fingering, spanking, penetrative sex, Prof/Student fantasy Word Count: 8.3k

MASTERLIST | Series Masterlist

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When I was younger, I hated going to museums. Granted, I'd only ever really had the opportunity to go during school field trips. The crackling, barely coherent ramblings of a stranger through a loudspeaker had never been my idea of fun.

In fact, I'd been to that exact museum before. But the present time was a little different. That time, I was enthralled with the objects on the other side of the glass. With wide eyes and childlike wonder revived, I was hanging on every word out of Spencer's mouth.

I knew the guy was probably a genius, but I had no idea how much of a genius he was until he was recounting the entire history of civilization like he'd been reading straight from an encyclopedia. He looked like a hilarious mix of proud and embarrassed when he finally admitted his IQ. Meanwhile, I had to admit that I not only had no fuckin' clue what my IQ was, I was certain it was significantly lower than his. 

He didn't seem to mind.

In a way, I thought it was strange when he told me he wanted to bring me to a place like that. After all, I'd told him I wanted to learn more about him. I figured a museum would teach me about everything else, not him.

But seeing him in this environment told me more about him than I ever could have imagined. I learned about his avid love for the most trivial facts, the way his inflection changed when he got excited, and that despite reading probably hundreds of thousands of books, his hunger for knowledge was still very much alive and well.

Most of all, I learned that Spencer Reid was unlike any man I'd ever seen before.

It was a bad idea. Because when we finally made our way out of the final exhibit, I didn't want to leave. Not even close. If you'd told my mother I spent several hours in a museum and didn't want to leave, she'd never believe you.

"Hey, so..." I started, pausing outside the gift shop on our way out. "It's almost 5. Did you want to grab dinner before we head back? I have worked up quite the appetite listening to you for the past 4 hours."

"Has it really been that long?" he asked incredulously before glancing down at his watch wrapped over his shirt.

I tried very hard, and failed, to suppress a giggle at the habit.

"I'm honestly surprised you still have spit left in your mouth," I joked as I swayed closer to him, almost enough to touch him.

"Ha ha, very funny," he replied. A slight pout formed on his face. I almost enjoyed the swapped roles; it wasn't often that he was the one who looked so forlorn.

"Come on, I'm joking!" I laughed before slipping my arm around his and pulling him closer to me.

Spencer glanced down in surprise, staring at my chest that was now fully pressed against his arm. Although, the way he looked at me was nothing compared to the response he'd given after I showed up in a pleated skirt that better belonged on a Catholic schoolgirl.

But I mean, like I'd said, I used to go there on school trips. It was only fair.

"I love listening to you talk, Spencer. You know that."

The speed with which he looked away when I finished talking was enough to tell me that I had said the wrong thing. His goofy, playful demeanor vanished so quickly, I'd almost gotten whiplash. He didn't remove his arm, instead clearing his throat and pulling out a brochure from his pocket to look at nearby places to eat.

A bit reserved, he asked if I was interested in one of the closer casual restaurants, to which I agreed. At that point, I removed myself from his side and was only a little surprised to see the way his body immediately relaxed.

I wanted to believe he just didn't like to be touched, which I was certain was true, but he was behaving differently with me than he had before. We'd touched in public before, a lot more than that, and we'd known each other a lot less!

But of course, that was probably why. The closer we got, the farther away he felt.

The walk to the restaurant was slightly awkward, so after a moment I decided to break the silence.

"You said you grew up in Vegas, right?"

"Yeah, until I moved to go to school," he explained, looking around at the surroundings of the D.C. crowds winding down rather than turning his attention back to me. 

At least I was finally learning more about him.

"Where did you go?"

"Caltech."

He was keeping his answers short, but I feel like he might still be a little embarrassed at my little jab at the museum. That was fine, I knew ways to make him talk. I clasped my hands behind me as I walked by his side, still tempted to touch him somehow, however ill advised.

"Was it hard being away from your family? That's a few hours away, isn't it?"

He laughed awkwardly, a sure sign that I'd forgotten that him and I come from different worlds.

"Well, I was barely 13, so... My mom was kind of legally obligated to follow me."

He was so cute, and he definitely wasn't aware of it.

"Right, sorry, forgot about the genius thing for a minute. Don't know how."

The smile he returned was genuine, which helped my guilt for bothering him yet again. But in my defense, it was easy to do when he was a literal genius and I was barely scraping by half the time.

As we arrived, we were seated in a booth near the back of the restaurant. I offered him the booth with a view of the door because I'd figured he would want it. He gave me a strange side glance at my assumption, like I was hiding something from him that would grant me the knowledge that it would be more comfortable for him to be able to see the door.

I didn't want to talk about how I knew that, though.

Instead, I asked, "Do you like it here? In Virginia?"

He nodded as he flipped open the menu, speaking almost scripted answers absentmindedly, "I do, but mostly because it's been so long that everyone I know is here."

I'd already been here before, so I didn't bother looking at the menu. Naturally, he'd only required a few seconds to read it. When he made eye contact again, I spoke through my thoughts.

"You said you're a profiler for the..."

"Behavioral Analysis Unit."

His tone was a mix of pride and nerves, which immediately made me nervous.

"I haven't looked it up yet because I'm scared about what I might find. What do you guys do, exactly?"

The server brought us drinks just in time to pause his answer, which he seemed to appreciate. I figured it was either a tough job to explain, or he didn't want to share that part of his life with me just yet (or, potentially, ever). 

Spencer lowered his voice like he usually did when he talked about work.

"We profile the behavior of serial killers. Sometimes for research, but mostly to assist local police in catching them."

"Oh..." I started, stopping mid-sip of my drink. It was a lot to take in at once. "So... yeah, I'm glad I didn't google it."

He scrunched his mouth in that unsure way, like he wanted to explain to me how he really felt about his job. Something in the bags under his eyes told me he hasn't talked about this in a long time. At least, not like he should. But he didn't talk about it. He looked away, opting to say nothing at all.

"Doesn't it get to you?" I pushed, trying to offer him the platform to talk about the thing that no doubt consumes most of his life.

"Does what get to me?" His voice sounded so far away.

"Spencer, when I met you, you were whisked away at the crack of dawn to go talk about serial killers. On a weekend. The second time you showed up at my place after clearly not having slept, I'm guessing straight from work..."

His eyes narrowed as I spoke, like I was talking from a tightrope that I could plummet off any second. He seemed scared that I would speak something into existence he wasn't ready to face himself.

"You're surrounded by evil all the time. You're responsible for learning, recognizing, and manipulating evil. That can't be easy."

Spencer's eyes were glazed over in a way I couldn't describe. He seemed defensive, steeled, and absolutely terrified. He wouldn't look me in the eyes, opting instead to stare down at the menu in front of him.

He shrugged as he halfheartedly concluded, "I guess that's one way to look at it. We also get to see a lot of good."

"Yeah..." I nodded solemnly, recognizing the dismissive thoughts from my own experience.

He was downplaying the great likelihood of traumatic memories he carried, as if he could will away the damage. Like it would stop existing if he could convince himself it wasn't that bad.

I wondered what had happened to him on the job for him to already have forgotten that things didn't have to be the worst possible to matter. That he still deserved better. That hurt does not require permission.

I couldn't stop myself, needing to see how he reacted when I continued, "But which do you see more of?"

I never got my answer. The server once again saved him from a conversation that got away from him. The presence of a third, impartial person shifted the mood back to what it was in the museum. I wondered how much was an act, both back then and in that moment.

Deciding it best not to dwell on the thought, I tried to forget about the darkness brewing in those coffee colored eyes. Once our orders were in, he turned his attention to the cocktail menu still laying in the middle of the table with a smile.

"I'm almost surprised you didn't try to order alcohol," he half-joked.

I leaned forward on the table, bringing a hand up to my mouth and whispering, "I heard there might be an undercover fed here, so, never can be too safe."

The bubbly, childish laugh that followed renewed my faith in him. He had that kind of infectious laugh that made you forget that badness existed at all. Once our ruckus had died down, he looked at me with the softness that had drawn me to him in the first place.

"You're cute."

When the words registered in my mind, I couldn't believe I'd heard them. The way his expression changed shortly after the words left his mouth told me he hadn't meant to say them aloud. But their effect on me was not at all stifled by his momentary lapse in judgment.

I'd wondered if it was getting hotter in the building, or if it was just my nerves getting the best of me. But it wasn't bothering Spencer, who was about to down yet another cup of coffee in front of him. I cleared my throat, trying to not look like a schoolgirl whose crush had just checked 'yes' on a note asking if he liked me.

Pointing to the mug in front of him, I joked, "How do you sleep?"

"Honestly? I usually don't."

That was the goofy overly literal dork I wanted to see more of.

"I can think of one way to wear you out," I suggested, lifting my leg to press the top of my foot against his leg under the booth.

He raised his eyebrows, giving a simple glance down to acknowledge the contact. Then his eyes were back on me, staring deeply with a hunger that would not be satisfied by whatever dish they brought out to us.

"I can think of several."

Humming cheerfully, I continued to run my foot up and down his leg. My cheeks flushed with my growing desire that I'd managed to put off for several hours. I was honestly shocked that I'd spent the whole day with this man, and only then thought about sleeping with him.

"It's too bad we can't," I pouted. "My roommate is back in town. Not sure she'd appreciate all the noise."

That time as my foot drew up his leg, he shifted in his seat so that his legs moved closer to me, extending the contact for a few seconds longer.

"Not to mention, I don't think you'd like to deal with several 20-year-olds."

The way he behaved whenever I pointed out my age was endlessly entertaining. That time, though, he seemed significantly less bothered.

"One is already borderline for me," he teased back.

I gasped, clutching at my chest as I batted my eyelashes just dramatically enough to showcase my pride.

"You flatter me, Dr. Reid."

He almost choked on his coffee as he stifled a chuckle, putting it down as he shook his head.

"Only you would take that as a compliment."

Recognizing this repartee as the foreplay it had always accompanied, I leaned forward on my elbows towards him. He immediately mirrored the movement, putting our faces much closer to each other than they'd been all day.

"What can I say? I enjoy being a challenge."

"Yes, you do." He hadn't even thought about it, responding almost instantaneously, suggesting once more that he could actually read my mind.

"How are you so good at that?" I kept the question vague on purpose.

He didn't fall for it.

"I'm good at a lot of things. Which are you referring to?"

What a cocky bastard. A very handsome, ridiculously sexy, dork of a bastard.

But he wasn't the only one at the table that knew how to get someone hot and bothered.

"Your humility is my favorite part, Dr. Reid." I stuck my tongue out at the end of the sentiment, a cheeky grin that reflected on him just as quickly.

"Quoting me? That's bold."

Deciding it had been too long since I had touched him, I lifted my hand to press a single finger against his chest as I taunted, "You aren't the only person with a good memory."

He leaned back at this point, backing away from my finger and the heated exchange.

"I don't have a good memory. I have an eidetic memory."

He had been very proud of that fact earlier when I asked him why the hell he was able to list off every single word from a museum display we'd seen an hour earlier. I'd asked him if it was the same as a photographic memory, and he'd gone on a rant about the pejorative connotations of the term. I wasn't going to go down that rabbit hole again today.

Instead, I took the same hand that had touched him moments before, curling all but one finger into a fist.

"So you'll be able to remember this forever?" I cooed as I held up my middle finger.

"I'll just file that away with the most important memories, like birthdays and the works of Arthur Conan Doyle," he sighed in response, graciously admitting defeat.

I was not brave enough to tell him I had no idea who that was, but I was sure I'd learn one day. That one, I thought, was probably safe to google. While he filed away my crude gesture, I filed away yet another fun fact to surprise him with later.

"You are, by far, the most interesting person I've ever met," I implored, to which he immediately shot back, "I could say the same about you. And I regularly talk to serial killers."

Touché, Dr. Reid.

"I'm flattered," was the last word I got in edgewise before our food arrived.

The rest of our time in the restaurant went very similarly, with teasing comments that built the sexual tension that was already too big for this tiny room. Our legs never stopped touching throughout the entire meal. Maybe that was why, when it was finally time to leave, we both felt a strange mixture of excited and sad. Once we were no longer behind the booth, it was back to pretending like we weren't constantly trying not to pounce on the other.

The walk to the metro was equal parts long and tense. At one point I'd swayed closer to him than I intended, and our sides brushed up against one another. Unlike before in the museum, he hadn't moved away. I couldn't believe something so minuscule could made me so happy.

The metro was more crowded than I'd anticipated. The fact that the station is underground was usually enough to make me feel a little claustrophobic, but the number of people bustling around me felt especially overwhelming. I couldn't help but chastise myself for having worn a skirt, considering the stark number of perverted men in places like these.

Spencer's touch woke me from my reverie. His arm had wrapped around my lower back with such unassuming delicacy, I'd hardly registered it at first. He was looking down at me with concern covering his features as he asked, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, sorry, there's a lot of people here."

I had one hand holding my skirt down against my leg, the other crossed over my chest.

"Makes me nervous," I further explained.

"Can I help?"

Even though he was offering, I could tell the crowds bothered him just as much. Thankfully, his presence was enough for me.

"You already are."

There was something so calming about his presence that was hard to explain. It wasn't his ability to physically protect me, considering he didn't  have his weapon with him most of the time I was with him. It wasn't his emotional availability (or lack thereof). It was more like he  exuded some chemical that made me docile. It was hard to explain.

I just liked him, okay?

When our train pulled in it was relatively crowded, but we managed to grab two seats near the back of a car. I sighed in relief as I plopped down into the plastic chair, happy to finally be able to rest my legs.

With Spencer on the aisle seat and us on our way back to Franconia Springfield Station, I let myself relax. My head dropped down onto his shoulder without much thought, and my entire body slumped over with it.

"How am I supposed to stay awake for this when you're so comfy?" I mumbled, looking down at the hem of my pleated skirt as I fiddled with it.

