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juniorgman187 · 4 years ago

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Serendipity (Reid Fic) Part 1

A/N: If you’re wondering if this is at all based on Rosie and Marco’s storyline in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” then you should know - it totally is.

Summary: An FBI gathering brings Reader and Spencer together after years of distance. This one night changes not only their future, but their perspective on the past. Category: Angst, Smut, *NSFW content Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: Mentions of traumatic childhood, child neglect, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, menstruation, pregnancy Word Count: 10.2k

I originally thought I would be able to fit everything into 1 part, but after further reconsideration, this will be a two part series.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

Serendipity: (n). Finding something good without looking for it.

A word I would only come to truly understand many months from now on a warm Thursday morning in May at St. Mary’s Hospital.

But whenever my thoughts drifted back towards the past, I would always remember that this was how it all began - on a chilly Saturday night in the heart of D.C.

Not more than four hours ago, Emilia and I drove down here for an F.B.I function that hired us. Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have agreed to be the caterers for an event so far away, but we eventually signed on after learning that there were at least 600 people attending. That meant a considerable amount of customers and an exorbitant amount of money. Saying yes was clearly a no brainer.

Just to put it into perspective of how big this event would be, Emilia and I got lucky if we could park somewhere with 80 customers. 80. So this event would be colossal for us.

But who would have guessed that in a crowd of 600, I would run into the one and only - Spencer Reid.

To preface, this wasn’t just any old birthday party, parade, or festival. It was a celebration and a grand one at that. Considering it was a private event at the Washington Monument, we were given special instructions to abide by the black-tie formal dress code that guests had to follow, too. I guess the caterers can’t look like slobs in the United States’ Capitol, now can they?

I definitely spent more time than I should have deciding on what outfit to wear, but my conscientiousness, or rather indecisiveness, did pay off in the end. For I would run into someone worth the trouble of impressing.

My hair, unlike Emilia’s, was down and curled in big waves, and on one side, some of my hair was tucked behind my ear and designed to stay that way thanks to copious amounts of hairspray and an ungodly total of bobby pins. Emilia lent me a black, floor-length dress that had a plunging v-neck that didn’t fit her anymore, but luckily, fit perfectly on me. Although I would have to remember not to lean over too far tonight, otherwise, the customers might get a show they didn’t pay for. I, however, didn’t look half so good as my business partner.

Emilia was clad in a navy blue silk dress with puffy sleeves and a high collar; the dress clung to her every curve, including her newly protruding belly bump. She looked regal and pregnant all at the same time, qualities I hadn’t seen coexist in anyone but the Queens and Duchesses in England.

“Well, don’t you look hot?” Emilia purred, running her fingers through my curls, then letting them fall and sway back into place.

“Are you kidding? You are quite literally a sexy mama.” I gushed to her, receiving a light chuckle in return.

“Yeah, well, when you’re five months pregnant, tell me how sexy you feel in a tight dress.” She remarked, turning her back to me while she arranged all the supplies in the kitchenette behind me. But even as she faced away from me, she still managed to recognize the effect her words had. Maybe it was something in my silence, or our sister-telepathy, but Emilia immediately felt the room depress. In an effort to take back the remark that turned the room cold, she sweetly added while hugging me from behind, “You’re gonna be a mom one day, too. I promise.”

I leaned into her embrace, feeling guilty for ruining the moment while also feeling burdened by the reminder of the terrible reality I had to face every day.

Ever since I could remember, I thought I was destined to be a mother, but that destiny had yet to be fulfilled.

Emilia was born only three years after me, and though that age gap isn’t big enough for me to be mistaken for her mother, I, she, and our younger brother Saul would all agree that in many ways I was their mom. I was the parent our parents never were. I was there for everything - soccer games, dance recitals, winter musicals - never getting the chance to participate in my own, but always attending their’s.

I had to admit sometimes it was a burden, having to grow up so fast and help raise my siblings while still trying to navigate through my own struggles of adolescence, but I saw it as something I was meant to do.

See, I wouldn’t have minded all the responsibilities of being a parent so much when it’d be my own kids that I’d be fulfilling them for - when it would be by my choice to fulfill those responsibilities and not by unfortunate birth order.

However, as the years have gone by, my calling to be a mother has gotten quieter and quieter and quieter until eventually, I don’t think I’ll be able to hear it anymore.

It’s not that I can’t have kids, but the fear of rushing into having one is what’s stopped me from pursuing that dream.

As someone who grew up with divorced parents and practically became my siblings only reliable caregiver, I knew what having a baby too soon could do to a family. So rather than repeating history, I chose to wait to have kids. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes my parents did, and so I lived my life. I traveled all across the globe, I met new people, tried new things, I even started this taco truck business with Emilia.

But still that gaping hole in my chest remained. A hole that nothing could ever fill the way that a child would.

No amount of living could make up for the emptiness of a life with no family.

I could pretend all I wanted that I was happy living out my twenties, but the truth was I didn’t want to spend the rest of my years working in a food truck, amounting to nothing more than a mediocre cook and middling entrepreneur. That was never my dream - as exciting as it was.

My real dream was to have a good life. The kind my parents never had thanks to the unplanned arrival of me. The kind my baby sister was already living out.

“You know what? It’s a really nice night out. I think I might go for a walk. Do you wanna come?” Was this my blatant avoidance of breaching the subject of pregnancy? Yes, but it was also my escape from this food truck that felt like it was getting smaller and smaller and smaller by the second.

“No, I’m okay. I’ll just get everything ready.” Emilia resigned.

She knew why I was really leaving - sister-telepathy, I’m telling you - but she didn’t feel the need to acknowledge it. For that, I was thankful. Maybe we were better at communicating with no words at all.

I carefully stepped off the back of the truck, making sure to hike up my dress high enough so I wouldn’t trip over the mess of fabric when my feet hit the floor. The nippy December air felt like a cool balm on my hot skin. I was burning up in that truck, and maybe it was nerves or something else, but I just had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was no explanation for it, but I realize now that the pit in my stomach was caused by something my intuition could sense but something my mind couldn’t understand.

Someone important from my past was here tonight.

As I sauntered around the monument, I took in the breathtaking view of the structure’s silhouette against the blazing orange sky that melted into an ocean blue. I regretted not bringing my phone to take a picture of it so I could show Emilia when I got back, but that one regret quickly turned into another when the night sky’s breeze brought a rude awakening. My body shivered at the frigid gust of wind that blew through and I suddenly started to regret not bringing a jacket.

“Are you cold?” A gentle voice asked me from behind.

I slightly recoiled out of shock of someone being there. When I turned around though, I couldn’t quite make out any distinguishable features. All I knew for sure was that this was certainly a man, and a tall one, too.

“Um, just a little.” I bashfully admitted, crossing my arms to hug myself and maintain some warmth. I hadn’t even thought about my dress’s plunging v-neck or the fact that I was practically squeezing my breasts together, accentuating them even further, but by the time, I realized, it was too late. He was already looking. But not at my chest. Somewhere far more invasive.

My eyes.

“Here, take my jacket.”

My small protests did nothing to stop him as he inevitably slipped the coat around my shoulders anyway. He’d come so close that I could finally see him and smell him. And let me tell you, if the sight of him wasn’t enough to break an overflowing dam of memories, then his smell certainly sent a flood that would.

“Oh my god,” I quietly gasped, my hand flying to my mouth to cover its un-ladylike gaping.

“Spencer Reid?”

I squinted my eyes and cocked my head even further to find evidence to support my assumption, and sure enough, I found exactly what I was looking for.

I was frozen in place as I deeply examined his face. My God! I mean, in many ways, he hadn’t changed a bit since the last time I saw him. Same dazzling hazel eyes. Same uniquely adorable nose. Same over-stimulated pink lips. I wonder if he still bit them as much as he did back then?

But at the same time, he was so different. Of course, I could still discern the same features I used to study endlessly back then, but his face had transformed into a man’s. He lost the glasses for one thing, but he also had a softer jawline, longer hair, and for lack of a better term, a beefier build.

He was all grown up now, and yet, I could still identify the same boyishly handsome charm that made me fall in love with him more than a decade ago.

“I knew it was you, (y/n).” He chuckled, sounding half proud of himself. My heart fluttered at the sound of my name on his tongue and the action that followed. With his eyes locked on mine, he tucked strands of my hair back behind my ears; it’s as if he were saying, “Let me get a good look at you.”

“How? It’s almost completely dark outside. You could barely even see me.” Certainly, you can understand why I was skeptical. Sounded too good to be true, if you ask me.

He shook his head lightly with a smile, seemingly questioning how I couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question. “No one else looks like you. Not even in the dark.”

His words spoke to a part of my soul specifically reserved for him. They were so genuine that I almost didn’t want to believe them because how could someone speak such lovely things and truly mean them? The world wasn’t that good a place. Certainly not good enough for Spencer Reid.

In that moment, I flew out of my own body and watched this entire scene unfold from up above. I could see the version of a girl I hadn’t seen in years, not since that last interaction with Spencer. She had these big lovesick eyes as she swooned over a man with just the same lovesick look.

The excessive upward tilt of my head and the way his neck craning down must’ve made it seem like we were about to kiss, but I knew better than to expect such a thing from Spencer Reid. And if anything, what we were doing right now was much more intimate than kissing.

“Wow, you ... you really grew up. You look great.” My own voice sounded unfamiliar to me after the words slipped from my mouth without even registering in my brain first.

“Are you kidding? Look at you! I mean, you are just ...” He paused for a moment to look me up and down, and I nearly shivered at the thought that he was practically undressing me with his eyes. “You’re absolutely beautiful. But you always were.”

I was almost completely in a daze when I heard a hideous squawk of a bird flying overhead. This wouldn’t make sense, but it nearly felt like a sign. Like the bird knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, reminding me of where I belonged - reality - not in this fantasy with Spencer.

“Um,” My head spun as I drew back from him. “I should probably get back. I’ll see you later.” I touched his upper arm gently as I passed by him, and it stunned me how warmth just radiated off of his body.

To my all too quick goodbye, he simply waved and watched me walk past him with a pursed-lip smile. And just before I got too far, I thought I heard him say, “I hope so.”

Though my feet were carrying me away from Spencer, my thoughts were only drifting closer to the memory of him, and we did have so many memories.

11 Years Ago ...

I was at the ripe age of 16 when I got my driver’s license. And to anyone else, this would seem like a given milestone, but to me - it was so much more. With the obtainment of my license, I also gained access to a whole new world. Opportunities poured at the seams. I could drive anyone and anywhere I wanted to and though it wasn’t true, it felt like I could do anything, too. But like all things good in my life, it fell apart in the face of responsibilities.

My newly obtained license was just another way for my parents to exploit me. Now, they didn’t have to drive Emilia and Saul since I could. Looking back, I have to wonder if the only reason they funded my driver’s ed classes were for the exact reason that if I took them, I’d sooner be able to take on yet another helping of duties they were too lazy to fulfill.

There’s one particular moment I can remember from this age and that same moment could also be regarded as the catalyst that would set off a series of events for the next 11 years to come.

It was the end of the school year and summer vacation was right around the corner. I was a sophomore at the time, and the prospect of being a junior the next year excited me.

To kick off the start of summer, Melody Hanes was throwing a pool party at her house. Everyone knew she was filthy rich because of a dead grandpa or some other, not to mention, she was also in student government so she had just as big of a role in school as her grandpa’s death did in making the Hanes family wealthy.

Though I never knew her personally, I did have third period chemistry with her for the entire year, and I sat right in front of her for pretty much the entirety of second semester. She must’ve only addressed me a handful of times, but she still invited me to her party anyway. Proximity, I had to admit, did play a part in that though because if I sat just a seat farther away, then I wouldn’t have been.

I came home that day, thrilled to tell my mother about my invitation. It would’ve been my first party that wasn’t a distant relative’s birthday celebration or a childish sleepover in elementary. It was my first real high school party, and for once, I thought - maybe I’d finally get the quintessential ‘high school experience.’

But of course, I never did.

As soon as I got home, I parked my car in the driveway, got the mail, and came inside the house to see my mother sitting on the couch watching TV, as per usual. While I was telling her about my invitation, she didn’t bother to lower the volume or even look away from the screen to give me her undivided attention, and when she did look away, it was only to take the mail from my hands.

“Your sister’s science fair is on that day, and you have to take her because I’ll be working from 1 to 7.” My mother never once looked up from the mail she was sorting through to address me. And her words, while incredibly monotone, were also spoken with such finality, like what she said was the last she ever wanted to speak on the topic. No room for discussion.

I’m not still losing sleep over it, but at the time, it felt like for once, I could actually just be a teenager and be young and reckless like everyone else, but that it was just taken from me. I never got the chance to be a kid again.

With the exception of Emilia’s science fair.

I knew my father wouldn’t be there, and obviously my mother wouldn’t, so I stayed to watch her presentation and to walk around the rest of the time. She deserved someone in her corner, and that someone was me. Even if no one was in mine.

As I serpentined through the cafeteria, a bittersweet feeling came upon me. From paper mâché volcanoes to potato batteries, I observed a childlike sense of wonder that I hadn’t felt for years.

Here, I was surrounded by children who got to be just children. They got to occupy themselves with trivial matters, like how gardens grow or if video games actually do rot your brain.

Their problems had solutions and their questions had answers, and it almost made me wish that I could revert back to a time where life was that easy, but I couldn’t because it never was … not for me.

So to sum it up, it was precious and heartbreaking all at the same time.

While browsing the fair, I stumbled upon a man that didn’t quite seem to fit in, and maybe it was my own unfitting appearance that made me recognize his. He could’ve very well been the brother of one of these children, but something about the way he was dressed and the way he carried himself made me highly doubt that.

He couldn’t have been a parent either, for he was not too far off from my own age, and if he was a parent of one of these eighth graders, that would have to mean that he had a kid when he was in kindergarten. So for all intents and purposes, he wasn’t someone’s brother or someone’s father. Who he actually was - I didn’t know, but I was determined to find out.

After that first observance, I spotted him a couple more times, but it wasn’t until we were looking at the same project that we actually spoke.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

The sudden sound of his voice alarmed me, but only because it seemingly came out of nowhere. Generally, before someone speaks to you, you notice signals that they’re about to, which helps you prepare for conversation. Whether it’s nervous twitches, a look in your direction, maybe even a small acknowledging smile, you’ll recognize they want to or plan to talk to you, but none of those signs were given to me. Even when I turned my head to give him my attention, he was still fixated on the project in front of us.

“Yeah, it really is,” I politely agreed. I awkwardly looked around the room as if I’d find an answer as to what to say next because I did want to keep talking to him, but the longer I stayed silent, the more I fear he’d begin to think I didn’t want to. With nothing else to ask but the question that had been bothering me since I first laid eyes on him, I simply went for it.

“So, who are you here for?”

For the first time, he turned his head to the side to look right at me. With a quizzical expression, he responded. “Oh, no one. I’m just a judge here.”

It was my turn to possess a quizzical expression. His statement wouldn’t have been weird, except for the part where any judge I’d seen or talked to were all well into their forties or fifties.

“Aren’t you kinda young to be a judge? You’re, like, what? Seventeen, eighteen?

“Nineteen actually. But I regularly come to judge the Summer Science Fairs here since I went to this middle school eleven years ago.”

Again, I would’ve taken his word for it, but the math didn’t make sense. “You were in middle school at eight years old?”

“Mhm. I ended up graduating high school at twelve.” He said it so nonchalantly, but for how big of a feat it was, I thought it would’ve deserved a more prideful tone, yet he still maintained such a cavalier one. Did he not think himself to be impressive?

“Jeez, you must be really smart.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, which made me notice that he wasn’t carrying a clipboard like the other judges, which was probably another reason why I didn’t take him for one. How would he be able to remember the projects that he was considering for awards? He’d have to have some magical memory for that.

Before answering, he began to walk away, but nonetheless he continued addressing me, so I followed him where he went.

“Mmm not necessarily. My IQ isn’t high enough to suggest I’m a provable genius yet, but I do have an eidetic memory and I can currently read 16,000 words per minute, which definitely helps. I hope to be able to read 20,000 words per minute in the future.”

Despite answering my question, he only left me with many more.

“What is your IQ right now?”

“131.”

My eyes widened. Even I, with my limited knowledge on intelligence quotients knew that was high, especially for someone as young as he was.

“So what IQ score do you have to have in order to be considered a genius?”

I couldn’t help but notice how he barely took anytime to think before answering me. It’s like his brain just knew everything, right then and there.

“A score of over 140 is considered a genius or near genius.”

“Wow, so you’re almost a genius then?”

“Almost, but not quite. If I receive diverse stimulation at a consistent rate for the next few years, I predict that I’ll have an IQ of 180 or higher by the time I’m in my early twenties.”

You would think he would leave me speechless, but I still went on to ask him about what an eidetic memory was, and he explained to me that he could remember things exceedingly well, but that it was not the same thing as a photographic memory. He made that distinction very clear to me.

Our conversation droned on for the rest of the fair as we continued to circle the cafeteria. I can’t count how many times we lapped around the same projects, but we never seemed to run out of things to talk about. Once those first few seconds after meeting him, when I didn’t know what to say, passed, I never again felt a sense of not knowing. We could talk for hours and hours, and it wouldn’t matter. I would never get bored.

How could I? When I was with him, it felt like the rest of the world just faded away. Our discourse flowed so easily, no pressure, no awkward silence. It was just me and him, and if you ask me, that’s quite the opposite of boring.

That was the first and final time I ever truly felt like a kid. Just like the ones in the science fair. Not a care in the world except for my morbid curiosity of the marvel that was him.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and I inevitably found myself being ripped out of my trance when I felt an aggressive tug on my sweater.

“We can go now.” Emilia interrupted.

I hadn’t even noticed that a majority of the poster boards were taken down and that an even larger majority of the people were long gone, too. I got so lost in the conversation that I didn’t realize we were one of the last people still there.

Emilia’s eagerness to leave was apparent as she pulled me away from my interesting conversationalist.

“I had a nice time talking to you!” I called out to him, walking backwards to lengthen the period of time I could keep looking at him.

“Likewise.”

I turned around fully just before I finally realized something. “Hey!” I yelled across the distance. “I never got your name!”

He bashfully smiled and looked down at his feet briefly. “It’s Spencer! Spencer Reid!”

I stood there for a moment, silently processing his name.

“What’s yours?” He yelled back.

I chuckled mischievously. “I guess you’ll have to find out next time.” My ambiguity puzzled him and intrigued him all at the same time.

“Next time?”

With the intentions of leaving him without a true answer, I simply turned on my heels and started walking away.

“Bye, Spencer!”

Even if he didn’t have an eidetic memory, I knew after that first day, he could never forget me.

- Present Time -

By the time I made it back to the truck, people were already lining up to order.

“Get over here!” Emilia squealed excitedly from the window, her hand rapidly waving me over as if it’d suddenly increase my speed. I ran back as fast as I could in a dress and heels and climbed into the truck, mirroring my sister’s zeal.

When I stepped in, Emilia took one glance at me and furrowed her brows. “Where’d you get the jacket?”

Had she not mentioned it, I would not have remembered the foreign fabric that wrapped around my shoulders.

“Oh, shoot!” I palmed my forehead after the realization dawned on me. I should’ve noticed sooner that I still had it on, but honestly, it didn’t feel unusual or out of place. It was comfortable and familiar, like it was meant to be there that entire time.

“I’m so sorry to do this to you, but do you think you can handle this alone for just a second? I have to return this to a friend.” I asked while slipping off the coat to ready myself to leave, even in the event that Emilia said she wouldn’t let me go. Luckily though, she understood it was urgent.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. Just hurry back.”

I extended my head to look out just past the side of the truck to look for Spencer while still being concealed within the vehicle. Now that there were more people here, I wasn’t exactly sure I should be caught mingling with the attendees, so instead, I decided to search for him from the truck, rather than wandering around the party, giving the impression to the people that hired us that I wasn’t doing my job and was just here to socialize.

