#I was not one of those kids that got an iphone young

[rimouskis]

I would give anything to have my crappy busted iPod Touch from high school back. like man I want to DIG IN to the music I had on there

[darnell-la]

𝗦𝗛𝗘 𝗪𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗦 𝗔 𝗕𝗜𝗚 𝗗𝗢𝗚

pairing: the worst!logan howlett x younger generation!reader

warnings: Logan easing into the new world and generation, mention of Wade trying to get roommate!reader and Logan together, making a TikTok, sniffing, smut, etc.

note: “she don’t want no puppy! She wanna BIG dawg!”

———

Logan had thought living with Wade would be a bad idea. He belonged in his last universe with what he’s done. He brought himself down for years, mentally and physically, hoping the pain would stop. Thankfully, it finally had.

It’s been almost a year since Logan has lived with Wade and his younger roommate. The match seemed off when he first met her, but after the first hour, she knew why she and Wade were close friends.

The girl was in college, young, pretty, had a small job at the campus, and loved parties, and things that Wade did daily.

Logan had a small argument with y/n a couple of weeks ago after she gifted him an iPhone. She said he needed it to keep in touch with her and Wade. She also said he needed a bit of humor.

He had no idea what that meant until she made a TikTok for the man. The videos that came up on his page didn’t make sense to him, he he still laughed at them.

He had no idea what happened to himself, but sending memes to y/n every hour was a habit.

After sending y/n a TikTok video, he swiped and came across a sound that confused him.

The man in the video was lip-syncing a song as she showed his muscles. Logan gave a disgusting look at his phone, thinking the man looked ridiculous until he read the title.

“When she chose you because you’re height starts with a six and your weight starts with a two”

Logan sent the video to y/n, asking her what he meant by that. He didn’t know being a muscle-tall man was a trend.

“Logan, I’m in the room next to you, just come here!” Y/n shouted in her room, making him sigh loudly as he got off of the couch for the first time in what felt like days.

“I just wanted to know what he meant? Like is being big and tall a trend? Like, if that’s the case, then I’d be viral,” Logan used words that y/n and Wade ran him by.

“God, Logan — Do people your age question everything?” Y/n checked her phone and noticed what trend he sent her. She’s thought about this trend but with Logan in it. He fits it perfectly, but Wade would tease her if she’d ever brought it up.

“I’m just askin', Bub. Seemed stupid to me,” Logan shrugged his shoulders. “Because you haven’t tried it,” y/n defended her generation. “So, you’re into that stuff? God, y/n — Never knew you’d be one of those kids,”

“I do like it, and since you’re so boring, we’re gonna have you do it, so c’mere,” y/n stood up from her bed and placed her phone down on her desk after clicking the sound.

“Gotta take your shirt off for it,” y/n lied, but she knew he’d do it, even if he complained. “No fuckin’ way, bub,” Logan laughed as he turned around to go back to his sofa until she grabbed his arm softly.

“Please! You never do TikTok’s with me,” y/n fake cried, annoying him in an instant. “Ain’t takin’ my shirt off for no little girls online. I’d get, what’s it called? Canceled?” Logan said, making her laugh.

“Logan, you sound stupid as fuck. Take off the shirt — Unless you’re jealous they look better than you,” y/n shrugged her shoulders as she went back to her bed to sit down, acting like she didn’t care to get a reaction out of him.

“Bub, you know I look better than them, so stop the lyin,” Logan felt a bit upset at her words. Y/n ignored him for what felt like hours, so he sighed and gave up. “Swear to god, I’d Wade say some shit about this, I’ll kill him,”

Logan and y/n worked on the TikTok for an half hour, trying to get the right angle since he kept saying he didn’t look good enough.

Y/n never complained. Watching him walk through her door repeatedly, then editing the video in slow motion, made her stomach tingle.

At first, Logan felt uncomfortable. She could smell the young lady, but he didn’t want to say anything. He’d be a pervert if he did, so he kept quiet, thinking it would go away, but he knew her spot grew bigger.

“So, you think I’m a big dog?” Logan genuinely asked as y/n began to edit the TikTok video. “What makes you think that?” She asked; thinking she nailed her scared response, but Logan saw the quick stutter in her fingers as she typed on her phone.

“Just askin, bub,” Logan said before taking a small sniff. He was leaning on her doorway as she sat on her bed. He was so far., yet she smelt so close.

He cussed himself out in his head, upset that Wade had won this “you’ll like her eventually” argument. Logan swore she was too young, and even made her feel a bit bad.

He had thought y/n had moved on, maybe got over the thought of her having a chance with Wade’s new friend, but the smell she had, is making him go insane.

All she’s doing is making a TikTok. That’s it, but he can’t stop thinking about the spot she’s soaking in her panties. He felt nasty, but in a good way after a while. The lust was taking him over.

“You happy you’ve got your little video?” Logan asked as he kicked off of her dorm frame and walked towards her bed to sit next to her.

“Yes, finally,” she smiled at him before continuing her edit. Logan scanned the girl's body slowly, watching how spotty her breathing was, seeing goosebumps form on her arms, and watching her leg shake a bit.

“Is that so?” He asked as he placed his hand on her thigh. She’s always been a sweet bean to him, but he ignored it. He tried his best to prove Wade wrong, but she was hard to ignore, and Wade knew that. Wade knew y/n would bring something out in the grumpy old man.

“Mhm hm,” Y/n mumbled as she pushed the post on her phone. “Think it’ll get a lot of likes,” she looked to the side at Logan who was now closer than she thought.

“And why is that? I look good?” He asked her, eyes on her soft and pretty lips. “Uh, yeah — Think the viewers will like it,” she awkwardly smiled, feeling her heart raise.

“Think you liked it more than the viewers will,” Logan almost whispered. Y/n just noticed how his shirt was still off. Why was his shirt still off?

“Seen you repost that video, y/n. You’re not slick,” Logan spoke about the video he had sent her. “Think you were thinkin’ about me when you did it,” the man smirked.

“I- I was just reposting,” Y/n stuttered as his hand slowly cupped her chin. “Guess I’m not the big dog you’re lookin’ for them,” Logan faked sighing as he pulled his hand back.

Before he could turn around to get up, y/n grabbed his face and pulled him into a short but long kiss, hoping to get the best out of this one-time thing.

“Told you last you, you ain’t for me, baby,” Logan said, making y/n look down in embarrassment. “I know,” she said. “I lied — Was just goin’ through a little somethin,” Logan admitted before pulling her back into a kiss, this time rough.

Y/n gasped as he breathed into her mouth, sucking on her lips like he’d starved for days. “Lo,” y/n moaned low at the feeling of his pulling her into his rough kisses.

Logan decided to push Y/n down on her bed and lean over her, keeping their lips together. Y/n instantly wrapped her legs around the man, pulling him closer as he moved his hips, grinding on her to feel the pressure.

“Oh, fuck,” Logan groaned in between their kiss, feeling his cock leak already. “If I fuck you, Wade wins,” Logan pulled back from the girl, taking a look into her eyes. She thought the man would leave, get off of her and never speak to her again, until he assured her, he was staying.

“Fuck it — Can’t resist you anymore, baby,” Logan smashed his lips back onto the young lady's lips, kissing her roughly as he tugged on his jeans. All y/n had to do was pull up the gown she wore almost every day she was off of work when she was too lazy to dress up.

“Wait- We need a condom,” y/n leaned up, but Logan pushed her back down. “Oh, no we don’t. Your cunts leaking too much for me to not feel her,” Logan said. She was confused, not knowing how he knew she was wet until she thought to herself.

He’s a mutant. His only powers can’t be regeneration and speed.

“Fuck, I-“ y/n cut herself off, embarrassed at her pervy actions. He probably smells her all the time. “Caught red-handed,” Logan chuckled as he put his cock in hand.

“Always wet around the house. Teasin’ me and basically beggin’ for me every day. Wished I took you to my room when I first met you. Maybe by now, we’d have our little family,”

Logan pushed into the girl, giving her no time to think about what he had just said about a family.

She’s never thought of a family with Logan. It’s not he wasn’t father material, it’s the fact she’s only been thinking about him pleasing her, and pleasing her only.

“Fuck, that’s it,”

[medusapelagia]

07 - The family ranch

written for @steddieangstyaugust (prompt: Moonlight ), @augustwritingchallenge (Prompt: fam/ranch), and @aug-kissed (prompt: Indirect kiss) Rating: Mature Relationship: Steve/Eddie TW: sad ending Words: 1704

When Steve failed his senior year and his father told him he'd have to work all summer he thought he meant working at his father's law firm in Chicago, not at the ranch in the middle of nowhere, where even the latest iPhone couldn't reach any signal unless he stand really still at the very end of the stalls, and work as a wrangler.

Sweeping away beads of sweat with the back of his hand, Steve wonders once more why his grandfather bought a huge ranch in Wyoming when he never stepped out of his huge manor on the east coast and he definitely had no love for horses whatsoever.

But in the end, he must admit that he’s happy his father sent him there to punish him because he discovered more about himself than he thought.

Even if working under the supervision of a young man just a couple of years older than him was annoying, Steve quickly found out that he loves spending time out in nature and that the horses are lovely and intelligent creatures.

Not that Edward ‘Eddie’ Munson, the Ranch Manager's nephew, ever made him feel welcomed.

He spent weeks making fun of Steve’s “town boy” attitude and his hairspray, but now that they have worked together every single day for almost two months, Steve must admit that he really didn’t know anything about the job and that Eddie thought him to love the stupid ranch and all his animals. 

When Steve got off the plane and found a rattling van waiting form him, he wasn’t expecting to learn so much and to have fun taking care of the horses, exactly as he wasn't expecting to find the Eddie Munson fun, interesting, and hot.

Saddling the horse, Steve chuckles at the idea of his Dad being the major cause of his bisexual awakening. He can’t deny that he’s attracted by the dark-haired boy whose eyes have never seen the ocean or never played golf but that have delivered more calves than Steve can even imagine.

For weeks they have danced one around the other, brushing their fingers while brushing the horses or exchanging stares that meant more than they dare to say, but none has had the courage to do something, and before they know it, their time together is almost finished.

Steve sighs, remembering to himself that those are his last couple of days at the ranch and that he will be back in Hawkins soon, attempting senior year for the second time.

The idea of getting back makes him sad, but he always knew the time to go back home would have come, so he tightens the saddle and guides the horse out of the stable. Eddie is waiting for him, already riding his huge black mare.

These are Steve's last couple of days on the ranch, and Mr. Munson, Eddie's uncle, has given them permission to camp outside for the night.

Eddie hasn't stopped talking since the moment they got on their horses and left the ranch, cantering slowly toward a nice clearing near a lake where Eddie and Wayne usually take the cow to water and refresh. But tonight there aren't cows to take care of and the lake it's just for them.

"Wayne used to bring customers here, but the lake is deep and there was an accident, a kid escaped from his parents' supervision and almost drowned, so he refuses to take anyone else." Eddie explains to Steve when he asks why such a beautiful place isn’t on the list of their natural attractions, "But you can swim, right?"

"I was the swim team co-captain," Steve replies proudly.

"Does this mean you can swim? Or it's just a title, my king?"

"Fuck you, Eddie!" Steve complains, rolling his eyes. 

Since Eddie caught a glimpse of Steve's Twitter account and noticed that his nickname was KingSteve he hasn't stopped teasing him for it.

"At least buy me dinner before, Harrington," Eddie replies, sticking out his tongue while they keep riding. 

The ranch is enormous, and Steve's grandfather owns acres and acres of land that now is used to attract rich tourists who want to live an experience in contact with nature. Steve would have never imagined how many people are willing to pay to take care of the horses, maintain the stables, cut firewood, and fix fences, the very same thing Eddie is paid for and Steve is not.

But tonight is their night, they have packed all the supplies they'll need to camp, and as soon as Eddie finds a place he deemable for them they'll set up camp for the night.

When the air starts to get fresher, Steve understands that they are getting close to the lake, and he's proven right when he finally sees a shiny blue surface waiting for them. Both horses instinctively move toward the lake, but Eddie is quick to grab their bristle and stop them.

"No, girls," Eddie says in a stern tone, "not going into the water until we get off, ok?"

The horses seem to understand and they wait quietly for their riders to get off and guide them toward the fresh water.

"Don't let Daisy get in too deep, she might slip on the rocks." Eddie reminds Steve while patting the neck of his horse.

Once the horses are refreshed, they tie them to a big tree, making sure they have enough rope to walk around and graze, then they start setting camp. Under Eddie's supervision, it doesn't take long. Steve chuckles, thinking how much he hated Eddie when he first met him and how much he has grown on him in the last couple of months.

"So you told me you can swim, right?" Eddie asks with a mischievous smile, and in a moment Steve finds himself soaked with his clothes still on.

"You're lucky I didn't have my phone on me, Munson!" Steve yells when he reemerges.

Eddie quickly strips off his clothes and joins him in the water, "Need help stripping?"

"Fuck you!"

"Maybe later." Eddie winks while Steve gets back on shore to take off his soaked clothes and gets back into the lake in his blue boxers.

They play in the water like kids, pushing each other underwater or challenging each other to swim faster and farther. 

There, in the middle of nowhere, Steve feels happier than he ever felt before.

"Can't believe I'm leaving in a couple of days."

"You could always come back to visit. You're fucking rich, aren't you? I’m sure you have a private jet somewhere."

Steve sighs, resting on the shore, enjoying the sun's warmth, "It was supposed to be a punishment. Don't think Dad will be eager to send me back here and work on the ranch. He wants a son who'll follow his steps."

"And what do you want, Steve?" Eddie asks, and the question has too many hidden meanings that Steve isn't sure he's ready to answer to, so he slowly gets up, wears his damp jeans, and tells Eddie that he is going to fetch some wood for the fire.

When he comes Steve helps Eddie with the fire and looks at his long slim fingers stirring some beans in a little pan. The bread is warm and soft when they eat, staring at the moonlight whose reflection gently lightens the lake's waters.

"Have you ever smoked, King Steve?" 

"Did you forget I attended one of the most prestigious private high schools in the Country? Of course, I did." Steve chuckles.

"I’m sure those rich boys you hang out with have no idea how to have fun. Such a pity… thank god I'm here to help you with your education."

"Are you a teacher now?"

"Didn't I teach you how to take care of the horses and clean their stables? Didn't I teach you how to make a fire? Didn't I-"

"Ok, ok. Got it. So, Professor Munson, what are you going to teach me today?"

"How to shotgun."

Steve shivers in fear and pleasure. On one side he's more than eager to kiss Eddie but on the other side, he doesn't want to kiss a boy for the first time ever and leave the next day.

"So, what do you say?"

Steve bites his lips while Eddie grabs a joint from his bag and quickly lightens it, the red cherry shines bright red when Eddie breathes in some smoke and exhales it slowly.

"Just one time…"

"If that's what you want. Open your mouth, sweetheart." Eddie smirks, breathing in some smoke and getting closer, just a few inches from Steve's pulp lips.

Eddie opens his mouth and lets the smoke escape in white swirls.

"Take it in... good boy. More?"

Steve nods, already feeling the effect of the smoke.

Eddie's lips drag in the smoke and release it so close to Steve's lips that's almost like kissing.

But they are not.

Because tomorrow Steve will leave and he won't see him again.

“I’m leaving soon,” Steve whispers, his eyes red and his pupils huge.

“I know.”

“I won’t come back.”

“I know that too.” Eddie nods, finishing the joint while Steve stares at the moonlight, high as a kite.

Steve would like to push Eddie on the old blanket and kiss him stupid. Taste him and explore his body like he did so many times with the girls of the school. But Eddie is something different, something important. He deserves more.

“I wish things were different.” Steve mutters, drawing mindless patterns on Eddie’s naked arm, “I wish I could stay.”

“You could. If you would.” Eddie replies without looking at him, “The place is practically yours. None will kick you out.”