"That certainly sounds like quite the predicament," he said in what I assume was jest.

He sat up, bumping my head off his shoulder for a moment. I interpreted it to be a subtle way of telling me not to do it, but once he had shrugged off his cardigan, he looked at me like he was confused I hadn't resumed the position.

Armed with a simper, I cuddled up even closer this time, wrapping my arms around his and resting my cheek against his shoulder. I wasn't sure why he had gotten so open to touch, but I wasn't going to complain. 

He didn't say anything when he draped his cardigan over my lap, covering my knees peeking out from under my skirt. A nice gesture, I thought as my body instinctively gravitated towards him. It wasn't until I closed my eyes that the pieces started to come together.

I was on the metro, in a skirt, with Spencer Reid's hand slowly but surely inching up my thigh.

My eyes shot open, and I tensed my grip around his arm. It was the only thing I did to betray my otherwise composed and unassuming position.

His breath was hot on my ear as he leaned over to me and began to whisper, "Do you know the idea that people fall asleep after sex is less true for women than men? Many speculate it's because women are just neglected in bed, but that's not quite it."

I didn't dare respond, hardly trusting myself to breathe as his hand continued to move closer to me.

"Both sexes do release the same chemicals during orgasm. Oxytocin to stimulate smooth muscle contraction and initiate the need to bond, prolactin to relieve arousal and signal satiation, and the leftover gamma aminobutyric acid, dopamine, and serotonin..."

I couldn't understand how he'd managed to make the lecture sound sexy, but I was too lost in the sound of his voice to bother thinking about it then.

"Still, women are less likely to fall asleep. Sure, they typically exert less physical energy during sex, but what about those women like you with a penchant for going for a ride?"

A woozy, lovesick smile spread across my face at the reference to our first encounter.

"Those women might still stay awake for longer and may actually be more invigorated after reaching climax. And it's all thanks to their naturally lessened refractory period."

I nodded dumbly, gasping lightly once I felt his fingers make contact through the flimsy cotton of my underwear.

"Which might sound like a curse. But it's not. It means that those lucky women can reach multiple orgasms in succession. Some partners just aren't willing to put in that kind of effort," he continued, tracing a finger up and down my folds through the fabric.

"But I'm not one of them."

His words were strong, and I buried my face into his shoulder, trying not to alert the entire car what was happening underneath his cardigan.

"I would much rather watch you come undone. Again, and again, and again. I want to make sure that when I'm done with you, you can't keep your eyes open."

My breath was getting quicker, and I let out a small squeak against his shirt as he pressed down on the bundle of nerves at my center, drawing circles around it.

"That being said, if you need something to keep you awake, I do have a solution. But if you make a single noise, I will stop."

I had to bite down hard on my bottom lip to prevent any noise from slipping out. My legs were wavering between opening and closing as I tried to keep them apart. I could feel how damp I was getting. My hips were moving with a mind of their own, rocking toward his hand. It took all of my concentration not to give us away.

I choked on my breath as a sly finger snuck into the side of my underwear, allowing entrance to the others that followed.

"Shhh," he hushed, pressing a soft kiss on the top of my head. Underneath my skirt, though, he was much less chaste. Slipping two fingers into my heat, I could have sworn I heard him laugh from above me.

I didn't dare look at him, nervous that the moment I did, I would lose all control.

"I had no idea it would be so easy to get you to follow directions. Are you that worried you might get caught?"

He could feel my heartbeat against his arm. He must have been able to, because I was suffocating against his arm. My hands clenched around him like he was the only lifeline in an ocean of pleasure.

"Imagine what they would think if they knew what you let me do to you. What you beg me to do to you."

My legs were beginning to tremble around him as he stroked me from the inside. All I could feel was him. His hands, his breath, his words.

"Is that why you wore this skirt? A naughty little schoolgirl fantasizing about an older man touching you like this?"

He quickened the pace of thrusting into me, his words getting more insistent as the train was almost empty now, closing in on our stop.

"Is it everything you thought it would be? No. Can't be. You wish there was something else of mine in between your legs."

I couldn't explain how, but my climax snuck up on me. When it happened, it smashed into me like a wave crashing onto the shore. I gasped for breath against his arm, and he thankfully took mercy on me. Despite definitely making a noise, he continued his motions, palming at the crest of my folds to give me one last boost of stimulation.

I shook around him, my thighs tightening onto his arm as I finally found release. I could hear the announcement calling for our station, but it felt worlds away. Still, Spencer pulled his hand out from underneath our pile of clothes, wiping the evidence of our escapade against the inside of my skirt before also removing his arm from underneath my tight grip.

"Son of a bitch," I puffed, relaxing all my muscles at once as I tried to retain control over my pulse. I could barely think straight.

"You're welcome," he beamed, as if he hadn't just gone full dominant as he finger fucked me on the metro.

I didn't understand how the hell he expected me to get up and walk off like nothing happene, but somehow, I managed. I stood with wobbly legs and a flustered state of mind until he linked his arm with mine and led me off the car and into the station. I clung to the assistance, grateful that he was once again taking pity on me.

However, it felt like it wouldn't last long. Once we'd gotten to his car, he helped me in before climbing into the driver's seat. It was silent for a moment, like he wanted me to ask him a question that I wasn't willing to ask.

I didn't want the night to be over, but if he asked me if I was ready to go home, I'd have to say yes. After all, it wasn't proper form to invite myself to his apartment. Especially with how weird he got whenever I got close to him.

"Do you want me to take you home?"

The pity was gone.

I didn't think before I spoke, immediately responding as a joke, "Not unless it's yours."

The silence was back.

Oops.

I realized that I'd spoken out loud at the same time he delivered his response; I was going to stop him, but he was too quick.

"My place it is, then."

I couldn't help but smile, my cheeks burning as I asked quietly, like my volume might change his mind, "Really?"

"Sure, why not?"

I didn't have an answer. We didn't talk for a moment, enjoying the contented silence as I texted my roommate to tell her that I was going to be late home, if I came at all. I was hoping for the latter. Once that was sent off, I returned my gaze to the man paying almost full attention to the road.

"You know, I have to get you back for what you did back there."

He smirked, not breaking away from the road as he replied, "I did you a favor."

"A cruel favor," I whined, turning in my chair as I buckled my seat belt so I could get closer to him.

"No such thing," he corrected, although I think we both knew there very well could be such a thing.

"Uh-huh."

I watched him for a moment, trying to decide the best way to get back at him. I could always try the most relevant payback...

He didn't even notice my hand reaching out until it was already sliding up his thigh at a rapid pace.

"What are you doing?" he asked, as if it weren't already obvious.

"Getting you back," I snickered as I finally made it up his leg, palming the quickly forming erection under his pants.

"I'm driving!" His voice was so high pitched it was heartwarming. It was like our roles had switched, even just for a second.

"I'm not stopping you from driving!"

Obviously trying to compose himself, he grabbed my wrist and held it in the air and out of reach of him.

"Unless you want to crash this car, you'd better wait until we get back to my place."

It was a valid warning, but not one I wanted to hear.

"Spoil sport."

"At least you're alive!"

It was back to the sexual tension from before in the restaurant. I wanted to touch him, and I was guessing based on the visible tent in his pants, he wanted me. So, I got to thinking, and I figured that if I wasn't allowed to touch him, that only left one other person.

"... What are you doing?"

It was a valid question. He'd glanced over to see my hand traveling up my own skirt as I parted my legs just enough to maneuver beneath my underwear.

"Nothing," I hummed, now looking at him with half-lidded eyes as I rocked forward onto my hand.

"That's cruel." He sounded so devastated to see that I was doing what he couldn't, despite the fact he had his hand in this exact spot not that long ago.

My fingers dipped between my folds, collecting the remnants of the orgasm he had given me as I crooned, "What? You said I couldn't touch you while you're driving. I'm not touching you. You're welcome."

I opened my eyes just enough to see the way he tightened his grip on the steering wheel while trying not to look at me. Couldn't drive distracted. That was the entire reason why I was touching myself and not him.

"Unless, of course, you do consider this part of me as your property. In which case, I'm not going to stop, anyway," I snickered. 

Rewarding myself with a soft moan, I tried to prolong the experience the best I could. It was hard when every couple of seconds he would look over at me. I hadn't thought that I would find his anger that attractive, but there I was, coming apart at the seams already based on nothing but a look. 

He was thoroughly unamused, which only egged me on, honestly. I didn't care if I was being overdramatic as I touched myself, I wanted him to think about what he was missing. Which was why I didn't stop myself from moaning. Pants and gasps echoed throughout the car as I picked up my pace.

"I hope you're ready for the consequences of this very poorly thought out decision."

On the contrary, Spencer. I had very clearly thought it through. I was thinking it so clearly I could picture his hands where mine were, among other parts of him.

Thinking about how to dig an even deeper hole for myself, I found the perfect mechanism.

"Mmm, Professor Reid," I cried, recognizing that it would either infuriate him or bring him a great sense of pride. I was fine with either.

I closed my eyes so I could better envision the fantasy that was actually just a memory. For now. With my eyes closed, I couldn't tell much of what was going on outside of my touch, trying to ignore the man beside me as best as I could. I wanted him to suffer.

Spencer, however, had other plans. With both eyes still on the road, his hand had found its way to my legs, where it shot up to join mine. He removed my hand quickly and replaced it with his own.

There was no subtlety or warm up this time. Without any hesitation, he dipped a finger into my heat just to remove it and begin rubbing harsh circles over my clit. I couldn't stop the yell that resulted, and seconds later I came undone against him.

As soon as the spasming stopped, he removed his hand, not speaking a word or even looking at me. I'd realized at that point that he'd only finished me off because he hadn't wanted to grant me the satisfaction of doing it myself. He was asserting that yes, in some sense, he viewed this as a part of his property.

I was oddly okay with that.

"Is the silent treatment my punishment?" I asked with a pout after a few moments of nothing.

He laughed bitterly back, finally looking at me for a moment before vaguely replying, "No. Your punishment will be much more fun for me."

I had to admit the implication that the silent treatment wasn't fun for him was flattering, at least. I was glad to hear that he enjoyed talking to me as much as I enjoyed listening to him talk.

But for the moment, I was sort of exhausted. Not in the way that would make me fall asleep, but in the I-just-had-two-orgasms-let-me-recoup way. Even though we enjoyed talking, those moments were refreshing in their own way. The best kind of connections were the ones that could always be maintained, even in the quiet.

Despite it not being my punishment, Spencer remained fairly quiet the rest of the way home. I wondered if part of that was due to him brewing a plan for what would happen when we got there.

God, I hoped so.

As we pulled up to the nondescript building, I had to admit I was a bit disappointed to find Spencer didn't live in some whimsical fantasy like I'd always envisioned. The building looked like every other one. But, at the same time, I couldn't want to see the inside. If I had to bet, there would be a lot of books and a stark lack of computers.

Walking into Apt #23, I was only a little surprised by what I saw. The warm green tones of his walls were complimented by red and brown accents, and my theory was quickly proven correct.

"Whoa," I mumbled under my breath, "It's like a library."

"You must go to some pretty small libraries, then."

I rolled my eyes. Like his usual attempts at humility, Spencer failed horribly.

I spun around on my heels to face him, but at the same time as I heard the lock flip into place, I felt his hand around my arm. Spencer's movements were quick as he gripped tightly on my wrist and pulled me towards what I could only assume was his bedroom.

Weirdly, I was still trying to take in my surroundings rather than focus on fucking him. It made sense, I figured. I had already experienced two orgasms today, whereas he had none.

Oops. Guess I really was a spoiled brat.

But seriously—I was in his apartment! I wanted to snoop, dammit!

Spencer wasn't going to give me an opportunity, though. He'd even made a point of shutting the door to his room once we were inside. Something told me he would keep a close eye on me as long as he could. That was probably deserved, considering that within the first few hours of interacting with him, I had answered a call from his boss.

In my defense, it had been fucking hilarious.

He led me to stand in front of him, and out of instinct and habit, I moved forward to kiss him. I never made it to his lips, though. Spencer pushed me aside toward the bed, and I laughed as I leaned over it, making a point of flipping up the back of my skirt.

"I've been bad, Professor," I giggled, turning to glance back at him from the position I had happily assumed without being told.

He had that dark fire in his eyes that usually came before a storm.

He looked like he was ready to break me. I was ready to be broken.

"Are you going to teach me another biology lesson?"

When his hands touched me, they were as tender as ever. He caressed my hips where I had turned the skirt up, hooking his fingers around the waistband of the underwear and casually removing them.

"No, I'm afraid not."

He sounded delighted despite the words he spoke.

"This will be a very different kind of lesson."

Oh, I realized all at once.

"A lesson in discipline?" I inquired, swaying my hips underneath his hands and waiting for confirmation.

The loss of his hand on one side caused anticipation to build. I could hear the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

It was hard to tell which happened first. Instantaneously, his hand came down hard on the soft skin of my backside as he responded, "Yes."

The adrenaline that coursed through my veins in response shook any feelings of fatigue I might have sustained throughout the day. I welcomed his body heat against my back as he leaned forward against me, and used his weight to press me down into his bed.

"Unless you've changed your mind."

"No!" I shouted back much too forcefully before gripping onto the sheets in front of me. "I deserve to be punished, Professor Reid."

He withdrew from me and, within seconds, brought his hand down on me again, that time striking the other side. The snapping sound of the contact was enough to elicit a response. I clamped my legs together and gave a soft mewl. Appreciating my vocal response, the next two hits came in rapid succession. I could feel the warmth building in the skin, the breeze from the motions acted as a buffer for the delicious sting.

He roughly grabbed both cheeks in front of him, for no reason other than wanting to. I groaned at the sensation of the tender flesh being handled, which only led him to release one to smack it once more. He followed with the other, appreciating the balance required of this particular punishment. I wasn't going to stop him. I was happy to continue. But something told me that he was breaching the point of comfort in his own conscience.