Luckily, there was something about my attachment to Spencer that was supernatural. I had this metaphysical ability to spot him even in a crowded place. I could find him anywhere. But whether that was a blessing or a curse was to be determined because right as my paranormal power kicked in, I found him. And there he was - standing next to another girl, a proximity much too close and a smile much too big to be anything less than flirtatious.

I paused to recall the image I had of myself earlier, when I floated up and out of my own body. I looked just like her - an oversized grin combined with lovesick eyes.

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part was he was returning just the same look of attraction to her.

“Um, actually,” I re-entered the truck completely, tossing the jacket aside haphazardly. “I’ll just return it later.”

“You sure? You can go. I’ve got things covered right now.” She said between multitasking at a rate that even I, a very-much-not-pregnant-woman, could manage.

All I could mutter back without giving away the sharp ache in my heart was, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

_ _ _

After hours and hours of non-stop working, the night, at last, was coming to a close. The large crowd had sized down considerably, until I could no longer hear the sound of a thousand voices meshing. All the decorations were already coming down by the time Emilia and I finished packing up the truck. Without the hectic energy to cause adrenaline to course through my veins, it should’ve been peaceful, yet my heart was not at peace.

I couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing Spencer with that girl, but that wasn’t really why I was upset. It was more about the fact that I’d actually believed for a second that I had any chance with him. I should’ve known he wasn’t single, and the fact that I let myself swoon over him again angered me all the more. If I ever had a chance with Spencer, the time to act on it was long gone.

Now, I had to live with that.

“You sure you wanna stay here alone? I’ll come with you if you want me to.”

Emilia’s question was referring to my proposal to stay in D.C for the night while she drove home. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I realized I couldn’t handle being in another suffocating car ride with Emilia. It had nothing to do with her - just that I needed alone time to process everything by myself. If I knew my sister as well as I thought I did, I knew she would’ve sensed something was wrong and tried to coax me into talking about it, which I was not in the mood to do. Plus, traveling for so long made me nauseous just thinking about it. Although, I didn’t have a plan, I knew that I just wanted to hail a cab and find a hotel somewhere here for the night.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me. Call me when you get home.” I tapped on the back of the truck twice to let her know she was good to drive away, and I felt the car lurch forward per my request. When the truck finally did move, out from behind it appeared the tall figure of none other than Spencer.

I was surprised, but only for a second, when that surprise turned into pain once more. Playing it cool so my afflictions wouldn’t be suspected, I nonchalantly stated, “Here’s your jacket, by the way. Sorry, I forgot to give it back to you earlier.”

I extended my arm far enough so that we’d still have a great distance between us when he went to grab it, but sure enough, my actions were all for naught when he not only refused to remove his hands from his pockets to take it but also walked two steps closer to me than he needed to be. I looked like an idiot just standing there with my arm so outstretched, only for him to not grab it and to let it simply press against his stomach as a complete avoidance of getting it back.

“You were supposed to keep it. That’s why I didn’t ask for it back.” He curtly replied, finishing his statements with a cheeky grin. However, I wasn’t in the mood to return it. I simply stood there and shook the jacket in my hand to emphasize its presence.

“Take it. Please.” My voice was full of contradictions. I tried to be assertive with my command, and yet my plead only softened the order and showed a defeat I wasn’t even aware of until I heard how sad it sounded. “I don’t want it, Spencer.”

He no doubt saw the shift in my demeanor but still wouldn’t pacify me by taking the jacket. “What’s wrong? What did I do?” His voice got quieter, as if speaking any louder would shatter me in this fragile state of being.

“Nothing, I’m just tired and I want to go home.” This wasn’t a complete lie. I was exhausted from working for hours and hours on my feet with no breaks in between, but it wasn’t exactly the full truth either. He could tell.

“Just tell me what’s wrong.” He persisted. “Please.”

The only way I could describe what I happened next was like the vision of a boiling pot. Gradually, I was heating up until I finally got so overheated that I just boiled over and exploded.

“What don’t you get, Spencer? I don’t want your jacket!” Fury consumed my tone. “And I don’t think your girlfriend would want that either.”

“Girlfriend? What girlfriend? What are you talking about? I don’t have a girlfriend!” His words were flying out of his mouth at 100 mph as he desperately trying to mend what couldn’t be fixed.

“Don’t play dumb. I saw you with that blonde girl. How close you two were standing, the way you were looking at each other.” Just having to recount the interaction made the horrid memory come back vividly into the forefront of my thoughts, and it broke my heart all over again. I shut my eyes painfully as though it would turn off the image of them together, but this only allowed for Spencer to wrap his warm hands around my upper arms and pull me closer to him without my knowing. I flinched unconsciously at the sudden feeling of his touch, to which he instantly let go.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His hands shook with remorse for letting them touch my body in a way that elicited that reaction. They hovered in the space between us, not knowing where to go that would suddenly make things okay. “But she’s no one, okay? She’s just a coworker.”

I wanted to believe him. I quite possibly did believe him, but there was still a sharp pain in my chest. Call it intuition.

“No, she’s not,” I shook my head. “She’s not ‘no one’... you love her.”

Spencer came closer but still didn’t let himself touch me again out of fear that I might draw back even further.

“Listen to me - whatever feelings I used to have for her are long gone. She’s married, (y/n). She has a kid. And none of that even matters because the way that I used to love her is nothing compared to the way that I-”

“Don’t.” I held my hand up in protest. “Don’t say you love me.”

His eyebrows knit together with dismay. “Why? Why not? It’s true. I love you. I always have.”

With one big sigh, I finally resigned to my emotions. “Then why didn’t you ever do something about it?”

Judging by the deflation of his shoulders and the far off look he got in his eyes, he knew exactly the moment I was talking about.

Two days after Emilia’s science fair, I drove to the library to pick up books I needed for my summer homework. I was already on my way out when I just happened to glance to my side, noticing a lone figure sitting at the bus stop. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I looked back, I partially recognized him. I shaded my eyes from the sun and squinted harder to confirm my suspicions.

“Spencer?” I wondered out loud.

The figure’s head turned around, narrowed their eyes, and waved. He stood up from his seat and made his way over to me with a precious little jog-walk. Although we had only met once before, we still embraced each other like lifelong friends.

“Do I finally get to know your name now?” He jokingly inquired after pulling away.

It completely slipped my mind that I’d denied him the knowledge of my name, but for my own satisfaction, I wouldn’t let him get off that easily.

“Do you have any guesses of it could be?”

He pouted childishly. “Are you kidding? In a population of 350 million people, there would be about 4.4 million names. But if every country on Earth had the same nominative diversity we in the US have, that would suggest about 750 million unique names exist.”

I must admit it was fun watching him melt into a flustered mess of facts, but I was growing just as impatient as him. “Come on, just guess. You might be right.”

He rolled his eyes but indulged me willingly anyway. “Okay ... um ... Catherine.”

“Nope.”

“Nicole.”

“Nope.”

“Gertrude.”

“Seriously?” I raised my eyebrows. He shrugged. “Nope.”

“Olive.”

“Pretty,” I smiled, making his face light up, too. “But no.” His smile fell.

“This is nearly impossible.” He sighed.

“Nothing’s impossible.” My delivery wasn’t as cheesy as the line itself, so it touched us both in a way that made that silly phrase feel like it’d never been said before. With a visible passion reignited in him, he continued.

“Francis.”

“Okay, maybe this is impossible.”

My blunt joke brought us closer together, our heads almost knocking into one another’s as we clutched our stomachs and leaned forward to support our all-consuming laughter. When we finally calmed down, I finally confessed.

“Okay, okay - it’s (y/n).”

He stood there completely silent. There was no expression of his face that indicated he planned on speaking, so I elaborated. “It’s not as good as the name Spencer, I know I know -”

“I’ve never known anyone with that name before.” His hushed voice cut into mine so innocently.

My cheeks heated from the slight compliment. “Well, now you do. And don’t you forget it.” I teased. With nothing further to say, I brushed past him to start walking away, when unconsciously, I spun my keys around my index finger and heard the familiar jingle of the metal, reminding me of something.

“Hey, Spencer?” I turned on my heels. “Can I give you a ride home?”

And so began our routine for the entire summer. I would bring my summer homework to the library, and Spencer would help me understand it, or even complete it, and then I’d give him a ride home. We’d go to the park and read, or we’d go to the movies, or we’d hang out at a diner. And each time, I’d drop him off.

The more time we spent together, the more I learned about him and his life. He told me about his mom, his dad - everything. I did just the same. I told him about my mom, my dad, my siblings - everything.

Perhaps we enjoyed spending so much time together because it was a sweet escape from our houses that weren’t homes. But every time we did hang out, we just got closer and closer, and by the end of the summer, I knew my feelings perfectly clear.

I love Spencer.

If missing that pool party at Melody Hanes was what it took to find the absolute love of my life, then what a small price to pay it was. I wouldn’t have traded a million pool parties for that one chance encounter with Spencer at the science fair.

One day, we were pulling into his driveway after having a picnic at the country club, and I’d just let him out of the car, when unconsciously, I said, “Bye, Spence! Love you!”

He caught the words faster than I did. He looked like a deer in headlights, and it took me at least two seconds more to figure out why. That entire day I’d been thinking about saying it, but by the end, I decided it’d be better not to, and yet, it just came out anyway.

“You love me?”

There were two ways I could’ve answered. The first was to deny it and say that I only meant that I loved him like a friend. The second was to be brave and validate my unintentional confession.

In the heat of the moment, I chose the latter.

“Yes.” I nodded, smiling from my own courage. You only live once right?

In a cruel twist of fate, Spencer never tried to speak, and instead, ran to his front door.

“Spencer!” I yelled. “What are you-”

He gave me one last look over his shoulder before he opened the door and closed it right behind him. That was the last I ever saw him.

I learned, that day, that you do only live once.

But you can die over and over again.

From that point on, he’s lived in my mind as the one that never was.

Regret and shame manifested on Spencer’s face. “I never wanted to hurt you.” He dejectedly began. “But I was young and-and dumb and just ... so scared. God, I was so scared.” He finally looked up, if for no other reason than to gauge my reaction. “I liked you so much, but I, I just couldn’t open myself up to the possibility of being hurt by another person I loved.”

Much like my own life, Spencer’s was riddled with traumatic experiences. Except rather than being expected to take care of younger siblings, he had to take care of his mom. And having to be a parent to your own parent? That’s something I would never wish upon anyone else.

“I ... I get it.” It was a sweet surrender, my words. After years of pent-up aggression borne from humiliation, rejection, and deep sadness, I could finally understand. “But as selfish as it sounds, I wish your past hurt hadn’t gotten in the way of our potential happiness.”

He took each of my hands in his, encasing them with palms of warmth. “Then don’t let the same thing happen right now. Don’t let the stupid, broken teenager I was cloud your judgement of the man I am now. Let me prove to you that I’ve changed.”

I stood there silently, an eerie parallel to how Spencer reacted to my confession eleven years ago.

“When I saw you, it felt like a second chance. A second chance to do what I was too afraid to do back then. And I couldn’t let myself make the same mistake twice.” His eyes were piercing through my soul. Every word plucked at my heartstrings, until I could no longer keep up with the symphony they were playing.

There was the slightest hesitation behind it, but I did inch forward. And in no time at all, Spencer saw the movement and made his own.

His hands released mine and shot straight for my cheeks to cup them gently, while kissing me firmly. He wasn’t the same shy boy he was, and this kiss was only proof of that. The way his lips were moving so fervently made me weak at the knees. He was so desperate and needy, like even with our lips touching, he still wasn’t close enough to me. Unleashed upon me was years of yearning wrapped in prominent lust.

“I love you.” He blurted clumsily on my lips. I didn’t return the sentiment, but that wasn’t why he said it. He wanted to say it so I’d know, not so that I’d say it back.

“You should know,” I muttered between kisses. “I’m not leaving D.C. until tomorrow morning.”

The biggest smirk creeped onto his face. Bastard.

Once we’d exhausted all the things we could possibly do in public, we ran to the nearest cab we could find and exhausted all the things we could do in that, too.

It was already past midnight when we arrived at Spencer’s apartment, and though we should’ve been quiet so as not to disturb the neighbors, we were still breaking out into a fit of giggles like a bunch of teenagers sneaking around as we ran up the stairs. We hadn’t even made it past the doormat, before he seized my hips in his hands and spun me back towards him. Forcefully, he pressed me against the door while simultaneously unlocking it. That shut me up real good, lemme tell you.

As soon as we crossed the threshold, he gave me a reprieve when he held me closer so as to stop pinning me against the door. In an effort to do the impossible, we stumbled through his apartment in a frenzy trying to undress each other while maintaining our bodily contact. With one giant tug of the zipper on my back, my dress fell to the ground. To his atonement, he left me in just a thong. Whereas he was much too overdressed in my opinion.

No sooner did I gracelessly unbutton his shirt than we ran into a plant against the wall. Our smiles practically ruined the kiss at the sound of the crash, but it remained nonetheless. I knew I was in for something, when Spencer paused to wait for me to unbuckle his belt. That was the first time we ever really stopped in place, but just as I anticipated, I was in for it.

When I finally freed his waist of the garment, he just as quickly placed his hand on the back of my thigh, and in one swift motion, hoisted me into the air high enough to allow my legs to wrap around his waist. My arms were loose around his neck and the feeling of his warm hands touching my bare skin sent a chill down my spine.

Due to Spencer’s essential hand placement on my body, I had to be the one to fumble with his bedroom’s doorknob until it finally gave way. Once more, we staggered through his room before he let our lips break apart to lightly toss me onto the bed. I giggled at the squeak of the bed, driving him visibly crazy.

He hastily unzipped his own dress pants, while I propped myself up on my elbows. When he met me on the bed, he hovered over me to the point of having to lay back down again just to see him clearly. He felt too far away so I drew him nearer by lacing my hand through his soft curls. I twirled one around my finger, which must’ve been too merciful for him to handle.

He placed his hand on the back of mine and slid it down to his cheek. He held my hand there for a moment, leaning into the skin of my palm prior to placing a chaste kiss on it.

He didn’t need to say it again for me to know what he was thinking.

I love you.

The anticipation was killing me and in the most impatient manner, I pulled him down to my level, mimicking his similar habit of face-grabbing during a kiss. I knew his hands would’ve flown to my face the way they did just minutes ago, but one was too preoccupied keeping himself up and the other was busy toying with the band of my thong. I shivered at the sensation of him slipping one finger under the material and letting it glide over my tender skin right above my heat.

“Spencer,” I mumbled in a kiss to bring his attention back to me. Although I was certainly interested to know the hidden talents of Spencer Reid and his fingers, I was restless. I’d been waiting years for this moment, and unlike most people, I didn’t want to wait another second. “I need you now.”

He pulled his head back so he could get a full view of my face to examine my sincerity. He wanted to know if I was sure, and my eyes told him such. He nodded in acknowledgement with such speed that I was sure he was craving this as much as I was.

Rather than looking at where our bodies were about to meet, I had to close my eyes so I could fully feel everything without any other sense taking that away from me. In a painfully slow manner, he lined himself up at my entrance. At first, he only lightly pushed in, and it was this slacken movement that made me cry out and grip his shoulders for stability.

He pushed further in until he was fully sheathed inside of me. There was a slight moment of regret for not letting him engage in foreplay before, but that quickly went away when the pain turned to pleasure. He gained more confidence in himself with each stroke, and I could feel it. The more powerfully he thrust, the more I felt myself tightening around him. The over simulation was a stark contrast from the stimulation I denied and so the sensation I was feeling was only heightened by the absence of it before. For that very reason, I knew I was already close. And maybe he knew it, too and just as sweet revenge, he decided to send me over the edge by pulling my leg over his shoulder to thrust into me a new angle. As I’m sure he predicted, I threw my head back as tears began to prick the corners of my eyes. He rode the ever exquisite border between pain and pleasure, and my tears were a manifestation of that. Not even a minute passed, before I tried to moan but pathetically failed, not even being able finish the pitiful wail without the both of us finishing together.

Our heavy panting synchronized and reverberated back to us while he slowed down his pace and pulled out.

Perhaps in the heat of the moment, we lost all logic and reason, considering that even up till now, neither of us had realized that he didn’t use a condom.

But what would eventually happen in the future as a result of this action, or inaction, would surely make us remember.

Spencer lowered himself down to kiss me breathlessly; strands of his hair clung to his forehead as sweat glimmered on both of us. Not until we were ready did we make our way to the bathroom so he could help clean me up. Once we returned, I gathered my clothes, but he made sure to grab my panties before I could even notice.

“Have you seen -“ I cut myself off when I saw what was dangling in his hands.

“Looking for this?” He teased.

All my energy had been spent on him that I couldn’t be bothered to fight for them back.

“Keep ‘em.” I smirked, my hand reaching down to pick up his jacket off the floor and hold it up. “Consider it a fair trade.”

No arguments from him.

Needless to say, I did end up finding a place to stay the night. Where and with whom you might ask?

Well, you can probably figure that one out for yourself.

_ _ _

I wish I could tell you I got a good night’s rest, and I could - it just wouldn’t be the truth.

Spencer and I spent the rest of the night just talking. We filled each other in on nearly ever second of the past 11 years, and once again, I found myself reverting back to the teenager I was at the science fair. The entire world revolved around us as we spoke to each other effortlessly, like no time had passed. Even in the periods of silence, I felt comfortable.

Spencer and I were lying on our sides facing one another when I felt compelled to profess that “I can’t talk this way with anyone. It’s just you.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with a small smile on his lips. He didn’t need to say that he felt the same way because I already knew. His hand never left my face but instead made its descent down my jawline and stopped at my chin. He raised his thumb to reach my lower lip, letting the pad of his finger graze over the soft skin of my lip.

It felt like he was tracing every detail of my body, running his eyes over every inch at least twice so as to fully commit everything to his memory.

At last, the tension broke when he positioned his hand comfortably at the back of my neck, bowing his head forward to kiss me. This one was quite different than our first, for it was gentler and warmer. We weren’t forcing ourselves to make up for lost time. In fact, this kiss was saying, “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Plenty of time indeed. Which we were happy to spend making love again.

And I will be the first to admit that if our first round of unprotected sex didn’t solidify our future predicament, this time certainly did.

Six Weeks Later ...

“Hello?” Clearly frustrated, Emilia waved her hand in front of my face to harness me back to earth. I hadn’t realized I zoned out until she scoffed at me. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“No, sorry. Could you repeat it one more time?”

She set down the papers in front of her and sighed unhappily. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been so distant lately.”

It hurt to hear, even though it was the truth. I wasn’t intentionally being despondent, but it’s hard to be present when there’s so much occupying your mind, and there was one thing in particular that was keeping me up late at night recently.

My period has always been irregular. For as long as I’ve had it, I’ve always missed a few weeks, then it would become consistent, then it would be sporadic again. In fact, there was one year where I only had four periods total. So it didn’t strike me as odd when I realized three days ago that my last period was about seven weeks ago.

What did strike me as odd was the other symptoms I was experiencing. Menstruation cycles are known to closely mimic the symptoms of pregnancy, but with the knowledge that my period wasn’t coming, it was disconcerting to me that I was suffering the discomforts without the actual period itself.

To me, there was only one clear explanation for this anomaly.

I was pregnant.

Earlier in the day, I bought a pregnancy test and was late to work because of it. If Emilia hadn’t been suspicious of my behavior before, showing up late only made her suspicion greater.

I didn’t know when I’d take it, probably at home after work, but the anticipation was eating away at me. I would pace around the truck until Emilia finally told me to stop because the vehicle wouldn’t stop swaying with my every movement. I was biting my nails and chewing on each little piece that grew back just to bite it back down to the nub. My hands couldn’t stop shaking, my breathing wouldn’t slow down. I was a hysterical mess.