But Steve has a girlfriend waiting for him at home. He has a future already decided and it doesn’t include hot cowboys or a ranch.

Eddie doesn’t insist. They sit in front of the fire until the fire dies and they find refuge in their sleeping bags.

If during the night their bodies find each other it’s only to warm themselves.

The next day, when Steve leaves for the airport, it isn’t Eddie who drives him to the airport, but Wayne and neither of them says a single word during the journey.

[jacquesthepigeon]

Yeah I know nothing about the crew either, and I don’t want to speak on them as people because clearly I don’t know them. But I think whether they’re drawing from irl experience or not, the message they’re sending with Chloe vs Andre & the other bad parents is very harmful. “Parents aren’t to blame for their children’s actions” only counts if those people are fully adults. Because society influences you and you cannot control your son’s life once he’s twenty or even thirty. he still might end up a bad person even if you raised him well. Chloe? She’s 14. Take away her iphone and she’s literally harmless. Can’t do shit without money and daddy backing you up. “Daddy, I want—” / “No.” The end. Sending your kid to your neglectful and abusive ex wife (no it doesn’t justify Chloe’s billing, yes Audrey is still abusive) makes you a piece of shit. The show tells you “no but you don’t get it he only got into politics to impress Audrey uwu” lol?? he still abused his power. It’s literally a crime. The show addressed the issue with the same logic they did the senti thing, which is to say: none. They established Andre as X and not only contradicted that, but his “redemption” is basically him ignoring the consequence of his own actions and starting from scratch as if nothing ever happened. Which is the same thing they did with Gabriel and Jagged. The show sells the willingness to change as the key to one’s redemption but that’s BS to me. Sure, it’s the first step, but the consequences of your bad actions don’t go away and you have to actually face them. In ML they’re just swept under the rug and expected to be forgotten.

This show loves bad dads so much it’s ridiculous I swear it’s like it became their priority to defend them over empathizing with any of the kids in S4-S5

I can’t help but compare it to SU where one of the characters thought he was bonding with his deadbeat dad but found out he was simply being taken advantage of and finally cuts the deadbeat out of his life (an option not many have, but cutting someone off emotionally is still doable I suppose). That is what caring about your young audience looks like.

[papirouge]

I gave up on being pro life publicly and online. The genocide in the Congo and in Gaza have proved it to me that many western women who run those pro life accounts don’t care for children. Many babies have been lost due to hospital bombings. More children are displaced with no families.

I’ve tried reaching out when they talk about saving children in generic posts because very real babies are losing their lives by IDF terrorism. And I get blocked or I get told “that’s different/ they’re Muslim/they should have left already/I don’t care” over and over and over again. The countless videos are already out that have children begging and crying for their families they lost or the homes that can’t be saved. Some of the worst messages I read criticized and blame the Palestinian men too that they should be protecting the kids, so when they die, it’s actually Palestinians fault. Not the IDF. Meanwhile those “young men” are just teenagers because their parents are dead. The Congolese topic is worst. Many are begging people to stop buying the iPhone 15 to raise awareness over the issues there but I got told by one girl who likes to call herself an anti woke submissive wife that she couldn’t care less about the Congo, she’s going to do whatever her husband wants, if that means ignoring genocide then that’s what she will do too. It’s her god given to have freedom over dead bodies l…

I’m fed up. I’m sick of the hypocrisy. I’m sick of seeing stupid homestead content of how they’re at peace taking care of a home as they purposefully condone genocide. If some hacker group exposed all these “submissive Godly trad wife” accounts as being agents for Israel to distract the west from IDF war crimes, I wouldn’t be surprised the least. Their apathy is demonic

@not-your-average-prolifer is the only pro life blog who passed the vibe check as far as I know. She reblogged posts about the emergency of pregnant women in Palestine and also post about mental health of middle east women. I think she is left leaning (correct me if I'm wrong!) so I'm not surprised to see her with more empathy about whatever's happening to women abroad, unlike Conservatives who are extremely stupid & uneducated when it comes to foreign affairs, if not straight up xenophobic.

I hope for every single Christian I know to never open their mouth about uwu Christianism is from Middle east uwu ever again the next time someone calls Christianism white man's religion or I'll go berserk on them. They better shut up forever. They had no problem to keep their mouth shut witnessing the martyrdom of our brothers - they better keep it that way permanently and stop summoning their struggle once it's convenient to them. YES, they proved they definitely consider Christianism a white man thing, considering our little care they have for our (non white) Christian brothers overseas. They better keep them out of their mouth permanently.

"They're Muslim" it's been well documented that there are Christians in Palestine. But even if they weren't, Christ wants everyone to be saved and accept him as their lord and savior - refusing to extend some basic empathy to people being bombed and killed in their sin is not the way to go. Never forget that Jesus didn't heal or saved only Jews, but also pagans, prostitutes, etc. It's insane how so unemphatic "Christians" have become.

Christian Palestinians are actually some of the oldest Christians - like, where do they those idiots think Jerusalem was?? where did the Pentecost happen? IN MIAMI?? KANSAS?? "They should have left" WHERE?? aren't the ppl pulling out this argument the same crybabies whining about woke culture destroying western civilization? Why didn't they leave the western zone already??? Also aren't they the same against immigration and how men fleeing their country are lazy cowards? so why are they mad at Palestinians sticking to their land?? Damn, Western politicians/diplomacy have the opportunity to do the funniest thing possible and mass import Palestinians in western countries to abide Zionists requirements in Israel 💀

And LOL oh so now Palestinian men are supposed to protect children? what are they supposed to do when the IDF is bombing their house? Take weapons to defend/get back their land and shit? Oh my bad, that makes them terrorists (and let's be clear : what happened on October 7th is unjustifiable but let's not act like the Hamas wasn't called terrorist much earlier than that). It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they do nothing, they're cowards, and if they do, they are terrorists - because in this case, resistance is defiance. Ultimately they just want to deflect from their own lack on empathy and find a rational explanation to that.

Conservative scrotes are the LAST people who should lecture anyone about defending the children when there are acting bullying kids young enough to be their grandchildren calling them wokes, leftists, or whatever. I won't even start about gun violence and how deflective they are about protecting the children only to protect their precious right to carry. Ghouls. They only care abt unborn babies because they are unable to call them out on their bs yet. Once they do, they'll cuss them, call them woke, and all sort of -ists.

On TikTok there was a Christian girl saying how Christians are "too emotional" and how we should keep supporting "God chosen people" (Israel). I already made a post calling out how this "god chosen people " narrative didn't stand now that we were in the NEW COVENANT. But let's follow her train of thought: isn't humankind made from God image? Where do emotions come from? Didn't God himself have emotion? Why? What's the right or wrong place to have emotion? She and all the clown who agreed with her would never be able to reply those questions. We've all seen the videos. I did what I could to avoid them but they're quite unavoidable at this point. What's the correct emotion after seeing 2 kids younger than 10 carrying a third one crying while one of his foot was hanging with only one tendon?? This girl, along with every single Christian unmoved by this disaster has to shut up. Their heart is a stone and they should stop trying to lecture people who still have a heart made of flesh. We're not the same. Christ is PEACE. Not war or violence.

And girl, you really shouldn't even engage with women labelling themselves "anti woke submissive wife" 💀 why would you expect them to care about anything but their idol (husband)? Stay focus on what really matters. Peace and God. We're in the end times and God is slowly but surely unfolding the truth. The masks are slipping. Take note of all the so called who remained silent witnessing satan action, take proper action, and go on.

[studies-in-the-art-of-deduction]

Stop practicing with pictures!

Alright this is gonna be one of the posts that people seem to like, probably because of the dramatic title and the "hot take" as the kids are calling it these days. This time we're talking about practice, specifically about one of the biggest mistakes i've seen people make with their practice habits

Now from the title you can already tell what i'm talking about, you have got to stop practicing with pictures, at least as much as you probably do compared to practice with irl subjects, this is for one simple reason: pictures are not real life!

Now, the argument of "anyone who posts a picture being very aware of at least vaguely what they're posting and hence your deductions are already being at least partially conditioned" is a very old one, and while actually a good one and one to keep in mind, that's not where i'm going with this

When i say pictures aren't real life i'm talking about the fact that pictures dictate the information we can get, not because of the people posting these pictures, but rather because of the nature of the pictures themselves. Any photos we find have the disadvantage of not allowing for deductions that would be useful or relevant at all in real life

Think about the following situation: you find a picture of someone's hand posted in r/deduction or somewhere similar, and you think "awesome! a fun, challenging picture that doesn't seem too stressful to deduce!" and you start going at it:

You see hairbands on the wrist, so they have long hair

You see nail polish and signs of manicure, so statistically they're probably female presenting

You see the hand is actually quite small, so they're short

You see the skin suggests they're young, maybe late teens/early 20s

You see they're wearing expensive jewlery, so well off economically

You see they're wearing an apple watch, so they have an iphone and potentially other apple devices

These are all good deductions, actually some of them could lead you to some deeper, more interesting conclussions, so all good right? Well let's now say you see this same person (with the same hand, hopefully) walking down the street, how many of those deductions are now just observations at most? The hair being long you can just see, same thing with the height and probably gender they present as, the age isn't much of a deduction either anymore, at most you could maybe narrow it down as a deduction but you can just see the range they probably fall in. You're left with maybe 2 deductions that are actually worth anything

Now yes, this is just an example, and yes i made it up, of course not all practice with pictures is useless, and not all ways of practicing with pictures are unproductive. But my point is this: a lot of people, most people i've met in this community actually, realize that it's a lot easier to just pull up your computer, find some pictures to deduce, and boom practice, not realising that most of their time an effort is probably going down the drain. And then those same people go out into the world, ready to deduce, ready to sit in a public setting and put all their practice to good use, and find that they can't actually deduce anything, or worse, they don't realise (and have no one to tell them) that hey, that deduction about that girl that just walked by having long hair because of the hairband on her wrist, yeah that's not really much of a deduction, everyone can see she has long hair.

So my advice is this: for the love of god, no matter how much you practice online, with pictures of people, keys, phones, daily carry, and rooms (jesus please don't practice only with rooms, when's the last time you actually saw someone's bedroom irl?). Do not make that your primary form of practice, go out, practice in real life scenarios, in coffee shops, and classrooms, and restaurants, watch real people exist in their natural habitat, and try to maximize your deduction abilities there, this is where most of your life is gonna be spent, and where most of your deductive abilities will matter

And apart from all of this, i'll throw in some extra advice: Practice mindfully, know why you're doing the exercises you're doing, know why and how certain types of practice work and if they're actually helping you. If you're gonna practice with pictures be aware that your goal is not to be able to use all of the types of deductions you manage to pull off with a picture in real life, but rather to strengthen your reasoning capabilities to then use those in real life, and reach different, more complex conclusions with them. Pictures are not a supplement for real life, they're a training range to make you sharper, but if you only ever go to a shooting range that doesn't mean you can suddenly join the army with no other training

That's all for this post, see you next weekend... or maybe sooner? ;)

Happy Observing!

-DV

[secretgamergirl]

"They Don't Teach Kids About Computers These Days!"

I see variations on this a LOT these days. Sometimes it's people in their teens/early 20s being frustrated at how they're expected to know everything about computers, sometimes it's college professors straight up HORRIFIED when they realize they have students who don't have any understanding that their hard drive, a school's internal network, and on a public website are completely distinct places for a file to be located, and I kinda figure the weird stress a lot of people seem to have about the concept of getting a game and not having it just go into their Steam library specifically is a related issue.

Now on the one hand, obviously, I sympathize with this. I have a series of posts on this blog called How A Computer Works, because... I want to teach people about this stuff. (That's still ongoing by the way, I've just got a lot else going on and need to settle on the scope of the next lesson.) On the other hand, uh... I'm from the generation before the one that apparently has all the computer literacy problems, and nobody taught us this stuff in school... and the next generation up wouldn't possibly have had access. So was anyone taught how to use them?

Now I say "they didn't teach my generation how to use computers in school" but that isn't technically true. I see a lot of people call people my age "the Oregon Trail generation" when this topic comes up. Sort of on the edge of Gen X and Millennials, going through school in that window where Apple had really really pushed the Apple ][ on schools with big discounts. And they did have "computer classes" to learn how to do some things on those, but... that isn't really a transferable or relevant skill set.

Like, yeah, if you're below the age of let's say 30 or so as of when I'm writing this, the idea of what "a computer" is has been pretty stable for your whole life. You've got some sort of tower case, a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and in that tower there's a bunch of RAM, a processor, video and sound cards of some sort, and a big ol' hard drive, and it's running Windows, MacOS, or some flavor of Unix going for the same basic look and functionality of those. It's generally assumed (more than it should be, some of us our poor) that a given person is going to have one in their home, any school is going to have a whole room full of them, libraries will have some too, and they are generally a part of your life. We can probably make the same sort of general assumption about IPhone/Android cellphones for the past what, 15 years or so too, while we're at it. They're ubiquitous enough that, especially in academic circles where they're kind of required professionally, people are going to assume you know them inside and out.

Prior to the mid-90s though? It was kind of a lawless frontier. Let's say you have a real young cool teacher who got way into computers at like 5 years old, and now they're 25 and they're your computer class teacher in the mid-90s. The computer they got way into as a kid? It would have been this.

That's not a component of it, that's the whole thing. A bank of switches for directly inputting binary values into memory addresses and some more switches for opcodes basically, and then some LEDs as your only output. Nothing about this is other than the benefits of fundamentally understanding some low level stuff is going to be useful at all in any sort of practical sense if you sit down a decade later with one of these.

This at least looks a bit more like a computer you'd see today, but to be clear, this has no mouse, no way to connect to the internet, which wasn't really a thing yet to begin with, and no hard drive, even. You did not install things on an Apple ][. You had every program on a big ol' floppy disk (the sort that were just a circle of magnetic film in a thick paper envelope basically and were, in fact, floppy), you would shove that in the disk drive before turning the machine on, it'd make a horrible stuttering knocking sound resetting the drive head, and just read whatever was on that right into memory and jump right on in to running Oregon Trail or a non-wysiwyg text editor (i.e. there's no making bold text appear on screen, you'd just have a big ugly tag on either side of your [BOLD>bold text<BOLD] like that). It was not unlike popping a cartridge or disc into an older video game console, except for the bit where if you wanted to save something you'd have to take the disk out while it was running and pop a blank one into the drive to save to.

So when I was a kid and I'd have my "computer class" it'd be walking into a room, sitting down with one of these, and having a teacher just as new to it as I was just reading out a list of instructions off a sheet like, "flip open the lock on the disk drive, take the disk out of the sleeve, make sure it says Logo Writer on it, slide it in with the label up and facing you, flip the lock back down, hit the power switch in the back of the machine..." We didn't learn anything about file management beyond "don't touch anything until the screen says it's done saving to the disk" because again, no hard drives. I guess there was a typing class? That's something, but really there's nothing to learn about typing that isn't where every key is and you only (but inevitably) learn that through practice.

Now, overlapping with this, I eventually got myself a used computer in the early 90s, very old at the time, but not as old as the ones at school. I had a proper black and white OG Mac. With a hard drive and a window-based operating system and everything. And... nobody taught me a damn thing about how that one worked. My mother just straight up did not touch a computer until something like 2001. I didn't really have any techie mentors. I just plugged it in and messed around and worked everything out. Same way I worked out what I was doing with older computers, mostly on my own at the local library, because that computer class wasn't much, and how I was totally left on my own to work out how to hook up every console I ever owned, which was slightly more involved at the time.

That forky bit in the middle was held in place with a pair of phillips headscrews. Had to keep the VCR and cable box in the right daisy chain order too.

Enough rambling about how old I am though. What's the actual disconnect here? How did my generation work out everything about computers without help but the next one down allegedly goes dear in the headlights if someone asks them to send them a file?