He was always so worried he would break me. I couldn't say it wasn't endearing. That didn't stop him from giving each side one more forceful blow, however, which earned him a mangled cry from deep in my chest. His body was against mine again, one of his hands reaching around to tilt my head up, despite not being able to see him. I was beginning to think he just enjoyed manipulating my body at will. To see how far I would let him.

"I think you're starting to get it, (y/n)."

"Yes," I responded, not caring if it didn't make much sense in response.

Despite the fact he'd already finished me twice today, I somehow already wanted him again. Maybe it was the allure of finally being able to fuck him in his own bed, or maybe it was the desire to see him fall apart as a reminder that I'm not the only one desperate for the other's touch.

So quickly he returned to the gentle, barely there traces along my skin.

"Punishment looks good on you," he praised, and something about the way he said it filled me with pride.

"You look good on me, too, sir," I slurred as he continued to draw feathery markings on the abused skin. He chuckled, finally moving up along my back before I interrupted his thoughts and appreciation once more.

"Fuck me," I begged. I wanted him and didn't care how I got it. "Let me help you feel good."

The hands that had inflicted pain moments ago were now gently massaging my shoulders through my top. I sighed, relaxing further into his touch. So easily I had become complacent to his desire. I let him do whatever he wanted, trusting that he would never do anything to truly, honestly hurt me. 

"Something tells me you're more interested in making yourself feel good," he asserted — quite correctly.

"Can't we have both?"

His silence told me he was considering my words. I knew that he didn't want to, since that would ruin the whole idea that this was a punishment in the first place. Then again, I didn't think he was fully committed to that idea anyway.

Dragging his hands once more down the plane of my back, he stopped to grip my hips and shift me backwards until I was pressed against him.

"You're lucky you look so fucking cute in that skirt," he growled.

I felt dizzy again already, drowning in the way his bed smelled like him.

"Mmm, I wore it just for you," I admitted, rubbing myself gently against his crotch now pressing into my bottom.

"Smart girl," he responded.

It felt like I was in a dream, to be there with him like that. For a long time, I'd thought I'd never see him again, let alone be laying on his bed.

I could hear him stripping behind me, and I peeked over my shoulder with a modest smile.

Time was not moving fast enough, I thought, but it was also moving too fast. Because as badly as I wanted him to ravish me, I was afraid what would happen when it was over.

I couldn't think about that in that moment, though.

Once he reached into his nightstand, I giggled with anticipation. He raised his eyebrows at me, unable to contain his own laughter.

"Oh, you're happy with yourself, huh?"

"A little bit, yeah."

When he returned to me, his hands were still gentle as they pushed my skirt back up where it had fallen. He revealed my body to himself, and I didn't have to be able to see it to know that my arousal spread down my inner thighs. I had, after all, already had two orgasms before now thanks to the man behind me.

"I'm also pretty happy with you," he whispered as he leaned over me.

With no warning, he fully entered me with one swift thrust. I whimpered at the feeling of him hitting against angered skin, mixed with the pleasure of being full once again. I clutched at the sheets and wished that they were him, wishing that I could somehow be even closer to him than I already was. 

"We'll see if you still feel like smiling after I'm done with you."

It was the last thing he said before he began to ruthlessly pound into me. I struggled to scream as loudly as I wanted to, but I couldn't make any noise at all. My body seemed to have relented all control to him within seconds; I didn't put up a single battle. Although his grasp held me in place, I still attempted to cant my hips forward to allow him better access.

My chest and face were warm with friction from rubbing against the bed, and my knuckles were blanched from the force exerted to try and remain grounded. Each movement seemed so purposeful, much like the way he thrashed at my skin with his hand.

"Fuck me," were the first words I managed to string together.

With one forceful thrust, he held me down on him as all the moans I couldn't make previously came pouring out of me. I thought I might actually cry from how overstimulated the day was  becoming. Seemingly reading my mind, Spencer pulled out of me entirely. I tried to reorient myself, but he stopped me. Using one hand to grab hold of my arm, he flipped me onto my back beneath him.

I hadn't even realized I was still wearing basically all of my clothes until he had to force my skirt back up again. Missing him between my legs, I began to crave him everywhere else, too. I struggled to pull my shirt over my head.

Spencer didn't stop me, just watching while he playfully rubbed his arousal at my entrance.

"Please, sir," I pleaded once I was finally able to lift my legs. I wrapped them around his hips and pulled him closer to me without letting him slip into me just yet.

"Just as impatient and needy as ever, (y/n)."

I chewed on my bottom lip, looking up at him with the puppy dog eyes that had always worked on him up to that point. It must have worked again, because he was sinking back into me before I knew it. My arms spread out across the bed, holding onto whatever I could reach as he set another brutal pace.

Our bodies melding together in a chaotic fusion of skin and fluids, I let myself get lost in the bliss of Spencer Reid laying claim to my body. I threw my head back, my eyes clamped shut as one of his hands came up to caress one of my breasts through my lacy bra.

"With undergarments like this, I have to wonder if you planned this all, young lady," he teased, no doubt referring to the matching underwear now discarded on the floor.

I opened my eyes to meet his, and for a second I was left breathless at the sight of him pumping into me. How I managed to say anything at all is a miracle.

"Never a plan, sir. But always a pleasure."

A flirtatious sparkle in his eyes, he slowed down as he pressed, "Did you wear them for someone else, then?"

The way I arched my back caused him to push even further into me, and I had to pause to moan before I continued.

"Are you jealous?"

His hips snapped forward, producing a simultaneously jolt of pain and pleasure. His voice was breathy as he tried to hold himself together while speaking, "Should I be?"

Our eye contact caused tension so powerful that I was certain it was palpable. A devilish grin and a bit of a snicker was the provocation he needed to drive into me harder once again. I didn't even try to suppress the noises he elicited from me, tightening my grip around him with my legs.

"Take me," I whispered under my breath, almost hoping that he wouldn't hear me.

I couldn't tell if he did, but his hand switched sides of my chest, and our faces grew closer together.

"I'm yours," I slurred. I truthfully hadn't thought about the words when I gifted them to him, but he clearly took note of them. That time, it was his moan that filled the air in the room, and I had never felt so excited by one of his responses. I chased after the feeling, locking eyes with him as both his hands grabbed my hips to begin the race to the finish.

"I'm yours, Spencer."

I didn't stop to wonder if I could play this off as part of the fantasy. I mean, it was part of my fantasy; the fantasy of being his, and him being mine.

He didn't object to my words then, either, and he had definitely heard me that time.

I smiled, barely noticing that he'd placed his fingers back on my heat, swiping frantically at my clit until I lost all composure underneath him. My hips rocked at no apparent rhythm, and distorted versions of his name broke through my mouth.

I hadn't even come down yet when he rammed into me with full force, bottoming out once again. I felt his cock twitch inside of me, followed by my muscles pulling everything out of him that they could.

The view of his satisfied face through my lust-filled daze was angelic. It appeared that he saw the same in me, but I couldn't be sure. Just as quickly as the moment had come, it had passed, his arms giving in to his weight as he collapsed onto my chest.

His hair tickled my collarbones, and I laughed at how incredibly out of shape he was. Especially for an FBI Agent. Even if he did go on the field often, I figured the resident dork didn't need to be totally ripped, anyway.

And, hey, he was strong enough to treat me like a ragdoll, so who was I to judge?

"Tired?" I asked, taking a shaky hand to his head, playing with the soft brown curls damp from sweat.

"You aren't?" he slurred, his words smothered against my skin.

"I am fucking exhausted."

That time, we both laughed. He was clearly pleased that, despite any perceived weakness, he was still able to thoroughly wear me out. When he moved to leave me, I dropped my legs. I was surprised I had managed to hold them until then, honestly.

He fixed his hair that had fallen in his eyes first, and I smiled at the peculiar priority. It was cute, though.

"Do you have to take me home?"

I tried not to let the disappointment bleed into my voice, but it did. He tried not to notice. He didn't answer as he cleaned himself up, and I sat up to look at him — once the world stopped spinning, anyway.

"No."

The butterflies spiraled out of control, spreading through every inch of my soul. I must have been beaming, because he looked so very nervous.

"Thanks."

His response came in the form of an unsure smile, followed by a genuine appreciation.

I briefly wondered if he realized just how transparent he was, but then decided I didn't want to think about it. I excused myself to clean up before bed, taking a long moment to rub my skin with aloe from under the cabinet, only to realize that I had basically nothing clean to wear. I rolled my eyes at the situation, wondering how many red flags it would set off for me to ask Spencer for some of his clothes.

I could just be naked. He seemed to like me that way.

I padded back into the room, expecting him to be waiting up for me. He wasn't. Spencer had passed out on the bed before he even had a chance to get under the covers. I stood at the door for a moment, trying to appreciate the value of this quiet moment while I still could.

Stripping off my clothes as quiet as possible, I was careful not to wake him. However, that also meant I couldn't climb under the covers, either.

It isn't exactly snooping if I'm looking for something innocent, right? That's what I had to tell myself, regardless. Because I was not going to freeze my ass off over a hookup's paranoia. Glancing at the dresser, I almost convinced myself it wouldn't be an invasion of privacy to open it. Luckily, I didn't have to. Directly next to it was a hamper of clean, folded laundry, with a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt on top. While disappointed that I had lost my excuse, I was grateful I had stripped myself of the choice.

He deserved better than me trying to pry into his life like that.

Slipping into his clothes, I stopped to hug myself in the soft fabric. With him asleep, I felt comfortable taking a moment to revel in the position he'd allowed me to exist in. I was in his apartment, in his clothes, and I would soon be back in his arms.

For now.

I chased the inevitable end out of my thoughts, slinking onto the bed and shimmying over to him until his hands found me in his unconscious state. I faced him, my hands pressing softly against his chest to feel his heart happily working under my touch.

His eyes fluttered open for a second, just long enough to see the wonder in my own. A smile crept along his cheeks, and he wrapped a lazy arm around my waist.

I wondered if he recognized his own clothes, or if he even realized this was real. Then again, the alternative was him assuming that it'd all been a dream... and it was a pleasant one, it seemed. 

"I'm happy," he confirmed in a hushed tone.

My heart almost stopped, and I peeked up at him, inching up so I could better see his face. His breathing evened back out as I felt the way he relaxed, quickly retreating back to the comfortable embrace of sleep.

"About what?" I whispered back.

Our legs twined together, and a soft sigh left his lips. I waited with bated breath  for his response, although I don't think I could have ever been prepared for what followed.

"I'm happy that you're mine."

... What?

 —————————————————

| Part 5 |

[ourplaceinthecosmosphff]

Chapter 1. The Case Against Fairytales

'his eyes across a room tangled up in her imagination they had spent a lifetime together by the time he said hello' atticus

My brother died the same way he came into the world: silent, eyes closed, changing my life as I knew it. 

We spent our whole lives trying to convince anyone we could that we were as regular as they were, but here's the first fundamentally different thing when you are royal: the meaning of the word ‘everyone’. 

In our case, we usually mean anyone in the country, most of the international media, and at least a sizeable majority of the world's population. It's not that everyone knew us... it's just that enough people did. Enough for it to be easier to call them 'everyone'. 

When my brother Louis was born, mom had been rushed to the hospital in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. The press was notified, they promptly set up camp at the hospital entrance, and the people started prayer campaigns to the safe arrival of their new prince and heir. Everyone rejoiced at his arrival. I remember, I was there. 

At three years-old, it felt like everyone was every single person in the planet. It was mostly just the people in our country; to everyone else, his birth was a quick, short line of announcement, maybe some notice to the fact that the newborn baby boy was taking his older sister's place as heir, and not much else. 

When he died, everyone was every single person in the planet. The second thing fundamentally different when you are a royal: from a very early age you must learn that tragedy sells more than joy. And in any constitutional monarchy country, a royal family is merely another commodity.

A few people talked about my early graduation from University. A lot more people talked about my boyfriend breaking up with me. There were a few articles about my little sister's victory at the ice-skating junior final. When she fell on her face in front of the cameras while attempting a risky move, she went viral. When my brother came into our lives, a few people took notice. 

When he left us, everyone did.

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

I, too, am a victim of culture appropriation. Since the dawn of time, from the moment humankind developed communication skills, there has been storytelling. And for the past few thousands of years most stories that parents tell their young as they tuck them into their blankets every night, have been about my culture. As far as that goes, it is not the most damaging kind of culture appropriation. But I have a duty today, and I will not shy away from it. I am sorry to say I must, and will, shatter the beautiful image of fairytales that kids have been fed for so many years now. 

I know what you are thinking – oh, boo-hoo, the poor little princess girl; is life too difficult in your beautiful palace with all the money a person could ever need? And yes, I know. I am not a victim. The same colonialism that placed my ancestors, and therefore, me, in the position of privilege and power I am in today has created many more actual victims around the world. But that is also why I must tell this story the way it was always meant to be told: truthfully. With all the weird, awkward, awful, bits and pieces that fairytales tend to skip. 

Fairytales would, for instance, skip straight to the grand, majestic welcome ceremony between the Queen of the United Kingdom and the King of Savoy in a sun floored courtyard with guards on tall, furry black hats strutting around, standing in a red-carpeted dais, with a handsome prince making eyes at me. But in my story, we will start with the train. 

That’s right, in modern fairytales you don’t take a lovely carriage ride to a neighboring kingdom. You take a train there – a commercial train, if you can, because modern times beg for demonstrating to the masses that the Monarch isn’t throwing money around. We were trying to highlight the easy routes of access to our neighbors to the northeast, and so we took the ferry across the Celtic Sea to Hugh Town Island and from there, Eurostar number 2 train that made a quick stop in Penzance, UK, and then went straight to London. 

The train ride isn’t comfortable – even if you have a first class private car. It’s bumpy and crowded and a terrible place to spend three straight hours. On that particular morning, I was in our car with my father, his household secretary Auguste, my private aide, Cadie, and a few other staff members. 