I didn’t tell Spencer any of my concerns, of course, but being as perceptive as he is, he noticed my strange mannerisms despite my best efforts to hide them.

“Your breathing just got faster. Are you feeling okay?” He paused the movie we were watching to check in on me one time. It should be known that the scene that caused my heavier breathing was a scene of a woman finding out she was pregnant and being absolutely devastated. I quickly brushed it off as just being too warm, to which he turned on his air conditioning. Luckily for me, he didn’t make the connection.

And it’s not that I didn’t want to tell Spencer - I really did - but why should I make a fuss about something if there ended up being nothing to worry about? That would just be extra stress, and the last thing a new, blossoming relationship needs is additional strain.

So without Spencer, I had to opt for the next best thing - my sister.

I’d reached my wits end, and I couldn’t keep up the act any longer. I was walking on eggshells with practically everyone I knew, and I’d sooner go crazy if I didn’t tell someone what I was really feeling. So in response to her question, I finally told the truth.

“I think I might be pregnant.”

You can imagine the shock on my sister’s face. Emilia’s jaw became one with the floor as her eyes widened so big I thought they would pop out of her head.

“You’re pregnant?” Already her eyes were welling up with tears of joy.

“I don’t know yet.” I put my arms around her to keep her calm and stable while the emotions began overpowering her. I wanted it to serve as a reminder to not get her hopes up, otherwise she’d get mine up, too.

“Well, have you taken a test?”

I reached for my purse behind her and rummaged through it until I finally retrieved the box. Holding it up, I reluctantly suggested, “I thought maybe you could be there for me when I did?”

She squealed with joyful elation, practically shattering the window pane with the high pitch of her voice. On top of that, she was jumping up and down with elegant grace that I had to wonder how her pregnant body could even manage to do such a thing.

“Of course, I will! Come, come, let’s go.”

We hopped off the truck and to the nearest restroom, which admittedly wasn’t the nicest of places, nor was the place I ever imagined as a child that I’d be finding out I was pregnant in, but it had to do for now.

When I first came out of the stall, I set the test face down on the sink, so that we wouldn’t see it until it was ready. Emilia set a timer for 10 minutes, but in the meantime, all we could do was wait. Neither of us could stay still; Emilia bounced up and down, rubbing her belly while facilitating some sort of breathing exercise. Meanwhile, I kept tapping my foot impatiently.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Emilia’s alarm scared the shit out of me, and we both were startled by the blaring sound. It was so jarring, but even that wouldn’t compare to the fear I felt when I realized it was finally time.

“Do you wanna look or should I?” She asked.

“You look.” I said at first. But when she lunged forward to take it, I did, too. “No wait, I should.” Then another moment of hesitation. “No, you do it. I can’t.”

I held my hands over my mouth while I watched her carefully lift the test off the sink, maneuvering it in such a way that only she would see the results. I watched her expression closely for any sign of a reaction, but she was stoic as can be. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed, happy - nothing. Complete and total poker face.

“Come on, Emilia! What does it say?” I blurted anxiously.

“Well, first, what do you want it to say?”

That was a question I hadn’t considered. I was so busy worrying about what I didn’t know, to pause and think about what I wanted to find out. On the one hand, I’d be ecstatic if the test confirmed that I was pregnant. I’d jump for joy because that was what I always wanted, right? But on the other hand, if it said I wasn’t pregnant, then I’d be sort of sad because I got so close to that lifelong dream. But after that, I’d probably just be relieved to have dodged a bullet.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I don’t know-”

“Don’t think. Just tell me. What do you want it to say?”

Without missing a beat, I replied, “Positive.” My sister and I alike were stunned by my answer. “Yeah,” I nodded slowly. “Positive. I want it to say positive.” I repeated, to cement my earnest desire.

Emilia’s facade melted away as she began to shake her head. “I’m sorry, (y/n). There’s only one line.”

We both knew what that meant, even if she didn’t explicitly say it. I sighed dejectedly, which was a surprise to even myself. I didn’t expect to be this disappointed, and yet I was. The knot it my stomach worked itself free, and where that pit used to be was just emptiness. My heart sunk and steadied itself, and my breathing resumed its normal pace.

“Well,” I bit my lip. “I guess that’s that.”

Emilia instantly drew nearer to pull me in for a hug, one I was not ready to accept but welcomed anyway. “I’m sorry, (y/n). But I mean, sometimes tests just come out with false negatives.” With her face still buried in the crook of my neck in our hug, she mumbled, “Not this one, though. This one’s positive.”

Immediately, I retreated from our hug and pulled her in front of my view. The sneaky girl had a huge grin that took up 99% of her face.

“You’re pregnant!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, shaking my body violently. We embraced each other in another hug while simultaneously jumping up and down. “I just wanted to trick you so you would know how you really feel. Now you know!”

And I did know. I did know that I wanted this baby and that I was glad it even existed.

Not long after our mini-celebration did I start to come down from the high of my euphoria. A certain realization dawned on me like a cloud of gray hanging above my head to rain on my parade.

What about Spencer?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　

PART 2 HERE!

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cancerjupiter · 4 years ago

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astro notes: neptune edition (pt. 1)

neptune represents issues which are frequently unconscious, so all of this may operate without your awareness. if projected, the negative aspects of neptune become more emphasised. the more you reject it in your own life, the more likely it is that you’ll meet it in exaggerated ways outside yourself.

neptune in the 1st house

tends to be the kind of person who waits and sees, but your outward behavior doesn’t begin to describe what goes on inside. you feel connected to your environment because you’re aware of subtle energies, you pick up impressions from others they’re usually unaware to be giving. you find yourself in the uncomfortable position of knowing (beyond a verbal level) what others’ unconscious motivations are, what’s hidden behind their civility. you tend to be very idealistic, preferring to live in harmony: peaceful non-demanding relationships and quiet and aesthetically pleasing surroundings. you choose to think kindly of others, whether they reciprocate or not; your sensitivity gives you a natural compassion. you can be most charming, often whimsical, sometimes romantic, and usually empathic. you seem approachable and often receptive to a degree others find startling and deeply gratifying (if not a little scary lol). you want life to be perfect for yourself and others, and your desire for a better world can be channeled into artistic creative pursuits, social work, or mere daydreaming.

you often struggle with personal identity. you may be so open to others that you pick up their moods without realising it. you tend to mimic, unconsciously, the strong characteristics of the last person you were with. don’t become an emotional sponge; define your emotional boundaries and accept it is necessary for your growth to establish a firm identity. another thing i noticed about you is that you guys don’t mind suffering; no, i’m not saying you don’t hate it (everyone does!) but you seem to accept it when you don’t have to. you put others first and feel that it’s best to sacrifice your own well-being than to be responsible for someone else’s suffering.

there’s almost always a strong awareness of and interest in spiritual energies with this placement. you may actually be psychic, whether or not you’re comfortable with the ability. you may deeply religious, although not conventionally since institutions don’t satisfy you; you feel at home with a belief system you know, from personal experience, exists. your lack of interest in the real world can lead you into seriously bad habits like drug abuse or eating disorders and due to your dislike of physical activity, this can quickly damage your (often sensitive) health. alternatively, this placement can also lead to arrogance, depending on the sun and midheaven placements/aspects.

neptune in the 2nd house

you tend to be idealistic with the use of money and personal resources, not terribly attached to them. you look at them as temporary and although sad to part with something you own, you can let it go where others simply cannot. there’s an indifferent attitude towards finances, income and etc. some of you are v generous and will give things away to people who can truly admire it, believing nothing truly belongs to anyone. this outlook satisfies you greatly, making you easygoing but also easily being taken advantage of. this sort of gives you a fairy-tale attitude towards your money - it’s either always there when needed, or simply one of the world’s idiotic, materialistic preoccupations. you may be unpractical or simply forgetful with resources; not willing to sit down and figure what’s the best buy and choosing to go with intuition. purchases usually go by what you want rather than what you can afford (my friend has no idea how much is on her bank acc and doesn’t care to figure it out. she just doesn’t care lol). you should actually read the small print in contracts and not trust just anyone with your money.

alternatively, there may be a strong tendency to overvalue material things (neptune = beliefs in the house of money and possessions), specially if there’s an earth emphasis in the chart, making you inclined to putting great care and time into upkeep. you usually want your things to look aesthetic™️.

there’s also a strong creative tendency; it may be expressed in various forms but it will certainly be inherent. you need at least periodic access to music and inspiration, including the outdoors where you can soak up peace and serenity. since the 2nd house also relates to sensual pleasures, you probably expect these to provide a kind of ultimate ecstasy. in short, this placement forces you to face up to your tendencies to create illusions about money, possessions, sex, or creative pursuits. don’t expect more from them than they can provide.

neptune in the 3rd house

on one level, this placement can confuse and scatter the brain, giving it vagueness and disorganized thinking. sometimes, however, the mind exhibits uncanny insights into the subtleties of the environment. you sense the hidden nuances and meanings behind what’s being said. what you miss in terms of precise analytical ability, you can by being able to view the big-picture more clearly. there’s a danger to this however; your desire to view what’s beautiful and ideal around you can give a kind of selective perception in which only the good is seen and what doesn’t fit into that is ignored.

you don’t usually feel comfortable expressing yourself through normal channels of communication. what you have to say can be better demonstrated through dance, poetry, song, or picture (painted or taken). there’s often a shyness in the early school situation, which manifested in mental illness (my friend has dyslexia and this was a hard time for her) or simply confusion.

since this house also rules siblings, there may be some sacrifices to be made in relation to them; they may be a problem or have difficulties. since neptune fuses the boundary between the self and others, you may feel you’re responsible for their problems or everything which happens in the immediate environment (also ruled by the 3rd). if you don’t have siblings, you probably longed for the companionship of it, an idealized vision of what a sibling is. i also noticed this neptune placement showing exceptional ability as teachers - specially working w children who have learning difficulties. they can understand ways to communicate with and understand the child better than anyone else.

neptune in the 4th house

i have this one and it’s a loaded position: an unconscious planet in an unconscious house. to feel safe in a secure nest is fundamental, though that’s often quite unconscious. your idea of haven includes a lovely home, w lots of food and someone who will take care of your needs. there’s an assumption that the mother, early home life and emotional security all need to be perfect. that is, all needs will be met with ease, and there’s no upset or disappointment in these areas. the mom or other primary caregiver, is supposed to be there when needed, regardless of other commitments. the illusions connected to the 4th house (remember, neptune refers to illusions which must be exposed and released) are deeply intimate; and any threat to them is profoundly threatening to you.

neptune in the 4th generally has to overcome the strong need for the nurturing parent to not only be perfect but to continue being so into your adulthood. you have great difficulty separating from them; you may never fully do it. it doesn’t matter if they actually lived to your expectations, for their importance is in your head - the parent you idealized or pretended they were. sometimes, however, this desire focuses on the home rather than the parent. in this case, the childhood home was either perfect, or mysterious and elusive. you can react by trying to re-create the exact same nest.

with this placement, nurturing yourself becomes the ultimate value, a way to find supreme satisfaction. you can also make the most amazing caretakers and companions. your need to nurture others is a complicated expression of your own hunger to be taken care of; you give too much and eventually become resentful when no one appreciates your (not asked for) sacrifices. you might also project neptunian traits onto your parent; they may be v spiritual and loving, vague and confusing, or even absent, so you were left w only a fantasy of what they could - and should - have been. they might have also been a victim (similar to pisces moon) and you might’ve felt obligated to save them.

you feel like caring involves being swallowed up completely, and it’s something you either constantly yearn or are terrified of. you also feel if your (unrealistic) emotional security needs aren’t met, you won’t survive the disappointment (you did, and you will again). neptune in the 4th can make the most patient and loving parents, w a strong sense of their emotional bonding and spiritual responsibilities. you will do more to create an ideal parent/child relationship than anyone else and constantly remind others of how important it is to strive to be the best parent one can be.

neptune in the 5th house

this combo leads to a definite charisma, an aura of charm and power and importance (timothee, angelina, mlk, drake, etc). it’s a strong indication of some kind of acting ability, though it may be used as a teacher or a salesman rather than on stage. you’re likely to work in some area where applause and respect can be immediate and experienced personally. you need this; neptune undermines the self-confidence so you depend on others’ feedback to measure your worth. this can be a deadly dependency because even the highest praise and respect can truly fulfill the yearning to be loved unconditionally, only provide a temporary high, making you forever vulnerable.

some of the illusions related to this placement include the need to have perfect relationships and children, and the perfect artistic creation. whenever one expects perfection, they’re doomed to disappoitment, although the process of disillusionment may be needed to rethink your outlook on life. you may expect your love life to provide a complete sense of fulfillment. you can make a v romantic partner, the type to love cheesy romantic things and music, who can surround your lover with utmost affection. however, you might also expect them to sense your wishes and always meet them; or expect yourself to always be sensitive and caring at al times, regadless of your moods and/or needs.

you need to re-evaluate your tendency to romanticize lovers instead of seeing them for who they are. you may also harbor illusions towards children, your own or all, which hamper your ability to deal w them realistically and effectively. there’s a difficulty in developing a strong sense of self-worth, or maybe fancying yourself to be far more important than you really are. this placement is associated w a great deal of inspired creativity, however, and if other chart factors support it, it indicates exceptional artistic talent. with humility and self-awareness, you can use your magnetism to uplift those who have lost all confidence.

neptune in the 6th house

w this placement, neptune is in its polar opposite, since 6th house relates to virgo and neptune relates to pisces. this house is about the world as it is and how to manage it in a day-to-day basis. neptunian energy is the opposite: it yearns for and seeks to unite w the cosmos, which transcends this world. how can these two work this out?

when they’re well integrated in the chart, you can dream of neptune while using the practical 6th house skills to plan and organise the dream you wish to make true some day. it can direct the neptunian energy to envision something better, prettier, more creative and inspiring. without this, the 6th house is merely a housekeeping unit - a drive to organise and plan, but for what purpose? neptune supplies it with purpose and the house repays it with practical skills, usually related to some artistic work.

however, if the energies are at odds, there is the need to dream vs. the need to be practical and realistic. you feel a strong need to busy yourself w details and make everything as efficient as possible, tidying up and even criticising others (negative virgo energy). you may expect far too much from others and yourself, never able to say “no” when more work is piled on you. another expression is not being able to keep your shit together; you forget, are disorganized, feel tired and drained of energy, get sick often, or feel generally unfulfilled. my friend, for example, often seeks jobs for its glamorous aspects, only to get swamped by details and routine.

#astrology #zodiac signs #neptune #neptune houses #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #1st house #2nd house #3rd house #4th house #5th house #6th house

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laufire · 3 years ago

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(CW for mentions of csa)

A lot of Commonly Accepted (Often Through Uncritical Repetition) Wisdom in fandom leaves me baffled, when not straight up ticked off, but one that's been on my mind lately, that never fails to bring a scrunched up expression to my face, is the idea that Bela Talbot's backstory was some last minute add-on to her character.

You might argue that the reveal was rushed since the writers caved in and killed her off against their original plan (or at the very least, earlier than). Or that using abuse is a trite way to raise sympathy for an antagonistic character. You could even say that some of the finer details might’ve not been set in stone until they sat down to write her exist, although that one is dubious. But I’m never really going to buy that Bela’s backstory hadn’t been already planned, likely in big part.

The reason why is Season Three Episode Six, “Red Sky At Morning”, Bela’s second episode, co-written by Eric Kripke himself. As all episodes with Bela were, may I add; which means he had a hand in crafting her story from the beginning, as creator, director, and writer.

There Dean, a character that has been shown as sharp and intuitive (although his success rate ain’t that great when it comes to Bela, admittedly xD), immediately pegs her as someone with Issues TM, asking “how did she get like this”. He even taunts her by referencing her father, showing off his talent to hit where it hurts by asking if he “didn’t give her enough hugs”, ‘cause he’s classy like that. This visibly affects Bela, changing her demeanor in their conversation, from more playful to defensive. Hell, I remember during my first watch in real time this moment, especially paired with the rest of the episode, was when I first thought it was possible she came from an abusive family.

Because, c’mon. This whole episode is about parricide. The monster of the week is a ghost who haunts those that “spilled their own family’s blood”. We get two other examples: a woman whose accidental car crash killed her cousin, and two brothers who killed their father for the inheritance. Clearly, the ghost doesn’t have a narrow criteria when it comes to means or culpability -which makes sense given his particular story: he was tried for treason and his brother, the captain of the ship, issued the sentence.

And just as we find out this information... Bela sees the ghost ship that foretells her death. This, paired with the insinuations about an unsavvory past and her discomfort at the mention of her father, aren’t a wealth of information, but they start to paint a picture. We now know for a fact that Bela caused the death of at least one relative (mom and dad); that she wouldn’t have needed to do it directly (she made a crossroads deal); and that she might’ve had a sympathetic motive (her father sexually abused her and her mother turned a blind eye).

That scene offers some more tidbits of information about her past that seem too in tune with 3x15 to be coincidental, and that absolutely break my heart: Bela’s “You wouldn’t understand. No one did.“ and “I’ll just do what I’ve always done. I’ll deal with it myself”. See, I always thought Bela must’ve told people, when she was a kid. That she reached out for help not just to her mother, but to everyone around her that she thought could’ve help: teachers, maybe even law enforcement; adults that should’ve being worthy of that trust and protected her. Except no one did (and the fact that her family seemed to be not only very rich but influential paints a very bleak picture that surely contributed to her cynic view of the world). So she took matters in her own hands, and sold her soul for ten years of relative safety and freedom from her abusers.

To tie it all up, her final scene in that episode offers some more moments that again, are very in line with her backstory. We see how she treats relationships as transactionals: she pays ten grand to the Winchesters for saving her life, like she paid with her soul. Dean, again, draws attention to her likely messed up past by calling her damaged, and she replies that “takes one to know one”. Terrible childhood, ammirite. The show wasn’t been subtle here: it’s telling us Bela has a terrible past, like the Winchesters do, but of a different kind that has resulted in a different kind of person. So yeah, I think all the facts were hinted at back in 3x06.

We could go even futher back and point out 3x03, Bela’s introduction. One of the very first things she says in the show, during her first face to face with Dean (a character that just condemned his soul to Hell), is “We’re all going to Hell, Dean. Might as well enjoy the ride”. Sure, it could be an incredibly fortuitous coincidence; as a writer, I’ve had those and they’re damn great. But it seems VERY lucky, and more likely to be a case of the kind premeditated, well-placed foreshadowing that Kripke excels at.

So, okay. I’ve established why I think Bela’s backstory wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. But why is there a notable narrative in fandom that it IS?

First thing first, I want to get something out of the way: you don’t have to like it even if it was planned ahead. I understand it’s a very thorny subject, and to make matters worse, it’s inherently tied to her death. You might even be fine with the what, but not with how it was dealt with (although personally, I appreciate that neither the abuse nor her death were shown onscreen. In fact, the worse violence we see Bela on the receiving end of in her run is Dean’s threats and manhandling, which seems like a very purposeful choice ngl. Even Gordon freaking Walker was gentler lmao).

But I do disagree with some extended fandom opinions on the topic, and I guess that’s what the post is about. For one, I don’t see how the show “condemned” or morally judged Bela in this scenario. If anything, they clearly wanted to make her sympathetic, AND they showed Dean as being in the wrong by robbing him of information. Dean’s opinion on Bela couldn’t count for shit, for once, because he didn’t have the full picture; because Bela had deemed him UNWORTHY of the full picture, and thus anything he had to say on her couldn’t be taken at face value (except this is Supernatural, so I guess this was a little too much to ask of some people?). I think saying that just because Bela died and went to Hell as a consequence of her deal, IN THE SAME SEASON the same happened to our co-lead, because the writers deemed her evil and irredeemable is simplistic at best, and the audience projecting their own feelings (or being unable to see past Dean’s) onto the writing.