Well first off I'm not at all willing to believe this isn't at least largely a sampling bias issue. Teachers see all the clueless kids, people asking online for help with things is more common than people spontaneously mentioning how everything is second-nature to them, etc. Two things stick out to me though as potential sources of the issue though:

First, holy crap are modern computers ever frail, sickly little things! I'm not even talking about unreliable hardware, but yeah, there's some shoddy builds out there. I mean there's so many software dependencies and auto-updating system files and stuff that looks for specific files in one and only one location, just crashing if they aren't there. Right now on this Windows 10 machine I've got this little outdoor temperature tracker down in the task bar which will frequently start rapidly fluttering between normal and a 50% offset every frame, and the whole bar becomes unresponsive, until I open the task manager (don't even have to do anything, just open it). No clue what's up with that. It was some system update. It also tries to serve me ads. Don't know if it's load-bearing. Roughly every other day I have to force-quit Steam webhelper. Not really sure what that's even for. Loading user reviews? Part of me wants to dig in and yank out all this buggy bloatware, but I genuinely don't know what files are loadbearing. This wasn't an issue on older computers. Again, screwing around with an old Apple ][, and old consoles and such, there wasn't anything I could really break experimenting around. It was all firmware ROM chips, RAM that cleared on power cycling, and disks which were mostly copy-protected or contained my own stuff. No way to cause any problem not fixed by power cycling.

Next, everything runs pretty smoothly and seemlessly these days (when working properly anyway). Files autosave every few seconds, never asking you where you actually want to save them to, things quietly connect to the internet in the background, accessing servers, harvesting your info. Resolutions change on their own. Hell emulators of older systems load themselves up when needed without asking. There's a bunch of stuff that used to be really involved that's basically invisible today. The joke about this being "a 3D print of the save icon" already doesn't work because how often do you even see a UI element for saving? When we still used disks regularly, they held next to nothing and would take like half a minute to read and write.

And don't even get me started on launchers and start menus and all that.

So... basically what I'm getting at here is if you feel like you never learned how to properly use a computer, go get your hands on an old computer and mess around. There's yard sales, there's nice safe runs in a browser emulators, hell there's kits to build your own. That or just look for someone wearing like a Mega Man T-shirt or playing a Madonna CD (hell maybe just any CD these days) and start politely asking questions, because again just because everyone who knows this stuff just had to work it out on our own doesn't mean you should have to.

[hetastates]

Midwest Monday!

How each (Midwestern) state responds to scam calls

Illinois: Abruptly hanging up the phone. He doesn’t have time, patience, energy, or will to deal with this. As a kid he might have played along, giving a fake name like "Mr. Hugh Wang-Kerr"; as a teen he would have made threats to the spammer, but as an adult he likes to keep the line free for business opportunities and ladies in strapless dresses (for some reason, though, they never keep the line free for him…)

Indiana: Specifically answers to say "what do you want" and hangs up. Sometimes does this while driving. It’s quite concerning to those who share the road with her. Everyone wonders why she picks up if she knows she’s going to be hanging up within two seconds, but nobody has ever asked her directly why she does this. Indiana's response to scammers is an enigma and— INDI KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD!

Iowa: WHAT? HUH?! He'll call you back, he says — and by that he means meet him at the Flying J later if you have something to say to him. He might be a strapping and toned young man — the type you’d think is attractive until you get close enough to smell that True Farmer Boy Whiff — but he’s an old boomer in terms of technology. He owns a LG 5450 for "business calls" and an iPhone 5 because his friends begged him to get a real phone, yet his monthly screen time is about forty two seconds.

Kansas: How do these people keep getting her number? She once took her grievances directly to the cell phone tower, but that wasn’t resolved the way she wanted it to be resolved. Kansas has a very communal way of fixing her scam call woes: If there’s anyone around her in the vicinity, she’s all up in their face. "Hey, do you know anything about how to get rid of these dang calls? Is there, like, a button I press or somethin'?" Oklahoma once told her to chuck it into a tornado. They haven’t spoken as of late.

Michigan: Are you calling about getting your car fixed by him? He’s told you a thousand times, these new cars and their computers have got to go. Oh, you’re not? Well, why are you bothering him? "We've called you about your car's extended warranty—" Oh have you? Have you now? Nah. He’s not buying it. Get off the line right this second or else he'll reach so far under your hood that you’ll be seeing via LIDAR until Teslas are reliable.

Minnesota: Poor Minnesota, easily flustered and not one to Karen around. Half the time, she’s not sure if it’s a scam call of if it’s genuine, and she doesn’t want to be too quick to judge. She'll sit there on the line for a couple of minutes to really gauge the situation, adding in a few "uh-huhs" and "mmms" until the time is right. Then — ope! There’s someone at the door! — or, — ope! My casserole is ready". Half the time, it’s not even a lie!

Missouri: The good thing about Missouri is that he likes good, cheap, reliable things — cell phones included. He has a Sonim XP8, meaning that every time a scammer (and this extends to tax collectors, insurance agents, and Oklahoma — "Seriously, Okie, go bother someone else!" —) gives him a ring, he just throws his phone at the nearest wall and picks it up after it’s stopped ringing. Concerned? Don’t be. The Sonim is designed for that type of treatment. There’s no point in buying something if you can’t huck it.

Nebraska: When she got her first scam call, Nebraska was quite surprised — she was under the impression that this sort of thing would never happen to her! She ushered over Minnesota, who begged her to be kind (oh, Minnesota — the trouble you go through), but Nebraska had heard too much about funny responses to scammers and wanted to try some out on her own. From inventing fake and morbid businesses to pretending to be in the mafia, Nebraska has demonstrated quite the creative streak when it comes to answering scam calls.

North Dakota: He doesn’t give much thought to the matter. He barely answers these calls. Sometimes it’s a one word "no" or a two word "go away", but NoDak works in silence when it comes to scam calls. Why give it time or energy?

Ohio: Aww, yeah! It’s his time to shine! He acts as though he’s in a Broadway musical or an award-winning Hollywood hit. He doesn’t want the fame and fortune that this career demands — no, he just wants the feeling of pride and superiority he gets from completely destroying the competition. He’s mustered up some quite imaginative responses to scam calls, and has concerned quite a few of the callers. His insurance company isn’t too happy with him, because he took it a step further and started doing it to them, too. Good thing they’ve got a lawyer…

South Dakota: Like Ohio and Nebraska, he has quite the enthusiasm to answer in funny and offbeat ways, but unfortunately, he’s got a brother to the north to put some sense into him. "No, SoDak, don’t answer the phone." "No, you’re not being stupid today." Dang it, NoDak, why do you have to steal his thunder? Can’t a state do anything fun? Saying funny things to scam callers isn’t even illegal this time!

Wisconsin: What's that? Wisconsin, pick up the phone! Or is she busy again, screaming over some sports game. What game could she even be this enthusiastic over? Does she even have any major sports teams? Regardless, that phone is not getting answered in a timely manner. Does she even hear it? Wisconsin? Wisconsin, we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty! Wisconsin! Wisconsin! Nothing. Damn.

[nickmaghighlights]

Nick Mag Highlights - #114 September 2005

Welcome to another edition of Nick Mag Highlights! Today, we’ll be taking a look at Issue #114 from September, 2005!

Now, I understand you might be slightly surprised we went from Issue #1 to Issue #114, but I say take the whiplash in stride! Variety is the spice of life after all, and this cover exudes variety. We went from a roster of just one measly Nicktoon to a whole overload of shows spilling out from the top of the page!

But of course, front and center we have Drake & Josh, which was entering its third season at the time after facing massive success. Unsurprising too, since it really had everything going for it. Boys wanted to be Drake, girls wanted to be near Drake, and Josh was there to carry the show. How times change… now Drake Bell doesn’t even want to be Drake Bell.

But I digress, let’s dive into Issue #114! You can read it on the Internet Archive here.

Is a franchise really a “thing” if it doesn’t have a fast food toy line? Think about it. 

I remember that online game they’re advertising on the left, I’m pretty sure you never get to see your created ghost stand back-to-back with Danny Phantom himself, pretty disappointing if that was the prize you were after. 

Okay, after looking at some footage, it seems like you never get to see your created ghost even move! Explains why my memories of this game are pretty vapid.

There’s nothing else to incite fear into the heart of a child quite like the phrase “Back to School”. Except for maybe dentist’s appointments, needles, large bugs, and the Easter Bunny.

To tie into this most horrifying occasion, the overarching theme of this issue is stupidity. Let’s keep reading and find out if that was a dumb idea.

At this point Nick Magazine had dropped Ooze News, instead opting to advertise the biggest Nickelodeon headlines (Oooh, Tak 3!) near the beginning, with a special section later on for showcasing any upcoming episodes of their regulars. Stay tuned for that!

I’m not a Barbie expert. Are these based on outfits the doll wore at some point? ‘Cause otherwise these are just regular clothes that say “Barbie” on them.

First speech bubble from Zelda in the blog’s history!

Anyway, did you know Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in The Middle) is a NASCAR driver now? Crazy.

Lovely illustration work from Roger Langridge, who still posts comics on Twitter! Check him out after you’ve finished reading this post, liked it, reblogged, left a comment, followed, and bookmarked my blog.

I know what some of you may be wondering, just what exactly was the hot-ticket item kids were asking for Christmas in a pre-iPhone world? Well, I guess a Firefly might be a possible answer? I don’t recall ever seeing one of these back in the day, and apparently they don’t even make them anymore. 

What this ad conveniently doesn’t tell you is the amount of parental controls stuffed into one of these things, which makes them a fantastic safety tool, but maybe not that cool of a toy. 

Take note, this was back when having “animations” was a selling point.

Here we can the see the aftermath of Nickelodeon teaming up with Baby Bottle Pop for a bit of cross-promotion, which culminated with the crowning of the first (and probably only) “Baby Bottle Popstar”.

Indeed, kids across America were urged to send in their own rendition of the iconic “Baby Bottle Pop jingle” (which no doubt most of you are humming right now). Those performances were left to the mercy of the online populace, voted upon with the utmost scrutiny. Few died, but many were injured, and a young Alyssa of California was crowned Baby Bottle champion.

So it says in the history books, anyway. If you’d like to see the Baby Bottle ballad that shook the world, I recorded a video of the Nick.com link included in this ad, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Sorry, got a little intense back there. Anyway this is a fun section! And anything reminding me about Jack Black and School of Rock is a positive in my book. Little odd lumping in The Dukes of Hazzard next to Finding Nemo and Spongebob, but I guess they might have wanted to throw a bone to the preteens in the audience.

Pretty cool full page spread advertisement for a Nicktoon, and for Catscratch no less!

Ah Catscratch, one of Nick’s oft-neglected 2000’s ‘toons, right next to The X’s and Making Fiends. Obviously I’m biased a bit, being a 2000’s kid, but it really sucks these shows fail to even get a passing reference nowadays. Oh well, if My Life as a Teenage Robot can escape Nick’s 2000’s dungeon, maybe there’s hope for the others.

A pretty funny comedy section here, depicting the daily newspaper of the fictional town of Moronia. I’d recommend checking out the full section if you’re not already reading along, it’s pretty funny!

Y’know I really wouldn’t have thought such generic phrases like “Feel Brand New” and “Make it Your Style” would be trademarkable. I would think at most you could get away with holding the rights to “The Lisa Frank Brand is for Every Happy, Cute Girl”. Although since they left that last one open, I bet the trademark is still available if anyone wants to snag it.

Additionally I’d like to give props to this company for being so bold as to have one of their mascot characters thank the Lord himself for their brand’s existence. You hardly see such tenacity nowadays.

Weird short fascination I had as a kid: I really liked the style of these ads that Pop-Tart was running at the time. I’m sure a lot of you remember the commercials in particular. I guess the black-and-white scribbly style just tickled my brain! Weirdest thing was they never actually inspired me to buy Pop-Tarts myself, it was only last year or so I had my first ‘Tart. Suppose that makes me a fake fan.

We’ve made it to The Comic Book, rejoice! 

Initially, I was particularly excited about this being the opportunity to introduce some of the regular comic series featured in this section, since I thought they’d have already started appearing by now, seeing as how we’ve jumped ahead much later into the magazine’s run.

But, uh, no, actually! This issue is completely lacking in strips from any of the notable ongoing comic series from the mag’s lifespan. Not even a Scene But Not Heard, which I guess disproves my memory of each issue having one!

Oh well, we’ll get to them when we get to them, the one-offs were usually just as entertaining. And we do at least have one recurring strip to talk about, Impy & Wormer!

Impy & Wormer was a regularly published strip for this section, created by James Kochalka. The strips were so small, you could find one of them at the bottom of each page of The Comic Book. It’s a pretty cute idea! I often found myself doodling Impy in the margins of my notebooks when the magazine was around. 

Say what you will regarding how Web 2.0 and the modern internet has affected society’s mental health and the overall cultural zeitgeist, but it did lead to this funny one-panel comic :)

Holy moly. Does anyone else remember Postopia? I swear for the last couple years I tried my damned hardest to find out what website it was that I played some weird Flintstones flash games on as a kid. I recently found out that it was indeed Postopia. Man, between this and Pop-Tarts it really seems like I would just buy into whatever weird viral marketing these fast food brands were pumping out as a kid.

I remember these being a fairly common activity in the mag: gag product labels. Cut ‘em out and tape them on to their intended packaging and you’ve got an instant barrel of laughs! Problem is they never seemed to be the right size for the products I tried them on. 

Come to think of it, my parents were really the only ones who got to see them finished, and they didn't really find them that amusing either. Was I really supposed to show my friends some dental floss I had taped a fake label onto?

“Nostalgia” is a term I honestly hate throwing around, what with how common it is, but this page in particular is really inciting some wistful childhood memories. Doesn’t seem like the worst deal in the world either, at least if you’re into membership cards, special edition issues, and stickers.

Sidenote, Step 4 isn’t really a surprise if you tell everyone it’s a Spongebob hat, guys!

Man, these guys hate teachers! I did not know a single kid in school who hated their teachers as much as the Nick Mag writers seemed to. A lot of my teachers were pretty nice, actually.

Yeah, in terms of replacing the Cartoon Calendar section (which we saw an example of in the previous NMH post), this leaves a lot to be desired. Still, I like when the magazine tried to give out fun factoids, it made me feel like my intelligence was being respected. Those puns are Zelda Van Gutters-tier writing though.

Now now, I’m not going to keep going on about Drake Bell. There’s only so many times you can shoot the elephant in the room before you start looking like the weird one. Drake & Josh was such a favorite of mine around the time this magazine came out, and it was really fun getting at least a little insight into what the behind-the-scenes view was like.

Small extra detail I find interesting is that almost every blurb below summarizing the new episodes for each show mentions romance and crushes (baring All That, but that’s a sketch show anyway*). Even the interview brings up that Josh had gotten a new girlfriend in Season 3. Guess Nick was really going all in on the love aspect to keep their preteen audience’s attention in the midst of puberty, which feels kind of manipulative in hindsight? Oh well.

*They were still making All That in 2005?

TurboNick, huh? I… think I remember this? Barely. Looking it up on Google gives me a faint sense of remembrance. Although I don’t remember Pick Boy. Sorry, Pick Boy. 

I guess the idea was you could check out clips from all your favorite Nick shows and eventually be graced with a full-on episode thanks to Pick Boy, and given his name I’m sure voting was involved to decide the full episode that was released. Not the worst idea! I certainly don’t remember Cartoon Network posting full episodes online. They probably didn’t even have their own Pick Boy.

I’m willing to give credit where credit is due. In the last NMH post I accused a lot of kids’ for being very fart-centric. I’m still sure in the Gnarly 90’s that was true, given all the stuff Ren & Stimpy were getting up to on prime-time television. But here in the Techno 2000’s we reference Spock and take Grandma to prom. A much more sophisticated fare.

Man, this must have been so cool for any Sly Cooper fans picking up this book. It’s a triple threat: questions, concept art, and a quick-look at Sly 3! I may not be a fan myself, but I can always appreciate some concept art and creative insight for a largely beloved character and series.