In fairytale world, when a princess does not look the part, there is usually the appearance of a fairy godmother who sings a nice song and magically transforms her into a Proper Princess™. There is no fairy godmothers when you are a real princess- real ones, sure, but they are not magical-, but you do learn from an early age what a Proper Princess™ should look like, act like, and sound like, and god forbid you don't. 

In the train that day, I heard all that was keeping me from being Proper™ from Auguste, who was in many ways the exact opposite of a fairy godmother. He had all the menacing authority of one, with none of the charm. He also didn’t have wings or a sparkly wand; he had greying short hair, and thin, small, reading glasses that he always pushed down to the tip of his nose to look above, which made me wonder what was the point of the glasses at all.

Before our arrival, I had to change my lipstick, which was too dark, my dress, which was too short at the daring height of above my knees, my shoes, which were open toed and therefore wrong, and finally, make sure to brush my hair once more.

My parents never subscribed to the idea that we were forbidden to do anything. They were raised on stern rules and heavily traditional costumes and wanted their kids to live more freely. So, growing up, they revolutionarily told us that we were free to be whoever we wanted to be – in private. In public, we had an obligation to be Proper™. After all, as I heard repeatedly growing up: royals don’t make mistakes, we make history; and history remembers.

So, yes. I, a grown, 25 years-old, law-school graduate, bar-approved acquisitions lawyer, changed out of my dress into a more proper one because my dad asked. Because as a princess, you’re never just yourself; you’re the country. And if your country comes from a Roman Catholic tradition, your hemlines must reflect that, no matter what century it is.

The country in question was just to the south of the United Kingdom, west of France, a large island named Savoie. The English call it Savoy, which is how it was pronounced anyway. It was originally populated by the Irish, but over the years it was conquered by the English, the Spanish, and the Portuguese until finally, in the 13th Century, it was conquered by France. It was bigger than Ireland, but smaller than England, and one of the biggest GDPs in the world, with a population of 49 million. Under the reign of Louis XV, however, France lost most of its possessions after its defeat in the Seven Years' War, and to secure Savoy, the king sent part of the court to live there and to reign in his stead as his emissaries. Louis XV's reign grew weak, including his ill-advised financial, political and military decisions, which discredited the monarchy and arguably led to the French Revolution 15 years after his death. France dealt with its dissatisfaction by revolting, Savoy however, secluded away at sea, decided to declare independence before the Revolution had even taken steam. The political leaders of the Island reached an agreement with the king's emissary, Prince Louis, the highest ranking monarch on the island; in exchange for support for the severance of all connection to France, he was then made King Louis I of Savoy. The Royal House of Savoy grew steady and strong by protecting its people and assuring them a freer, better life than the one they'd known under French reign.

A few years later, I sat on that train in front of the current King of Savoy. My father. 

“You look beautiful, Maggie.”

“Thank you.” 

“The other dress was beautiful as well. Just not for today.”

“Mm-hm.”

A moment of silence went by. I picked up my phone and checked my emails. There was one from Sophie with the subject ‘urgent!’ so I clicked in it feeling my heart race.

It read,

‘Marie, I’m sorry to bother you on your days off, but the depositions got moved up to Monday and we can’t find the notes on the manager deposition, you were the one who did them. Is there any chance you have a copy and if so can you send them to me? Enjoy England! XO Soph’

Sighing, I put down my phone and quickly found my laptop on my suitcase. I turned it on as I replied to Sophie’s email to tell her to expect my deposition notes shortly. 

“You know if we could I’d let you wear whatever you wanted.” Dad added as I logged into my computer.

“I do.”

I moved quickly through my folders realizing the most recent update on my notes hadn’t been uploaded to the cloud. Sighing, I logged on to the train WiFi and checked the storage service online. It didn’t connect.

“Honestly, darling, you look even prettier with this dress.”

I looked up, mentally wondering if the previous versions of the notes would be useful.

“This isn’t about the dress.”

I realized, then, that it wouldn’t matter anyway because I wouldn’t be able to send them to Sophie without internet. I looked out the window, realizing perhaps too late that we were in the tunnel, underwater. Of course there wasn’t internet.

“Well, what is it about?” Dad asked, putting his book marker back inside the page he was on and laying down the book to give me his full attention.

“Work, papa. I have a job.”

“Yes, and it’s your day off. Maybe you should try and turn off from work for the next few days?”

I smiled down to my computer, “maybe this is a conversation for another time.”

Dad adjusted his posture, looking a little taller, and looked around the room to Cadie and Auguste sitting in a booth nearby with our private hair and make-up artist, and dad’s footman, and personal aide.

“Excuse me, everyone, would you be so kind as to give us the room? Or, uh, the car? There is a little lounge outside, isn’t there?”

“Of course, sir.” Auguste said, jumping up immediately with the aide, and Cadie and Cass, the make-up artist, followed.

After they had left and closed the door behind them, I looked at my father. He lurched back in his seat and smiled at me. 

“Go on,” he said. “If you don’t scream I don’t think they’ll hear us.”

“Why would I scream?”

“I don’t know, Maggie. But I don’t know why you would be so passive aggressive, either. Can you tell me?”

“What do you want, dad?” 

In truth, I added the ‘dad’ at the end of the sentence to make it sound less aggressive, but as he stared at me, I felt uncomfortable not explaining myself.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”, I asked, tiredly. “I’m here, wearing a proper, long, not-slutty dress-“

“No one here used that word-“

“My toes will be perfectly hidden away when we arrive, I have hidden my ugly, evil legs under some stockings-“

“Really, Maggie, no one said your legs were-“

“My make-up is light and my hair is simple and non-threatening. I know not to smile too much or too little and to let the adults lead the conversation”, I said, the word ‘adults’ dangling bitterly from me lips. “And not to walk ahead of you, but always behind, taking your lead.”

“You make it sound so stiff and calculated.”

“And I have taken time off of work to be here.” I said. “All other Junior Associates are working overtime and through weekends to cash in as many billable hours as possible to be promoted to Full-time Associates, and instead I took off four days to travel with my dad.”

“Work, for work!”

“So, again, what do you want? How else am I not meeting your expectations?”

I spoke calmly, gently, and as low a volume as I could just to confront his joke not a minute before about how if I didn’t scream the others wouldn’t hear us. I made sure to be as poised and contained as I could. He heaved a sigh.

“I’m sorry you had to take time off work.” 

I waited, as he stared in his usual lovingly, patient way. I smiled, more as a peace offering than genuinely. 

“You know very well they won’t fire you.”

Still, I was quiet, smiling as sincerely as I could. 

“And I know that isn’t fair, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So tell me something I can do and I will.”

“Okay.” I said, nodding. “I want your honesty. Don’t treat me like a child you need to protect, don’t patronize me. All I want is an honest answer.”

He adjusted himself in his seat and cleared his throat. “Alright. Go on.”

“Why am I here, papa?”

He blinked, seemingly confused. I could tell he expected a harder question.

“Your- Because your mother sprained her ankle?” he answered, still unsure. “What- do you mean philosophically? Why are any of us here, really? I don’t understand.”

I tried not to smile. “I mean I have a life. I am not your heir. Louis is your heir, it is his job to help you when mom has emergencies.”

He sighed deeply, finally arriving at the same page where I was.

“Your brother is in school.” He said. “And you are our oldest child. So, I’m sorry if it disrupts your life, Maggie. But you are needed.”

“And after school?” I asked “His graduation is in 6 months. Are you telling me that after he graduates university and moves back home, when he is starting his career, maybe moving to the capital, when you and mom have an emergency, you will call him up instead of me?”

He gave the table a sad smile. “If that is your wish, yes.”

“So that’s all, then?” I confirmed, suspiciously. “He moves back after graduation and you will give me the space I need?”

He smiled. “Is that what you want, then?” it wasn’t a confirmation. It was a tone of accomplishment. Of finally realizing what was it that I wanted, as if this entire conversation that’s what he had been trying to find out.

“I went to school for years. I interned for a year. I studied hard for the bar exams in America and Savoy. Yes, dad, I want to use the degree I worked hard for.”

“Okay, then. We will give you space.” He said. “Space from us, to be who you want to be. To be normal.”

I rolled my eyes, smiling, slightly amused at his dramatics. “That is not what I meant.”

“But it is accurate.”

“Papa...” I sighed.

“I’m just saying, sweetheart, I understand.” He insisted. “It’s why you went to America for University, it’s why you are based on the capital now. As long as you’re too close to us, you can’t live a normal life.”

“I can never live a normal life. We are not normal.”

“But you wish to try.”

I chuckled. “How?! You said it yourself, they will never fire me. My firm, I mean. Wherever I am, I am never just me and my degree and my career. People look at me and see you, as if I am you. I am their King. I am the Royal Family of Savoy. They’ll never take me seriously or afford me the same opportunities as everyone, because I am not everyone.”

He nodded, slowly, then sighed. “Yikes. You’re right. That sounds tough.”

“And I’m the passive aggressive one?”

“Job security and the attention of your bosses. That sounds awful.”

“Papa...”

“You want the space to dedicate yourself to your career without us pulling you away for royal work. Is that it? Okay. You got it. As soon as your brother is back from University, I will make sure you’re only needed for official events, and only if you’re not working.” 

He sounded serious now. Sincere as when he delivered the End of Year address every Christmas, which was meaningful. Getting dad to afford me the same seriousness he afforded his subjects was as much seriousness as I could get from him. Still, there was no mistaking the sadness in his eyes. 

“Even before his affirmation ceremony?” I asked, trying to sniff around for a trick.

The affirmation ceremony was meant to make clear to the country that an heir to throne had the seal of approval of the Monarch, and it usually happened when the heir was 21 years of age, to signify the Monarch believed in the event of a tragedy, the heir was ready to rule.  In modern times, it meant an heir was ready to start working as a full-time royal. Though my brother was 22, the family had decided to wait until he had graduated university to do his ceremony. 

Dad took longer than I wished, but finally, he nodded. “Yes. I promise.”

If you’re paying attention, then you might have noticed the math doesn’t add up. How come my 22 years-old brother is the heir when I said I am 25, the oldest child? Well, as with most fairytales, as well as with most of life, the problem is the patriarchy. For the thing is, though I was older than Louis by three years, because I was born a girl, he became the heir when he was born. So, at three, I went from future-Queen to lower ranking older sister. 

It wasn’t unusual, my father himself had two older sisters who were lower than him and his brothers in the line of succession. As a result we had older cousins who we outranked. I cared about all this at 25 the same as when I was 3: not at all. 

Absolute primogeniture law was passed in Savoy when I was 5, propelled by my birth and the new times. It was, however, not retroactive. This meant the law was changed for future births, not past ones, so all girls born after the law came into effect would be heirs in their own right, no matter how many brothers they got after, and all girls born before would go into history as having missed it by ‘just a bit’.

Louis and I, though, didn’t sit around having long discussions about who would be a better ruler. There has never been an instance in which we were arguing and I yelled something like, “first you stole my throne and now you stole my cookies! I hate you!”. For us this was just a little footnote in the family tree. A little fun fact to tell our future kids one day. And although I couldn’t remember what it felt like, I always knew it was much better not having to be the Crown Princess of Savoy.

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

When we finally reached Penzance, the small town in the tip of the isle of England where sat the second Eurostar station, I was able to finally connect to the internet. My father left our train car to walk about with his security because he wanted to witness the new English policy of installing a check-point at the entry due to the immigrant crisis – a huge part of why we were there. While he did that, I sent Sophie my notes on the deposition, and answered some messages.

There was one from Louis, my aforementioned brother:

‘are you close?’

And one from our baby sister, Lourdes:

‘what do you think??!!!!!!!!’, with an attachment of two videos.

And, lastly, one from my mother, Her Majesty Queen Amelie-Elyse, back home with a sprained ankle.

‘Hope all is well! Let me know when you’re with your brother. Don’t forget to let your hair down before leaving the train!’

She didn’t mean it in a philosophical, have fun kind of way. She literally meant let my hair down, apparently it softened my features. 

I replied to her with a selfie, with my hair properly brushed and down, in preparation for the arrival in London, which was close now. Let Louis know we were almost there. And sent a quick, uncommitted ‘woah!’ to my sister, without opening her attachments. They were always the same: videos of her practicing. There was only so much ice skating I could watch in a lifetime.

My mom answered my text with, “why did you change your dress?!”

I sighed, getting ready to justify this decision as well, already anticipating she would argue that the fascinator wouldn’t go with this one dress, so I told her I already had another fascinator standing by. 

Growing up with fairytales they don’t tell you about the little annoying details. Characters who are annoying usually are the villains, the ones the Princess escapes from, usually saved by the prince. They don’t tell you sometimes, actually a lot of the times, the people you love can be equally as annoying. 

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

When we arrived at the station in London, I was already wearing my disc fascinator in a light shade of blue matching both my lace dress, this time reaching all the way to my ankles, and eyes. We were quickly greeted by the Savoyen Ambassador to England in front of the press, and escorted into government cars towards Whitehall. 

The large parade ground was a traditional courtyard in central London that usually housed ceremonies related to the military and the royal family. When we arrived, the day finally was washed in a feeling of ceremony. 

The place was lined neatly with military guards, security barricades and the Scotland Yard Police kept watchers and paparazzi at bay, the press lined up inside to have the best view of all involved. As we arrived, the traditional 41 gun salute was already sounding on. A military band was playing. People waved and yelled hello as we drove inside. I suddenly knew what to do, as if my body had the gene for it. This was one thing that was definitely genetic.

I stepped out of the car delicately, smoothly, knees together like a proper lady, polite smile on my lips in thanks to the guard who saluted as I left. My father greeted a handler who escorted us to the front of all the lined guards, where three structures had been set up: one large one in the middle, with a red-carpeted stage and a large roof, the British Royal Coat of Arms in the center with the British flag to its right and the Savoy flag to its left. Decorative flowers and elegant plants here and there. Two smaller, simpler structures to both of its sides. Inside all of them, men and women in formal suits and ties and knee-length, appropriate dresses and hats. 