All that said, to go back to the initial point of all of this xD: WHY does fandom seem to insist on viewing this narrative choice as some cheap last minute addition?

There might not be one explanation that fits all, but I have a few ideas. One is that, if this wasn’t planned for and hinted at from early on, some people might feel as if this “absolves” them of their previous (and disgustingly hateful and misoginistic) reactions to Bela. Others will see this as absolving Dean, and maybe even Sam to a lesser extent, for not helping her and for being callous towards her; if her tragic backstory was this artificial, rushed choice made by Those Writers, then Dean wasn’t responsible for reprehensible attitudes towards someone who deserved his compassion (and it can’t be denied that this fandom loves absolving Dean of responsibility lmao). And a lot people are probably only repeating what they've heard from others as the accepted narrative, especially those that didn't even watch all of s3 if at all (Castiel is my fave too, but seriously, s1-3 are worth it).

It’s like they’re creating this imaginary separation between Bela pre-reveal, and Bela post-reveal, to make the situation easier to themselves. See, Bela pre-reveal was this annoying bitch who inconvenienced and embarrassed our leads (not to mention dared have chemistry with them), and thus deserved to be punished for it; or, if we’re going with more modern fandom sensibilities, she can be made to fit into the shallow #GirlBoss mold, with a side of “Secretly A Lesbian And Therefore Not A Romantic Threat” flavour -the current preferred method to make controversial female characters more palatable.

The reveal throws a wrench into this narrative. “Bitch who deserves her comeuppance” is a hard sell when you’re talking about a character who survived csa. And a shallow #GirlBoss reading doesn’t work if you have to acknowledge that Bela was one of, if not the most tragic characters in the entire run of Supernatural.

She spent over half her life at the mercy of her abuser(s), hurt by those who should’ve loved her and protected her most. The rest of her life was extremely lonely, with seemingly only a cat as company, and a surface-level freedom that hid under the sentence that loomed over her head. She died without a single friend, or a simple show of kindness and compassion, without anyone bothering to fight for her. And then she ended up tortured for who knows how long until she became one of her torturers.

All of that is extremely difficult to digest. And when things are hard to swallow, people do as people do, and they try to simplify them. So, sure. Bela’s reveal wasn’t ever hinted at, it’s completely removed from her character and the person we met, and is not even worth trying to fit into the narrative. Sounds easy.

#talking to the void #my thoughts #spn thoughts #supernatural #bela talbot #bitter lau tag #fandom nonsense #spn 3x15 #spn 3x06 #spn s3

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meangirlsx · 4 years ago

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I LOVE THE HUFFLEPUFF!CARRIE HC SO MUCH what do you thing the other characters’ houses would be ?? 🤔 i’m a strong believer in hufflepuff alex and reggie, griffyndor julie, and slytherin luke

AHHH THANK YOU! I like the responses I was seeing that suggested she could be a Slytherpuff because ambition is also definitely a big thing to her. I’d have to think more on her, but I fully believe Hufflepuff is at least part of her.

I’m honored you want to know my thoughts on the main characters. Strap in.

One of my favorite things I’ve ever seen was this post about how Hogwarts houses can be based on how someone would perceive, view, and use magic. It’s about what you value and what you choose. So I’ll be using that as part of my analysis of each character. Like with people, I think you could probably make an argument that every character exhibits at least one trait one time of every house, but since the point is to focus on their primary values, that’s what I’ll be doing.

Julie: Gryffindor. Bravery is at Julie’s core. The kind of strength she exhibits in losing the most important person to her and coming out swinging is unmatched. It takes an immense amount of bravery to face her grief and not only return to the thing she shared with her mom but let it be a rebirth for her. She finds both her mom and herself as she finds music again. She focuses on being kind, warm, empathetic, understanding. She knows what it’s like to live with unimaginable pain and she commits to helping others through the same thing. I believe she would use magic the same way she uses music. So I believe Julie would see magic as a tool and responsibility she had been entrusted with. She writes songs with Luke about coming into yourself, and her speech at the Orpheum tells listeners that she’s there for them if they’re going through a hard time like she did and that they deserve to see the glory that they are, that they can be brave and strong in the face of anything. She would use magic to channel her strength and bravery and help others just like she does with her music.

Luke: Gryfferin. I’ve seen a lot of good arguments for both Slytherin and Gryffindor for Luke, and I believe he’s both with a Gryffindor primary. We focus a lot on his ambition, and he does have that in abundance. But I think he also exhibits bravery as a strong value of his. As Meg Cabot taught us, “courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear.” Luke decides that his drive for music, his ambition, is more important than his fear of leaving home. It’s also a reckless pursuit of glory, which is very Gryffindor. Then he regrets it and decides that his need to express his feelings through the very thing that caused him to leave home is more important than his fear of being wrong or addressing his pain and guilt. Similarly, when Caleb shows up in the studio, Luke is the one to approach him and stand up to him. He’s just as terrified as Alex and Reggie are, but his friends, Julie, and their second chance at music all matter more to him than his fear of Caleb. We see Slytherin ambition in Luke’s desire for the band to become famous. I would also argue that a drive for fame and glory is very much a Gryffindor trait. We also learn that what he wants is to connect with people through music. He writes songs, sometimes with Julie, about fighting to find yourself and to find home in the people you love. In a sense, by becoming ghosts, the guys are given a bit of magic, and we see Luke consider their second chance as something special to be protected, a Slytherin view, but also that when they believe their chance is being ripped away, he chooses to give it up, to be strong and show courage in favor of what matters most to him – his friends, Julie, and their musical integrity.

Alex: Huffleclaw. Alex focuses on relationships, so I’d say he’s primarily a Hufflepuff. We see him checking in on the people he cares about. After the guys leave Julie hanging at the dance and Alex and Reggie take her to see Luke visiting his parents, Alex emphasizes that the group knows what it’s like to be let down by someone you trusted and cared for. We know that’s true for all of them, and we see the toll in Alex’s eyes. Between that and Luke’s statement that Alex’s parents were never cool again after he came out, we get the sense that he was once close with his parents. He watched their relationship dissolve, and he learns to recognize the same pain in others and do what he can to make it better. As a ghost, he uses magic to form relationships. He takes special moments to connect with Julie. He meets Willie and jumps in headfirst. Willie teaches him how to interact with things as a ghost, and then Alex practices for himself. He likes exploring the boundaries of being a ghost, as we see when he picks up the picture of Julie’s mom and when the guys prank Trevor. I think picking up the picture also once again shows his focus on relationships. He values connecting with people and making them feel better, and he uses magic to explore his curiosity and the new world they’ve been given.

Reggie: Hufflepuff. I’ve seen, and fully support, the theories that Reggie isn’t dumb – he’s intuitive and aware, and he learned how to use his humor as a power. He learned how to use his humor to diffuse situations with his parents and he does the same at different points during the show. He breaks tension and lightens moods and hearts. As a fandom, we’ve agreed that This Band is Back was a song the guys came up with when they were alive to cheer Reggie up when he was down. A song about their friendship brings him back to himself. When Reggie arrives at the Orpheum, his eyes fall to Julie and he doesn’t look away until Luke starts flickering. He’s not focused on the crowd or the venue they’ve been waiting to play for 25 years, the thing they believe is their unfinished business. He’s focused on the girl who helped change their afterlives and became family. As a ghost, Reggie uses his magic to help Carlos prove the existence of ghosts because he wants to defend every kid like him who has never been believed by adults. He chooses to share his magic to defend people who feel overlooked.

#julie and the phantoms #jatp #Julie Molina #Luke Patterson #Alex JATP #Reggie JATP #Carrie Wilson #should I format this so it’s not just blocks of text #I also have a few other half formed thoughts #I could make a case for a lot of variation for each of them #Julie’s also got a lot of Puff in her

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lofitowns · 4 years ago

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I would like to request an one-shot where Female Reader is Nagisa’s mother and also a former assassin. As Nagisa’s mother, she’s sweet, she’s beautiful, she’s doting towards Nagisa her son but during a parent/teacher day, she will reveal her past as an assassin to Korosensei but she’s glad to hear that her son is also one of the best students of the school.

mother’s intuition

❝ THERE’S A LOT OF THINGS YOU DON’T TELL ME. BUT, THAT’S OKAY. ❞

pairing: nagisa shiota x mother! reader

word count: 1655

summary: in which you have a parent-teacher conference with your son’s e-class teacher and reveal your past (fem! reader)

warnings: mention of death

a/n: i’m so sorry for how long this took me to get out. i started school and i’ve been drowning in work and have had no motivation to do anything. thank you for your patience. i haven’t watched assassination classroom in a while, but i did my best!

also i try to stay away from specifying gender, but since they asked for a mother, i ended up using feminine pronouns.

You had never told your son about your previous occupation. Being an assassin never really came up in normal conversation.

That was something you kept in your past. It seemed like a lifetime ago, you had changed a lot since then.

For one, you gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Nagisa Shiota.

You had been twenty-eight at the time and you were in love. He seemed to be the man of your dreams. He understood you, for he was from the same profession. You assumed you’d be together forever.

But forever doesn’t always last.

After he was killed, you refused to continue your work as an assassin. It just wasn’t for you anymore, you even took your fallen lover’s name, Shiota, to distance yourself from it. You were skilled, one of the best, and they were sad to see you go.

Some days you missed it. You’d be sitting in your office chair, a stark contrast to how free you used to be, and think back. How the cool metal of a gun felt in your hands, how your fingers locked around the trigger.

Ever since being moved down to Class E, Nagisa had been busier than before. He was probably just studying more, you assumed, and maybe he had even made some friends! At least, that’s what you hoped. You had no real idea of what was happening in the classroom on the hill.

When Nagisa told you they were holding parent-teacher meetings, you were excited! While he didn’t go into detail, he would tell you over dinner how much he liked his teachers. How they were supporting him and making his confidence grow. As his mother, you couldn’t think of anything better.

As the night grew nearer, Nagisa seemed to become more... Hesitant about you going. You could tell he was hiding something, a quirk you developed after your many years in the field. Now that you thought about it, it seemed like he had been hiding something for a while. You just never thought anything of it because you trusted him to talk to you.

You could tell something was off as soon as his school building came into view. Your shoulders were stiff and your brow furrowed.

“You coming, mom?” Your blue-haired boy questioned, a few feet in front of you. You hadn’t realized your feet had stopped moving.

A gentle smile pulled at your lips in reassurance, “Of course, sweetheart.”

The building was longer than it was tall and looked to be made of flimsy wood. It didn’t look as put together as the main school building did. Of course, you were a bit disappointed that your son had been pushed down, but you would always support him. It also didn’t seem fair to you that the lowest students were moved to a different building.

Disregarding that fact, you walked through the open double doors. Your eyes scanned around the walls, your ears tuning themselves into the hushed voices. Another trick you picked up on the job.

There was a small laugh and then a door creaked open, a tall, dark-haired teenager and an older woman walking out.

“Nagisa!” The boy’s voice boomed in the quiet hallway.

The corner of your son’s lip quirked up as he gave him a small wave, “Hey, Okajima.”

The boy’s attention was dragged to you. You could practically see his eyes bulging out of their sockets and his tongue roll out of his mouth. You pretended not to notice, bowing your head in greeting.

“You must be Nagisa’s classmate. I’m his mother,” You greeted, sending who you assumed to be his mother a smile.

“Good evening. Yes, I’m Okajima’s mother. It’s very nice to meet you.”

After exchanging pleasantries, you took a few more steps towards the office door.

“That’s your mom? Whoa.” You heard a voice behind you say. His mom whispered scolding words before dragging him out the door.

You shook your head, laughing under your breath. “Come on, your teacher’s waiting for us, right?”

A flustered Nagisa nodded quickly, walking in front of you to open the door. When he did, that sense of uneasy from earlier returned.

Your eyes narrowed as you stared down at his apparent teacher. His head was far too circular and he didn’t seem to have very many human features. The teacher, turning his head to you, flashed you a grin. What exactly was going on at this school?

“Ah, you must be Nagisa’s mother! What a pleasure to meet you!”

Choosing your words with caution, you turned to your son. “You can wait outside if you want.”

You didn’t fail to notice the way Nagisa’s eyes flickered from you to his teacher or the slight nod his teacher gave him.

Settling yourself in the wooden chair, you turned your attention back to the teacher in front of you.

“It’s a long trek up the mountain,” he started, arms waving around like noodles, “Would you like a drink?”

Without wasting any time, you began questioning him.

“What are you?”

His posture stiffened and his eyes darted around the room. He cleared his throat, acting like nothing happened, “I’m not sure what you mean, ma’am. I’m your son’s teacher, Mr. Karasuma.”

You were about to retort when the door slammed open. There stood a beautiful blonde woman, hands settling on her hips.

“I just saw Nagisa walkout. Is his mom not coming?” She had failed to notice your presence.

The thing, you knew he couldn’t be a teacher, in front of you cleared his throat once more, nodding in your direction. Her blue eyes snapped to you, widening a bit. Her face contorted in confusion before turning to recognition.

“Are you...?” Her voice almost seemed hesitant as she stepped farther in the room to take in your face.

“Are you (y/n) (l/n)?”

Now that was a name you hadn’t heard in a while. Your mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to figure out the best way to answer. Alarm bells were ringing in your head. How did this stranger know your given name?

“No! This is Nagisa’s mother. (y/n) Shiota!”

“I’ve seen your picture before. You knew Lovro.” She seemed to disregard his comment.

That was another name you hadn’t heard in a while. You pursed your lips, a battle going on in your mind about what to say next.

“And you are?” You questioned, eyebrow raising in suspicion.

“Irina Jelavić. He trained me.”

Your mouth all but fell open. The figure behind the desk started flailing his arms around, whisper yelling at the woman. He questioned why she had even mentioned that and that she would blow their cover.

Your eyes turned back to the “teacher” in front of you. You knew something was going on up here. “Who are you and why are you teaching my son? Why are there assassins in the same building the children are learning?”

A strained laugh fell from his lips, glancing between you and Irina. “Well... You see...”

The blonde stepped forward, setting her hands on the desk and leaning towards him, “She used to be an assassin. I looked up to her for years. If Nagisa is her son, she’d be happy to know of his progress.”

The alarm bells in your head were louder now to the point you could barely hear. Question after question kept popping into your mind.

After a few more attempts at coaxing, the figure behind the desk finally shoots up. A few papers flew off the desk before he was standing in front of you in a completely different form.

They explained it to you, not in as much detail as you would have liked, but you understood the gist. This creature had blown up the moon and now they were training a group of kids to kill him. To top that off, if they didn't, he would destroy the Earth.

You scoffed a few times, thinking to yourself that this couldn’t be real. This was all a big joke. Your son couldn’t be training to be an assassin under your very nose. But you took a look at the creature in front of you and decided to believe them. What did they have to gain from lying?

“How... How is he doing?” You asked, settling back into the stiff chair you had been sitting in since your arrival.

“He’s one of the best in the class. It seems, from what Mrs. Jelavić says, that he takes after his mother.” The creature answered. A small smile tugged at your lips as you listened to him, Korosensei, speak.

“He even came to me the other day, thinking maybe he should be an assassin after he finishes school. He’s very smart, very resourceful.” He continued to explain.

Even though you had left it in the past, hearing all the things he said about your son made your heart swell. You could tell just from how he spoke how much Korosensei cared for your son.

“Should I tell him? About what I used to be.” You finally questioned, furrowing your eyebrows in thought. The large creature across from you chuckled and reached out to place a tentacle on your shoulder.

“Do what you think is right.”

You gazed at him before standing up, bowing your head at the two in farewell.

“Thank you, both of you, for telling me. Nagisa has been a lot happier since he came here. He thinks very highly of all his teachers. He’s becoming more confident every day.”

The cool night air greeted you after you walked through the main doors. Nagisa was leaning against the exterior, watching the tops of the trees sway in the wind. The moment your foot stepped on the grass, his eyes averted themselves to look at you.

You sent him a warm smile, “Come on, let’s go home. I think there’s a lot we need to talk about.”

thank you for reading :) have a good day!

#gracewrites #gwac #request #nagisa shiota #assassination classroom #assassination classroom x reader #assclass #nagisa shiota x reader #assassination classroom imagines #nagisa shiota imagines #nagisa #nagisa x reader #anime #mine #writing #imagines

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hollypastl · 4 years ago

Text

the disappearance of [REDACTED] ch.3

miya atsumu/reader

Summary: "MISSING: MIYA Y/N" It reads. Underneath is a picture of yourself. Age, height, weight. Everything important is listed. How embarrassing.

Genre: angst/mystery

Warnings: missing persons, time skip spoilers

Notes: crossposted on ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726002/chapters/70566306#main

[y/n] 10:27pm: i’m heeeereeeee

[y/n] 10:29pm: i said i’m here you asshole

[y/n] 10:29pm: hurry tf up

[y/n] 10:29pm: did you fall asleep

[y/n] 10:29pm: i’m leaving if you don’t respond in the next 30 seconds

With a painful squeak, the window slides open. “Wouldja shaddup?” He hisses. “Yer gonna wake up ‘Samu if ya keep buzzin’ my phone so much.”

“Too fuckin’ late, asshole.” Osamu groans. You can hear him rolling over in bed and Atsumu disappears from view, courtesy of a pillow flying towards his face at light speed.

You take over the spot he’d been occupying to pop your head in and lean over the windowsill. “Hey, how are you?”

“Tired.”

“Then go back to sleep, stupid ‘Samu.” The killer arm flies out again and this time the pillow lands. Atsumu’s head gives a sick crack against the drywall.

You let out a low whistle. “Nice one.”

He finally sits up and comes into view. “[l/n], right?” He’s obviously tired, and you feel kind of bad for waking him up.

Your face quirks a performative smile, remembering that you do still have to respond. “The one and only.” You straighten your arms and hoist yourself up, over, and in through the window, taking a seat and holding out your hand to shake. “Hey, you don’t mind if I call you by your first name, do you? It’d be kinda weird to call you Miya when I already call Atsumu, Atsumu. You can call—”

Without warning, you shoot to the other side of the room and stick yourself to the wall.

The door swings open.

From where you stand, Osamu’s eyes connect with the person at the door, darting towards Atsumu for a split second. He realizes there could be big trouble really quick. His mom might be pretty chill, but having a random girl sneaking into their room? Does he realize that? He was suffering from brain damage at the moment.

A silent conversation takes place between the brothers and their mom, who stands silently at the door. It kind of freaks you out, how you can see her shadow splaying out from the light in the hallway and not hear a sound.

“Go to sleep.” She commands, slamming the door shut.

A breath of relief leaves all three of them.

It swings back open. “Sorry fer slamming the door. G’night, love ya.”

“Love ya, too.”

“Love ya, mom.” They chorus, slightly out of time with the other. When they speak in tandem like that, you can’t tell who’s voice is who’s.

“And close the damn window; it’ll mess with the AC.”

The door clicks closed, the lights in the hall are flicked off, and footsteps walk away.

You hop over to give Atsumu a hand up. He’s still sulking against the wall. “Like I was saying, you can call me [y/n].” You pat him on the shoulder, which is slightly awkward because the boy is so much taller than you. You wonder what their mom feeds them. Then you remember why you’re here in the first place. Seems like the trauma of almost getting caught redhanded was getting to you.

“[y/n] can we hurry up and go?” Atsumu whispers in your ear. You’re not paying attention, you’re too busy rustling through their closet and dresser.

“I’m kinda busy, right now. And we’ve got plenty of time. What difference is a few minutes gonna make?” You slide one drawer open after the other. “Eww. Teenage boy sock drawer.” Atsumu kicks it shut and you almost lose a finger in the process. You can’t see it, but intuition tells you he’s red in the face.

“Do I even wanna know what you two are up ta?” Osamu drawls.

“We’re breaking into an abandoned sweet potato farm.” You throw a different shirt at Atsumu. “Change into that.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

“I meant why are you breaking into an abandoned sweet potato farm?” Osamu corrected. You faltered. Why did their voices sound so similar?