And rounding us off it's... Hey, it’s Bill Trinen! He was a sort of meme for a while, wasn't he? Back when they let him be in Nintendo Directs, anyway. Well, I say meme, but I guess he was more like an oyster stuck on the underside of a much larger meme named Reggie Fils-Aimé.

Yeah, definitely more like an oyster… What were we talking about? Oh yeah, NintenDogs! Never played it. Apparently they poop! Cool, I guess!

Well, well! That wraps up another addition of Nick Mag Highlights! I think getting the 2000's side of the timeline after the first issue was good for giving a bit more context on how the magazine looked and grew throughout its time on the market. I’m excited to see what’s next, and I hope you enjoyed it too. There’s tons more content and memories to read through. 

Also, one last thing. While looking up that one Danny Phantom flash game from the start of the issue I found that there’s apparently a new Danny Phantom graphic novel coming out this Summer? I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything about this! The art looks really pretty. If this seems like your thing, keep an eye on it!

That’s all for now! Until next time, keep reading!

[trivialbob]

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Yesterday was a four brewery day!

Recently the newspaper had a story about three new smash burgers places. All three are within walking distance of each other (and lots of other breweries and restaurants) in the North Loop area of Minneapolis. I’m starting to like that neighborhood.

First we stopped for one of those smash burgers at Bricksworth Beer Co. They just opened a new bar and restaurant in Minneapolis. The original location, which serves pizza, is in Burnsville. I’ve been meaning to that one too. For some reason I rarely go south of the Minnesota river. It’s just a few miles but seems much farther to me. Or as my younger sister says, “It’s just not in my comfort zone.”

The burger was excellent as was the one beer I had. Sheila and I chatted with the people sitting next to us at the bar. I love doing that now. She is so proud that she has trained me to like sitting at the bar instead of a corner table and talking to strangers.

Across the street is Modist Brewing. We walked in to take a quick look but didn’t order beer. I just wanted to see the place and count how many dogs were in there. There were two sleeping dogs I saw. I let them lie.

Then we made a short hop to Northeast Minneapolis. We stopped at Indeed Brewing to see if they had Coconut Macaroon Cream Ale, a limited edition Sheila has been wanting to try. There was no more CMCA. That didn’t deter us from ordering something else and playing cards.

Indeed was busy. I asked two women if we could share their large table. They gladly said yes. When they later left, Sheila waved over two other people who were looking for somewhere to sit.

As an old, bald guy wearing nice shoes and a good sweater, and my wife with her gobs and gobs of red hair, people seem to trust us. The two young women who joined us got up to use the rest room or smoke. They left iPhones and pocketbooks on our table. They didn’t even ask us to watch their stuff.

When we left someone else took our seats at the table. I like that. The video at the top I took from Indeed’s patio. That area was busy too, with a barrel fire and patio heaters keeping it comfortable. Of course I like watching the trains pass by.

When we finished there we drove back closer home and met friends at our local brewery. The place was busy. There were a lot of kids there. Unlike at Target, I’ve yet to see a child melt down at a brewery. Some little kids near us had lots of toys and snacks. The Girls Scouts were in there too selling cookies.

This picture below is from a brewery, not a daycare :)

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #18:

Earth

It's countdown time: I see Neil Young and Crazy Horse this Thursday on the second night of their new tour. I'll be there to scream and lose my mind like a 12 year old. You'll then have to read about it all in minute detail over and over again for years.

But my famous brother, who'll also be there, has warned me that I need to brace myself: Nils won't be on stage with the band as he's busy making serious money with The Boss; nor will Pancho, who's still in retirement, and, although Neil is surely working on the necessary tech as we speak, no one has figured out - yet- how to bring poor Danny Whitten back to life. And so that means Crazy Horse is now welcoming, at least for the moment, its fourth official rhythm guitar player: one of the hipster kids from Promise of the Real Pancakes.

Here's a photo of him from the internet:

You're looking at Micah Nelson, Willie's son. Willie's 90 so either he had a kid at age 78, which seems totally possible for good old Willie, or this photo is not current. Let's google and find out... Micah is apparently 33 years old so either there's a hormone issue going on, or Willie's weed protects his progeny against aging or this is a dated photo; or all three of those things are happening at once. Regardless, I hope Micah wears this shirt while on stage Thursday.

By my count this particular Nelson was involved in at least four different Neil Young records during the dark Montsanto Years - there were two studio records, a live record and a soundtrack for Paradox, one of the worst of Young's 20+ films - which is totally saying something as many of them are largely unwatchable unless you're nuts like me - which is four more record appearances than I can personally claim with Young. Micah may even have a credit on Peace Trail as well; perhaps he programmed Neil's new robot. So, with all that under his belt and this new invitation to join the upcoming tour, Nelson's got to have something good going on for him other than his boyish good looks. We'll see.

Unfortunately, Micah will probably be on my assigned side of the stage: Billy Talbot usually sets up on Neil's right and, these days, Billy doesn't amble about too much; poor Talbot looks like he could use a walker, a hovercraft, or a whole tribe of Road Eyes to stabilize him, but he's still game and I sure as hell hope he sings a lot and pounds out some big boneheaded bass licks at the show: the dude has always given his fellow cavemen a good name.

But anyway, I've got to get my mind open to having this Nelson kid on stage so today I'm going to make myself listen to another Promise of the Real Potato Salad Neil Young record. We've already survived, barely, the first of them and I'm not listening to that overwrought codswallop all over again; I could sit through their second studio album together - it sounded cool for an anticipatory moment back in the day with its Time Fades Away meets anti-Trump vibe - but that record turned out to have a circus themed song on it that shook my soul down to a wounded, terrified core, so that's out, and there's no way I'm going to sit through another screening of Paradox any time soon: I feel like it was mostly iphone shots Micah and his band mates in period dress lined up and waiting for access to outhouse crappers.

So that leaves Earth, Young's nutty live-but-autotuned / field recordings record from 2016. I listened to the whole thing a few times way back in the day: I laughed a bit, got into it for moments and then never listened to it since. All that changes right now. Micah Nelson, please don't ruin my day.

The album sounds okay! It opens with Mother Earth, which, as I've discussed elsewhere, was the wrong song to end Ragged Glory with. But it sounds pretty lovely here with Neil alone on his pump organ. Go Neil, go.

But midway through the song Neil pasts on some professionals' studio vocals in an effort to ruin the good thing he had going; my memory tells me that he does the same on just about every song; Neil called the additions "edgy" at the time; I'd choose another descriptor. "Dumb" could work. Or "wacko". But let's just settle for "good old Shakey".

Because they're not that unexpected. Neil is surely a big fan of Dylan's Christmas record and Micah Nelson wasn't even a twinkle in Willie's eye when Young brought in a full boy's choir for Touch the Night, instructing the kids to sing joyfully along with him about a fatal, or perhaps just harrowing, midnight car accident; they're probably all still in therapy.

And remember, there's a 100 person choir out there who are still wondering if that session in which they sang about nausea and sexual death actually happened or whether it was all just a crazy dream.

We're fairly deep into this whole Shakey Sunday thing and I'm probably failing miserably in my originally stated goal of explaining, at least to myself, why Neil Young? But I want to suggest the obvious point here all the same: Neil Young just does whatever the hell he wants and typically that means doing something utterly wacko. And we love him for it.

So go for it Neil: bring in a pro choir and have them sing the names of gas stations with earnest polish while you do your crazy grandpa routine! It'll be totally edgy. I guess.

The other wacko, or truly Shakey, choice here is shoving a whole nature documentary into the record. Again, we probably should have seen this coming: Young's songs and focus at the time were almost solely on climate change concerns, and ever since his very first film over 50 years ago, there are often crackling fires to be heard on some of his best songs. Plus he came of age hearing the rooster in The Beatles' Morning Morning and the dogs chasing the train on Pet Sounds, and there are bird cries layered into Young's fantastic original version of Pocahontas.

There are times on the record when Young's assembled monkeys, badgers and hornets sound totally appropriate. For example, every time they interrupt a song from The Monsanto Years, I'm totally into it: I'd rather listen to bears bellow than hear any of the songs on that record anyway.

But hold on, I just fired up disc two on my trusty IPod (no, of course I don't own this record on vinyl; I don't have 165 dollars to spare on the CD-Rom compatible blue ray download immersion set complete with pan pipes and rolling papers likely available on Neil's forever beta website) and either I'm currently drunk (well, maybe I am sorta: how the hell else do you expect me to make it through 4 hours of frog sounds mingled with The Promise of Real's bongos on every track?) or Box Store, another of The Monsanto Years' problem tracks actually sounds pretty great here.

Let's paste it in and give it another listen; you tell me: does this song still suck or is it a sweet space opera about Walmart?

We've got a car horn honking and ambiance and then it's time for a typical Neil Young song. Yes, I know, the choir croons a lot of sophomoric and terribly rhymed nonsense about Volkswagen being too big to fail and too rich for jail but there are no bongos to be heard, Neil's own vocals are strong and there's all kinds of 90's style remix action going on interspersed with vintage Shakey guitar shredding. This is actually pretty damn good. And when Neil drops a huge F-bomb about TV toward the end and then start ordering us all into line before dropping some real bombs, then frogs, on our faces I'm ready to award Micah and his preteen band mates honorary middle school diplomas. They likely need them.

And what about the songs we actually liked to begin with? Vampire Blues sounds pretty cool, I guess: Young's vocals are great anyway, the Chevron tie-in is so meatheaded that you've got to bow down, and Neil does demonstrate that he can successfully play the song while not totally wasted.

But Western Hero just sounds dull and After the Gold Rush, with its rampant participation from a sentient being, is downright horrifying. And yeah, after 34 years I'm finally into the song Love and Only Love now that I have it on vinyl but, for god's sake, why is there a 28 minute long version here complete with a whole orchestra pit filled with every bongo Joe Freakin' Lala ever owned and every member of Willie's rampant progeny wailing away?

Come on, Neil: you could have given us the rest of On The Beach in that same time instead. For the Turnstiles would feature baseball bleacher chatter and whale voices while the oblivious choir chants "Ten Dollars at the Door" with no idea whatsoever that they're filling in for pimps; the title track could clobber us with intermittent wave crashes, seagull screams and radio static before devolving into penguin screams. Could be pretty damn edgy.

Knowing Young, he's probably got that exact album in the can already; yet another new live album, F#$%kin Up, came out earlier today; so knowing Neil, Earth 2 will be out in mid-May

[petalsfm]

if you’re hearing PARANOID by POST MALONE playing, you have to know HUNTER CLARKE (HE / HIM; CIS MAN) is near by! the TWENTY-EIGHT year old LAWN CARE TECHNICIAN has been in denver for, like, THREE MONTHS. they’re known to be quite SECRETIVE, but being ASTUTE seems to balance that out. or maybe it’s the fact that they resemble NICK ROBINSON. personally, i’d love to know more about them seeing as how they’ve got those THE SMELL OF CIGARETTES AND WEED LINGERING LONG AFTER YOU'VE LEFT, THE ECHO OF AN UNFURNISHED APARTMENT, ALWAYS HAVING YOUR ( WIRED ) EARBUDS IN YOUR EARS, THE FEELING OF THE WIND AGAINST YOUR SKIN AS YOU BIKE AROUND TOWN vibes. and maybe i’ll get my chance if i hang out around the LAKERIDGE DISTRICT long enough!

STATS:

full name :       hunter theodore clarke nickname(s) :     n / a birthplace :      montrose, colorado date of birth :       02 / 14 / 1995 parentage :      georgia hansen clarke & jonathan clarke sibling(s) :      n / a relationship status :     single gender identity :     cis man ( he/him ) sexual orientation :      heterosexual faceclaim :      nick robinson

BACKGROUND: ( tw: emotional abuse, running away, homelessness )

never stays in one place too long. honestly he’s surprised he’s been in denver for 3 months. staying places and making connections isnt really his thing

EMOTIONAL ABUSE TW ! grew up with two parents who had more interest in arguing with each other than raising their own son

hunter was not a bad kid by any means, his parents were simply unfit for their roles. becoming parents at the age of eighteen and twenty-three, they were forced into a shotgun wedding and ended up living in a trailer home. neither of them actually WANTED to be parents-- they didn't want to hear any noise, be disturbed, nor did they want to help him with any problem he may have had-- academic or personal

being the cause of many of their arguments was not good for the young boy. hearing the two scream back and forth about who went wrong in what area of raising their son made it incredibly difficult for him to want to stick around TW END !

so, at the age of fourteen he snuck out in the middle of the night ( with nothing but his birth certificate, social security card, and cash he'd stolen from his parents ) in hopes that everything would just be over

he didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t officially start working for another two years so he had to improvise. he began going to different neighborhoods and offering to mow the lawns of rich people with yards bigger than his old house. only a few people said yes, but it was enough to keep him afloat for a little bit. 

obviously, once that money was gone he had to look for some other way to at least keep eating. as stupid as it sounds, he resorted to stealing phone chargers and selling them / phone parts for cheap. iphones and galaxy’s were really gaining popularity back then so he was lowkey making bank

he hated stealing but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes

he didn't really have enough money to leave montrose for awhile so he just hung around parts he knew his parents would never go to

the one place he could find solace was at the few churches he could find that left their doors unlocked overnight. he'd grown accustomed to being a light sleeper, but being able to lay down in the pews and just close his eyes gave him some comfort.

eventually, though, with his limited amount of money, he was able to go back and forth between colorado and utah, just finding any place he could work himself into

as he got older he got into stealing more things because it was easier than trying to get a job ( which is almost impossible when you have no address ) and was definitely almost caught multiple times

once he got enough money ( and barely missed getting arrested ) he skipped town and went to las vegas for awhile. he thought it’d be easier because there are so many people there and he could start a new life. however, he ran out of money quick and couldnt find anyone. he’ll tell you he likes and prefers being on his own but he’s really bad at life without a little help / push in the right direction

so he’s back in colorado!! he found his way to denver back in june, which seemed like the perfect time to get back into the lawn care business

honestly now ?? he’s tired of stealing so he’s probably just mowing grass and pulling weeds to stay afloat. it's the easiest job he can picture for someone who dropped out in the ninth grade

he never means to hurt anyones feelings but if it happens it happens

doesn’t really apologize lol hes GARBAGE!

never ??? sees when hes in the wrong ??? nothing is ever his fault.

MISCELLANEOUS / HEADCANONS: ( tw: drug mention )

has never spoken a coherent sentence in his life

he probably gives everybody a fake name. it started at first because he didn't somehow want his parents to catch wind of where he was ( not like they'd care much ), but continued as he grew older just because he feels his real name isn't actually that important to learn

he also never remembers the names he gives people. you could be calling "james !!! james !!!" and he'd have no clue you were calling him fjdhgfdkjgh

speaking of names, he's horrible at remembering other people's names. you will have to tell him a hundred times

definitely owns an iphone 8 he bought off craigslist. was mad as hell he had to buy a dongle to make his wired earbuds usable, but he's never letting the wired earbuds go.

also, definitely doesn't have any numbers saved in his phone. every time he gets a text his automatic reply is "who's this?" even if there's text history

he steals shit and barely has money but he’s definitely the type to flex on these hoes! smh probably goes into an expensive ass store and tries on a watch, takes a selfie with it, then says hes not gonna buy the watch. if u ever ask him abt it he says he lost it or he chooses not to wear it bc time is a social construct.

really bad with feelings. like so bad. he doesn’t know them. has never felt an emotion ever, actually.

the least confrontational man on the planet. he hears a raised voice? he's gone faster than you can say the fake name he's given you. will literally never argue and has never argued in his life.

his most prized possession is his bike, which is the one nice thing he's ever bought for himself. he doesn’t even want a car he really does not. he’s such a fuckin loser but he just loves riding all around denver. new route every day.

the only piece of furniture he owns is an air mattress that lays in the center of the living room in his studio apartment.

probably always wearing a hoodie. he likes looking ~mysterious~ cus hes a LOSER

trying to save up his money for vegas 2.0 but definitely spends it all on cigs and weed LOL hashtag grown man things

[zoeylcwrence]

PICKING UP FROM HERE • @cagenewman

Bath & Body Works better have a working website! Have you ever seen middle aged women get mad when they don't have a certain candle in stock? That's like releasing lions from their cages at the zoo. Exactly, and a lot of times the candles don't even really smell like what their description said, so I always think you should get one in person so you can test it first! Yeah, if you smelled it before, it should be the same, but if you haven't then why chance it? Oh, Bagel Bites! I don't think I've ever had one of those before, but I know they're a popular snack. Before I stopped eating meat, I really loved pizza rolls. Speaking of food still, I made the tofu and it wasn't that bad! Maybe even add a little sauce and it would be a nice middle day meal. Nice! A great first watch. Can you believe how far technology has come? Kids these days don't even know what a rotary telephone is! But you're right, the world has changed drastically since we were kids so I understand why they need Iphones as young as they are. Exactly! And it's nice to make your own traditions, too. Hey, it sounds like a good plan to me! They've got very sturdy boots. Cowboy or not, honestly! Did you end up finishing it? I did and I'm happy with how it turned out. Have you guys gotten your ugly sweaters picked out yet? But I'm a fossil that can still do a cartwheel, which counts for something, I hope!