We walked the grovel path to the larger structure as the band played and the press, lined up in front of this platform, took their photographs. My father climbed the steps first, quickly being received by the small, elder, lady in a lavender overcoat and matching hat, impressive set of pearls dangling from her neck. She smiled as he lowered himself down to kiss both her cheeks warmly. 

The queen then looked at me and I approached, just as our handler told Her Majesty:

“And may I present, Her Royal Highness, Princess Marie-Margueritte of Savoy.”

I lowered myself in a curtsy, and as she extended her hands to hold mine, I also kissed her cheeks, trying to avoid knocking her hat with mine. 

“Welcome.” She smiled. “I hope the ride was forgiving.”

“Very comfortable.” My father told her. “Always surprising how fast it is.”

“Yes. You’ll remember, I’m sure, the Prince of Wales.” She said, walking us to the center of the platform where another two men awaited.

My father and the Prince of Wales greeted each other warmly, they were more used to running in the same circles – royal weddings here and there, international summits and meetings, or whatever it is they do. 

“We’re so glad to have you.” He told my father. 

“I don’t know if you’ve met my daughter, Princess Marie-Margueritte.”

Smiling, I curtsied to the Prince of Wales as he held my hand, before kissing my cheeks. 

“You brighten this day, Your Royal Highness.” He told me, before stepping closer to add, in a whisper. “Sorry you have been dragged to this.”

I giggled, “I’m happy to be here, sir.”

Straightening up, he noticed my father was already greeting the man behind him. “Hopefully we won’t bore you too much. I have tried to bring someone else closer to your age. Have you met my son?”

The handler didn’t know it, but there were no introductions necessary. And yet, all I could do was smile politely as we were introduced to:

“His Royal Highness, Prince Harry of Wales.”

I wondered, for a moment, if he would acknowledge that we already knew each other. 

“It’s a pleasure, Your Royal Highness.” Holding my hand in his, he brought my knuckles to his lips. 

The answer was, obviously, no. So I lowered myself again in a curtsy as an excuse to avert my eyes from his.

I couldn’t understand why, but I had been unprepared for him. With all of Auguste’s preparation, all the briefings, with all the preachings about my appearance, no one had prepared me for him. I don’t know if it was that, like me, he was one of the youngest there, or how absurdly, almost ridiculously tall he was, or maybe how the blue in his eyes contrasted with the red of his hair, but he just… stunned me. When he kissed my hand, his eyes traveled down my legs all the way back to pierce mine, igniting a wave of electricity down my spine I was unable to control. 

He leaned back, and there we stood, hand in hand, wordlessly. 

“You can follow the King, ma’am.” Auguste whispered behind me, his voice making me jump slightly, as I quickly pulled my hand from Harry’s, not before realizing he had something scribbled on his palm.

My father and the Queen were deep in conversation, with Charles besides them, as they reached the center of the platform to watch the guards. The Queen in the middle, my father to her right, and the Prince of Wales to her left, I walked forward to stand beside my father, while Prince Harry walked to his. 

We waited just a moment, and then the band started playing the Savoy National Anthem, and the British Anthem after it. A few words said, more ceremony here and there, and the Prince Wales formally invited my father to inspect the Guards, so they left together, accompanied by one of the military leaders to walk among the rolls of guards,  as the three of us stood behind to watch.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” I said, looking regretful, walking towards her, closing the gap left behind by the others. “She was sorry she couldn’t be here.”

“I hope it’s nothing serious.” Prince Harry interjected.

“A sprained ankle.” I explained, looking ahead. 

“Harry is also here after a small hiccup with the Duchess of Cornwall, my daughter-in-law.” His grandmother told me. “An illness in her family, nothing serious.”

“Hopefully I’ll have time to meet her before we leave.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” She nodded. “How did you mother hurt herself?”

“Horse fall. She was never very fond of Polo, I’m afraid this will drive her further away from it.”

“Oh, that is regretful.” The Queen said. 

Harry looked at me. “Do you play?” 

“I do, sir.” 

“Harry is very good,” his grandmother told me, “he will be the one playing with you in the charity match in the coming days.”

“I look forward to-“, I started, but Harry had started the exact same sentence. We locked eyes, and chuckled.

“You first.” I said.

“Please, I insist.” He responded, cheeks reddening.

His grandmother looked between us, and then back to the uniformed men in front. She then said, in a low tone, something I would spend a large part of the upcoming months thinking obsessively about:

“Be careful with him... He will charm you, but he is a heartbreaker.”

The words astonished me so much I looked at her, unsure she had actually said them. But she had, clearly, because Harry was also looking at her, quite shocked.

“Granny!” he complained, in such a whiny tone I broke into laughter.

“Do I lie?” She asked him, grinning. It only made him look more shocked. 

“Don’t ruin my reputation in front of foreign royals!” he said, in a low tone, before looking at me. “Specially such pretty ones.”

My giggle froze in my throat under his intense glare, and I could feel my cheeks reddening.

The Queen looked at me. “Oh, you’re blushing. It’s too late, I see.”

It was.

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

Margueritte’s outfit

The ask box is open! Let me know your thoughts? And if at all possible, like this page so I know you liked it? Thank you so much!

[A/N: Attention: by continuing to read you are accepting that some sad stuff is coming. You been warned. Thanks for checking this out! Let me know your thoughts?? thanks!!!!]

[A/N2: Hey! Nat here. I wanted to talk a little more about the story we are about to go on together.

In the upcoming chapters you will be introduced to the Royal Family of Savoy, a fictitious European country right below the UK, to left of France. When I first posted a fanfiction, FIUYMI, I made the main character latina, since that’s what I am, and I had previously felt that I couldn’t relate to other characters I had read. In this one, however, I decided I wanted to write about a fictitious monarchy, and I knew I wanted to make it as realistic as possible. 

As much as I wanted at many points in the story to make the character look more like me, the idea felt like cheating: Margueritte is a blood royal, born to a life of specific privileges and hardships, and pretending she could look like the type of people who don’t have white privilege would be trying to ignore a very real issue: all monarchies - past and present - existed, lasted and gathered riches on the back of people of color. Most of their descendants still carry white and wealth privilege because these royal families, however many years ago, supported and perpetuated colonialism and white supremacy that left countless countries and their populations still recovering today.

That is a legacy Margueritte didn’t chose, and which she also doesn’t have to face, but in this story she will chose too. As you’ll see, she finds herself in a much more influential position she thought she would have, and as such she realizes she has two options: she can stick to the message her family - and other royal families - have perpetuated for generations and keep her head high, mouth and ears shut, so their legacy can survive; or she can chose to be a modern Queen who will make the institution relevant again. I want to write about this because this issue is important for the times we live in, particularly after the way the Duchess of Sussex was treated in the United Kingdom.

What that will look like will depend on who Margueritte is as a person and whose advice she takes, and that is a journey I hope you’ll take with us =) ]

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Dad Fluff: Ohana

A followup to this very short drabble about Mina drawing a family photo! 

CW: Vague references to Danny’s past torture, but nothing specific. Brief referenced to enforced malnourishment/near starvation.

“You’re officially obs-… obsessing,” Nate says softly, dropping onto the couch next to Danny, leaning over and tilting his head to try and get a better look at his face. “L-Love, talk to me. You’ve been looking at th-th-the picture she drew for… longer than can be g-good for you.”

“I wasn’t in the picture,” Danny whispers, still holding it in his hands. Looking at the stick-figure attempts to draw Nate and Mina herself and even Toto, a ball of black and brown squiggles with eyes. “I don’t know why, why she wouldn’t-”

“Danny,” Nate says seriously, taking the paper from his hands and turning it over. “You are the p-p-picture. Look at you, here.” He points, tapping his finger against the drawing with a soft crackling sound as the paper shifts in his hand. “You’re so… you are s-s-such the center of her life that she didn’t have en, enough room to draw you if you didn’t have your very own s-side.”

Danny’s lips press slowly together, and he nods, but he doesn’t look convinced. “I never drew myself in, um, in the pictures, either,” He says, finally. “I used to draw Mom and Dad and Ryan on one side, and… and, um, then myself over in the corner or on another paper, because that’s how it felt-… sometimes I didn’t draw me at all…”

“Danny.” Nate set the drawing down entirely, laying it carefully on the coffee table, taking Danny’s hands in his. “Look at me, love. Please.”

Danny’s jaw is locked but trembling as he raises his eyes, slowly, to meet Nate’s.

They’re both older, and stronger, and Nate likes to think wiser, but Danny’s eyes are still the same. Bright sparkling blue, the only time in his life Nate has seen the color blue and called it warm. His freckles have deepened with time, rather than faded, and Nate lifts one hand to cup his face, rubbing a thumb slowly over an old scar on his cheek, feeling the shift in skin texture under his touch. 

“This is n-not that family.” Nate keeps his voice gentle but firm, not quite insistent. Danny nods, but he’s scared, and the fear shows through even when he tries to hide it. He’s never been a good liar, and he’s a worse liar with Nate. “I kn-know we all bring things from our childhoods-… but we are not your parents. And Mina is not Ryan, and she isn’t y-you, either.”

“It just felt like-”

“Like you weren’t part of us,” Nate says softly, and Danny nods. Nate sighs and slides his hand down Danny’s neck, over the hints of scarring there, then curves his palm around Danny’s shoulder, pulling him close. Wavy red hair tickles against the side of his neck as Danny’s tension collapses. “This is your family, Danny. We w-worked hard to build it. We… we worked so hard to get the fucking ch-chance to build it. This is our f-family. And you’re her whole world.”

“She drew my scars. She drew them in bright red, they’re what she sees, it’s all anyone ever sees, is what h-he left on me-”

“Ssssshhhhh. I know that was h-hard to see.” Nate closes his eyes, tries to remember what he and Dr. Rosa had talked about when it came to helping Danny through his dark moments, encouraging him to keep talking, to pull himself back. “Did you h-hear what she called them?”

“My… my pretty marks,” Danny whispers, and Nate begins to run his thumb on Danny’s shoulder through his long-sleeved shirt, thinking of doing this in Alberta, feeling the shift of bones under his thumb when Danny had so little weight at all. Now there is a gentle roundness, strength he’d rebuilt in himself year by year. “She called them pretty marks.”

“There. She didn’t see them as bad, D-Danny, she just sees them as part of you. The same way she calls that weird thing on your hip your ‘blue spot’.”

“It… it is an actual blue spot on my hip, though,” Danny says doubtfully. “I stabbed myself with a marker at the last group home before Mom… It is a blue spot.”

“And your marks are p-pretty to her.”

“I just… it hurts, to see me not in the picture again, Nate.”

“I know. But she’s n-not you. She didn’t d-d-do that because she didn’t think you belonged with us, but because she c-c-couldn’t fit how important y-you were when the rest of us were in the way.” Nate’s efforts are rewarded with a nearly-silent huff of laughter from the man in his arms. “I know it’s h-hard not to bring it with you… I sometimes want to g-go to confession and I haven’t b-been Catholic since I was s-s-seventeen…”

“What’d you confess to?” Danny asks, curling more against him, and Nate sighs with a kind of relief as he pulls him closer. “Just… sucking dick?”

“Yes.”

Danny blinks and pulls back, looking up at Nate with surprise. “Did you actually? To a priest?”

Nate grins, and watches Danny’s internal battle between his need to still be sad over the injury in his mind and the idea of a sixteen-year-old Nate Vandrum talking about blowjobs in the confessional booth. “Couple of t-t-times. Some oth, other stuff, too. I was a really bad C-Catholic.”

“If you did it and still went to confession, you might actually have been a pretty good one,” Danny says, and the two of them break up into relieved laughter, Danny’s hands splaying over his face not to hide his scars but just to hide his smile.

“Danny, you are M-Mina’s family. You’re w-w-with her every day, all day-”

“-Except during Mom’s Morning Out, which, I really wish they’d change the name of that fucking group-”

“… let me finish, D-Danny. Mina wants for nothing. She is warm, and fed, and educated, and clothed, and l-l-loved.”

“I was most of those things,” Danny says, softly, but he’s coming back, Nate can tell. Pulling himself out of the spiral inside his mind, starting to feel more present, less like he slipped beneath the surface of a dark pool. 

“You were some of th-them all of the t-t-time, but you never had them all, all of the t-t-time. And she does. You were the one who brought up adoption, you are the one who taught her the alphabet, you were the one to d-d-decide we weren’t going to watch those episodes I d-d-downloaded of Mister Rogers any longer and we’d let her watch s-s-something made in the last ten years-”

“I still watch them,” Danny says, softly. At Nate’s raised eyebrows, he shrugs. “Call it my confession. Forgive me, Father, for I have watched educational children’s programming from the eighties-”

“Hey, now. Some of us recovering Catholics like the ‘Forgive me, Father’ stuff, but… I’m n-n-not one of them.”

Danny flashes him a bright smile, and Nate feels an absurd sense of victory. He wants to raise his hands in triumph. He settles for pulling Danny in for a kiss. 

“Sorry, Professor,” Danny murmurs against his mouth.

“Now, see, I l-like you calling me Professor…”

Danny laughs, softly. “Put your tie and jacket on and I’ll take it right back off you again, Professor Vandrum. But… I… I get it. She drew me bigger than everyone else because I am important. And she probably thought, since it’s the same paper, that it still counted as being all together…”

“Kids tend to d-d-draw themselves larger than they really a-are, compared to other people,” Nate says softly. “If they feel secure, and s-safe. You saw how big M-Mina drew herself.”

“Right. Bigger than you,” Danny says, blinking, looking back down at the paper. “And I was the biggest person.”