“The third years are planning a party to kick off summer break, but they need a location. We just need to check if it’s safe, and we’re in.” Your head shot back at Osamu and you ignored Atsumu stripping in the corner of your eye. The room was dark enough. “Wanna come?”

“Uhh, I’ll pass.” He flops back down on his mattress with an audible whump and throws the duvet over his head.

You shrugged. “Suit yourself.” You turned to Atsumu, now dressed in a shirt that wasn’t cringy as hell. “Ready?”

He was already lifting himself out the window and extending a hand to you. “Bye, Osamu!” You whisper-yelled. “Sleep well. I promise Atsumu will try to not wake you up when he gets back.”

Outside, it was much brighter. From the light of the moon and stars, you could fully appreciate the scowl Atsumu directed at you. “What?”

He shuts the window first, obviously struggling not to slam it. “Didja have to spend twenty minutes flirtin’ with my brother?”

He’s already hiking his way up the hill that they called their front yard, probably looking for his bike. “Oh, was I? I didn’t even realize.” It takes you a second but you find it fallen in the bushes of his neighbor’s lawn. “Can you blame me? He’s pretty cute.”

Atsumu sputters, yanking the handlebars from you. “Will ya stop teasin’ already?”

He’s so easy to rile up. “I’ll have you know I’m never anything but truthful.” He swings his leg over the bike and checks the road.

“Hurry up and get on. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, one sec.” Without warning, you stick your thumb and middle fingers in your mouth and whistle nice and quiet. Wouldn’t wanna wake the neighbors.

The hair on the back of his neck shoots up and he waits a good thirty seconds for the lights to switch on in one of his neighbor’s houses. “WHAT THE HELL?” He whispers. When he looks back, you’re just tapping your foot and debating whistlin’ like a banshee again.

“Just callin’ our friend.”

“Wha—”

Finally, a giant dog bounds up from the woods, surprisingly silent for his size. “Good boy, coming here.” You rub his face affectionately and finally sit yourself down on the back of the bike. “Taro, meet Atsumu. Atsumu, meet Taro. Taro-taicho, really, but he’s not militaristic about his title.”

“Whydja introduce the dog first?” He grumbles, toeing the kickstand up.

The bike jerks forward and you wrap an arm around Atsumu’s waist to balance yourself. It’d be inconvenient and uncool to fall off. A piece of dried jerky is also tossed to Taro with your free hand and you call for him to follow.

The air feels nice, breezing through your hair and tickling your skin. July heat has been unbearable, you’ve hated it ever since you were a child. But it felt nice with the sun being long gone. Even the crickets and cicadas relentless buzzing was oddly tolerable. Maybe you should make late night summer outings a habit.

After twenty minutes of coasting up and down hills and towards their destination, Atsumu breaks your comfortable silence. “Yanno, this is kinda romantic.”

“Huh?”

“You. Me. Alone. Under the stars.” Objectively, he’s not wrong. Last time you heard, sneaking out with a boy in the middle of the night did fall under the spectrum of dumb high school romantic activities to engage in. You might have even entertained the thought of playing along if Atsumu hadn’t carelessly pointed it out.

“Don’t forget about Taro.” You reminded. “Or that I wanted your dreamy brother to come along—” You fail to deliver the line flat and a laugh bubbles up.

“Will ya stop with that?” He lurches forward and peddles twice as hard, putting his frustration into kinetic output.

You cackle and lean against him. “C’mon, I can’t help it, Atsumu.”

“Help what?” He sounds exasperated, like he regrets even agreeing to this whole adventure in the first place.

“Making fun of you whenever you try to flirt with me.”

He scoffs. “M’not flirtin’ with ya! That’s just how I am!”

“M’kay.” You hum. You don’t buy it for a second. “Well, that’s just how I am too.”

“Fine.” He huffs.

“Fine.” You mirror his tone and he isn’t sure if you’re teasing him again or not. “Turn here.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.” He swerves to the left and you let out a short whistle to alert Taro. Just because you’re feeling extra nice tonight, you toss the dog another piece of jerky, which he leaps in the air to catch.

“Hey, want some jerky?” You’re already pulling apart a nice, soft piece for him. You’ll feed the tough bits to Taro.

“You mean the stuff you’ve been feedin’ the dog?”

“It’s for humans, too.” It definitely wasn’t.

He thinks it over for a second. “Only if you feed it to me.”

Oh, the stuff that just pours out of his mouth. Does he think before he speaks? You’ll miss hearing it someday. Just to play along, you let your breath catch. It’s just loud enough for him to hear.

“C’mon, my hands are busy, just give it here.” He argues, turning his head slightly so you can see his mouth but he can still see the road.

“‘Kay.” You pop the meat in his mouth. “Huh.” You stare at your fingers.

He groans. “What now?”

“I’m just surprised you didn’t try to suck on my fingers or anything!” You explain.

At that, you can feel him stiffen up immensely. “I—If anything, y—you’d be suuuuuh…” He trails off.

But you know exactly what he wants to say. “I’d be…?” You almost miss the sign. “Oh, hey we’re here!” You bounce off the bike before Atsumu has a chance to stop, and run up to the gate. “Wow, lucky it’s only rusted shut.” You give it a few good kicks before the metal snaps open. “It would’ve been so annoying to lug my bolt cutters all the way back here. Hey, you’ve got your tetanus shot, right?” You shoot over your shoulder.

Taro beams ahead once he can wiggle through and you’re right behind, waving the flashlight on your phone around and picking your way through overgrown weeds. You’re glad you wore tights under your denim cutoffs or else your legs would be itching like crazy right now.

“Atsumu? You coming?”

He shakes his head and runs his hand through his hair. He must be tired. It is almost midnight after all. After a moment, he follows after you. Even from several feet away, you can see his eyes drooping and the sluggishness in his step. Right, he did just bike forty minutes with you balancing behind him and not helping in the slightest. Not to mention your personality can be… grating. Or so you’ve been told. When he gets close enough, you offer your hand and he takes it without any fanfare. This old place is creepy as hell and he’s not gonna say anything to make you take it back.

To Taro, you direct three short whistles, signaling him to lead the way, but stay close. He picks his way through the field carefully and you follow dutifully behind. The fields are full of holes and pits, you’re again glad that you wore clunky hiking boots with ankle support over some flimsy sneakers. The LED light on your phone can only help so much.

“Should you be wavin’ that thing around?” Atsumu asks, voice low with trepidation.

“What thing?” You ask.

“Yer flashlight.” He clarifies, halfway between a hiss and a sigh.

Your brow involuntarily furrows. Where had he gotten that idea? “Why? Kind of need it to see, ya’ know?”

“But what if someone sees?”

You stop in your tracks, drop his hand, and turn around. “There’s no one around for miles, Atsumu. Nobody’s gonna see.”

“Then why are we even here?”

“To check if it’s safe, I told you that.”

“From what? Some old farmer’s ghost?”

“When did I— Actually, you know what? That’s a good point. I didn’t think about the place being haunted.” Considering what you knew about the history of the property. You continued to mutter under your breath and swiped your phone on. Did you have a signal here? Could you download a ghost detector app? “Maybe I’ll just have to borrow one from the paranormal club at school. They owe me a favor, after all.”

“Can you PLEASE stop rambling and tell me what we’re doing all the way out here in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night?” His palms land on your shoulders. From the way his fingers dig into your skin, you’re glad he religiously clips his fingernails.

“—”

He shakes you, roughly. “EXACTLY?”

You dropped your arm from where it was held in the air, trying to get a better signal for your phone. “We’re checking for bombs.”

The annoyance in his expression drops and leaves you looking at… You didn’t really know what that emotion was. “What?”

“I told you it was abandoned in the 40’s.” Maybe you hadn’t been clear enough when discussing it with Atsumu the day before. In your defense, it seemed pretty obvious. Why did he think there were people here? You had said it was abandoned.

“You’re tellin’ me...” He sputters.

You cock your head to the side. “I mean, why did you think I brought Taro?”

His eyes dart behind you to where the dog is patiently waiting.

“We’re leavin’.” Before you know it, Atsumu has a vice grip on your wrist and is dragging you back the way you came. But you can’t leave yet, you haven’t cleared the property. At the very least, you wanted to make it to the old farmhouse and see if the floorboards were safe for dancing!

A sharp twist and tug of your wrist frees you for a split second, but his reflexes are quick, even when he’s not looking and it’s dark out. “Let go!” You whine. He doesn’t. Any attempts, physical or emotional, are useless. You’re caught off guard by just how much stronger he is than you and you’re not sure what makes it more infuriating: that you’re weak, or that you’re stupid for not knowing.

Taro barks and your eyes widen. On instinct you grab the arm Atsumu’s dragging you with and throw your entire weight back. By the grace of the gods, it’s just enough to send him stumbling back and you both topple over in the thistle.

“Owwwww.” You moan, already second guessing yourself. There are thorns digging into every inch of your skin and Atsumu’s bony elbow has planted itself in between your vital organs.

Slowly, he lifts himself up. “What the hell was that for?” By now, Taro has bounded over and is shoving his nose in your face. He growls when Atsumu extends a hand.

“Taro, heelAHHH!” One after the other, you take the proffered hand up, tell Taro off, and rise up. Except when you put weight on your ankle, it screams in protest. Tears prick your eyes and you grip onto Atsumu for support. You feel bad for him. Your nails probably hurt.

“Don’t step back.” You warn, remembering at least that through the pain searing itself up your leg.

He shifts his weight and Taro barks a warning again. “Is he barking because of the…”

“Yeah.”

From your spot hanging onto him, you can hear his heart beating faster and faster. It wasn’t a situation you were familiar with. Should you just tell him not to be scared? But that tactic never worked for you in the past.

He’s the first one to work up some courage and kick his mind back in gear. “Can you walk?”

You test it, setting some weight on your heel. Probably not as carefully as you should have because you hiss in pain.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He sighs, gingerly turning around and crouching down, listening for Taro’s warning the whole time. “Hop on.” You comply. “Taro-taicho? Lead the way.”

The dog stares Atsumu down while you bury your face in his back. You’re so angry. At what? You’re not quite sure. Definitely not Atsumu. It’s not his fault. Then again, why did he get so mad anyways? It’s not like you were purposefully— That’s a lie. Abandoned farm from the 40’s wasn’t specific enough. Even with the additional context of your bomb sniffing hound. You let him assume and from how quiet he’s being, he’s pissed. You would be too if the roles were reversed.

Vaguely, you process him helping you back onto the bike, giving his shoulder for you to hang onto. The person you’re mad at is yourself.

“Why’re ya snifflin’?”

If this were a movie, your tears would be shining in the moonlight as the wind whipped them off your cheeks. But it isn’t and you’re glad he’s not looking at you.

“I’m sorry.” You choke out. Your throat is closing up and they’re the first words you can think of. “Are you mad at me?” They’re whispered as loud as you can make them, but you can’t put any real force behind them because the frog in your throat is getting bigger by the second. The atmosphere is nerve wracking. His answer can’t come quick enough because your mind is already jumping to different, more effective, ways to apologize. What should you do? How do you make it up to him? You’ve never been good at gift giving. Was running an option? Let him take you home and then lock the door before he can say anything. Delete his phone number and ignore him at school.

The manipulative bitch inside you wonders if giving him a piece of yourself would suffice. Would he even want it? He sure spoke like he did. Sometimes. How far would be enough? A kiss? On the cheek, or lips? How long? What if he wanted more?

He had asked before. Half joking, half serious. Unwilling to commit. Back then, your rejection had been painless. The both of you laughed immediately after and went back to normal.

But that was then and this is now. 'Now' is painful and suffocating. It's a shot in the dark, but maybe the opposite action would give you room to breathe.

#miya atsumu #atsumu x reader #haikyuu

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whoperlokian-bendingismagic · 4 years ago

Text

New Short Story

Distance is a funny thing. Or rather, perception of distance is a funny thing. Human brains can really truly understand distances of up to about ten miles. Anything longer than that and it’s just math. Driving down a road, if you have 240 miles left and you’re going eighty miles per hour, you have three hours of driving left. You don’t really know what that means, though. It’s just ticking on a clock, and going from landmark to landmark, if there even are landmarks to use. The human mind is always approximating, always recalculating sensory inputs based on past experience It only knows what it’s been designed to know.

Never trust your own mind if you have instruments. Instruments first. If there’s no instruments then don’t trust your two-second gut. Trust your two-minute gut.

I grew up in the Eastern Urban Complex. The night sky was nothingness, a velvety black backdrop to a million lights and and towering buildings stretching up and over.

My parents saved up for a vacation. A proper one outside of the urban complex, not just a trip to a different borough where you didn’t have to do the cooking or cleaning for a week. We went when I was 10. We took a train that had no windows. Passengers who had never lived outside the city experienced agoraphobia and severe confusion. It was better to entertain everybody with screens, caused less panic. The train was luxurious. The chair was comfortable, we were served delicious food by pretty ladies in tidy uniforms and gleaming smiles, their hats perched just so over their immaculate hair.

We took the train out of the city and all the way to the end of the line. If you asked me how many miles we traveled on the train ride, I would have told you about fifty. I looked up how far the trip actually was years later. It was more like seven hundred miles.

Distance is relative. Distance is perception and perception is false. Check your instruments, check them again. If the numbers seem wrong to you check the backups. It’s probably you that’s wrong, though.

As I stepped out of the station, I found the world too big, too open, and I suddenly felt too small. There were people there to help us get acclimated. Focus on ourselves, then let our senses explore this alien experience of openness, of distance, of the desert. We got into a car and were driven out towards the mountains. We couldn’t see the mountains from the train station, but that was what my parents told me. We were driving towards the mountains. I’d never seen mountains in person. I’d looked at pictures in a book, though. I’d heard they were big. When we crested a hill and could suddenly see the mountains, I shrieked. They were coming right up on us and we were going to crash into them.

My parents shushed me, but the driver chuckled and said that was a pretty typical response. Of course, we didn’t crash into the mountains, they were still miles away, and as we got closer, the slopes became gentler, smoother as we got closer, and the road climbed up through a canyon between two peaks. The trees changed. The Eastern Urban Complex has trees in its thousands of pocket parks between buildings, shady trees with broad green leaves that turn golden and orange and red in the fall. The trees here had needles. Very little grew beneath the trees, and the dirt felt more like dust than anything.

We finally got out of the car at a retreat. There were a series of buildings situated around a bigger building. THey were all built out of logs. My mom told me the smaller buildings were called cabins, and the bigger one was called a lodge. I had read about cabins before but didn’t think they looked quite like that.

Perception and reality are often at odds. Instrumentation distills reality into digestible pieces of information we can use to modify our perception to match reality. The instrument says I’ve been “here” for two days, but that feels wrong too. I don’t have any backups to cross-check, though.

There were other children my age there that I played with, trails to hike, a forest to explore and rocks to climb. I don’t remember a lot of details from my time there. I couldn’t tell you the color of the sheets on the cozy bed. I couldn’t tell you what meals we ate, or the names of the children I played with. There’s a distinct smell, one of dust and pine trees that’s locked in my mind, though, and there’s my first sight of the true night sky.

My parents let me stay up late, and we would go out and look at the night sky. It was practically littered with stars, big and small. I’d never thought of the sky as an object before. I thought that maybe if I got a good 50-foot ladder, I could climb to the top of that and touch the stars from there.

Examine your thoughts. Why are you thinking what you’re thinking? What’s the basis? Answer these questions honestly to yourself and to others, it can save your life, your crew, and your mission.

That experience planted something deep in me and I strove to find a way to touch the sky. A 50-foot ladder is hard to come by, but if you really want to touch the sky, you need a fusion drive. The best way to get a fusion drive is to join the Naval Scientific Exploration Team, NSET, pronounced “enset” for short.

I poured myself into my studies. I had never been a slack student, but with a distinct goal in mind I became great. I studied general spaceship engineering and navigation. NSET only takes the best and brightest, so I fought to prove that I was good enough.

There was an experiment, or demonstration done on every NSET cadet after they were accepted. We were asked a series of “true or false” questions with only a second to answer each one. “An object released in Earth’s atmosphere will fall to the ground”, “Magnets attract opposite poles”, “A ball thrown will approximate a circular trajectory”, Easy, true, true, false.

“The earth revolves around the sun” false. “Orbiting objects experience gravity” false. “The world is flat” true. We all knew the correct answers to those more difficult questions, but without time to think, we grabbed for the convenient, intuitive answer. Answers that are convenient or intuitive are not by definition correct. They are, however, easy to fall prey to, because they fit so neatly into a caveman view of the world.

Cavemen have never traveled through space, though. Cavemen have never traveled at a million kilometers an hour, or measured distances in light-minutes. Cavemen were never one mistake away from their entire support environment vanishing in a cloud of twisted metal and shattered ceramic. Cavemen never watched their friends desperately fight against nothing and be pulled apart from each other by first order kinematic equations, enacted ignoring losses due to air resistance or friction. At NSET academy, we watched tapes collected from black boxes from early manned explorations deep into the solar system. I can’t sleep sometimes thinking about the panic and terror flooding those people as they were ripped from their venting ship and out into space.

So we had it drilled into our heads that we were unreliable, that trusting our gut could be catastrophic. The first practical exercise in the NSET training program is called “the egg”. It’s a sensory deprivation tank. You feel weightless, with no light, no ambient temperature, no sound. It starts by feeling liberating. The mind is free to wander, to contemplate anything. People outside NSET use sensory deprivation tanks as a meditation aid or a brain-booster, but they get to control when they leave. The Egg isn’t something you pay for, or do to enhance your mind, or leave whenever you want. It’s a test and a demonstration. Some people lose it hard. They get transferred to a different branch of the Navy, or optioned to leave with no shame or dishonor, just getting admitted to NSET is an easy way to join a private spacer corp. NSET isn’t for everybody, and if you can’t handle The Egg, then nobody wants you on their NSET crew.

I didn’t fail The Egg, but I can understand why people do. When all the senses you rely on to provide information don’t have any information to provide, you start losing the more esoteric senses supported by the main five. First, you lose your sense of form as your body dissolves into the nothingness surrounding you. Next, you lose your sense of space entirely, if you don’t have a being, a shape, then how can you know anything to be anywhere? Without space, you lose time. Some people, particularly those living with mental conditions like ADHD or depression can already have a loose grasp of time, but even the most neurotypical hard-ass king of punctuality starts losing their sense of time.

Then, The Egg opens. The light is disorienting, sounds are suddenly back, and you have a shape, a form, a place, there are things happening, which means that time works again. Then comes the question: “How long were you in there?”. Nobody answers that one correctly.

Two days can’t be right. The oxygen and battery indicators haven’t even gone down to 75 percent.

You should not trust your intuition, your internal senses to make decisions for the entire space ship. That is the constant lesson at NSET training. There are tips and mental exercises to help with some of the shortcomings our minds have, but our instruments are always the key. We go back into The Egg on a routine basis, and now that we know what’s coming for us in the prolonged sensory deprivation, we can react. Focus on your breathing, your heartrate, your fingers and toes. Move periodically to pull yourself back into awareness of your body. The heart is not a good clock, but it’s better than no clock. Count your pulse to use it as a rudimentary timepiece. Don’t go with your initial gut feeling. Instead, if everything else is going wrong, think about the information you have available for two minutes and then check your gut. If you’re only given a second to answer, you think the sun goes around the earth, but with two minutes you’ll know that the earth moves around the sun.

Everybody is trained in every function of the ship. There are specializations, but we aren’t running routine trade routes to Mars or microgravity mining operations. NSET’s goals are to travel to the great beyond, past the Oort cloud and set courses to new solar systems. The ships have the latest technology, the best drives, and the best crews.

I’m ostensibly a navigator, helping track progress and plot courses as we travel further than any human ever has. However, if need be, I can pilot the ship, rebuild the reactor, maintain environmental controls and life support, and repair damage to the ship’s hull.