[sundaysundaes]

Whispers

Lee Donghyuck/Haechan X Reader | Smut, Fluff | 5k | Idol AU

Summary: Donghyuck has been busy promoting his new album and no matter how much he misses you, he can’t see you in person due to his schedules. Desperate for your touch, he begins to call you late at night.

Warnings: Phone sex, masturbation (male and female), dirty talk (but is it still called ‘dirty talk’ if Donghyuck is just being honest and saying whatever that comes to his mind?), no plot with a lot of dialogues

The vibration of your iPhone wakes you up from your dream. Being thrown back so suddenly to reality makes you feel slightly lightheaded but it’s all worth it the second you see his name written on your screen. Rubbing your eyes away from sleep, you answer his call, “Hyuck?”

“Hey, Noona.” The airiness of his honeyed voice sounds familiar and pleasant in your ears that it instantly paints a smile on your face. “Did I wake you?”

You refrain yourself from yawning. “Yeah, I fell asleep reading.” Narrowing your eyes irritatedly at the brightness of the fluorescent light hanging on your ceiling, you decide to switch it off and uses the dim glow of the bedside lamp instead.

“What time is it?” He gasps when he notices the time on his screen. “Three AM?! Shit, I didn’t realize it was this late. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine, I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway. I still have to work on my papers, so it’s actually good that you woke me up.” You nuzzle close to the pillow, holding your phone to your ear with one hand, blinking sleepily. “Did you just get back from schedule?”

“Yeah.” He sighs wearily. “I’m dead tired right now. I wish I could just take a day off, you know? I mean, performing is fun, but promoting a new album can be so hectic. I’ve only been sleeping for, like, two hours per day since last week.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” You bring the teddy bear he’d given you on your birthday close to your chest, pretending like you were embracing him. “I wish you could take some days off, too.”

“Yeah?” Somehow, he sounds like he’s smiling. “Then do what?”

“I don’t know, play games, I guess? Or just lie around in bed, doing nothing.”

“I’d rather be doing something, actually.” He chuckles softly, a hint of teasing in his voice. “Or someone.” 

“Gross,” you retort but you can feel your lips curving upwards. “It’s okay if you want to rest, Hyuck. You don’t have to force yourself to call me every day. Your health should be your number one priority.”

“What, you don’t want me to call you?”

You freeze. “Of course I want you to call me. I just—”

“I thought you’d be excited to hear my voice.”

The sudden bitterness in his tone makes you sit up from the bed, eyebrows adjoined in confusion. “What—Hyuck—”

“You know what?” He exhales loudly. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have called. It’s late anyway.“

“Can you please just listen—”

“I’m tired. Let’s just talk tomorrow.”

“But—”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Hyuck—” But you’re only answered by silence when the line gets disconnected. You stare at your phone, eyes wide in disbelief. 

What the hell just happened?

Upset and vexed, you dial his number. You wait with your jaw clenched until he picks up on the fourth ring. “Can’t you listen to me for one second?!” Not sure if it’s because of the drowsiness or exhaustion, but you find yourself shouting even before he says anything. “Of course, I want you to call me, you idiot! It’s the only thing I’ve been waiting all day. Every day, Hyuck, I wait for your call every day. I keep catching myself checking on my phone every ten minutes, waiting for your texts, wanting to call you. I miss you, of course, I miss you—you’re—” You turn stiff when you hear him cackling from the other side of the phone. “Are you laughing?”

“I’m sorry.” His laughter is contagious but you put up your best effort not to get infected. “You’re so cute when you get all riled up. Isn’t it obvious that I was just joking?”

“Right. I’m hanging up.” 

“Wait, Noona—” You listen to him with your eyes throwing ice daggers to the wall. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise.” There’s a small pause where you’re too irritated to talk and he’s too unsure to start but he tries. “So, like… you miss me?”

“Not right now.”

“Aaw, come on, I was just messing around.” You can imagine him puckering his lips, batting his eyelashes for forgiveness. “Please, tell me. Tell me how much you miss me.”

You throw yourself back to the bed, huffing. “I don’t think I want to.”

“You get cuter when you’re angry, you know that?” He sighs to the air. “Aaah… I miss you. I miss you so much, Noona, you don’t even know. Probably more than you miss me.”

I don’t think that’s possible. “Of course,” you reply, holding back a smile from breaking on your face. “Since I only miss you a little bit.”

“A little bit?”

“A tiny, tiny bit. On second thought, maybe I don’t miss you at all.”

“Is that so?” You can tell he’s exhausted by the way he lets out his chuckle, but it doesn’t mean it’s less sincere. “It really has been a while since we last saw each other, hasn’t it?”

You nod to yourself. “Four months.”

“You keep count, huh?” His teasing tone makes you flushed. “Love me that much, do you?”

“Around four months,” you correct him, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible when the truth is, you can practically hear your heart hammering against your ribcages. “Or maybe three? Five? I don’t know.”

“Why are you so cute? Seriously, how can you be this cute?” Donghyuck sits on the edge of his bed, lips forming so widely that it nearly splits his face in half. When his chuckles have receded, his eyes begin to soften. “I love you, Noona. You know that, right?”

People might be thinking about how lucky you are to have a member of one of the most prestigious boybands in the world confessing his love for you at 3 AM, but honestly? You’re just so grateful for the fact that Lee Donghyuck, a boy who stole your heart nearly a decade ago when you were too young to even understand the word love, finally realized that your entire relationship with him was deeper than a mere friendship. It took years for both of you to finally gain enough bravery to act out your feelings, especially when he managed to shine brighter than you could ever imagine being. You were afraid of it—afraid that you would be burnt by his fame, afraid that he would discard you for he had everything and you only had him. But Donghyuck didn’t want anything. He only wanted you.

You love him. You’ve been loving him for as long as you can remember so hearing him say the words, no matter how often he has mentioned it already, still sparks fire through your veins. You’ll never admit that out loud, though.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot these days,” he sheepishly adds. 

“More than you think about yourself?” You snort. “I’m shocked.”

“Eeyyy, I’m serious.” The sound of your giggle makes him sigh, longing to hear it in person. “I wish I could be with you right now. I thought about you a lot during today’s photoshoot too.” He lies down on the bed, running a hand through his hair. “I thought about our last date. About that red dress you wore. Man, you looked so cute in that dress.”

You half-buried your face in the pillow, heat blossoming on your cheeks. “Now this is the topic I like to talk about.”

Donghyuck scrunches up his nose. “Aren’t you gonna say I looked nice too that day?”

Even the slightest thought of him—any version of him, whether it was him dressing handsomely on a date or him waking up in the morning with a bird’s nest on his head—never fails to send butterflies swirling in your stomach, but again, you’ll never admit that out loud. “Meh,” you jeer, even adding a shrug when you know he won’t be able to see. “Could’ve dressed better. I mean, ripped jeans? Really?”

“Yah, yah, yah. You said I looked good wearing those jeans!”

“We were going to a fancy restaurant and I wore a semi-formal dress, Hyuck. They just didn’t match my outfit. They didn’t match anyone’s outfit there, really.”

“Really? You’re gonna say that? Even after you spent the whole night stealing glances at me with drool on your face?”

You wish you could say he was lying, but you indeed spent the entire night drooling at him over the sight of his black leather jacket and the way his jeans just wrapped his thighs so perfectly. “I have lost interest in this topic.” It’s for the best before you combust into flames. “Where are you right now?”

“Back at the dorm.” He softly yawns. “In my room.”

“Alone?”

“Yep, since Johnny-hyung is filming out of town.” When you stay quiet, unsure of what to say, Donghyuck grins mischievously. “Why, do you wanna sneak in? I think I can afford to lose some sleep tonight, if you know what I mean.”

Flustered, you retort, “After Johnny caught us cuddling last time? No way.”

“Yeah, about that,” Donghyuck says a little awkwardly, “After you went home he said to me that he heard the whole thing—”

“What do you mean the whole thing?” The horror in your face and your voice is clear.

“I meant, the whole thing. Us having sex and stuff.”

You could practically feel the exact moment when your soul is leaving your body, but Donghyuck continues as if he’s simply talking about getting caught cheating during a test. “But it’s okay, he’s cool. He’s got my back.”

“Oh my God.” You nearly faint. “I will never show my face in front of your roommate, ever again.”

“Yeah, about that—“

“Are you fucking kidding me, Hyuck—”

“Jaehyun-hyung heard us too.”

“What?!”

“And he told Mark-hyung about it later on, and that’s the reason why I had this bump on my head for three days.” Donghyuck pouts, rubbing the back of his head, lean fingers carding through soft brown locks. “He hit me with a book, lecturing me about bringing you to the dorm as if he never did that himself.”

Not trying to overreact about it, but you’re suffocating by this point. “Why are you so chill about this?!”

“They heard us having sex, not murdering the innocents.” He rolls his eyes but seems amused at your reaction. “To be honest, I hear a lot of stuff happening in our dorm that I’m sure you don’t wanna know. Like, a lot a lot. Way worse than what I did with you.”

“And does Taeyong know about this?”

“Taeyong-hyung needs his beauty sleep so we agreed not to tell him stuff.”

“I feel sorry for him.”

“I just feel sorry he’s not part of our antics.” Donghyuck shrugs, kicking off his shoes and socks before he leans against the headboard. “How about you? Are you alone?”

“Yeah.” You heavily sigh, still feeling quite dizzy after hearing the truth he just blurted out. “My roommate’s gone for the weekend.”

“Oh…” He taps his fingers against his stomach, a weird feeling swirling inside his chest as a thought begins to form. “That’s… great…”

Donghyuck’s tongue lays heavy in his mouth, suddenly loses the ability to form a simple conversation as his mind begins to focus entirely on something else. It all started that one night when he pretended to be asleep, when in fact, he was listening to his roommate, Johnny, speaking to his girlfriend in hushed whispers. The way the older man was chuckling to his phone was suspicious, and the more he tried to listen intently, the more he realized that Johnny wasn’t conversing. He was giving orders with a voice thick with seduction. The sensual words Johnny used made Donghyuck’s ears turn scarlet, and he buried his face deeper behind his blanket. Since then, the curiosity within him has been rising more and more, nearly suffocating him sometimes when he desperately yearned for your touch but his schedule never let him take a goddamn break.

Not knowing the dirty thoughts that flit across his mind, you carry on your conversation like usual. “I guess, but it does get lonely sometimes when she’s not around. I actually like having a roommate.” The sandalwood aroma from your diffuser, combined with his velvety voice, comforts you and you’re finally able to relax. “Have you been eating well? I’ve been craving for strawberry—” 

“What are you wearing?”

“—pancakes—what?”

“I…” Donghyuck heaves out a heavy breath, biting the corner of his lip, unsure yet not ready to give up on his desire. “I just… I was wondering—Are you wearing pajamas?”

“Umm…” The way he asks about it sends heat rising to your cheeks. He doesn’t sound as innocent as the words he uses. You look down, fingers curling at the hemline of your clothes. “I’m wearing one of your shirts, actually.”

Donghyuck throws his head back, eyes tightly shut as he curses silently into the air, his phone pressed against his chest. The sight of you wearing his oversized shirt has been one of his most recurring fantasies and not being able to see you, but knowing that you are wearing his shirt, kills him. 

“Hyuck?”

Donghyuck brings his phone back to his ear. “Sorry, there was a… Mark.” He mentally slaps himself on the head. 

“There was a Mark?”

“I mean, Mark-hyung was here—but he just left so—" 

“Are you drunk again?”

“No!” Donghyuck rubs his temple. This is not going well, he shouts in his mind. “Why—” He winces when he hears his voice crack. Clearing his throat, he tries again. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

Because it smells like you and it helps me sleep better. “Just because,” you quietly mumble, eyes locked to the ceiling. “Why are you asking me this exactly?”

“Just because,” he mimics. His breathing sounds more prominent as if he’s in the same room, only a few inches away from your ear. It’s the reason why you enjoy talking to him this way instead of taking video calls. You can focus solely on his honeyed voice, almost like a lullaby to your ears. “Can you tell me…” he continues, laced with both hesitation and anticipation, “What else you're wearing?”

“Umm…” You take a deep breath, trying to keep yourself composed. “I don’t think I want to say.”

“Please, Noona.” The sudden desperation in his plead startles you as if he’s losing control of himself, little by little. He seems to notice that too because when he speaks again, it’s steadier, almost formal. “I just… I want to know. If that’s okay.”

“Well…” You curl your toes. “Aside from your shirt, I’m…” Just say it, for God’s sake. He’s your boyfriend. He’s seen you naked. “I’m only wearing my panties.”

There’s a pause that makes your heart thump. “Not, uhh…” Donghyuck wets his lip. “Not even a bra?”

You fiddle with your fingers. “N-no.”

“Fuck.”

You nearly drop your phone. The guttural groan he just emitted from the back of his throat catches you off guard. “Hyuck..?”

“Noona, there’s—” Donghyuck sits up straight, nails nearly sinking to his jean-clad thigh. “There’s something I want to try.” There’s a sense of urgency mixed with minimum self-control. “I-if you don’t mind…”

You know where this is going. “What is it?”

“Just—Just follow my lead, okay?”

You shakily nod your head. When he calls out your name again, you remember that you have to say it in words. “Okay.”

“Can you…” Donghyuck’s heart is beating out of control.  His mind desperately tries to answer how the fuck do I start this?! “Can you, umm, lie down on the bed for me?”

You can tell he’s nervous and it’s both reassuring and endearing to know that he’s never done this with anyone else before and probably not mentally ready to do it with you, but tries to go all the way because he knows both of you need to find a way to release all of these pent-up emotions. 

You follow his order. “I’m…” You take a deep breath so your voice won’t tremble too much. “I’m lying on my bed.”

Donghyuck always takes a few seconds before answering, as if he’s battling inside his head as he tries to sort out his thoughts. “Is your light turned on?”

“Yes.”

“Turn it off.”

You switch off the button on your bedside lamp. “Okay, it’s off.”

“Okay, mine too.” Then all you can hear is his slightly ragged breathing. “It’s… a bit awkward, isn’t it?” He chuckles nervously, followed by an inaudible, “Fuck, why am I so nervous,” as he’s straying away from the phone. 

A smile paints your lips. “You’re adorable.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” 

When silence strikes, Donghyuck scratches his cheek. “Do you… want to know what I’m wearing?”

You gulp. “S-sure.”

“Well…” Donghyuck takes a look at himself. “I’m wearing a denim jacket, a white shirt, a pair of jeans—I just got back from a photoshoot so—”

So he must look good. “Take them off.”