“I h-hate admitting this, but you’re the one she g-g-goes to first when she’s scared, or hurt, or has a n-nightmare or feels sick to her stomach. You’re the one she asks for juice and ah, applesauce. That’s all you, Danny. You’re not part of our family, you are our family. We built every single thing we have because of you. You chose me-”

“-… was made for you…” Danny murmurs, and then stops when Nate shakes his head.

“No, love. You chose me, and didn’t l-let go. You chose to say y-yes when I asked. You chose to agree when Mina’s birthmom liked us in our profiles. You chose Toto at the H-Humane Society, you chose every single thing we are. You built your own f-f-family, love, and she can’t picture us without seeing you as b-b-bigger than everyone else.”

Danny nods slowly, rubbing at his face, at his eyes, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees. “Yeah… yeah, okay.”

“I know this is hard for y-you, love, and always will be, but… this is your family. You, and I, and Mina… and Toto… and, fuck, even your brother.”

Danny’s smile widens. “What do you think he’ll say if I send him a photo of what Mina drew and tell him she called them ‘pretty marks’?”

Nate shakes his head, leaning over to hold Danny’s face in one hand again, kissing his forehead, feeling the worry-wrinkles smooth under his mouth. “He’ll say, ‘it’s ab, about time someone other than Vandrum and I noticed you’re gorgeous’,” He says, softly.

Danny snorted. “He’s never called me gorgeous in my life or his.”

“Not to your face.”

Danny’s smile is infectious, and Nate pulls him in for a kiss knowing the tightrope has been walked, they’ve cleared the worst part of the shadows that threatened to sink their claws in - at least for now. 

They’ll have this conversation again, in a hundred different ways, every time something pushes Danny towards the fears and worries built by a lifetime of having to earn the love that should have been his birthright. They’ll have it every time Danny is reminded or forced to relive years spent desperately trying to earn the mercy of a man hellbent on his slow, inexorable destruction. 

But they have the foundation. They’ve laid the path, together. When one of them falters, the other holds the weight, until they can find their own way out. That is their marriage, and has always been, and will always be.

That is Danny’s family.

“It’s sm-small, and b-b-broken, but we made it ourselves,” Nate murmurs, and Danny lets out a peal of surprised laughter, loud enough that Nate shushes him, worried about waking Mina so soon after she’s fallen asleep. 

“Did you just quote Lilo and Stitch at me?”

“No.” Danny raises an eyebrow, and Nate puts his hands up in surrender. “I quoted it to m-myself!”

“No, it’s fine, I like that movie, you know I do.” Danny slides arms around his waist, holding him tightly. 

After a few beats of silence, Danny says softly, “Ohana means family, Professor Vandrum.”

“Family m-means nobody gets left behind.”

[this-is-a-love-story-fleabag]

The Wedding Planner (4/4)

An AU in which Fleabag is a wedding planner, and Klare and Claire have found the perfect Catholic church to get hitched in… This chapter is 1403 words. Other chapters: 1, 2, 3. Also on ao3.

Their father cleared his throat and stood. Bit by bit, the room fell quiet, and he smiled at the assembled guests, a brief grimace that was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

"It's my, er, pleasure, to, er... sincerely... very much," he began. The wedding planner gave him an encouraging grin. This was actually going better than expected. He turned to the bride. "Claire is my... er... daughter..." He halted, making some kind of filler noise that rose in pitch until it tailed off, audible presumably only to passing dogs. "You know... er..."

"You look flustered, what happened?" hissed Claire from the corner of her mouth as her sister slid into her seat next to her at the head table. "He wasn't violent, was he, because I'm prepared to sue if-"

The wedding planner started. "No!" she whispered, tucking a stray strand of her unruly hair behind her ear. "Why would you even ask that?"

"I just know that Martin's a bit-"

"Oh, yeah, Martin," she said, visibly relaxing and surreptitiously smoothing out the creases in her dress. "No, he was fine. Drunk."

"Then why are you so..." Through the back door of the hotel reception room, the priest came shuffling in, apologising in hushed whispers as he pushed past the other diners on the way to his seat, his collar crooked and his hair tousled. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"You are joking."

"Just... shut up. Did I miss anything good?"

"Well, the CEO is acting like an arse," she said, sipping her glass of champagne and surveying a nearby table with ill-disguised calculation, "but honestly that works out well for my promotion prospects, so I'm all for it."

"I can arrange for an extra bottle of wine or two to be sent to his table if it'd help."

"I'll let you know."

She watched as her sister took three bites of her starter and pushed the rest of it around her plate. "When are the speeches?" asked Claire.

"Three quarters of an hour, which should be just after they serve pudding."

"Excellent," said Claire, standing up and abandoning her meal. "That gives me time to catch the partners from the Belgian wing of the company. I think now would be a good time to grill them on their efficiency savings."

"Sure," said the wedding planner, quirking an eyebrow. "Romantic. Table three."

After her sister had insinuated herself at the appropriate table and was engaged in a serious-looking discussion about some boring business thing, the wedding planner - in what she hoped was a ladylike, subtle way - swapped her plate with her sister's and made short work of the salmon terrine.

Sitting back in her seat and stifling a burp, she scanned the crowd with a secret smile, proud of how the day had come together. Her eyes lingered on the priest, who was listening intently to her Great Aunt Winifred with genuine interest as she embarked on one of her (long, tortuous, probably racist) stories. A little mark was peeking out of his collar where she'd sucked a bruise into his neck after he pinned her against the wall and-

As though he could feel her gaze, he looked up, met her eye, blushed, looked down at the table, and allowed himself to smile.

There was a sea of blonde hair in the room, attached to dozens of smiling Korhonens, all as effusive in their praise and happiness as Klare. The other wing of the family were more of a mixed bag, Scots of varying degrees of dourness making uncomfortable conversation with Mum's weird sisters.

Claire turned up again as the second course was drawing to a close.

"Are you about to eat my steak?"

"No," she said quickly, withdrawing her hand.

"You can have it, I'm just going to eat some ice."

"You're going to eat ice?" said the wedding planner, gobsmacked, as her sister picked up a couple of cubes from her glass of water and began to crunch on them.

"What?" said Claire through a mouthful of ice.

Their father cleared his throat and stood. Bit by bit, the room fell quiet, and he smiled at the assembled guests, a brief grimace that was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

"It's my, er, pleasure, to, er... sincerely... very much," he began. The wedding planner gave him an encouraging grin. This was actually going better than expected. He turned to the bride. "Claire is my... er... daughter..." He halted, making some kind of filler noise that rose in pitch until it tailed off, audible presumably only to passing dogs. "You know... er..."

His stumbling attempt at a toast went on for two more uncomfortable minutes, before eventually he managed to force out "er... upstanding..." and raise his glass of champagne. "The bride and groom!" he announced, finishing strong, and drained his glass, sitting heavily with a relieved sigh.

"Thanks dad," said Claire sincerely, kissing him on the cheek.

"Well... I meant every word," he said, looking shell-shocked.

Klare stood next, taking the microphone and dazzling the audience with both the size of his smile and the whiteness of his teeth.

"It is so wonderful that you can all be here to celebrate with me and my beautiful bride! When I first saw Claire, she walked into my office in Finland and said that she was going to be my business partner, and I thought she was pulling on my nose! I never thought I would be so lucky in my life. Now please, come to join us as we cut the cake."

The photographer was politely but firmly placed in the correct location to capture the moment with the best possible light, and then the wedding planner slid into the DJ booth to give him a pinch at just the right moment to begin the first dance. Klare, very wisely, decided against smushing a slice of cake into Claire's face, and patiently fed a bite of it to her instead, with an expression of intense love in his eyes.

Her job largely finished for the day, barring any major emergencies, the wedding planner breathed a sigh of relief and slipped away for a well-earned cigarette outside. She rested her forehead on the cool brick wall and blew out a steady stream of smoke, the tension of the day slowly easing from her shoulders.

A twig cracked behind her and she straightened.

"Hello," said the priest sheepishly. "I don't suppose I could bum a fag off you?"

Taking the lit cigarette from between her lips, she held it out to him and fished another one out of her handbag. He took it and put it in his mouth, his lips meeting her lipstick stains like a second-hand kiss.

The silence between them was as comfortable as it was electric, the sounds of their inhales and exhales cutting through the stillness. It lasted the length of a cigarette, before he was tugging her by the hand, motioning for her to follow him.

"What?"

"Just come and see."

She followed him, grumbling something about manic pixie dream priests. It turned out to be a vivid patch of forget-me-nots that had wormed their way into a crack in the polished facade of the building, struggling out of the tiny patch of earth to explode in colour.

"So beautiful, isn't it?" he said, giving her a heated look.

"It's probably deeply symbolic. I don't know of what, though," she agreed, brushing a finger against the tiny blossoms. She turned her head to look back at him over her shoulder and gave him a tiny smirk. Some last vestige of self-restraint broke inside his chest and he backed her against the wall, cupping her cheek in his hand and capturing her parted lips in a deep kiss.

The strains of music from the dance floor were just audible in their secluded corner.

"Dance with me," he murmured into her skin. She twined her arms around his neck and they swayed together on the mossy brick of their makeshift dancefloor.

"Do you make a habit of dragging women into alleyways to ravage them on the pretext of showing them flowers?"

"I'll show you my stamen if you show me your pistil," he said, leering unattractively.

"Oh my God, you nerd," she laughed, burying her face in his shoulder.

"So how are you feeling about the institution of marriage now? Has all this changed your mind at all?" he asked, looking into her eyes with a soft smile.

She snorted. "God, no." She pressed her body deliberately against his, a teasing smile on her red lips. "How are you feeling about priestly celibacy?"

He took some time to respond, his thumbs stroking over the curve of her hips.

"I don't know," he said slowly, and leaned in for a kiss.

[newstfionline]

A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

By Rick Rojas, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2018

WEE WAA, Australia--The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought--now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas--seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Mr. Gabbott introduced Ron Pagett, 75, a lifelong farmer with thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

More than $1 billion dollars have been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help--at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children--Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long distance running is his diversion from ministry).

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office--his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes, in his “existential moments” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice. Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life--teachers, police officers, pastors--are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

[thewebofslime]

MORE ON: CHILD VICTIMS ACT Rochester Archdiocese files for bankruptcy amid sex abuse claim obligations Handmaid's Tale comes to life with JCOPE protest in Albany Diocese of Brooklyn hit with 10 new lawsuits under Child Victims Act Child Victims Act lawsuits pile up as Rockefeller U Hospital settles 200-plus When Jim Clemente walked into the Bronx home of his former summer camp director, it wasn’t for old time’s sake. The twenty-something Clemente was wearing a wire. Federal agents and an NYPD detective were listening in. And his old camp boss, Michael J. O’Hara, was showing Clemente pictures of kids he’d molested — just like he’d abused Clemente a decade prior. “I was scared to death while I was there,” Clemente, now 59 and retired from a storied FBI career, recalled of the 1986 meeting. Clemente had convinced the predator he was a kindred spirit and had to keep his cool, or the criminal case being built against O’Hara — a Boy Scout leader, Catholic school teacher and youth-basketball coach believed to have sexually abused hundreds of kids — would fall apart. The meeting was his sixth in three months with the violent, intimidating drunk from Long Island with the perpetual “sh-t eating smirk,” Clemente remembered. O’Hara had plied a teenaged Clemente with beer and violated him while they were alone at the Catholic Youth Organization camp in upstate Godeffroy. Enlarge Image A picture of Clemente around the time he was molested as a child. Clemente at the time of the O’Hara investigation was a fledgling Bronx Family Court prosecutor. He would go on to become a criminal profiler for the feds, to his present career as a TV writer for the show “Criminal Minds.” His quest for justice began in 1985, with a TV movie about incest. “My brother called me. He had seen the movie, ‘Something About Amelia,’ and I think Ted Danson played a sex offender. He said, ‘We should do something about the director at that camp we were at,’ ” Clemente said. His sibling revealed he’d once snuck into O’Hara’s office to find “two paper bags filled with pictures of him molesting boys.” “I said, ‘Oh God, I thought I was the only one.’” ‘I went in the shower, and I turned the light off … and I just cried. That was the day I kind of withdrew from everybody.’ When he asked his brother why he never told him, Clemente’s brother said O’Hara somehow suspected he’d seen his secret stash and pointed a rifle at him, pulling the trigger until the gun clicked. “It would be that easy,” O’Hara sneered. Strangled by shame and fear, Clemente could only confide in his high school guidance counselor, a priest, Father Frank Stinner, about the abuse. Stinner’s reply stunned Clemente. “Say 10 ‘Our Fathers,’ and 10 ‘Hail Marys.’ I absolve you of your sin. Don’t ever speak of this again.” He kept silent for a decade. But after the fateful conversation with his brother, Clemente called the FBI-NYPD Joint Task Force on Sexual Exploitation of Children. “As I was telling the story, I started shaking, shivering,” he said. “I was 15. It was my first time ever being away from home.” O’Hara was a “tough love” authority figure who hit kids and shot his rifle off without warning. He had Clemente stay with him alone in the woods to help close the campground. O’Hara complimented him, took him out, handed him booze. He started talking about sex. Enlarge Image Clemente (center) pictured during an episode of CBS’ The Case of: JonBenét RamseyCBS via Getty “I was really embarrassed. I didn’t know he was manipulating me. Eventually he molested me, and he did it again and again.” When O’Hara returned Clemente to his Goshen home, he forced the teen to shake hands as they parted. “I went in the shower, and I turned the light off … and I just cried. That was the day I kind of withdrew from everybody.” His mom always suspected something. “She’d say, ‘Jimmy, you used to be such a happy kid, what’s wrong?’ … I never told her before she passed away from cancer.” Months after he reported O’Hara, the task force needed Clemente’s help. “I was no like no f—-king way! I can’t sit down and have a cordial conversation with this guy!” But his answer changed the day he visited his alma mater, Fordham University — and saw O’Hara, sitting at a desk in the registrar’s office. “It makes my skin crawl,” Clemente recalled. O’Hara knew Clemente had graduated from Fordham Law School and it appeared he had been keeping tabs on him. But it was the predator’s parting words which sealed his fate. “Oh yeah, I was sorry to hear about your mother’s death,’” Clemente remembered. “It creeped me out and it pissed me off. I called the FBI and I said, ‘I know where he is, wire me up.’” ‘The detective met me and they took off the wire and I immediately ran to the bathroom and puked my guts out.’ On the advice of investigators, Clemente enticed O’Hara to a meeting, saying he needed to talk and O’Hara was the only one he could turn to. They met Halloween night, 1986. “My heart was racing. [The agents] came to my house to wire me up. They were late. They gave me this sort of pep talk and instructions. “I can remember vividly, hearing my own footfalls as I was walking down the street … conscious of every single sound. I can remember people in costumes walking across the street. It was so bizarre. It felt like there was a billion-watt searchlight pointed at me.” They shared a booth. O’Hara quickly ordered a beer, and flung an insult just as fast when Clemente was slow to join in. “You always were a wimp,” O’Hara said. O’Hara got straight to the point: “‘This is about sex, right? It has to do with what happened between us?’” A disgusted Clemente recalled how O’Hara talked about the molestation as if “this was something we decided to do together.” O’Hara, then 43, shared his horrific legacy: he’d been a pedophile since he was 19, working at a Queens orphanage where he sought out the night shift to have access to kids, he told Clemente. “He bragged about it. He bragged about boys I knew at the camp, he literally went through the list — he had dates and times and places, first names. All well beyond the statute of limitations, which was five years at the time.” They spoke for three hours. Clemente had to leave by then because the tape in his recording device was about to run out. “The detective met me and they took off the wire and I immediately ran to the bathroom and puked my guts out.” It was half a dozen meetings before Clemente was able to help steer investigators to victims at a school at Hastings-on-Hudson. The recent cases would be viable in court. As O’Hara gleefully showed off evidence of his crimes in their final face to face, including the photos, Clemente stood in the dumpy brick duplex and palmed two of the pictures and slipped them into his back pocket. O’Hara soon after the meeting disposed of the cache of 500 photos, so the two images Clemente lifted became crucial evidence in the case. O’Hara was arrested 1987 and convicted on a child pornography charge. He was sentenced to a year in jail. Enlarge Image CBS via Getty When the case was finished, one of the FBI agents Clemente worked with took him to lunch and handed him an application to join the bureau. ” ‘They would take me, even though I was a victim?” Clemente asked. “Of course!” the agent replied. “It really was the pivotal turning point in my life,” Clemente recalled. During his FBI career, he worked on child-trafficking cases and white-collar crime. One of the pedophiles he busted was Father Stinner. Clemente plans to sue the Archdiocese of New York, which ran the summer CYO camp, in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday under New York’s new Child Victims Act, which created a one year “look back” window for sexual abuse cases past the statute of limitations. He called the law “amazing.” Investigators believed O’Hara, who died in 2000, had as many as 200 victims. He was first reported in the 1960s in Hewlett, Long Island, when the Boy Scouts created a “perversion file” on O’Hara. Despite knowing about the accusation, the Archdiocese employed O’Hara at various schools for years, Clemente’s lawyer, Jeff Herman, said. “It’s shameful that the Archdiocese of New York Catholic schools did not remove O’Hara in 1966, when he was caught the first time,” Herman said. Clemente urges O’Hara’s other victims to “join us in demanding justice.” “When it was a deep, dark ugly secret that I couldn’t talk about, it was a deep dark ugly part of me.” Talking openly about molestation is the only way to stop it and to move on, said Clemente. “I can tell you from experience, once I went forward and once I confronted him, that’s when I started to turn it around,” he said. FILED UNDER CHILD VICTIMS ACT , FBI , SEX OFFENDERS