With new drive technology and a different goal in mind, we surpassed the limit of Voyager 1 as the farthest human-made object from earth in just eighteen months.

The time doesn’t make sense, the O2 and electric readings don’t make sense, checking trajectories. Which way am I headed?

The sun is nothing but the brightest star now, out of millions visible to my naked eye. My repair mission timer is reading three days now. The ship is long gone, I don’t know how I got separated but I did. I’ve been using every trick in the book, but staying out here is almost worse than The Egg. Three days doesn’t make any sense. I had O2 and suit systems batteries good for a five hour repair shift. I started using my heartbeat as a timer, I counted to 3600 beats, an hour, and the gauges haven’t moved, not since I left the ship.

I’m not cold, but that’s not surprising. The one-second gut reaction is that I should be solid ice by now, but space doesn’t work like that. Heat transfer occurs through three mechanisms: convection, conduction, and radiation. Convection requires a moving fluid, and conduction requires a contact with a surface at a different temperature. The void of space requires neither. The suit is designed to minimize radiation heat loss, so I’m keeping a level temperature, especially now that I’m not exerting myself. I’ll be warm for a long time after I die out here.

I do have to keep myself moving, minimally at least. If I stay still for too long, I can feel myself becoming the universe. My arms and legs melt out from me and start spinning outward and outward. My chest becomes so bright and before I know it I am the universe, I have no form, I have no volume or dimension and I become the galaxy around me, until my suit beeps, or an itch develops on my skin and I snap back into myself, and now the repair mission timer reads four days. Oxygen at 75%, battery at 75%.

In calculus, when the teacher was repeating subjects to the rest of the class that I already understood, I would contemplate infinity. Calculus deals often with infinity and zero, and I would contemplate just how large infinity was. I would try to fit it into the room with me. Over there, in a corner, there’s a tiny speck. That speck contains all human knowledge. I make it just a little bit larger and add another infinity inside the infinite volume of the room. I add all the functions that have a derivative, the speck grows infinitessimally. I add all the functions for which no symbolic integral exists, the speck grows less. This whole vast room is everything we don’t know and do know and even then it’s merely vast, not infinite. Now I’m experiencing just how wrong I was. Infinity stretches out from me in all directions and I cannot see all of it. The stars slowly rotate around me and maybe if I had a really good fifty-foot ladder I could climb up that and touch them.

I’m traveling at close to a million kilometers every hour, every 3600 heartbeats, more or less. I may as well be going nowhere. The stars aren’t changing, nothing is changing. I’m only going a million kilometers an hour compared to earth. There are all kinds of things that I’m traveling slower than, or I’m in lockstep with. Motion is relative, distance is relative. I don’t have instruments that can tell me where I’m headed or how quickly, or if anything is coming.

Day five, and I remember that I haven’t had a drink of water since before I left. Two hours before I left I took final hydration, then I peed before getting in the suit because I hate peeing in the suit. I haven’t peed either, I haven’t felt the need. Haven’t taken a shit. Haven’t felt the need.

I flex my fingers and toes. Then I roll my head and smile and frown and squint and stick my tongue out. I say a few words, mostly to practice words.

The word “planet” is ancient greek for “traveler”. Technically, then, everybody on the ship is a planet, the ship itself is a planet, and I’ve somehow become a planet all my own. I’d have to call myself a rocky planet. I have a crust, and underneath that I’m liquid, and all my heat comes from the core of me. I haven’t eaten food in five days, either. No food, no water, oxygen at 75%, battery at 75%.

It took me a while to notice the dark spot in the sky. The void of stars, where there was nothingness. There hadn’t been nothingness there before but now there is. Day five and a half, another star just vanished behind the penumbra. A rogue planet, it must be. I’m traveling so fast compared to earth, I’m probably still going pretty fast compared to this rogue planet as well. I’m on a pretty direct approach with this black nothingness. Not a black hole, there’s no accretion disc, there’s no gravitational lensing, just black. A dark planet just as lost as I am. I wonder if I set foot on it, will it drain all my heat through my feet and leave me a frozen husk in an instant? Will I be alive for long on this?

Strangely, I will be the first NSET crewmate to make physical contact with a planet not of our solar system.

I’m getting closer to the planet, I can feel something happening, a tug leading me to the planet. Two-second gut reaction is that I’m caught in the planet’s gravity. Two-minute gut reaction is that I won’t really feel the gravity until I’ve got something resisting me. I’m in freefall, but without an atmosphere there’s nothing to perceive the pull of gravity.

So why am I feeling this pulling force?

Just under half of my vision is complete void. In my slow spin I can see the stars in half the field of view, and the rest is simply blackness. I don’t have enough light to tell if anything is rushing up on me. I can’t tell how close the ground is now of this pitch-black planet.

Then, impact as my body touches the surface. Not feather-light and gentle, but not so hard it hurts. And then, I sink, and the cold rushes into my suit, and the blackness consumes me and I feel nothing once again.

#short story #original writing #I was originally inspired by the episode of Voltron where the paladins lose their lions and are left drifting in space #I listened to a lot of dark ambient while writing this too #It felt good to write a short story and finish it #It's been a while #if you've made it this far please reblog!#Likes don't spread it around #writeblr #sci-fi #science fiction #the expanse

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humanp30ple · 4 years ago

Text

👽 Star Stuff 👽

Basic

Name: Stella-Marie Monroe

Nickname: Tell, Stella Belle, Star Stuff

Age: 17

Gender/Pronouns/presentation: agender, they/them, feminine

Nationality: American

Ethnicity: Afro-Arab and Irish

Race: Multiracial

Orientation: Bisexual

Known Languages: English

Occupation: High school student, dreams of being either an astronomer or a physicist.

Physical Description:

They're a shapely individual who stands at 5’4 and weighs 123.5 lbs. They appear to be physically mature for their age with wide, full hips, a busty chest, and rounded, sloping shoulders connected by a slim, well-defined midriff. Their bottom is full and round and most of their weight seems to be situated around their thighs. They have tawny brown with a coppery undertone and that’s covered from head to toe in freckles, chestnut-colored eyes, and warm black, waist-length, corkscrew curls pulled into a high side ponytail with mall bangs. They have deep-set, almond-shaped eyes with full, rounded eyebrows with a low arch.

They have a heart-shaped face, their chin is pointed and their forehead is the widest part of their face. They have a strong jawline that tapers off into a defined chin and high cheekbones. Their nose is relatively small with a flat, round shape. They have a heavy upper lip pronounced cupid's bow. They have a gap between their two front teeth that they aren’t really proud of but refuse to get fixed despite how insecure it makes them. Their ears are smaller than average ears and are slightly pointed with unattached earlobes. They frequently wear makeup; their favorite look is draped blush with either an orange or pink tinted lip gloss.

They have large rectangular palms with fingers equal in length to the palm. Their nails are often painted in bright neon colors. They are right-handed.

They have a medium-sized birthmark located just under the left side of their collar bone that kinda resembles the milky way galaxy if you look at it hard enough.

Their most iconic outfit is a fuzzy, neon pink, over-sized, off the shoulder, leopard print sweater with a bright green alien on it worn over a fluorescent green leotard tucked into baggy, high waisted, acid-washed mom jeans that are rolled up at the ankles to reveal the fishnet stockings underneath worn with white high top Nikes. They are most often seen wearing a wide variety of brightly colored scrunchies. Their favorite and perhaps most iconic scrunchie is a hot pink one with neon green aliens on it.

Likes/Dislikes:

Likes:

Space and space-related things

Science fiction

The 80s and things with a retro aesthetic

Makeup

Animal print

Cursed images

Roller skating

Crunchy foods

Dislikes:

Inauthenticity

Bad science

Being lied to

People who act in bad faith

Being wrong about something and not knowing it

People who spread misinformation

Smooth, pasty food

Being considered ordinary

Favorite colors:

Pinks, greens, and purples, specifically in bright, fluorescent, neon shades; deep blues

Favorite Food(s):

Cheez Balls

Favorite Drink(s):

Coca-Cola

Favorite Song/Theme Song:

Space Age Love Song by A Flock of Seagulls

Movies/TV Shows/Performances:

Cosmos (the Carl Sagan one)

Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back

Hidden Figures

Book(s):

The Dune series by Frank Herbert

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Favorite Subjects in school:

Physics

Planetary science

Favorite animal(s):

Opossum

Favorite place(s):

The movies

The local roller rink and arcade

The local planetarium

Personality:

Charming, independent, energetic, and compassionate, Stella-Marie Monroe truly is a free spirit.

One of their most endearing qualities is their strong humanitarian impulse and extreme generosity with their time in helping other people. They feel their best when they’re serving others in some capacity. They love people and want to dedicate their life to helping people, whether that be through educating them or advocating for them.

They’re quite talkative and enjoy both small talk and deep, meaningful conversations, which are just two sides of the same coin for them, and are adept at steering conversations towards their desired subjects in ways that feel completely natural and unforced.

People close to them have said that one of the best things about them is that they are direct and to the point. They say what needs to be said, especially when no one else is willing to say it and can generally be relied upon to be the person who won’t hesitate to call out something or someone they don’t think is right. Though they can be quite contentious at times they can also be trusted to be the one who preaches compassion and sensitivity and is concerned with ensuring the well being of others. They’re generally a good judge of character and possess the ability to peek behind the mask that others wear and identify dishonesty and disingenuous motives.

Many people have described their thought process as being unique, eccentric, and perhaps a little unconventional; with ideas coming rapid and often completely out of the blue. Reading fiction, especially science fiction helps give them food for thought regarding radically new ways of looking at things and heavily influences the way they view the world around them. They aren’t content to just accept things as they are and would much rather think about what they could be.

They can become a bit impatient with those who are conservative in their thinking and unimaginative and those who are afraid perhaps to think about and try new things and ideas. Nevertheless, they won’t push anyone outside of their comfort zone if they truly don’t think they’re ready to leave it just yet.

As they observe, forming new connections and ideas, they won’t hold their tongues – they’re excited about their findings and share them with anyone who’ll listen. This infectious enthusiasm has the dual benefit of giving them a chance to make more social connections, and of giving them a new source of information and experience, as they fit their new friends’ opinions into their existing ideas.

Ideas are at the core of their being. They generally prefer to work with the big picture yet still display a healthy appreciation for all the little details. When describing an event, will tell people what it meant instead of what happened and would much rather focus on the “Why?” than the "Who?", "What?", and "When?" When it comes to new ideas, they aren’t interested in brooding – they want to go out and experience things, and don’t hesitate to step out of their comfort zones to do so. Knowledge is important to them and they chase as much of it as possible. They’re always on the search for new information and enjoy passing on the knowledge they've gained.

They firmly believe that there are no irrelevant actions, that every shift in sentiment, every move, and every idea is part of something bigger. To satisfy their curiosity, they try to notice all of these things and to never miss a moment.

Although they’re very open to exploring new ideas, they require some form of scientific proof before anything can be believed and have been known to call out bad science whenever they come across it. Even then, they enjoy entertaining hypotheticals and indulging in the seemingly impossible. They possess a strong imagination and a unique sensitivity to their surroundings. They often receive intuitive hunches and are apt to have vivid dreams. They have a deep appreciation of beautiful things and find beauty in almost everything.

Many have noticed the intensity with which they carry out their activities and pursue their interests. Once they’ve set their mind on a goal, their dedication, determination, and commitment to it are extraordinary. Any attempt to deter them or make them change their course has a 90% guaranteed chance of failing miserably. Whatever they’ve set their sights on, they refuse to give up or let go of it. Some find their enthusiasm to be magnetic, others find it just plain scary.

Keeping things going is their strength, especially once someone else starts them. Their stamina and persistence are simultaneously their greatest strengths and one of their greatest weaknesses; they can get caught in a rut and refuse to seize new opportunities. There are times when they can come across as dogmatic and unyielding. They follow their own convictions regardless of what others think of them and won’t quit until the thing they’re pursuing has reached its logical conclusion.

What they have in regards to pure enthusiasm they lack in terms of concentration. It’s hard for them to maintain interest as tasks drift towards routine, administrative matters, and away from broader concepts.

They also have a habit of overthinking things and have a tendency to doubt their own conclusions. They’ve never been one take things at face value – they look for underlying motives in even the simplest things. It’s not uncommon for them to lose a bit of sleep asking themselves why someone did what they did, what it might mean, and what to do about it.

They are often described as being independent to a fault. They loathe being micromanaged and restrained by heavy-handed rules – they want to be seen as highly independent masters of their own fates, even possessors of an altruistic wisdom that goes beyond draconian law. The problem is: they live in a world of checks and balances, a pill they are not happy to swallow.

Ironically, despite readily advocating for the needs of others, their greatest weakness is that they struggle with advocating for themselves. They often have a difficult time saying no and will sometimes stay in bad situations thinking that they can somehow change the other person and then all will be well. Subconsciously they love to play the martyr or the savior who fixes people and as a result, people will often try to take advantage of them and their willingness to help. They’re a sucker for a sob story, much to their own detriment.

They’re a sentimental and romantic person. At times, they expect too much from others and then feel hurt if the other person doesn't come through for them. They have a strong tendency to place their loved ones on a pedestal, thus setting up the eventual disillusionment that comes when they discover that the object of their admiration has faults, too.

Their worst quality, however, is their refusal to cope with challenging emotions. Negative feelings make them uncomfortable. They have a difficult time dealing with their own or other people's problems and emotional pain. They often try to "cheer up" or offer advice to those who are hurting, but in actuality, they’re trying to avoid or ignore the emotions involved. This refusal to engage with their emotions in a way that’s productive causes their feelings to manifest in ways that cause problems for them, particularly when under stress, criticism or conflict, They frequently experience emotional bursts that are counterproductive at best and debilitating at worse.

#ocs #long post #80s #aliens #aliencore #spacecore #starcore #retro aesthetic #nblw character #nb character

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drawing-way-outside-the-lines · 5 years ago

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Dubhlainn ‘Lane/Laney’ McKinney *Minor character.

Voice Claim:(Brendan Gleeson) https://youtu.be/MSV9xFqcEh8?t=17s (Right click on links and open in new tab)

Partner(s): Sorcha McKinney (Pictured here) Parents: Niamh McKinney (mom born Niamh, no surname) Conlaoch Belphegor Oisin McKinney (dad) Kids: Cathal McKinney Age: Ancient. Height: 187cm Body type: Muscular, but not too buff. Slim waist. Eye color: Dark Green. Classification: (Immortal) Demon Known powers: Possession, Invisibility, Teleportation (The ability to move instantaneously from one location to another without physically occupying the space in between) Darkside View (The power to force target to see the evil side of their own soul.) Telekinesis ( The power to manipulate objects/matter with their mind.) Corruption Inducement (The power to erode a person’s morality to the point of being evil.) Belief Inducement (The power to make someone believe in anything) Rot Inducement (The power to cause anything organic to decay and rot) Object Animation (The ability to bring any sort of object to life, such as statues, game stations, rugs, bottles, etc.) Reanimation (The ability to reanimate dead beings, possibly restoring their consciousness.) Intangibility (The ability to pass through physical matter.) Shapeshifting (The power to transform and reshape the form of one’s body.) Illusion Manipulation (The power to manipulate illusions) Animal Manipulation (The power to influence/control animal behavior)

About: Outspoken, Stubborn, Resourceful, Challenging, Adventurous, Determined, Stiff, Authoritarian, Strong, Serious, Principled, Intuitive, Elegant, Confident, Suspicious, Strong-willed, Pretentious, Asocial, Complex and can be a bit hot-tempered. ~ Sexuality Omnisexual (Attracted equally to all human beings (men, women, transexuals, etc.) … A person who can be sexually attracted to anyone and anything, from men/women/everything in … and also non-human animals and inanimate objects) ~ Is a very high regarded form of demonic Knight.Or a Knight of hell, so to speak. ~ Always wears a special pointy ring on his finger to show he’s one of the first generations of McKinney males. Only he, his brother and their father has one. ~ Is also an assassin of hell. ~ Irish ~ His name means ‘black sword’ ~ Talks with a thick accent. ~ Smells of Pachouli and Sage. ~ Into dark arts and are quite skilled. ~ Dislikes that his wife sleeps around with other men, but at the same time he isn’t faithful either, on his travels. ~ Has silky soft hair. ~ Can play harp very well. ~ Is very into blond virgins. Don’t care if they are male or female. ~ Is a master with a sword. ~ Hates honey. ~ Is rather grumpy. ~ Is actually not an asshole although he may come off as one. ~ Loves his parents, brother, nephews and son, but isn’t very close to the rest of the family. Cats, mead, milk, Ireland, the McKinney castle and the grounds it stands on. Traveling, hell, rain, sex and potatoes. ~ Loner. ~ 10/10 would rather cut his dick off than his beard. ~ Style: Flamboyant pirate???? ~ Hates when people tell him stories or comes to him with their problems.

One gif to describe him:

Sorcha Aoibhell McKinney *Minor character.

Voice Claim:(Amy-Joyce Hastings) https://youtu.be/eeJkGJxb9DA?t=4s (Right click on links and open in new tab)

Partner(s): Dubhlainn ‘Lane/Laney’ McKinney (pictured here) Parents: Fionnoula Mag Aoidh (Mom) Galagars ó Dufaigh (dad) Kids: Cathal McKinney Age: At least 4000+ years. Height: 157cm Body type: Slim, big boobs. Eye color: Light green/blue-ish Classification: (Immortal) Demon Known powers: Possession, Telekinesis (The power to manipulate objects/matter with their mind.) Levitation (The ability to cause oneself/subjects/objects to hover in the air.) Psionic Speed (The power to enhance one’s speed with mental strength.) Reanimation (Power to reanimate corpses and dead beings.) Sensory Scrying (The power to perceive through other beings’ senses) Fear Inducement (The power to evoke extreme fear and horror in others) Emotion Manipulation (The power to manipulate all emotions) Nerve Manipulation (The ability to manipulate the nerves and nervous system of oneself or others.)

About: Irritable, Difficult, Amoral, Aggressive, Seductive, Sensual, Stubborn, Passionate, Unstable, Tense, Selfish, Provocative, Neurotic, Morbid, Vain, Competitive, Outspoken, Proud, Argumentative and Emotional. ~ Sexuality Straight. ~ Irish ~ Into dark arts/magic, and is very good at it. ~ Wears a Christian gold cross, but it’s a mockery. She isn’t religious at all. ~ Hates most people. ~ Has a hard time accepting no for an answer when it comes to sex. ~ Goes after what she wants. ~ Suffers from strong mood-swings. ~ Is a bitch. ~ Can’t cook. ~ Pretty much only speaks Irish or Gaelic. Will for the most refuse to speak English, and mostly only does it for her own gain. ~ Smells of wild roses. ~ Hates kids. Even kinda hates her own son. ~ Loves to look at herself in the mirror for hours while brushing her hair. ~ Hates her parents in-law, and they aren’t too fond of her either. ~ Style: Medieval

One gif to describe her:

#Laney McKinney #Sorcha McKinney #Irish demons #demons #Irish demon #demon #supernatural #immortal #ts3 #sims3 #sims 3 #simblr #simographysup

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natasha-romanoff-deserved-better · 4 years ago

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Children Of Yesterday- Chapter Three

Standing in front of him, are two more children, only slightly older than the one he had found. The blonde child was freakishly skinny with dark bags under his eyes, and was standing with another black-haired slightly taller child who had a bony arm wrapped around him.

The blonde was wearing an over-sized Captain America costume that drowned him, and the other only wearing a leather jacket with sleeves that covered his hands and fell to his knees.

Tony almost chokes.

The blonde in the Captain America costume. The black-haired child standing over him. The scared, timid kid on his hip with glasses and bruises.

He knows who these kids are.