He’s probably as startled as you are when you hear the words tumbling down your mouth. But even if he is as embarrassed as you are, he doesn’t make it as obvious. “Sure.” A rustling sound can be heard, and you let your imagination wander. You can tell he’s taking off his jacket and soon, his shirt will follow. Donghyuck would always take his shirt off by grabbing the fabric from the back and yank it over his head, instead of crossing his arms at his waist. There’s something masculine about it, but you tend to get more distracted at the way his muscles would contract in his lean stomach. His silver necklace would dangle around his neck, and he’d smirk whenever he caught you staring at him for a second too long. 

“My shirt’s off,” he quietly states, snapping you out of your reverie. “Now take yours off—wait! Wait. Leave it on. I want to imagine you wearing my shirt. Just take off your panties.”

“I’m—” It’s so damn hard to focus when you feel so ashamed just by hearing his instructions. “Okay…” Your fingers are quivering when they slide down your stomach, thumb hooking around the hem before you pull your lingerie down to the middle of your thighs.

“Lie down,” he whispers, “Prop a pillow behind your back. Are you comfortable?”

“Y-yeah, just…” You sigh, head going dizzy. “Embarrassed.”

The airy laughter that flows from his mouth is too innocent to be heard in this kind of situation. “So cute. Me too, actually. I’ve never done this before.” When his chuckles have receded, the nervousness grows vivid in his voice once again. “Do you, umm... Do you want to stop?”

You’re supposed to say yes, or at least a bit conflicted about it, so it shocks you when you immediately answer, “No,” without hesitation.

“Thank God.” Donghyuck sighs, smiling softly against the phone. “‘Cause I wouldn’t know what to do if you said yes.” He unbuckles his belt with one hand, taking it off as his heartbeat soars through the roof. “Then, umm… can you spread your legs? As wide as you can.”

You feel so exposed even when no one is looking. Following his guidance, you question, “What about you? What are you doing?”

“I’m…” Donghyuck swallows hard, looking down at the way his hand is pressing against his semi-hardness. “I’m rubbing myself over my pants.”

Fuck, you mentally groan. “Why aren’t you touching yourself directly?”

“Cause I want to wait for you.” He has his eyes closed, hand slipping under the hemline of his jeans, stroking himself over his boxer. “I want to picture you rubbing your fingers on your clit. I want to hear you moan my name when you do.”

Oh my God. “Then guide me,” you plead. There’s something so irresistibly sexy about him touching himself while picturing you pleasuring yourself with your fingers. “Tell me what to do, Hyuck.”

He runs his tongue over his lower lip. The excitement of being able to act as a puppeteer, tugging on your strings, sends all blood rushing south. “Can you push your shirt up? Don’t take it off, just—” He exhales, taking a moment to collect himself after a certain obscene thought of you touching yourself entered his mind. “Just make sure it’s not in the way.”

“Okay.” You grip the hemline of your shirt, pulling it up until it pools above your chest. “Now, what?” 

“I want you to touch your breasts.” You’re more aroused by his breathy voice and lustful tone than embarrassed at this point. “Imagine me, Noona,” Donghyuck whispers, and he sounds so close, as if he’s lying down next to you. “Imagine me with my hands on you, caressing your breasts. Can you do that?”

You squeeze your breast, mumbling out a weak, “Yes…” The memory of Donghyuck, embracing you from behind, his naked chest pressed against your spine, hot mouth lazily pressing wet kisses against your nape suddenly comes alive in your mind. You still remember how sexy he sounded moaning out your name as he rocked his hips forward, his fingers exploring around your chest, rubbing and pinching at a certain spot to make you press closer to him in desperation for more of his touch. 

“Suck on your fingers, make them wet, then bring them back down.” Donghyuck’s hips are bucking against his hand, his fingers tugging his zipper down. “Imagine my mouth latching on your nipple, sucking it the way I always do. The way you like me to do.” 

You bring your fingers to your mouth, coating two of them with saliva before you bring them back down to pinch your sensitive bud. With your eyes closed and his heavy breathing in your ear, the wet sensation of your fingers gives you a clear image of his tongue flicking against your nub. 

“Tell me how you feel.”

“It’s not enough,” you croak out, “I want to feel you directly on my skin.”

Donghyuck takes a sharp breath. “You don’t even know how much I want to be there and touch you.” The way his voice suddenly becomes deep sends shivers down your spine. “I want to suck bruises on your skin. I want to mark you everywhere, again and again, so the bruises will last for days. I want you to remember me every time you see yourself in the mirror.”

You sheepishly smile, though your heart is still racing. “I always remember you even without that, Haechannie.”

The sudden change of his name warms his heart. “I wish you’re the only one who calls me that. You make my stage name sounds better, special. I could have thousands of people screaming my name but none of them makes me feel the way you do.” As he slides his hand under his boxer, finally making direct contact with his skin, Donghyuck becomes desperate once again. “Bring your other hand down. I want you to touch yourself, Noona, please.”

You slide your hand between your legs, tentatively rubbing yourself between your folds. “Hyuck…”

“Does it feel good?”

You nod, eyes shut, and your mind wanders. “Yes…”

“Rub your clit for me. And imagine I’m doing that with my tongue.”

You can picture him with his head between your legs so perfectly behind your closed eyelids. He has done it several times and you remember how he would always start slow, placing open-mouthed kisses on the inner part of your thigh before dipping his head down and swipe his tongue along your folds—all the while never breaking eye-contact. He would press a kiss against your clit, and lick you slowly because he’d want you to beg for it. He never directly told you but you could tell he liked being in control because the second you whispered “Please, Hyuck,” he would immediately indulge you with everything you wanted and more. 

Donghyuck would suck hard on your clit, doing it so suddenly that you’d nearly crush him by wrapping your legs too tightly around his head. Amazed and delighted by your reaction, he would break into a smile with his tongue still darting out to taste you, mouth pressing harder against your skin until he plunged his tongue inside your heat.

You moan out his name at the memory, directly to the phone.

“Fuck, baby, you sound so perfect…” Donghyuck nearly whimpers and the word baby stirs something within you as he never called you that before.

“Call me like that again…” You rub yourself harder on the spot you like the most. “Please, Hyuck…”

“Baby…” Donghyuck’s fingers are curling harder around his length, pumping himself in accordance to every gasp and moan you’re emitting. “I wish I could see you—I wish I could lock my eyes with yours as I eat you up. I want to see your face, every single expression you make—I bet you look so cute, so goddamn... erotic.”

Your hold around your phone loosens but fortunately for you, the pillow pressing against it keeps it close to your ear. “Touch yourself,” you breathily murmurs, “I want you to touch yourself too.”

“I am, baby,” Donghyuck softly moans, his fingers tightening around his length. “What else do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stroke yourself harder and run your thumb over your slit.” Donghyuck zealously follows, cursing under his breath at the pleasure. “And I want you to keep doing it until my name escapes your lips.”

“God, I want you.” He repeats your name over and over again, as ordered, with him stroking himself faster each time. “Noona, I want your mouth on me. I want to see you hollow your cheeks around me—like how you did to me when we were backstage, that time after the concert. You looked so pretty that night, so eager—so desperate for me—”

“Me too. I want to make you feel good too. I—” You nip at your bottom lip, feeling goosebumps creeping up your skin when he moans out your name. You’ve always loved his voice, loved it more than anything else in the world, and the sounds he makes when he’s in bed with you is the sexiest thing that even your poor mind can’t even begin to imagine. And now, focusing solely on his voice, listening to his filthy, sinful words, he’s driving you to the edge of your sanity.

“I’ve touched myself before at the thought of you,” he confesses breathlessly, “Several times, even way before we started dating.”

You’re trembling at the thought. “Haechannie—”

“You don’t know just how much—” The sound of him trying to stifle down a moan only makes you crave for him more. “—how much I wanted you back then. How much I want you now. Even during high school, I just—I wanted you—wanted to touch you—wanted—ah fuck,” a whine slipped out his lips, “Wanted to hold you so bad, to make love to you until—”

At the rustling sounds, him whimpering at his touches, and you rubbing yourself on the perfect spot, you know you won’t last long. “H-Hyuck, are you close?”

“Just a little bit more, Noona, ah—” He thrashes his head against the pillow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows hard. “Fuck, I need to be inside you. I need to feel you clenching your walls around me.” At the memory of you gazing at him with anticipation building inside your seductive, half-lidded eyes, as you parted your legs to give him permission to ravish you the way he wanted, Donghyuck quickens the pace, thrusting vigorously into his hand. “Fuck yourself with your fingers, baby, please.”

You’re more than keen to follow, inserting one digit inside your heat with another one following soon after. You can visualize him bringing your legs in the air until they dangle over his shoulders, his hips slamming hard against yours with each thrust. “Hyuck—”

“If you were here right now,” he nearly growls, “I would fuck you so hard until you’re mewling my name against the sheets. And I won’t stop, I won’t stop even if you beg me to. I won’t stop until I’m done with you.”

Donghyuck doesn’t sound like he’s trying to dirty talk which only makes it even more arousing to your ear. It’s as if he’s losing control of his mouth, just saying anything that comes to mind. The honesty, the urgency, his breathy, desperate calls of your name between lewd words—

You choke out a sob. “Hyuck—I’m close—”

“Me too—N-noona—Kiss me—”

It’s one of the most intense orgasms you’ve ever felt and it’s funny because you never really enjoyed touching yourself before. Donghyuck follows a few seconds after, moaning your name so erotically that will probably give you a hard time falling asleep for days at the thought of it. You’re left dazed, staring at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes. Your phone lays forgotten on the pillow next to you. Mustering all the strength you have left, you reach out for it. “Hyuck…?”

You can hear him breathing heavily. “I’m here,” he says. “Are you okay? Did you get to come?”

“Y-yes.” Now that it’s over, you begin to feel self-conscious again and the heat that blooms on your cheeks nearly wash every bit of your orgasm away in an instant. “Did you?”

“I made a huge mess.” He chuckles, sounding just as embarrassed as you are. “Fuck, didn’t realize it was going to be this good when we started. What would’ve happened if we had Face-Timed each other instead?”

Your head nearly explodes at the thought. “One step at a time, Hyuck. I’m practically dying from shame right now.”

He laughs a little at that. “So, you don’t really oppose the idea? Man, I have something to look forward to then.”

“Shut up, you’re gross. Is this the reason you called me?”

“No,” he hastily says, “I swear, I called because I missed hearing your voice.” Then he thinks about it again. “Well, I mean, I have been thinking about doing, uhh, these kinds of things with you but trust me, it wasn’t the reason why I called.”

“Sure,” you flatly reply, teasing him.

“Yah, yah, yah, it’s your fault for saying that you were wearing nothing but my shirt!”

“It’s your fault for asking me what I was wearing!”

It’s always like this with him. You’re bickering at one point, having sex at another time, then goes back to bickering once again. But it’s endearing, you suppose, because after this, you’ll be murmuring loving words, and just when you begin to think about it, Donghyuck whispers into the phone.

“I love you, Noona. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

And you smile. “I love you too, Haechannie. You’re the second best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“What the hell is the first one?”

“Chicken nuggets.”

“You’re so dead.”

***

[chrisevansjellybeans]

Undercover- Mob! Steve Rogers Part 2

Okay here is the highly requested part two to my Mob! Steve post! I had some technical difficulties posting it but hopefully you guys see it in the tags now :)

Warnings: swearing and smut

Word count: 2.8k

“When I said go undercover, I didn’t mean under his covers, Agent.” Director Fury slammed his hand down on his desk. It had now officially been twenty-four hours since your encounter with the mob boss and you had been waiting anxiously all day to talk with Nick Fury. The rumor around the office all day was that he wasn’t too pleased with how things went down.

“I did what I had to do, sir.” You stated boldly.

Fury scoffed but didn’t respond.

He was quiet for a moment, his eye scanning over the piece of paper in his hand. You fidgeted uncomfortably as your legs were still sore from your romp last night and you tried to hold it together as Fury gave you a weird look.

“Just sit down, Y/N.”

You muttered a thank you as you took a seat.

“Listen, this is all good and fine but I want more. This,” He waved the note in his hand. “Is just a drug felony. I want this bastard put away for life.”

“But what about Stark?”

“A slippery politician, nothing more. I want insight on just more than this. I want it all.”

You sat back in the chair. You understood where he was coming from, but he was also acting like you hadn’t just uncovered a huge piece of information.

“Sir-”

“Which is why you’re going to continue...seeing Rogers. Your undercover assignment has just been extended until further notice.”

“But, sir!” You stood up in protest.

“But nothing, Agent. You’ve made your bed and you’ve already lied in it. Now do it again.” He snapped.

“Are you pimping me out, sir?”

“You did that yourself, Y/N.” Fury snarked. “Anyway, as we speak I have other agents creating an entire new identity for you on the internet so when Roger’s does eventually look you up he’ll find everything we want him to find.”

You felt yourself sinking back down into the chair. He was being completely serious. You suddenly felt very hot as you processed all the information coming at you.

“And what exactly is it going to say?”

“That you are Y/N Monroe. You are the same age as you are now and a barista at the coffee shop just below your apartment. You went to the University of Minnesota and graduated with a business degree, but currently can’t find any jobs. Pity. Your parents died when you were young and you have no siblings-no need to wrap anyone else up in this. We’ve made an Instagram account since that seems to be the most popular app among adults your age. I pushed for no socials but apparently it’s weirder if you don’t have one.”

“Okay...but I don’t have a coffee shop below my apartment.”

“You do now. Your stuff is being moved into a safe house apartment on the other side of town. That’s where you’ll be staying for now. Don’t worry, I have Parker holed up in the apartment two doors down.”

You bit the inside of your cheek to try to calm down. There was nothing else you could do. Fury was right, you had made your bed. You reached over and grabbed the file that Fury had pushed towards the front of the desk. Your new life all put together in a Manila folder.

Damn you, Ma and your slutty advice.

“You can go now.” Fury waved you away, now totally focused on whatever file he had in front of him. You hesitated, wanting to say something but nothing came so you left.

“Y/N!” Peter ran up beside you as you stormed down the hallway. “Heard we’re gonna be neighbors.”

You smiled at how excited he was. “It’s only temporary, Parker. Don’t wet your pants.”

Peter blushed and gently shoved you to the side as you both continued walking. “I know that. But doesn’t mean it won’t be fun. We could have movie nights or something.”

“I suppose we could find some time.” You nudged him back.

“Oh here, before I forget.” Peter shoved a brand new iPhone into your hand. “Fury had me add some tweaks to the geo location so it’s more precise than what Apple has. My burner number is already programmed in there too.”

You studied the burner phone, impressed that they didn’t just give you another shitty tracfone like you were used to.

“Thanks, kid.”

“I’m not that much younger than you.” Peter grumbled as the two of you finally made it to the parking structure.

You smirked over your shoulder as you walked up to your Jeep Wrangler. “Young enough. ‘Night, kid!”

Peter flipped you off but was smiling the whole time as you drove off.

You punched in your new address in the GPS and followed along as it brought you to the older part of town. You had always loved this part of the city but never thought to move out here. Even though it wasn’t the new upcoming neighborhood, the rent prices had been driven up by the young kids moving in who just “adored the old time aesthetic” and the lofted buildings.

Your building was one of those you noted as you parked your car outside of your new address. The old brick building was tall, maybe six stories and had fire escapes littered across the front of it. The front door was a rusted green that you had to yank to budge to get open.

Extra security, I suppose. You laughed to yourself.

Your apartment was on the third floor and right off the freight elevator. You weren’t expecting much when you opened the door but you made a noise of pleasant surprise when you did.