[blogwonderwebsites]

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church http://www.nature-business.com/nature-a-pastor-pushes-forward-as-a-drought-threatens-his-town-and-his-church/

Nature

WEE WAA, Australia — The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

Image

The Rev. Bernard Gabbott after a Sunday service. “We would live nowhere else,” he said of his family.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought — now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas — seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Image

A church breakfast. Mr. Gabbott has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

‘Pray for Rain’

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Ron Pagett, 75, farms on thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

“I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” said Philip Firth, who raises cattle and sheep on land where Mr. Gabbott’s young sons have been learning farmwork, referring to God.

Image

Philip Firth shoveled cotton seed to feed cattle on his property. “I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” Mr. Firth said, referring to God.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

More than $1 billion has been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help — at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children: Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

Image

Ron Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts. One from the 1960s was worse. Still, this spell was not over yet. He figured it would take him years to stagger back to profitability.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long-distance running is his diversion from ministry.)

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office — his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach Scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes in his “existential moments,” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance, but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

Image

Mr. Gabbott preparing for Sunday service while his children played.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Farming for God

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice: Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life — teachers, police officers, pastors — are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

But on a long drive back from one of his Scripture classes, he told me there are moments when he feels like he is running out of time.

We were side by side, our gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. The two-lane road was surrounded by sun-baked fields that looked as if they never ended. Everything was brown. Even the clear sky seemed stained with dirt.

Moving his family out of Wee Waa seemed increasingly possible given the church’s finances.

But he was reluctant to go anywhere else. Instead, he was scouting for second jobs. Maybe he could work as a farm hand or in the bakery a few days a week.

Sure, he conceded, he wished he’d had more than the one convert. But he’d come to believe that tending to mortal concerns, however minor, was more than busy work.

“We’re actually getting traction,” he said.

He felt compelled to see Wee Waa through the droughts, on land and in town. His work wasn’t done.

Image

Parched earth at the bottom of the nearby, now-dry Narrabri Lake.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

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Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church, in 2018-10-08 08:40:20

[algarithmblognumber]

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church http://www.nature-business.com/nature-a-pastor-pushes-forward-as-a-drought-threatens-his-town-and-his-church/

Nature

WEE WAA, Australia — The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

Image

The Rev. Bernard Gabbott after a Sunday service. “We would live nowhere else,” he said of his family.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought — now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas — seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Image

A church breakfast. Mr. Gabbott has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

‘Pray for Rain’

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Ron Pagett, 75, farms on thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

“I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” said Philip Firth, who raises cattle and sheep on land where Mr. Gabbott’s young sons have been learning farmwork, referring to God.

Image

Philip Firth shoveled cotton seed to feed cattle on his property. “I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” Mr. Firth said, referring to God.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

More than $1 billion has been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help — at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children: Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

Image

Ron Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts. One from the 1960s was worse. Still, this spell was not over yet. He figured it would take him years to stagger back to profitability.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long-distance running is his diversion from ministry.)

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office — his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach Scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes in his “existential moments,” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance, but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

Image

Mr. Gabbott preparing for Sunday service while his children played.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Farming for God

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice: Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life — teachers, police officers, pastors — are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

But on a long drive back from one of his Scripture classes, he told me there are moments when he feels like he is running out of time.

We were side by side, our gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. The two-lane road was surrounded by sun-baked fields that looked as if they never ended. Everything was brown. Even the clear sky seemed stained with dirt.

Moving his family out of Wee Waa seemed increasingly possible given the church’s finances.

But he was reluctant to go anywhere else. Instead, he was scouting for second jobs. Maybe he could work as a farm hand or in the bakery a few days a week.

Sure, he conceded, he wished he’d had more than the one convert. But he’d come to believe that tending to mortal concerns, however minor, was more than busy work.

“We’re actually getting traction,” he said.

He felt compelled to see Wee Waa through the droughts, on land and in town. His work wasn’t done.

Image

Parched earth at the bottom of the nearby, now-dry Narrabri Lake.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Australia’s Drought Threatens the Flock

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/australia/drought-farmers-nsw.html |

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church, in 2018-10-08 08:40:20

[captainblogger100posts]

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church http://www.nature-business.com/nature-a-pastor-pushes-forward-as-a-drought-threatens-his-town-and-his-church/

Nature

WEE WAA, Australia — The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

Image

The Rev. Bernard Gabbott after a Sunday service. “We would live nowhere else,” he said of his family.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought — now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas — seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Image

A church breakfast. Mr. Gabbott has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

‘Pray for Rain’

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Ron Pagett, 75, farms on thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

“I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” said Philip Firth, who raises cattle and sheep on land where Mr. Gabbott’s young sons have been learning farmwork, referring to God.

Image

Philip Firth shoveled cotton seed to feed cattle on his property. “I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” Mr. Firth said, referring to God.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

More than $1 billion has been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help — at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children: Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

Image

Ron Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts. One from the 1960s was worse. Still, this spell was not over yet. He figured it would take him years to stagger back to profitability.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long-distance running is his diversion from ministry.)

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office — his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach Scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes in his “existential moments,” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance, but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

Image

Mr. Gabbott preparing for Sunday service while his children played.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Farming for God

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice: Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life — teachers, police officers, pastors — are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

But on a long drive back from one of his Scripture classes, he told me there are moments when he feels like he is running out of time.

We were side by side, our gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. The two-lane road was surrounded by sun-baked fields that looked as if they never ended. Everything was brown. Even the clear sky seemed stained with dirt.

Moving his family out of Wee Waa seemed increasingly possible given the church’s finances.

But he was reluctant to go anywhere else. Instead, he was scouting for second jobs. Maybe he could work as a farm hand or in the bakery a few days a week.

Sure, he conceded, he wished he’d had more than the one convert. But he’d come to believe that tending to mortal concerns, however minor, was more than busy work.

“We’re actually getting traction,” he said.

He felt compelled to see Wee Waa through the droughts, on land and in town. His work wasn’t done.

Image

Parched earth at the bottom of the nearby, now-dry Narrabri Lake.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Australia’s Drought Threatens the Flock

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/australia/drought-farmers-nsw.html |

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church, in 2018-10-08 08:40:20

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church http://www.nature-business.com/nature-a-pastor-pushes-forward-as-a-drought-threatens-his-town-and-his-church/

Nature

WEE WAA, Australia — The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

Image

The Rev. Bernard Gabbott after a Sunday service. “We would live nowhere else,” he said of his family.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought — now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas — seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Image

A church breakfast. Mr. Gabbott has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

‘Pray for Rain’

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Ron Pagett, 75, farms on thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

“I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” said Philip Firth, who raises cattle and sheep on land where Mr. Gabbott’s young sons have been learning farmwork, referring to God.

Image

Philip Firth shoveled cotton seed to feed cattle on his property. “I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” Mr. Firth said, referring to God.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

More than $1 billion has been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help — at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children: Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

Image

Ron Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts. One from the 1960s was worse. Still, this spell was not over yet. He figured it would take him years to stagger back to profitability.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long-distance running is his diversion from ministry.)

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office — his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach Scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes in his “existential moments,” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance, but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

Image

Mr. Gabbott preparing for Sunday service while his children played.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Farming for God

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice: Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life — teachers, police officers, pastors — are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

But on a long drive back from one of his Scripture classes, he told me there are moments when he feels like he is running out of time.

We were side by side, our gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. The two-lane road was surrounded by sun-baked fields that looked as if they never ended. Everything was brown. Even the clear sky seemed stained with dirt.

Moving his family out of Wee Waa seemed increasingly possible given the church’s finances.

But he was reluctant to go anywhere else. Instead, he was scouting for second jobs. Maybe he could work as a farm hand or in the bakery a few days a week.

Sure, he conceded, he wished he’d had more than the one convert. But he’d come to believe that tending to mortal concerns, however minor, was more than busy work.

“We’re actually getting traction,” he said.

He felt compelled to see Wee Waa through the droughts, on land and in town. His work wasn’t done.

Image

Parched earth at the bottom of the nearby, now-dry Narrabri Lake.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Australia’s Drought Threatens the Flock

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/australia/drought-farmers-nsw.html |

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church, in 2018-10-08 08:40:20

[blogcompetnetall]

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church

Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church http://www.nature-business.com/nature-a-pastor-pushes-forward-as-a-drought-threatens-his-town-and-his-church/

Nature

WEE WAA, Australia — The Rev. Bernard Gabbott bumped along on a road so remote the asphalt had given way to gravel, heading out to see a farmer who had been working seven days a week, straining to keep his cattle and sheep fed.

He pointed to an empty patch of earth. The farmer had plowed it to plant as pasture for his livestock, but instead, the afternoon wind kicked up clouds of dust.

“It’s been like that for months,” Mr. Gabbott said as he pulled up to a small farmhouse.

When he arrived nearly a decade ago in Wee Waa, a small town surrounded by scrubby farmland, Mr. Gabbott’s mission seemed straightforward. He was the vicar of the town’s small Anglican parish. His job was to bring people to Jesus.

But now, he has found himself wrestling with a far more complicated reality. With the worst drought in decades threatening a way of life in Australia’s rural communities, he has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.

Image

The Rev. Bernard Gabbott after a Sunday service. “We would live nowhere else,” he said of his family.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

He is a counselor, a social worker, and a philanthropist drawing from his own modest funds. At times, he provides solace; in other moments, he must convince hard-pressed families to set aside their pride and accept vouchers for the grocery store.

The repercussions from the drought — now affecting a stretch of Australia larger than Texas — seem almost biblical. There was the town swarmed by famished emus searching for food. The crops overrun by feral camels migrating toward water. Around Wee Waa, it has been the kangaroos invading soccer fields and crowding roadsides after dark, their carcasses littering the pavement in the morning.

But the consequences have been especially brutal for livestock farmers, who have been forced to sell off stock and take on mountains of debt. Hanging over everything else is the specter of harder times to come, leading many to reckon with the potential devastation of their livelihoods and their communities.

“I think there are two droughts going on,” Mr. Gabbott said.

The farms are endangered. So is the town.