After an accident with Hydra and the time stone, Tony and Rhodey are left with six of their teammates turned into young children. Trying to keep the six young, traumatized and rambunctious children safe all while finding a cure and attempting to give them a taste of a real childhood might be their biggest mission yet.

Read Here on AO3 or continue under the read more!

Clint awakes to a rough shove on his shoulder. Jerking up, sleep gone from his eyes in an instant, as he scans the room for danger. There is none- it’s just Natalia. She’s standing by his bedside, clad in the leggings and jacket despite the clock on the wall reading almost 2:30am.

“’Atalia? What are you doing?”

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

“I knew it! You can talk!”

Natasha is unimpressed at his intuition. “Of course I can talk.”

“Then why didn’t you ever talk to Tony or the other guy?”

“Why would I let them know I can understand them? I’m not an idiot. People tell secrets when they think you don’t understand.”

Clint mouth hangs open in amazement at her thought process. “That’s so cool! I wish I had thou- wait. How did you get in my room?”

Natasha holds up her left hand, a keycard clasped between her fingers. “I stole it from the agent last night when he picked me up.” Natasha rolls her eyes at the thought. “But come on. We have to go, now. Before they realize I took it.”

Clint nods, and rushes to climb out from under the covers of the hospital bed. The commotion rouses Bruce, who sleepily opens one eye to peek at the pair. Natasha grabs his new glasses from the hospital bedside table and hands them to him.

He gives her a small smile in thanks, then looks between the two other kids. “You’re leaving?”

“Yup.” Clint nods. “I gotta get back to my brother. He says hospitals are bad, anyways… You’re coming too, right?”

Bruce sits up, gives them a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t have anywhere to go…”

“You can come with me! Barney says we’re going to join a circus soon! Doesn’t that sound so fun?”

Bruce chews on his bottom for a moment, staring at Clint as he considers his offer.

“Well, I do really like elephants…”

“So, it’s decided then!” Clint exclaims, a smile spreading across his face at his new friend. Natasha rolls her eyes at them and turns away from the pair to glance out the door, checking the hallway for any wondering agents.

“Are you two ready to go or not? We still need to get the others.”

“Yes,” The two of them say in unison. Neither of them had any possessions besides the clothes the hospital had given them, which; while annoying made things a lot easier. No packing required.

Steve and Bucky are not as excited as Clint and Bruce were.

Bucky stood in front of Steve, who was sat upright on their bed, with his arms crossed and expression hard. “We’re not going.”

“Why not?” Natasha asks, irritation in her accented voice.

“You didn’t plan anything!” He throws his arms up in the air. “How are we even going to get anywhere after we get out?”

Natasha shrugs. “We can figure that out later. I don’t see the problem.”

Bucky gestures over at Steve. “He can’t walk very far. And besides, this place has really good medicine here!”

“So just take some of the medicine?”

Bucky glares at the three of them, until Natasha finally rolls her eyes and gives in. “Fine. Stay here. We’re going home.” She turns around, and nods at Clint and Bruce to follow her out the door.

They shuffle out, quickly hurrying across the hallway to Sam’s door, where Natasha bounces onto her tip toes to scan the keycard across the electronic lock. There is a small click from the lock, and Clint pulls it open for her and Bruce.

Natasha moves over to Sam’s bed to shake his shoulder. “Sam,” She whispers, “Wake up.”

Sam grumbles, brings an arm up and take a swipe at Natasha, which she avoids easily. “Five more minutes.”

Natasha frowns and pinches his arm. He finally opens his eyes, confusion clouding his face.

“What are you all doing here?”

“We’re busting out of here!” Clint tells him.

“What? Why? All these people seem really nice…”

“They kidnapped us.” Natasha deadpans.

“What?”

“We all woke up in an exploded building, and then they forced us onto a plane and now they’ve locked us in here. For no reason. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“…No.”

“Exactly. Then explain why you’re locked in a hospital?”

“Um,”

Clint spoke up. “We’ll help you get back to your mom and dad. They’re probably worried about you- I know my brother is.”

Sam considers this a moment. He chews on his bottom lip as he meets eyes with the three other standing in front of him. They have a good point.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m coming with you.”

“We gotta get passed the dude at the desk in the front first, though.” Clint reminds them. Natasha thinks for a second, before turning to Bruce.

“Think you could distract him?”

Bruce’s eyes widen. “What? Why me?”

“They’ll never suspect you. You look too nice.”

“What do I do?”

Clint butts in. “It’s easy! Just pretend to be sick or hurt or something. Barney has me do it all the time.”

Natasha nods. “And then I’ll sneak up behind him.”

Bruce is clearly uncomfortable, but he doesn’t back out like he wants too. “Okay…”

Natasha doesn’t waste any time, just grabs his arm and shoves him out the doorway. He trips over his two feet but manages to right himself before he can completely face plant. He shuffles down the hall and around the corner, poking his head out so he can see the agent sitting at the front desk. He is clearly uninterested, lounging back in his chair while his feet are propped up on the desk. All his attention is focused on his phone, engaged in some kind of colorful game.

Bruce wraps his arms around his stomach and hunches over. “Excuse me?” He calls as he steps into view. He brings his eyebrows together, trying his best to put on the best puppy eyes he could.

The agent startles at his voice, jerking up and swiveling around to find Bruce. “Bruce? What- how did you get out of your room? I thought we- wait, are you okay?”

Bruce chooses to ignore the room question, instead shakes his head and motions to his stomach, as he takes another step. “I, uh. I feel sick.”

The man stands up, walking closer to Bruce and kneeling to his level. He opens his mouth to say something, but is cut off by Natasha launching herself onto his back.

Natasha uses his shoulders to lift and push herself up and get her legs around his neck. The man bucks up and reaches back to try and yank her off, but she continues squeezing with her thighs to keep her balance and restrict his breathing. With her right hand, she reaches down and pinches a point on his neck.

The man goes down. They tumble to the ground together, Bruce narrowly side stepping out of the way and Natasha rolls of his back, a wide smile on her face at her success.

“Whoa!”

“How’d you do that?”

Clint and Sam are watching wide eyed to the side.

“There’s a…” She pauses, trying to remember the English word. “A… sleep point? No. Pressure point on the neck. I pinched it.”

Natasha bends down to the unconscious agent and sticks her hands into his pockets. She produces another keycard, which she hands off to Bruce. She unhooks the gun from his holster and shoves it into her leggings waistband.

Clint runs over to the two large doors across the lobby, grabbing onto the handles. The doors open, revealing more into the compound. It’s the middle of the night, so there are less agents than normal, but still an unsettling amount milling around. Natasha turns back to them, eyebrows furrowed. “We.” She pauses, words elusive, “sneak by them. Find an exit.” She finishes.

“There.” Sam points to a small counter with several computer screens sitting atop. “We can hide behind that… and then sneak into that hallway on the other side.”

“I’ll go first.” Natasha doesn’t wait for a confirmation, instead just darts out into the open, crouched low as she silently moves through the room and ducking behind the counter between it and the wall.

One by one, with the help of Natasha on the other side motioning to them, the other three scurry across to their new hiding spot. Sam is the last to go, and almost there when he slips, drawing the attention of several agents who come dangerously close to spotting him.

Every kid breathes a sigh of relief when Sam makes it safely to them. Natasha worries her bottom lip. “There’s too many of us too all get around like this. We’re too noticeable.”

“What if we turn out the lights?” Clint suggests.

“Yeah!” Sam agrees, nodding along. “I saw that in a movie once. They shut off all the power.”

Natasha looks to Clint for guidance, giving in when she sees his and Sam’s confidence. “But how will we get to the power?”

“Usually it’s a whole room you needa’ find with tons of buttons and switches and things.”

“There’s a map on the wall over here.” Bruce speaks up, pointing at a framed picture labeled “fire escape route” in bright letters.

“Perfect!” Sam, the tallest of the four, stands on his tip toes to see the map clearly. The compound is big, the map almost slightly overwhelming as he scans over it. Not all the rooms are labeled, instead just the general wings. “There.. maybe?” He points to a section that doesn’t have any labels, guessing it must be the general upkeep rooms. “Or actually, maybe, there?” He points at another spot. “Oh, or-“

“Someone’s coming!” Clint warns. He grabs Sam’s wrist to pull him down, Natasha and Bruce on their heels as they take off running down the hallway.

“Which way, Sam?!”

Sam calls out for them to turn right, into a smaller corridor. “I think this way.” He says, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice as he leads them. They slow to a jog when they’re out of view from any agents, but the adrenaline pumping through their veins keeps them all on high alert. They don’t stop to catch their breath until they make it to the wing Sam identified and find a room titled controls. Natasha pulls out the keycard and holds it over the lock.

“черт возьми!” Natasha exclaims as the lock flashes red, signaling the keycard was not compatible. She brings the keycard down to examine it closer, before throwing it to the ground in frustration.

Sam watches her in concern, noticing the angry tears building in the corner of her eyes. “It’s okay,” he tells her, moving to pick up the card.

“It was only for hospital locks!”

“Maybe we could…break the lock or something?” Bruce offers.

Clint shakes his head. “I can get in.”

“The key doesn’t work.” Natasha repeats herself at him. She stomps a foot to help emphasize her point, as if he hadn’t just watched her explain it to Sam.

“I know that. I don’t need a key. Look,” Clint points upwards towards the ceiling, where a small vent is blowing cool air. “If I can get up there, maybe I can crawl in?”

Natasha is not impressed with his plan, but she can’t think of any other ideas. Bruce is already helping Clint push a chair they’d found over to just below the vent. “Okay,” Clint instructs. “Someone needs to help me up though.”

“I’m the strongest.” Natasha volunteers.

“No! I am!” Sam looks over at Natasha accusingly.

“No, you’re not!”

“Boys are almost always stronger than girls!”

“That’s not true!” And then quieter, under her breath, “Мудак.”

Sam jerks back. “What the heck does that mean?” He whirls around to Clint. “She just called me something!”

“Can you two shut up?” Bruce cuts in. The three other kids turn to him in surprise at the anger and annoyance in his voice. Once he notices them staring, he hunches back into himself. “Sorry. I just really don’t like fighting...”

Sam apologizes to him, while Natasha stays quiet, but a guilty look painted onto her face.

“Sam is taller than you, though, so he would be best.” Clint tells them. Natasha doesn’t argue, knowing he is right but not wanting to admit it out loud. As Sam climbs onto the chair, Natasha and Bruce hold the legs steady, making sure the chair isn’t going to slip out from under them. Clint steps up onto the chair with Sam and awkwardly begins climbing up onto his shoulders.

Clint takes a second to find his footing, whispering apologizes whenever Sam softly grunts in discomfort. He grabs hold of the vent, threading his small fingers through the bars and yanking the vent cover away. It clatters to the ground, all of them cringing at the loud sound. “Okay!” Clint gets a steady hold into the vent and begins to pull himself up into the small passage. Beneath him, Sam boosts him up the rest of the way. “I’m in!” He announces as he lifts his lower body into it enough to swing his legs inside with the rest of him.

The passageways are small, but much bigger than the ones in his house. Crawling through with practiced ease, he takes the first left he comes across and crawls several more feet until he finds another vent. He peeks through, finding a room below him crowded with all kinds of screens, keyboards, buttons and lights. Clint squeezes himself around, curling up so that he can kick the vent cover out of the way.

Lowering himself down and letting himself drop, he falls hard, his ankle twisting as he hits the floor, and he holds in a grunt of pain. Forcing himself up, he rushes over to the door, pulling the hatch and pushing it open to where Natasha, Sam and Bruce are all anxiously waiting for him.

The three bundle inside, closing the door behind them. Bruce excitedly runs up to the screens, eyes wide as he quickly reads all the words and labels. Sam takes a place next to him, scanning the buttons.

“How do you know what is what?”

Bruce frowns. “I don’t.”

Clint isn’t interested in waiting. “Just press some!” He comes up behind them, reaches out, and runs a hand over a row of buttons. “One of them is bound to be the lights and doors.”