The inside was warm and inviting. A plush gray sofa that resembled a cloud was center in your living room that you saw right away from the small entry hallway. As you stepped in further you saw a decent size tv mounted against the wall and two bookshelves on either side of it, filled with books and records that went along with the record player that was right underneath the television. To the left the living room was the kitchen. Nothing big, which you didn’t mind-you weren’t the best cook in the world. There was a small bar-like counter that had two barstools perched underneath. Down the small hallway you found your bedroom. A king sized bed covered in an off white comforter set with matching sheets. Small potted plants hung from the corner near the window and an array of makeup and perfumes littered the top of the wooden dresser.

Tentatively you opened the dressers to find a whole new wardrobe waiting for you. There were basics: such as t-shirts, jeans, bras and panties but there was also a whole drawer dedicated to skimpy lingerie that you knew was expensive. The walk-in closet was filled with dresses, some formal and some you wouldn’t let your grandmother even see hanging off the rack.

“Well done, Fury.” You mumbled to yourself as your fingers ran down the silk fabric of a long evening gown.

You were settling on to your couch, sweats on and a glass of wine in your hand when you heard a knock on the door. Slowly you got up, grabbing your gun from the plant next to the door. You looked through the peephole and let out a curse when you saw none other than Steve Rogers standing outside your apartment.

You shoved the gun back into the plant and ran your fingers through your hair before opening the door, but leaving the chain attached.

“Mr. Rogers, how can I help you?” Your eyes twinkled as the man in front of you rested his arm on the top of the door frame and leaned close to the opening you had created.

“You said I would see you soon, princess. Looks like soon is now.” The nickname again caused your stomach to flutter.

“I was just getting ready for bed. You’ll have to come by another time.” You feigned a yawn. Steve’s eyes blared as he stood up straight.

“It’s rude to keep your guests waiting, Miss Monroe.” Your heart jumped at the use of your alias. Thank god your team worked fast.

“And it’s rude to show up to people’s apartments unannounced, Mr. Rogers.”

“Open the door, sweetheart.” He hissed, but his eyes held anything but anger. He was intrigued. He never found a woman before who wasn’t afraid to dish back his sass. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

“Say please.” You teased through the opening.

“Please.” He said through gritted teeth.

Chuckling you closed the door gently and undid the chain. Before you could reopen it though, Steve pushed his way through scooping you up in his arms as he did. You naturally wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms held tight around him as you squealed against his neck.

He walked you back into the living room and plopped down on the couch, holding you so you were still straddling him.

You pulled away but kept your arms hanging loosely around him. He smirked up at you as his fingers toyed with the hem of the tank top you had on. His eyes fell to the wine that was only half drank on your coffee table.

“Heading off to bed soon, huh?”

“My bedtime snack.”

There was a part of your brain that recognized him for who he was: evil. But another part of your brain saw him as the man who made your body feel things that it had never felt before and that had your heart racing like a schoolgirl with a crush. The part that recognized that he was so easy to talk and joke with. The great sex wasn’t a bummer either.

His smirk was replaced by a genuine smile as he pulled you down and gave you a kiss that had your toes curling. He moaned into your mouth as you slowly ground your hips against his, your fingers tugging at the hair by his neck. His tongue massaged yours, letting you know exactly who was in charge at this moment. His hands ran underneath your tank top, fingers tracing up your spine before reaching the front and giving your nipples a slight twist.

He moved his mouth from yours and peppered kisses along the side of your neck as he lifted the tank top over your head. He threw it to the side as his mouth attached to your protruding bud while his fingers pinched and toyed with the other one. Skillfully, and with his mouth still attached to you, Steve flipped you over so your back was on the couch and he was on top of you. He lifted his head, his blue eyes clouded with lust as he started kissing down from the center of your chest, down your stomach and down your legs as he pulled your sweats along with him.

He hummed as he spread your bottom lips apart with his fingers, licking a stripe from your hole to your clit. You wiggled your hips against his face but he responded with a smack against your core.

“Honey, you gotta learn who’s in charge here and who’s-“ he kissed your clit ever so slightly, teasing you. “Just a little cock slut.”

His tongue circled over your bundle of nerves while fingers toyed with your slick. Gently he pushed two fingers into your pussy. Your eyes fluttered closed as his steady rhythm and flick of his tongue brought your orgasm to the forefront.

“Shit, Steve…” you whimpered, gripping his hair and pulling him close. “Oh fuck, I’m close!”

“Let me taste you, princess.” Steve growled. You nearly lost it at the sigh of your juices dripping from his chin. “Give it to me like the good girl you are.”

“Oh god!” You called out as he hit that spongy spot that caused your thighs to tighten around his head. Your body spasmed as it rode out your orgasm. Your chest heaving and your legs shaking as he slowly pulled his fingers from you. A moan was caught in your throat as you watched him put his soaked fingers between his lips, a look of pure satisfaction covering his perfect face.

Steve leaned his body over yours but careful not to let his full weight fall on you. He ran his nose up the side of your neck, along your cheek before letting it rub against your own. You grabbed his neck, pulling him into a deep kiss. There was something so erotic about tasting yourself when your tongues met.

“Show me your bedroom?” Steve pulled away. You gave a weak nod. Steve stood up and hoisted you up, your legs weak beneath you.

“Poor baby.” He cooed in your ear. “Only one orgasm down and already can’t walk. I can’t imagine how you’ll be when I’m done with you.”

With that he lifted you and walked down your short hallway to the bedroom. In your hazy, post orgasm mind you hoped the mattress was comfy. You hadn’t even tested out beforehand.

Steve threw you on the bed and you sighed as you fell into the cloud. You leaned back on your elbows and watched as Steve unbuttoned the new shirt and trousers he had on. You stifled your laughter thinking about the wine stained ones back at his house.

“Something amusing to you, sweetheart?” He grabbed your ankle and pulled you towards the end of the bed. He lifted your foot up, setting it over his shoulder as he kissed the inside of your calf.

“No, sir.” You teased.

“You’re a bad liar.” He nipped at your knee.

Not as bad as you might think.

Steve made you come at least four more times that night. Your body completely spent when he finally rolled over and laid next to you, yours and his body covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

You rolled over and threw your leg and arm over his body, nuzzling your head into the crook of his neck. Steve’s fingers toyed with yours as he pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“Spend the night?” You asked into the darkness. It was nearly three in the morning and your eyes were slowly closing no matter how much you willed them to stay open.

“I have some business things that I have to take care of early in the morning.” He answered, his fingers running up and down your arm.

“Oh, okay.” You said sadly. Steve’s chest rumbled with light laughter as he brought your hand that was in his up to his lips and gave it a kiss. You were soon realizing that he was actually a very affectionate person.

“But I want you to come back to the house tomorrow. I’ll send one of my guys for you in the afternoon.”

“Really?” You sat up. Steve blindly reached for your nightstand and turned on the lamp that was on it. His hair was tousled from the numerous times you had run your fingers through it and his lips were red and swollen. He looked like the epitome of sex and it was fucking hot.

“Yes, really.” He chuckled. He grabbed your phone that was on the nightstand and held it out for you to unlock. You did quickly and he took it back and started typing. “I don’t give out my personal number to a lot of people.”

“So I’m special.” You wiggled in your spot, a grin covering your face.

“Yes. You are.” Steve looked back at you and you were taken aback by the sincerity in his tone. He handed your phone back to you and you laughed at the name he had for his contact: Steve Rogers and an eggplant emoji.

“You’re a child.” You giggled.

Steve rolled his eyes and got out of bed and you took the time to appreciate his bum as he walked over to get his pants.

You gathered the soft sheets in your hand and brought them up to your chest. Although you weren’t sure what you were trying to hide, he had seen it all.

Once he was dressed and you slipped on a robe that you found hanging behind the door, you walked him out. He stood in your doorframe, his large figure making the space seem very small. He smiled as he tucked a loose piece of hair behind your head and leaned down and gave you a kiss.

“Make sure to lock all the doors behind me. And text me when you wake up tomorrow.” He demanded softly.

“Mmmkay, I will.” You said hazily.

“Go get some sleep, princess.” He laughed as he pushed away from the door and walked to the elevator. You watched as he got in and gave you a quick wave before whipping out his phone to make a call.

Once he was out of sight you closed the door softly, making sure to bolt everything before heading back to your bed. You were too tired to even clean up before you passed out.

[lovesomehate]

Hey! It’s booty shorts Jacob again aka Annie. I’ve come to drop a new au. I hope it’s not too long and it wasn’t cut off or anything. Also, it’s been a little while I popped in. How are you as well? Have you been good? I just got caught up on some assignments. Here’s the au:

(Ryan, Jacob, Chris, and Bobby are around the same age. They’re within three years of each other. Laura is 7 years older then them and a year younger than Travis. Caleb and Kaylee are Travis’ kids. 🤫. Anyway, Hackearney, Chryan, and Jacobby supremacy!!! iPhone items are around because I’m lazy.)

Travis sat in his car hidden by the tall trees in the dark. He angled his car just enough in the tree line, he was bored and damn near ready to 10-7 out of there. He was tired, until a green suv sped past him. He clocked the speed and sighed, “Of course we got some kids speeding.” He flickered on his lights as he passed the route 919 sign. He followed behind them for a few minutes before the car stopped, he pressed on his radio. “Dispatch, 10-28… New York license plate.” He rattled off the numbers, the voice called back. “It’s coming back to a Caleb Kearney… it’s clean.” Kearney brought back painful memories he didn’t want to relive. ‘Family is supposed to be the most important thing in the world to you travis. How do you want to protect us when you won’t leave them? I thought I was your family!’ ‘You are Laura. But those are my parents… I can’t… look just stay and we can talk.’ ‘No, you made your choice. I guess blood is thicker than water. Enjoy your REAL family.’ That argument was stupid. It started for no reason, it was like Laura loved to start with him. They needed an occasional argument but this one was too sensitive. And things happened. Travis opened the door at that and made his way to the car. He could hear hushed whispers in the car, it was two people from what he could see. He stopped by the window.

In the car the young kids jumped briefly, he knocked on the window. The boy rolled it down, “Great night we’re having huh officer?” Travis sighed as he looked at them, “Are you aware of why I stopped you?” The boy looked at the girl who fumbled a bit. “Uh… because you can tell we’re lost?” He gave them an unamused look, “You were speeding. Would you mind telling me why you were going triple digits on a 65?” The boy shrugged at him, “Hey sir, it’s dark and spooky here. We’re camp counselors. We’re just trying to get away from the trees and shit.” Travis clicked his tongue, “License. Both of you.” The girl reached up and pressed the over head light on, she gathered it out of her purse and his wallet. She handed it over. He nodded, “I’ll be right back.”

Travis went to his car and got in, his body was unforgiving to his car. No matter how many times he adjusted the seat. The years has not been good for him. He remembered how he used to roll out of bed unbothered, now he needed a few pep talks, at 43, he should be retired. He clicked his overhead light and paused, “Caleb and Kaylee Kearney. Huh? Kearney… there’s plenty in the world. They’re twins. 22 years old.”

Kaylee shifted in her seat and looked behind them, “That dude is giving me odd vibes. Why was he staring at us like that?” Caleb shrugged at her, “How am I supposed to know. Jeez though, he’s creepy.” She groaned as she looked down, “You think mom is going to notice us here? I mean our lie about cross country was kinda thin.” Caleb scoffed, “She’ll be animals. She’ll be fine.” He shifted in his seat, “Plus, we help the kids. We dig into our background for our father and maybe our moms parents and we’ll go back home before college.” Kaylee nodded, “Sure. Sounds easy.” The cop eventually came back to the window, Caleb jumped again. “Come on dude. You need a bell or something. Your feet doesn’t make a noise.” The cop didn’t say anything, he cut his eyes towards Kaylee. She fidgeted in her chair, her dark eyes locked onto his. “What are you two doing out this late?” Kaylee looked away, “Uh, you know… we’re camp counselors at the Quarry. Hacketts Quarry.” Caleb frowned, “Don’t say Quarry. Quarry is a place where you get minerals out of or extract them is the proper term. It’s a summer camp.” Travis shook his head, “Uh, counselors aren’t expected tonight. Tomorrow morning. Yes. Not tonight. I can point you to a motel to rest in.”

Kaylee looked from him to her phone, it said mom across the screen. She answered it and was speaking to a face but Travis couldn’t see or hear. It wasn’t until he watched her brush some of her hair behind her ear, he seen a headphone. Caleb nodded, “Yeah, we’ll take the motel. She gets cranky like our mom if she’s no where on time but I could use some rest.” Travis nodded, he watched Kaylee end the call because her attention was back on them. Both the children looked vaguely familiar, yet he couldn’t place them. They’re too young to be related to any Kearney he knows and the oldest ones are dead. They died young. The one that grew up with him, Laura, he doesn’t think they could be directly related. But Caleb’s blue eyes are something that can’t be ignored. Same way Kaylee’s dark eyes seem familiar.

He cleared his throat when he realized he was just staring. “Uh, I’m letting you go… just… be careful. If you two follow the road, it will be the next right to the Harbinger Motel. Okay?” Caleb and Kaylee both nodded and watched him slowly walk away from the car. “What did mom want?” Kaylee shrugged, “Wanted to know if we got here yet and how she’s disappointed that she learned we were coming out here from uncle Ryan.” Caleb groaned, “Man uncle Ryan can’t hold water!!! He’s always telling on us!” Kaylee looked at her phone, “Should we turn our location on just in case?” Caleb nodded, “Mom already knows we’re here. It’s only right. And let’s get a room too. I’m tired.”

Kaylee looked over at her phone, she groaned, “Ugh. This guy. Caleb your step dad is calling.” Caleb looked down, “Max is your stepdad. I’d rather find out who our real dad is. Mom went to school here. We just find uncle Jacob and uncle Ryan and we crack the code.” Kaylee finally answered the FaceTime and pulled her airpod from her ear. “Hi, Max.” He grinned, “Hey kiddos. Did you make it safe? Do you need money? Did you get stopped? You weren’t speeding were you? What cop stopped you?” Caleb started to squeeze and crunch an old chip bag in one of his hands, “Uh oh. The connection… I can’t hear you- oh no.” Kaylee clicked the end button before she laughed, “You’re a bully.” Caleb laughed too, “Yeah, we need to get mom and our real dad back together. This guy? He sucks Kaylee… he’s so nonchalant. He doesn’t push mom. He gets pushed over. I know whoever dad is… he has to be like perfect or something.” Kaylee nodded, “I mean, yeah, mom talks about the guy a lot. How many people do you think remember them being together?” Caleb looked up at the motel they were nearing, “The Harbinger… sounds like a murderer stays here.” Kaylee laughed, “You’re stupid. Come on. Let’s get our room.”

Laura paced her bedroom, she ran her hands down her face. “Laura, you’re being over dramatic-“ She whipped around, “Max! Shut up! I let them go cross country to California! Why are they in North Kill huh? Why’d they stop at the Harbinger motel?” Max shrugged at her, she sighed, “They’re going to meet him. Or he’s going to meet them.” Max reached for her hand, “You shouldn’t care. We’re together now…” Laura looked down at him, “Max… do you realize I still love him. We had plans. We planned our lives out with each other. I chose that college because it was near his police academy! I never even told him I was pregnant. He must think I’m a bitch for withholding information.” Max shook his head, “You did what you thought was best for you.” Laura pulled her hand free from him, “No! I wanted him to choose between his family and me because he loved me! Not because I was giving him kids. But no, Constance and Jedediah get sick and he has to stay to take care of him. Ugh…” She sat down on the bed, Max looked at her, his eyes were sad. She groaned, “Look, I know I keep putting off what we are… Max… I’m sorry for all of this coming out now. But I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts. I couldn’t be alone with my guilt.” He stood up and looked at her, he cross his arms as his eyes flamed. “I stayed with you for over 10 years. I thought things might bloom. But it was like we were best friends raising some kids. I loved them like they were my own… this… Laura maybe you are selfish. Maybe if you do show your face, he wouldn’t want you back. I want you know that you’ll deserve it.” When he left the room, she heard the front door slam shut. She was alone with her thoughts. Her thoughts on how she inadvertently messed up both relationships.