Image

A church breakfast. Mr. Gabbott has become a one-man support system for earthly concerns.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

‘Pray for Rain’

Wee Waa, a onetime cotton capital a few hundred miles northwest of Sydney, is one of many rural communities in a part of Australia enduring its driest year since 1965. Scientists have shown that climate change makes Australia’s droughts more severe, but many farmers said the cause matters less than their immediate needs.

Ron Pagett, 75, farms on thousands of acres on the edge of the Pilliga Scrub, an expanse of scruffy woodland. Mr. Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts, but he figures it will take years to stagger back to profitability from this one.

A truck pulled up to the house with boxes of canned goods, and Mr. Pagett sighed. “Surely,” he said, “they can find someone poor to give that to.”

Mr. Gabbott said it was a response he heard often: farmers refusing charity, playing down their troubles.

“I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” said Philip Firth, who raises cattle and sheep on land where Mr. Gabbott’s young sons have been learning farmwork, referring to God.

Image

Philip Firth shoveled cotton seed to feed cattle on his property. “I’m convinced he turned the tap off,” Mr. Firth said, referring to God.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

More than $1 billion has been made available by officials to support agriculture. More recently, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, Australia’s first Pentecostal leader, has urged the nation to pray for rain.

[Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week.]

It’s a common refrain. Here in the sweep of Australian farming country, where land is measured by the thousands of acres and the horizon consists almost entirely of different shades of brown, there has been a flood of entreaties for divine help — at dinner tables, in schools, at gatherings of friends.

“We pray for your mercy in sending soaking rain,” Mr. Gabbott said, praying at a regular Bible study at home, “that really replenishes the land and restores the country.”

He is a convert to rural life. Mr. Gabbott, who is gregarious and quick to laugh, grew up in Sydney, the son of missionaries. He had a brief career in politics working with the conservative National Party before entering the ministry.

For nearly a decade, he has lived in a century-old house behind the church, where his wife home-schools their children: Seth, 12; Baxter, 9; Elsa, 6; and Sage, 4.

The shiplap walls are covered with stickers, family portraits and a timeline of Australian history that stretches across the kitchen. There is no television, but overstuffed bookshelves are everywhere.

The parish owns the house, and Mr. Gabbott said he couldn’t afford to buy his own if he wanted to. He and his wife, Anita, could probably earn far more if they moved; they have a half-dozen university degrees between them.

“We would live nowhere else,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing.”

Even before the rain stopped falling, Mr. Gabbott, 43, could see the families moving away and the shops on the main street emptying as farms needed fewer workers and residents were drawn to bigger cities. He could sense the apathy that pervaded Wee Waa, a town of about 2,000 people.

The drought has only accelerated that decline. It’s tugging on the community’s already-fraying fabric, imperiling the entire town.

He has tried to hold together what he can. He assembles a slice of the community on Sundays, when he stands at the front of his brown-brick sanctuary in the center of town, reads from the gospel and delivers sermons that, as some of his congregants joke, he takes his sweet time to unspool.

Image

Ron Pagett, 75, has lived through other droughts. One from the 1960s was worse. Still, this spell was not over yet. He figured it would take him years to stagger back to profitability.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

But these days, most of the work comes during the week. He is a constant presence in Wee Waa, dashing around in a T-shirt and sneakers. (Long-distance running is his diversion from ministry.)

“I’ve got six days off,” Mr. Gabbott said. “I think that’s the common myth in town.”

Most of the people he encounters will never join him at church. Instead they drop by his office — his regular corner booth at the town bakery. Or they listen to him teach Scripture at school or they run after him as he crosses the street, asking to borrow his car, which he lends them, even though last time it was returned badly dinged.

Sometimes in his “existential moments,” as he puts it, he questions if he’s effective. He has noticed a slight uptick in church attendance, but the offering is dwindling. In nine years, he has converted one person, a cotton farmer he reads the Bible with every Monday.

Now, he said, his church might not make it: It’s just months away from not being able to afford his wage.

“I don’t know if we made any change or difference in town,” he said, sitting in his house one afternoon. “Someone shared with me, I think it’s an urban myth, but 80 percent of ministers who quit in America go into construction because you’ve got something to show at the end of the day.”

Image

Mr. Gabbott preparing for Sunday service while his children played.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Farming for God

When Mr. Gabbott was in Bible college training for a rural church, another pastor gave him some advice: Learn how to work on a farm.

A family paid him $1,000 for 10 days of work, and then he kept at it.

Over time, he found that, out on the land, men would open up, their minds distracted, their eyes focused on the job at hand rather than the person they were talking to.

“You have very different conversations with men at the dinner table and in the paddock,” said Kaylene McClenaghan, who became close with Mr. Gabbott’s family while he worked on her family’s farm. “Bernard took that to heart.”

In small towns like Wee Waa, the figures who are pillars in community life — teachers, police officers, pastors — are often just paying their dues and passing through. “It often takes people a long time to trust who’s there,” Ms. McClenaghan said.

Mr. Gabbott’s willingness to hang around has changed him, and Wee Waa. He offered funerals as evidence. He averages one a week, and many of the deceased were never regulars in his pews. Yet they requested him. Even Catholics in town have asked to have their funerals in his church with him presiding.

The strength of that bond has made a decision about his future all the more agonizing. He does not want to leave his parish without a pastor. He does not want to leave Wee Waa.

But on a long drive back from one of his Scripture classes, he told me there are moments when he feels like he is running out of time.

We were side by side, our gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. The two-lane road was surrounded by sun-baked fields that looked as if they never ended. Everything was brown. Even the clear sky seemed stained with dirt.

Moving his family out of Wee Waa seemed increasingly possible given the church’s finances.

But he was reluctant to go anywhere else. Instead, he was scouting for second jobs. Maybe he could work as a farm hand or in the bakery a few days a week.

Sure, he conceded, he wished he’d had more than the one convert. But he’d come to believe that tending to mortal concerns, however minor, was more than busy work.

“We’re actually getting traction,” he said.

He felt compelled to see Wee Waa through the droughts, on land and in town. His work wasn’t done.

Image

Parched earth at the bottom of the nearby, now-dry Narrabri Lake.CreditDavid Maurice Smith for The New York Times

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Australia’s Drought Threatens the Flock

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Nature A Pastor Pushes Forward as a Drought Threatens His Town and His Church, in 2018-10-08 08:40:20

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Meet the Trans Woman Running for Pete Sessions’ Seat in Congress

The election of Donald Trump has brought out a great many people interested in trying to take the country back from the Republicans starting in the 2018 mid-term elections. They’ll need all the help they can get as here in Texas the Democrats have a rather deplorable history of turning up at the polls when there’s no president on the ballot. One of the hopefuls is Danielle J Pellett, who will be challenging Pete Sessions of Texas’ 32nd District. We sat down with her on opposite sides of the Internet to get to know the woman who would unseat Sessions, who is well-known as a tough opponent.

  Free Press Houston: What made you decide to run for Congress?

Danielle J Pellett: For far too long, I have been standing in a voting booth and my options were simply a Republican or Libertarian. I wondered where the Democrats were running for office. I kept thinking “someone should do something about that.” This past year, I finally decided that I needed to be the person who stood up to do something about it.

  FPH: More specifically, are you opposing Pete Sessions because of anything he specifically stands for or just because of the direction the Republican Party has taken?

Pellett: As a former conservative, I disagree with the direction that their party has taken. Most notably, some of Sessions’ votes betray core conservative Republican values: shutting down the government repeatedly, refusing to get clean water to Flint, and opposing a raise to minimum wage to get families off of food stamps. We should be fiscally responsible and stop subsidizing Big Oil and make Wall Street answer to why we had to bail them out in 2008.

  FPH: You’ve talked about growing up with Republican/Libertarian ideals, and rather than throwing those by the wayside you feel that some aspects of that simply feel more at home in the Democratic Party than in the GOP. What of your original stances do you find mesh the best with the DNC?

Pellett: I believe in a small government, which means not getting involved in family matters like they did with Terri Schaivo, or overturning the fracking ban they did in Denton. When I was young, I was on the Federal free lunch system and at one point we were on food stamps in order to make ends meet. My parents were not lazy, and their hard-working ethic put the lie to the welfare queen narrative. Despite what Paul Ryan says, those meals didn’t leave me with an empty soul. It fed a child and made them able to study and succeed in life.

What feels like a lifetime ago, I wound up not going to OCS [Officer Candidate School] and getting a commission with the Air Force due to the Air Force core value of Integrity first because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. As I studied the oath of office and realized that to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, they were some horrific domestic policies that need to change.

We were firing gay military translators as we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, while not putting those wars in the budget and kept asking for “emergency funding” as if it were a surprise that we were still there. We’re supposed to support our troops, but where was the support there?

Finally, I believe in provable facts over political dogma. Pollution is bad, and climate change is real. Drug testing is more expensive to the government than welfare is, and poor people can’t afford drugs. It’s even cheaper to rehabilitate addicts rather than locking them up in jail.

  FPH: You credit Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) with a political awakening in 2001. What about Sen. Sanders’ and your own ideology would be most beneficial to Texans?

Pellett: Bernie Sanders has always been an independent who refuses to be bought out. He likes to tell it as it is, and refuses to let others get away with selling lies such as “Clean Coal” or that massive corporations just like to donate thousands of dollars to candidates and expect nothing in return.

His speech at Liberty University reminds us of our Texas values of working hard and paying our fair share. So when I see the ultra-rich getting away with squirreling away their money in illegal overseas tax shelters, I know that they are not paying their fair share. Instead, they are paying politicians to distract us with these supposed culture wars over abortion, gay marriage, and which bathroom we can pee in.

We used to have our roads and bridges paid for by tax dollars, now you see toll roads being built all over the place. We even have toll roads that are paid off that are still getting government subsidies while the companies that maintain them are collecting toll money.

  FPH: Why do you think so many Representatives end up running unopposed?

Pellett: Just like doing taxes, a lot of things are designed look harder in order to make people feel like they are unable to comprehend or do it. We also have rampant gerrymandering that makes districts nearly impossible to win.

My district right now vaguely looks like a donkey. This was done with regard to the historically low voter turnout in Garland. Due to the tenacity of Victoria Neave and her get-out-the-vote efforts, she won in a district that everyone had assumed was impossible.

  FPH: Texas, particularly Dallas and Houston, is a place where large corporations hold significant sway, and provide a living for many, many people and their families. Is your message in opposition to them, or is there a place where people and corporations come together for the greater good?

Pellett: The economy has been faltering for the past decade. For anyone who has ever played Monopoly, you realize that income inequality will ruin people. Once we have a winner in Monopoly, the game comes to an end. But how does that work in real life?

If a few corporations have all the money and all the resources while the majority of the middle and worker class doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet… then these corporations are now unable to sell their wares to the public. In short, who will be left to buy stuff when everyone is barely scrounging by to have shelter and food?

So what I would say to business interests is this: you have to look at a five-year profit plan rather than just the next quarter. In the short run, shutting down your factories and sending jobs overseas for lower pay seems to do great, but this has happened on a macro scale and has ruined Michigan.

For the greater good, businesses must want to increase their pay to match inflation. Businesses must realize that government should work as a check and balance in order to protect the people. We must remember the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon, West Texas, and the Magnablend plant in Waxahachie that prove we must have and enforce regulations for the safety of the people.

There has to be a balance between helping businesses thrive and making certain that we don’t have poisonous chemicals in our water like they had in Corpus Christi.

  FPH: If you had to pick one issue that was most dire in need of addressing in Texas, what would it be and how would you address it?

Pellett: Education is the linchpin for all of this. We need to teach science without religious bias, we need to teach history without politically-motivated revisionism, and we need to fully explain where babies come from and how to avoid that in order to reduce our teen pregnancy rate.

  FPH: Do you anticipate support from the DNC in your candidacy?

Pellett: I expect that the DNC will support me once I win the primary. I have already reached out to multiple candidate sponsorship programs and political action committees that are dedicated to promoting science and Progressive values that will not cost me my morals and ethics.

There is a way to work from within the system where you can get $27 donations from regular people and you do not have to rely on the backing of the fracking industry in order to compete in a political race.

  FPH: What do you think will be the biggest challenge in your race?

Pellett: I’m up against one of the most powerful people in the Texas Republican Party, who is well known and is instrumental in getting lots of money from wealthy out-of-state donors and from political action committees. In the past two years, Pete Sessions has raised over $2 million. Only 1 percent of that came from small dollar donations, so we know exactly who he answers to.

All I can hope to do is call him out on this while proving that I am the better candidate that understands the values of Texans today and for our next generation.

  FPH: You’re one of a number of trans women nationwide I know are running for office in 2018, including some prominent ones like Brianna Wu. What empowers you the most against the almost-inevitable transphobic backlash?

Pellett: I’m not running because I’m transgender, I’m running because I believe in helping middle and working-class Texans. I just happened to be transgender, and I honestly expect more push back from the fact that I’m an ex-conservative and I know how they think, how they speak, and I know how to destroy their talking points.

  FPH: Being the biased, lamestream media, I probably fucked some of this up, so here’s a small bit where you can say anything you want.

Pellett: My mother, Maria del Rosario, was born with cerebral palsy. It was misdiagnosed as polio when she grew up, and she had the Forrest Gump leg braces and walked with a noticeable limp. She was told all her life that she was an invalid and a cripple, and she couldn’t do the same things that her sisters could.

Naturally, she went ahead and did the thing anyways. She defied my grandfather by walking to Mass every morning before going to Catholic School. She defied my grandfather by going to college and getting a degree in teaching English as a second language to special-needs students.

She defied her family by falling in love with and marrying a gringo, my father David Ellsworth. Her doctor said it would be impossible for her to have a child. I am the product of one stubborn Latina and the man who supported her.

When I started supporting Bernie Sanders at the Texas Democratic Party and wanted to engage in direct democracy through a petition process at the State Convention, everyone told me it was impossible. I defied the naysayers and did three of them.

Meet the Trans Woman Running for Pete Sessions’ Seat in Congress this is a repost