Chris smiled as he looked at the counselors, Nick, Emma, Abigail, Caleb, Kaylee, Kaitlyn, Dylan, and Silas stood in front of him. “Hacketteers welcome!” Caleb rolled his eyes and looked at Kaylee, she looked up at Chris. They’ve technically grew up knowing him, he was their uncle through their uncle Ryan. They just didn’t know how close their family was in actuality. “Alright, Caleb, Sports Coordinator.” Caleb nodded, “Kaylee, nurses station.” He went on to assign the rest of the counselors. Nick was the cook. Emma was doing theater. Abigail was art. Kaitlyn was the activities coordinator. Dylan was announcements. And Silas was activities assistant and sailing coordinator. Everyone was chatting and talking, Caleb looked at Kaylee, “I’m going down to the town… go get some snacks. And adult stuff.” Silas cut his eyes at him, “Mind if I come?” Caleb shrugged, “Shit, more hands to carry stuff.”

Constance held onto Jedediah’s forearm as they walked out the market. She went stiff when she seen Travis coming towards them, only it wasn’t their son. The blue eyes told her everything she needed to know. “Oh my Heavens… Jed… do you…” He nodded, “I do. Is he… is that our boys son?” She swallowed, “No, because Travis would’ve told us. He and the girl, they broke up. What was her name?” Jed shifted his weight to hold them, “Uh, Lucy? I can’t remember… it was years ago… the Kearneys… they’re dead. They’ve been gone for awhile. Their house is still boarded up down the road.” Caleb got closer as a plastic bag fell, he kneeled to gather the groceries, “Hey, here. I don’t think you guys need your produce bruised up.” Constance looked at him like she seen a ghost, especially the goofy way he smiled. It looked like their son, but their son was void of any humor. Any light. His dark eyes looked haunted ever since the girl left. Their relationship strained but he wouldn’t admit to it. Constance knows, she knows he blames them. But they had Chris and Bobby, he made it his choice to stay with them. He had someone worth fighting for but he- “Ma’am… are you alright?” She coughed and Jed looked down at her with a warning in his eyes, “I’m fine. Thank you young man. For help.” Caleb nodded, he had the goofy grin again, “Hey, you know, it’s always good to help. Mom raised me and my sister to help people. Just like family. All you have is family. They’re the most important thing in the world.” Silas was in the background, Jedediah narrowed his eyes at the boy just slinking about. “Erm, that’s great! Sounds like your mom is a nice woman… uh, bye.” He pulled on his wife, she finally took her eyes off Caleb and looked at Silas. The boy looked familiar. But she couldn’t linger. Silas whistled a funny tune, “That old woman recognized you.” Caleb scoffed, “I’ve never seen her a day in my life. Anyway, you a beer or a liquor guy?” Silas frowned, “Uh, neither. Mother doesn’t let me drink…” Caleb frowned, “Lame. I’ll get both… you can never go wrong with with too much alcohol.”

Chris held his face in his hands, Ryan scratched his head, “Uh, you mean to tell me you guys don’t know that Caleb and Kaylee is Travis’ kids?” Chris looked up, “No! Travis didn’t tell us! And how was I supposed to know! There’s like Kearneys all over the world!” Ryan sighed, “No, your big brother made his choice. And I guess Laura made hers.” Chris moved his hand to his mouth he bit down on his knuckle, he immediately paused. “Travis doesn’t know does he?” Ryan cringed and Chris groaned, “Oh god! I know now! I can’t lie to him! He’s going to kick my ass because he’s going to think I’ve known! What the fuck Ryan!” Ryan shrugged at him, “Jacob knows! Why are you yelling at me?” Chris sighed and stood up, he pressed a kiss to Ryan’s lips, “I will be buried alive when Travis finds out. Make sure my funeral is lively… don’t let him just leave me in a hole. Invite people.” Ryan rolled his eyes, “Now you’re overreacting.”

Caleb found Kaylee on the side of the road, she was on someone’s porch peering in through slats of wood. Silas looked over, “Isn’t that your sister?” Caleb was already unbuckling his seatbelt, “Regretfully. Here, I’ll be back.” He got out the car and ran up to the porch, “Kay, what are you doing?” She looked over her shoulder, “This is the old Kearney house. I thought we’d at least meet some grandparents. I guess not. The phone book had this address in it.” Caleb grabbed her bookbag and slung it over his shoulder, “Jeez. You lugged this all the way here? This weighs as much as you.” Kaylee shoved him, “I found out from uncle Ryan before he stopped talking, our fathers name is Travis. I think it starts with an ‘H’. He made a ‘ha’ noise before running and locking himself in the room with uncle Chris. If you take me to the library before the kids get here tomorrow I think we can google.” Caleb nodded, Kaylee followed him to the suv and climbed in. She looked at the bags, “You do realize we’re going to have to hide the beers and liquor. We’re around kids.” Caleb nodded, “We’ll party when they’re asleep.” Silas shyly smiled at Kaylee, she smiled back, “You’re quiet and observing Silas. You should liven up a little. It’s camp.” He shrugged to himself, “Mother didn’t want me to make noise unless it was howls and growls for some extra money.” Caleb looked in the rear view mirror, she caught his look. It read, he’s been saying shit like this the whole ride. Please stop it. She nodded, “Well your moms not here.”

Jacob and Bobby covered for Caleb and Kaylee without knowing it. They were just up there talking with Chris when Ryan noticed they were missing. Kaylee signed in to use a computer, Caleb looked over her shoulder as she typed. “Okay, Travis Haack.” Kaylee hummed, “Died as a baby. Next.” Caleb tilted his head, “Travis Haag?” Kaylee clicked around, “In prison longer than we’ve been alive… longer than mom has been alive.” Caleb ran his finger down the line, “Travis Habecker.” Kaylee looked at the screen, “He died by drowning… in 1970.” Caleb stopped at a name, he hummed, “This is familiar… Travis Hackett. Uncle Chris’ and Bobby’s last name.” Kaylee shrugged and typed the name in. “Oh… he’s the sheriff-“ Caleb pushed her aside, “That was totally the creep that pulled us over… see if you see a yearbook. He probably went to school with mom.” Kaylee found one and clicked on it, “Class of 1983… but mom was a junior. I found Kearney…” LAURA KEARNEY, JUNIOR. They zoomed into their mothers smiling face, she had huge hair. They couldn’t stop laughing. The librarian sent them several looks. “Okay… Caleb you have moms eyes… and her smile. But you don’t look like her. I do.” Caleb nodded, “You probably have dads coloring. I mean, aside from the blonde hair. I have to have his hair.” Kaylee searched and found TRAVIS HACKETT, SENIOR. Kaylee’s jaw dropped, “Caleb. That’s you. That’s you if you wore glasses. That whole awkward face you make… Eww our dad is a creepy cop.” Caleb rolled his eyes, he looked down as he studied the image. “Wait. Do you think that’s why he let us go? Wow. He missed 22 birthdays and said, hey I’ll let them off with a warning.” Kaylee looked at Caleb, her brother was a hot head and quick to get in any emotional distress. She knew he was going to be beat up over this. Especially because their mother raised them with family in mind. “Come on, let’s cool down before we go back.”

Laura’s hands gripped her steering wheel as she sped down the street. She passed the Route 919 sign on her right. She needed to explain it to her children, she can’t let them find out. But judging by Caleb’s text ominous text, ‘Thanks for everything mom.’ They definitely know who their father is. “Shit! Fuck! God dammit!” She was nearing familiar territory when blue and red lights flickered on behind her car. “UGHHHHHH!!!!” She couldn’t see who was in the car, but god, if it was Travis she could keep going. She wouldn’t stop. She didn’t care. But if it wasn’t… she finally slowed down and pulled over. Laura brushed her blonde flyaways from her face and finger combed her hair. The officer was not Travis at all. It was some young kid that had a pimple sprouting on the top of his nose. She beat her hands against the wheel, this was going to take forever. “Good evening ma’am-“ Laura cut him off, “Look. Give me your sheriff. Your supervisor. Whoever. Get me Travis Hackett.” The young officer called out on the radio, she couldn’t hear Travis’ voice. But she knew he had to be irritated. The call was short. But she didn’t know how police radios worked.

Travis pulled up behind one of the older police cars and walked to the officer on scene. “Meyers. Why am I here?” He rested his hands on his hips, “The lady called you by name sir. But, she was clocked at going 125 down here heading towards the Quarry summer camp.” Travis ran a hand through his hair as he tried to incline his head to see who was in the car, “The lady… is she blonde? Does she have blue eyes-“ Meyers nodded, “Yep. She’s uh, beautiful. I mean… I don’t have her license…” Travis leveled him with a look, “That woman is a mother. And I don’t think a child is her type. You can go Meyers. I can take care of this.” Travis cupped his hand over his mouth and breathed out, he sniffed before he straightened his uniform and fixed his hair. He rested his large hand on his gun while he walked towards the car, he felt shell shocked when he locked eyes with Laura. She froze too. It’s been 22 years. It was one argument. It was one little fight and that resulted in them separating. But god, the connection was still strong because they both stared at each other and just stayed like that. No one uttered a word. “Ma’am… you do know you were clocked at 125?” Laura rolled her eyes and smiled, “You do know I don’t care right. I have to fix something.” Travis leaned against the car window, all propriety was out in the open. “Fix what? And don’t get bratty with me, I’ll take you down to the station.” It was easy between them, it could never be like this with her and Max. She felt the words roll off her tongue, “I bet you wish you could have me handcuffed at the station… you’re a naughty sheriff or something?” He couldn’t help the slight smirk, “Maybe only for you…” It’s like their argument hadn’t happened. It’s like them being separated never happened. It’s like they just got out of high school. Like no time passed, but Travis straightened up and felt his back crack all the way up to his neck and realized he was still old. “You didn’t say what you were going to fix…” Laura reached out and grabbed his hand, he laced their fingers together. “Why don’t you hate me… you know. I know you know. You know because I know you’re not stupid. You know?” He looked down at her as he clicked his tongue off his teeth, “Because I made the choice. I had to keep my family out the well but I left you stranded at the bottom… I wasn’t thinking.” Laura looked at him with sad eyes, “I wasn’t thinking. My parents died and… and I just didn’t want to lose you too and I did by making you choose.” He shook his head, “You never lost me. I uh… there’s been nobody else Laura. I pushed everyone away. Hell, my relationship with the family took a nosedive when you left. I worked and worked and look, Sheriff of North Kill.” She smiled, “I have my own animal hospital downtown, Kearneys Klinic.” He reached down to fix a strand of hair, it was a force of habit. When they were younger, he didn’t want her eyes covered by anything. “You know your son drives like you?” Laura laughed, “Oh, he does? Did he get out a ticket like me?” Travis shook his head, “He sounded like a smart ass. Your daughter was just as quippy as you were though.” Laura sighed and looked over, “Why don’t I park my car at your house and you take me to the Quarry?” He looked at the watch on his right wrist, “It’s 2 in the morning… why don’t you get some rest?” Laura nodded and unloosened their fingers, “Well, guess I’m sleeping at your place too.” He snorted as he stood up, “Yeah… uh, I’m not trying to be a homewrecker Laura. If you’re happy-“ She reached out for his tie and pulled him down to her head level, he tried to swallow to keep from choking. She glared at him with flamed eyes, “It was never a home to begin with without you Travis. And there was somebody but he wasn’t you… I missed you.” She pressed her lips to his but pulled away just as fast, “Lead me to your house. I’m tired and I haven’t had a decent nights sleep since I left all those years ago.”

Caleb frowned at Laura, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Kaylee cringed as she looked at the man in a flannel and dirty jeans. Jacob and Bobby were making busy like they were cleaning the bar but they were trying to eavesdrop, “Oh no, Jacob. This glass fell.” He pushed it off the bar. Jacob cleared his throat, “I’ll get that for you Bobby. Don’t you worry.” Travis wanted to yell at them but this was as private as they could get. “So…? Uh…” Laura closed her eyes to breathe deeply, “Children. Your father and I loved each other like a lot. But he had duties and I had duties and I was hoping to like tell you guys sooner. First of all, I didn’t know you were offered a summer camp job. I would’ve said no. But, look, travis is your dad. And I’m sorry you didn’t know it sooner.” Caleb glared hard until a grin popped on his face, “When you said I was handsome like my father… you lied?” Kaylee giggled and looked away. Laura scowled, “Your father was hot. He was peak hotness when I was at school. Yeah, he wore glasses but he didn’t have acne or braces.” Kaylee nodded, “No, because you had the braces mom. We took pictures of your yearbook pictures. 1983 what a time to be alive.” Jacob snorted and Travis looked back, both he and Bobby ducked behind the bar. Travis sighed, “Look, I can’t erase 22 years of me missing from your lives but I can try to be there for the next 22.” Caleb raised his eyebrows, “How do you know you’ll live that long?” Travis rubbed the back of his neck, “My parents are still alive.” Laura looked at him, “Still?” The kids noticed she said it like she was surprised. “I thought they were sick?” Travis shrugged, “Yeah, they were. They started to hate this woman from some odd sideshow and I guess hate keeps them alive. She had a ‘dog boy’ it’s some kid that makes like wolf noises for money. He’s albino and kinda freaky looking. I had to shut down the attraction a few times in the past.” Kaylee looked at him, “Holy shit! Silas? He’s a counselor. His mom doesn’t let him live. Like Caleb destroys his liver on a nightly basis and that kid won’t even sniff a beer bottle.” Laura arched her brow at Caleb, Bobby spoke, “He gets it from Travis. We seen the old aged whiskey in his car. Real top shelf product-“ Travis cleared his throat, “Leave.”

Everyone was surprised at the way the family showed up to the Hackett house. Constance fell in love with Kaylee, it was probably because there was never girls around. She was excited to meet her. Jedediah was talking about how he knew Caleb had to be his. Laura thought things would be awkward, she didn’t tell them or him about their extended family. Instead everyone welcomed them with open arms, even Constance’s judgy face never showed up once. When Laura got pulled in a hug she knew the older Hacketts had to be replaced. Constance used to say she was never enough for Travis, but here she is getting a hug from the surely woman. Laura looked over at Travis, “If I ask you now… would you leave?” He shook his head, “North Kill has always been our home… it’s my turn to ask you… would you leave?” Laura looked at how excited and talkative everyone was. Jacob and Bobby were sitting by Constance hearing about Kaylee’s future dreams. Ryan and Chris were with Jedediah and Caleb, the sports talk and science talk had them interested. “Honestly… the city has been a little too loud for me lately. I think a change of scenery could do me good. And, you guys have a lot of animals that need help.”

The end. Travis and Laura get together and stay in North Kill. Laura finds out he bought her a ring all those years ago, she demands he marry her now definitely or she’ll leave again. He does. Half of the town show up. Chris stays running the Quarry. Kaylee actually became a reoccurring counselor because she loves kids. Silas was able to live a little by being friends with Kaylee, she begged her father to look into the obviously illegal practices that Eliza ran. Travis arrested the woman for abuse, private property damage, among other things. Ryan’s animated pilot for Hacketteers’ Nightmares gets the green light. The first season is about werewolves. Jacob and Bobby stays in all the town gossip because of sportsbar and people are drunk when they talk to them. Caleb dropped science and just took up football, after all he had an arm on him. Max moved on but old memories hurt when he seen Caleb being drafted on tv and seen Kaylee, Travis, and Laura behind him. Travis and Laura were wearing matching rings and looked genuinely happy. And he was oddly, happy for her.

That was a whole ass trip gjsnfnsnfnsbfn Booty Shorts Jacob you never disappoints. This was soooo good 😂 I love the idea of everyone that knew young Travis taking a look at Caleb and being like “yep that one belongs to Travis for sure” 😂😂😂

Laura and Travis being that one couple from school that everyone knew would end up married. Well they weren’t wrong, just took them 22 years to do it😂😂😂😂

I’m going to be thinking about this au for a while now 🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