Before Bruce can stop him, the group is plunged into darkness. Shock causes them to freeze for a moment, only broken by Clint letting out a loud hoot and high fiving Bruce.

~~~

Steve picks a piece of skin from his thumbnail, frowning at the small bead of blood that bubbles up. Next to him, Bucky slaps his hand away.

“We should have gone with them.” Steve grumbles at him.

“Why?”

Steve shrugs. “It’s not right for us to stay here and just let them go off. What if they get in trouble? Or need help?”

“Just because they’re doing something doesn’t mean we have to too.”

“No, but if the whole group is going, we should too!” He explains. “Also… I can’t stay here. Ma won’t be able to pay a bill like this. It’s bound to cost an arm and a leg.”

Bucky glares at him for several seconds, before looking up to the ceiling and letting out a heavy sigh. “So, what, you want to go catch up to them or something?”

A smile spreads across Steve’s face as he nods excitedly.

“Ugh. Fine.”

“Yay!” Steve claps. Just as he is slipping out of the bed, everything goes black. “Hey! Turn the lights back on, Buck.”

“I didn’t turn them off.” Bucky frowns, glancing up to the lights. “Look, the hallway is dark too.”

“They probably turned the lights out to save money again. They’re super expensive, probably.”

“Yeah, maybe so.”

The friends tug the door open, the electronic locks no longing functioning due to the power outage. They step out of the room together, coming to a halt when they notice the agent laying haphazardly on the floor in the medical lobby.

Steve rushes over to him, looking down at the guards body. “He’s still breathing. Should we do something?”

Bucky is about to suggest turning him over when he is cut off by a high-pitched alarm ringing out through the air. He covers his ears reflexively as he jumps. The unconscious agent’s walkie talkie sparks to life, a voice calling out for him to answer, and then something about a code 673. “Shit. We gotta go.”

“We can’t just leave him like this!”

“Yes, we can. If someone comes and sees us, they’ll think we did this to him!”

Steve is unconvinced, so Bucky doesn’t wait. He grabs Steve’s wrist and hauls him away from the man, through to the other large doors and pushing their way through. It’s dark, so they can’t quite tell what type of room they’ve entered, but it’s large, and there’s people dressed similar to the agent all running around frantically. They pause, unsure of what to do next or where to go.

A pair of agents run by, and someone shouts an order out to them, telling them “they” are in the west wing and headed towards an exit. Bruce and Steve don’t need to discuss it- they take off running, following some of the agents but keeping in the shadows the best they could, avoiding the emergency lights.

A gunshot echoes through the building, causing them to both flinch a second time. The panicked agents become more frantic at that, yelling at each other to not fire back.

“It’s probably that girl. She shot the machine man who helped us, remember? And they wouldn’t want to shoot a kid.” Steve nods in agreement, and against their instinct, force themselves to run towards the sound of the gun.

They find Natasha standing with a gun held straight out in front of her. Behind her, Clint, Bruce and Sam are all gathered. In front of them, stand several agents, including the eye patched man Bucky recognizes from earlier. Their hands are all up, and one of the women agents is gently trying to coax Natasha to put the gun down, to come back with them.

Tony and Rhodey step out of the car, both unspeaking as they walk side by side into the tower, thoughts weighing heavily on each’s shoulders. Tony had thought going back to the tower would provide comfort to him- his home, where he could be surrounded by all the things he owned and loved and where the love of his life was waiting for him. But walking in, he is flooded with reminders of the team’s absence. A tea packet from Bruce left on the counter. Steve’s sketchbook and charcoal pencil settled neatly on an end table by the couch. One of Clint’s stray darts lay under the couch, discarded and forgotten from an aiming contest with Sam. Even the absence of Natasha’s things is a sign of her, her spy habits of leaving no trace.

“I’m glad they’re staying at SHIELD.” Tony says, later that night. He stokes a thumb over Pepper’s bare shoulder as they lay under the covers, Pepper’s head on his chest. She glances up at him, eyebrows raised in question. “When that doctor read off all their medical issues… and Fury’s right. Some of them, Their childhoods… I wouldn’t know how to deal with them.” Pepper isn’t sure who is he trying to convince, her or himself. “I’d only do more damage.”

It had taken Tony over ten minutes, a confirmation from Rhodey and video evidence dug from Friday’s storage to convince Pepper it wasn’t some prank Tony was trying to play on her. She’d handled it calmly, the reality not quite sinking in until later that night, when the tower was unusually calm and quiet.

Pepper doesn’t speak. She knows there is no convincing her husband of otherwise. Maybe, it would have been possible, several weeks ago. Before Peter had broken his leg and been knocked unconscious while under his supervision. Before the liquor supply had been drained in the matter of just several days. His mind is made up. She draws tiny circles into his skin until they both drift off.

FRIDAY jerks them awake, loudly announcing urgent messages from SHIELD. Tony grumbles awake before remembering, why exactly, SHIELD would even be contacting him in the first place. He has several missed calls from Fury, along with one text message reading “Get here now.” Helpful.

Tony and Rhodey arrive to the SHIELD compound, both in their suits and ready for whatever. There are agents running around, yelling demands and questions into phones and walkie talkies. The power appears to have been shut off, besides emergency generator lights and a blaring alarm.

“What the hell is going on?” Tony shouts over the alarm to Fury.

“The damned kids escaped. All six. They’re gone.”

#look i actually wrote something #children of yesterday #marvel #marvel fic #natasha romanoff #sam wilson #bruce banner #clint barton #tony stark #james rhodes #Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #marvel fanction #fanfic

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weirdfella · 5 years ago

Text

Family Dysfunction and Personality Type

by Susan Storm (X)

What Is a Dysfunctional Family?

Before we get into type’s role in all of this, let’s take a look at what family dysfunction really is. The Medical Dictionary defines ‘dysfunctional family’ like this:

“A family with multiple ‘internal’ – e.g. sibling rivalries, parent-child – conflicts, domestic violence, mental illness, single parenthood, or ‘external’ – eg. Alcohol or drug abuse, extramarital affairs, gambling, unemployment – influences that affect the basic needs of the family unit.”

Psych2go.net lists eight common characteristics of a dysfunctional family. These include:

Addiction

Perfectionism

Abuse

Unpredictability and Fear

Conditional Love

Lack of Boundaries

Lack of Intimacy

Poor Communication

Today we’re not going to get into issues of addiction, abuse, gambling, or unemployment. We’re only going to look at the difficulties that personality type can play a part in. These difficulties include sibling rivalries, parent-child conflicts, perfectionism, and poor communication. We’re going to go through each of these issues one-by-one so that you can see how type differences can cause family dysfunction to show up in an otherwise normal home.

Personality Type and Sibling Rivalries

In a study published in 2016 by the Journal of Marriage and Family, 75% of mothers admitted to being closer to one child. Researchers of a 2005 study observed that 70% of fathers and 74% of mothers show preferential treatment to one of their children. Parental favoritism is often at the center of sibling rivalries. Personality differences also play a part. Here’s an example to give an idea of how many sibling conflicts escalate:

A feeling dominant brother (ESFJ) is trying to maintain harmony in the home along with the feeling-oriented mother (INFJ). They both give priority to feeling over thinking when making decisions involving the family. Meanwhile, the thinking-dominant sister (ISTP) is seen as needlessly critical and argumentative. The ESFJ brother can’t figure out why INTP sister won’t just get along and work with the family “team” to maintain harmony. He de-values her problem-solving abilities because she expresses herself in a way that contrasts with his feeling orientation. It seems to him like she’s always critiquing things and questioning rules. ISTP sister sees ESFJ brother as a “suck-up” and a people-pleaser. She de-values his ability to sense the needs of the people around him. Fights erupt and hurt feelings linger and build over time. The INFJ mother feels a more natural understanding with her ESFJ son because they both process decisions through feeling. She struggles communicating clearly with the ISTP daughter and the daughter feels hurt and rejected.

The scenario above is just one of countless scenarios in which personality type can create chasms between siblings. We can’t possibly cover all the potential scenarios in this article, but we’ll take a look at some of the most common sibling rivalries related to type.

Feeling Sibling + Thinking Sibling: Feeling sibling believes that the thinking sibling is uncaring, cold, argumentative, or overly-detached. Thinking sibling believes that the feeling sibling is overly sensitive, illogical, too attached to their values. Arguments erupt when feeling sibling argues from a place of values or ethics and thinking sibling argues from a place of logic or causality.

Extroverted Sibling + Introverted Sibling: Extroverted sibling thinks the introverted sibling doesn’t like him/her because he always wants time alone. Pushes introverted sibling into social settings which results in introvert feeling angry and lashing out. Extroverted sibling pesters introverted sibling or gives up on relationship. Introverted siblings needs are possibly not respected in the home. Extroverted siblings needs are possibly not respected in the home. Introvert becomes drained by lack of alone time or extrovert becomes drained by lack of outside stimulation. They both see the other as uncooperative.

Sensing Sibling + Intuitive Sibling: Sensing sibling believes intuitive sibling is too fanciful or detached from reality. Sensing siblings wants intuitive sibling to be more specific and literal. Intuitive sibling believes sensing sibling is too unimaginative or literal. Intuitive sibling wants sensing sibling to be more big-picture oriented and conceptual. Both de-value the other’s intelligence and struggle to connect via communication.

Judging Sibling + Perceiving Sibling: Judging sibling believes that the perceiving sibling is lazy, a procrastinator, unpredictable, and inconsistent. Perceiving sibling sees judging sibling as too controlling, rigid, rule-abiding, or too easily flustered by change. Both feel misunderstood and judge/feel judged by the other.

Are sibling rivalries bound to happen when siblings have different preferences? Absolutely not. Sometimes children with different preferences bond in a powerful way and help to increase each other’s maturity and self-awareness. However, these types of rivalries can occur, particularly in families where there is unhealthy or absent communication, conditional love, or poor support and guidance from parents. If the most involved parent in the home shares more type preferences with one child over another, a “type culture” can be created that unintentionally de-values the gifts of the child with alternate preferences. The other sibling feels misunderstood, pressured, unappreciated, angry, and especially resentful of the sibling who shares type preferences with the parent.

Ways to Heal Sibling Rivalry and Other Family Conflict Issues:

Step 1 – If you sense that there is a lot of sibling rivalry in the home related to type differences then it’s time to make an assessment of your family. Get a piece of paper and write down each person’s preferences (if you don’t know them all, just write down the ones you do know).

For example:

The Johnson Family

Mom: ESFJ Dad: ISTJ Oldest Daughter: INFP Middle Son: ESTJ Youngest Son: XSFJ

Step 2 – Father and mother should get together and assess any similarities or differences in preferences among family members. How do you see the introverts getting along versus the extroverts? Is there an adult or child that is the “odd one out” when it comes to a particular preference? Are there any signs that this child feels de-valued or maybe idealized? The parents in the family should look everything over and also analyze the unique stressors of each of the family members in their home. You can see a list of possible stressors for introverted types here and extroverted types here. Discuss ways you might be seeing stress among each family member based on the expectations, rules, and lifestyle of the home.

Step 3 – Set up a family meeting. This should be at a time when everyone is relaxed and no conflicts are already at play.

Step 4 – Ask the introverts and extroverts to discuss their needs separately. Then ask them to come together and list 3 things they struggle with in the home related to their introversion or extroversion, and 3 things that they appreciate in the home. Look for some agreed-upon solutions to help extroverts and introverts both get their needs met. Write these down.

Step 5 – Continue this process with each preference. Intuitive and sensors. Thinking and feeling types. Judgers and perceivers. Pay special attention to family members who are unique from the rest of the group. In the example above of the Johnson family, you can see that the oldest daughter is the only intuitive and the only perceiving type. Does she feel misunderstood or forced into a lifestyle that doesn’t fit? Or does she feel overly-idealized because of her differences? Try to find some articles that would describe each child’s strengths so that everyone can realize the capabilities of each individual in the home. Realize, however, that if a child hasn’t been nurtured properly that they may not be showing those strengths. They may have been trying to operate in the same style as the predominant “family culture” and therefore haven’t been able to strengthen their own natural gifts.

Step 6 – Come up with a family action plan for acceptance in the home based on the conversations that take place. Make sure each individual gets a chance to discuss their thoughts and needs. Remember that it’s impossible to completely cater to every personality type and that’s okay. The goal is to let everyone feel heard, understood, and appreciated for who they are. This meeting will give each family member a chance to speak up for themselves and bring up their needs and possible frustrations in a judgment-free zone.

Some helpful articles to possibly reference during the family meeting:

What Your Child Needs to Hear, Based On Their Personality Type

What Your Child Needs, Based On Their Personality Type

The Childhood Struggles of Every Myers-Briggs® Personality Type

Parent-Child Conflicts

Parent-child conflicts are more likely to occur when children and parents don’t share the same type preferences. This is especially true if a parent doesn’t have an understanding of personality type. An introverted parent may view their extroverted child as showy, loud, obnoxious, or attention-seeking. An extroverted parent might view their introverted child as reclusive, boring, anti-social, or cold. Parents might try to change their children into their own image, viewing their natural wiring as the only “right” way to be. The child might try to oblige the parents for a while, but over time this can lead to resentment and frustration for everyone involved.

Extroverted Parents – Remember introverted children are energized by the inner world of ideas, reflections, and inner analysis. It doesn’t mean they dislike you if they want to spend most of their time in their room. They will respond better to a question if they have time to process it first. Chances are, they’ll become irritable if they have to socialize most of the day.

Introverted Parents – Remember extroverted children are energized by the outside world of people, activities, or objects. They aren’t trying to get in your way or disrupt your peace, they are simply trying to connect with you and energize themselves with interaction and experience. Continually shutting them down and telling them to be alone is the equivalent of an extrovert constantly forcing you to be around people. Balance is key. Some alone time each day for an extrovert is a good thing. Spending 80% of the day alone is not.

Thinking Parents – Remember that feeling children are more likely to take criticism personally. Give them words of affirmation consistently, and when you have to criticize, make sure to affirm your intentions rather than focusing solely on their mistake. Affirm that you love them and appreciate their good qualities. Remember that conflict is especially disruptive to feeling types and they may feel compelled to fix it (especially FJ children). Don’t create a lifestyle in the home that forces feeling children into perpetual mediation, need-tending, and peacemaking. This isn’t a healthy position for a child to be in.

Feeling Parents – Remember that thinking children seek logic over value-laden reasoning. They respond to straightforward direction and they want rules reasonably explained. If you have to give criticism, cut to the chase and avoid emotional lecturing or “sugarcoating”. Be kind, but don’t beat around the bush. If they struggle with emotional connection or empathy, don’t take it personally. For some thinking types empathy is a learned skill. Re-phrase insensitive comments to them so that they can have easier communication with others. Show appreciation for their problem-solving abilities and their critical thinking skills.

Intuitive Parents – Remember that sensing children want explicit, literal instructions. Don’t be vague or skip steps when giving them a direction. They might get irritated with you if you’re constantly trying to engage their imagination or talk concepts rather than give them facts and real-world experience. These kids trust what they can touch, feel, taste, hear, or what has been proven to them through life experience itself. Clarity is key and these kids will learn best through experience.

Sensing Parents – Remember that intuitive children need a big picture vision or idea in order to be inspired. They don’t want a ton of sequential steps when getting directions. They prefer to be given an overall goal and then fill in and ask questions as necessary. Let them imagine, question, and try things in new ways. Conversation about concrete day-to-day experiences can make them bored and irritable sometimes. Appeal to their imagination and understand that they will be more drawn to the abstract than the concrete.

Judging Parents – Remind yourself that perceiving children aren’t necessarily lazy or unproductive, although their style might seem like it to you. They like a lot of variety and spontaneity in their lives. A rigid structure and a very repetitive routine can make them irritable and frustrated. They will feel trapped if every part of their day is planned out or managed. They think best when they can mix work with play and mix up their routine. Give them the chance to prove that they can keep up with their tasks in their own way. If they are perpetually missing deadlines then step in and give them some time management techniques and reminders so that they can stay on top of their homework. Make sure that they’re getting unstructured time each day.

Perceiving Parents – Remind yourself that judging children need structure and consistency in their lives. They will get irritated if they are interrupted or forced to change their focus in the middle of a project. These kids want to finish what they start before they do anything else. They need time to switch gears between activities. They may not react well to surprises or spontaneous outings. Try to give them advanced notice of what your plans are for any given day. Remember that judging types feel responsible for the environment they are in. This can make them appear like “control freaks” sometimes, but it’s their way of organizing things so that they can think more clearly and accomplish their goals.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism can be displayed by any personality type, and it’s never something you want overrunning a household. Here are some things each type might want to look out for when running the home.

Introverts: Don’t expect your house to be perfectly quiet with children. Make sure you’re getting regular time alone, but don’t stifle the needs of the extroverts in the family. If things are noisy from time to time that’s normal. It’s not a sign that your family is out of control.

Extroverts: Don’t pressure your family into near-constant social excursions and outings. This may be your idea of fun, but not theirs. Don’t take it personally or consider yourself a failure if some of your family members seem happiest when they’re alone.

Intuitives: Don’t de-value the needs of sensing children by “zoning out” when they’re discussing details or concrete experiences. Realize that they are more focused on the present than the future and may not feel as inspired by your new idea as you are. That’s okay. Show appreciation for their perspective and spend occasional time doing hands-on activities with them. Also, don’t beat yourself up if your family life doesn’t match up to the vision you had many years ago. Intuitives tend to create idealized visions of family life and the reality of family life can be very different from the dream. Appreciate the positive moments and accept that family life has its ups and downs. Get help if you need it.

Sensors: Don’t condescend to intuitive children by saying their heads are in the clouds or they are too unrealistic. Listen to their imaginative ramblings and realize that they will be more focused on concepts that concrete experiences. Don’t talk over them or argue with them constantly when they’re trying to bring up a hypothetical scenario or envision possibilities. Let them have some time each day to let their mind wander over unusual scenarios. Let them try things in new ways sometimes, even if it feels unreasonable to you.

Thinkers: Don’t force feeling children to make decisions the same way that you do. Remember that feeling children will step into a situation personally before they decide. They want to know how a decision aligns with their values or impacts the people around them. They can feel indecisive and stressed if they have to make a decision that may upset other people. Don’t make fun of their emotions, or act aghast when they make a decision that to you seems illogical. Encourage them to stand up for themselves even when it may upset others. Validate their feelings, and calmly explain the logical consequences of something if they are too fixated on the personal aspects of a decision.

Feelers: Don’t act shocked or offended when thinking children speak their mind directly. When they are faced with a decision rather than step “in” to the situation, they step “out” to view it objectively and without personal bias. They try to detach themselves emotionally from a situation when they assess it. This can make them seem “cold” or lacking in empathy to some feeling types, but it also helps them to stay level-headed and logical.

Judgers: Don’t force perceiving children to do all their homework and all their chores as soon as they get home from school. They will likely need some time to de-compress and live freely before they settle back into homework and responsibility. Judgers like to get everything done ahead of schedule, but perceivers work in spurts. Make sure they are meeting their obligations and responsibilities, but try to break up tasks with chunks of regular free time.

Perceivers: Don’t berate judging children or call them “high strung” or “uptight”. Don’t force them into a constantly changing, unpredictable lifestyle. Knowing you’ll be on time, dependable, and consistent is important to them. Give them a heads up when something is going to happen so that they can mentally prepare.

Poor Communication:

So many family rivalries are the result of poor communication. This is especially true when family members de-value each other because their type preferences don’t align. We’ve gone over a lot of the ways that poor communication can show up in the sections preceding this so I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail right here. However, doing the things below will help to open the channels of communication among family members of all types:

Schedule regular family time together (preferably without screens or devices around)

Have small family rituals (like a story before bed or a family game night) that encourage intimacy.

Eat meals together, without the TV on or phones at the table.

Make sure children get at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time each day.

Be an active listener. Focus 100% on what your child is saying. Make sure you understand your child correctly before you give advice or criticism. Paraphrase your child’s words back to them to make sure you’re being accurate.

If there are issues in the family, make sure that you attack the problem itself, NOT the family member personally.

Start each day fresh. Don’t hold onto bitterness, anger, or disappointments.

Ask forgiveness. Everyone makes mistakes and acknowledging this is important.

When it comes to personality type and communication, you can find a whole bunch of tips to encourage positive communication here: How Each Personality Type Likes to Communicate.

#mbti #cognitive functions #family #dysfunctional #intuitives #judgers #thinkers #feelers #sensors #perceivers #extroverts #introverts

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stcrr · 5 years ago

Photo

elle fanning. cis female. she/her. ／ lorelei “lorrie” gunther just pulled up blasting which witch by florence + the machine — that song is so them ! you know, for a twenty-three year old musician, i’ve heard they’re really -reclusive, but that they make up for it by being so +observant. if i had to choose three things to describe them, i’d probably say chipped glitter nail polish, a silver gilt mirror, losing yourself in the beat of the music. here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble ! ( ally, 22, est, she/her )

me: i don’t have a type when it comes to muses! also me: unveils this new muse that is also introverted and anxious but this time with more glitter. anyways, meet lorelei, starr to her fans, and lorrie to her friends, an observant girl, gifted mimic, misfit, mirror, and musician. kind of a jem and the holograms/hannah montana/perfect blue hybrid. details under the cut, like for me to hyu to plot !!

(also her pinterest im really proud of it you guys)

statistics.

full name. lorelei amelia gunther. nicknames. lorrie. aliases. starr. occupation. singer-songwriter. age. twenty-three. date of birth. february 1st, 1997. nationality. american. ethnicity. white (austrian and irish). gender | orientation. cis female | queer. hometown. boston, ma. zodiac sign. aquarius sun, scorpio moon, pisces rising career/voice claim. lorde.

height. 5′9 weight. 120lbs build. willowy. distinguishing features. wide eyes, full lips, constant bags, probably has glitter in her hair. health. 7/10; has no major illnesses but eats like shit, has a whack sleep schedule, is a dysfunctional adult basically. she’s also big depressed but you know how it be.

positive traits. ambitious, intuitive, observant, imaginative, independent, neutral traits. talkative, intense, impressionable, negative traits. anxious, avoidant, moody, secretive, resentful, aloof,

likes. the nighttime, storms, baggy clothes, mountains, weed, lsd, books, blanket forts, lying on the floor, singing, cryptids, cemeteries, dislikes. being herself, deadlines, dolls/puppets, the paparazzi, social media, planning ahead, the outdoors, conflict, the beach,

history.

(tw suicide mention, anxiety attack) (tldr at the bottom)

her mother called her lorelei after the sirens of the rhine; she insisted her first cries were the sweetest song. and lorelei continued to have a beautiful voice; she sang more than she spoke. but only at home.

she never responded to lorelei, though, not really; it felt too grand for her. she was a chicken-legged girl who liked overalls and goosebumps books. she was just lorrie.

she grew up in a lower-middle class region of boston, ma. her father was a salesman, and her mother was a travel agent.

for a while, at school, she didn’t speak at all. she was diagnosed with selective mutism at age five, and it took until she was thirteen to overcome it completely.

this was not at all helped by the fact that her parents had a nasty divorce when she was seven years old. her father used her mother’s ten-year-old suicide attempt against her in court to prove she wasn’t stable, and gained full custody of lorelei and her two older brothers. her oldest brother, matthias, sided with their father, but the middle brother, jeremias, sided with their mom, and tried to run away to his mother’s house basically every month. he ran away for good when he was fifteen, living with his girlfriend’s family.

what helped her overcome this selective mutism, at least at first, was her middle school drama class. at home, lorelei had always been an excellent mimic. she did her favorite impressions for her drama teacher, and she encouraged her to try some monologues and scenes. as she got better at acting, she realized that she didn’t have to be herself; she could be somebody else. and that made talking all the easier.

by high school, she was no longer selectively mute, but was still anxious and shy. she was, however, a total drama kid, and still loved to act. she could be outrageous, incredible on stage; she wasn’t being herself, after all, so if people were judging her, it was the character they were judging, not her.

still she was def the kind of girl who had a mental breakdown every four months and dyed/cut her hair/gave herself bangs. she could never quite shake the feeling that she was an outsider looking in, separated, different.

she still loved music, and as she grew older, she started to write songs. it was her secret dream to be a musician. one of her theater friends talked her into singing one of them when she was sixteen, and then encouraged her to try out for the talent show. she was able to get through the audition, though she was a little nervous, but she knew it would be fine. she was on stage all the time, this would be fine.

but this time, she had to be herself in front of the entire school, and she froze up, not a sound leaving her lips. she doesn’t remember leaving the stage; only remembers that suddenly, she was in the girls bathroom, sobbing her eyes out.

her friends comforted her that night, partying in their basement like they always did, but thats when lorrie had an idea. what if she didn’t perform as herself?

that’s when a starr was born.

as lorelei dressed herself up in all the holo and glitter she had, she created starr in her head; she was born beloved, charismatic, fearless, this glitz and glamor girl who had it all, but what now? even at the top, she found emptiness. she was a beautiful supernova, so breathtaking you forgot she was really a collapsing star.

starr was lorrie’s ultimate muse; she wrote song after song for her in the next few months, until, finally, she asked some of her friends to help her record a music video. she didn’t expect this music video to get 60 million views in a matter of weeks.

royals, of course, blew the fuck up, and she had people calling her house to get her to sign with this record company or that record company, and her eventual producer flew her out to la with her dad. and, of course, the rest is history. (her dad also blew a lot of the money she earned as a minor but she got rid of him and that’s neither here nor there.)

however, as she got more and more into the la lifestyle, she began to rely more and more on starr as an alter ego. people liked starr, after all, and lorrie didn’t even like herself. she played the part of the dignified, wise, and eccentric former queen during interviews, when recording, at after parties and award shows.

even her first major relationship she got while acting like starr, someone fearless and fun, basically a manic pixie dream girl. if you’ve ever listened to the album melodrama, then you know how badly that ended.

that’s around when she realized that starr had taken over her entire life. coming home from a house party absolutely zonked, she looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize herself, didn’t see that nerdy, overall-clad chicken-legged girl from her family pictures.

she stripped her clothes off, scraped the makeup off her face until her skin was red and dry, dragged a brush through her hair to get rid of all the product, and pulled on a hoodie and leggings she had brought with her to la a year ago. she wrote the first draft of all the songs in melodrama in the coming hours.

however, she still wrote from starr’s perspective, knew she’d perform it as starr. it may be far more personal, but lorrie wasn’t ready to come out just yet. in fact, she’s kind of been hiding the last year or so, a full-on depression mess.

tl;dr lower middle class nerdy girl from boston overcomes crippling social anxiety through acting, finesses this into an alter ego to be a musician, hits it big, loses herself in the alter ego, has a disastrous relationship, and tries to become herself again.

present.

first of all, her real name is Known to the public, but not her “brand” outside of starr. it’s proven to be a boon as of late; she’s known for basically being a walking sailor moon cosplayer, not a skinny woman in baggy jeans and a big black hoodie.

since she’s trying to work on herself, she’s kind of in a creative slump. like, she still has more than enough royalties off her music to keep her going, but her agent and producer are both pushing her to clean up some of her songs and record them for a new album. she can still write as starr, but it feels... different, now. melodrama was far more personal than pure heroine, and she wants to continue to grow; writing as starr feels like reverting back to her sixteen year old self. but she’s too scared to write as herself So....

at events though she’s still in the gauze and stars people expect from starr.

trying to reach out to her mom and brother jer again. not her dad, fuck her dad.

loves true crime, the supernatural, and conspiracy thought. is probably watching a true crime doc rn.

she’s just starting to leave her house for the first time in like... a year? like she’s only started to get out again in the last few months.

as for drugs, she def drinks, but she’s more likely to smoke weed. also, she’s a big fan of lsd, but holds herself off to only tripping every few months.

is considering moving to the woods and being the lonely crone everyone whispers about. or maybe switching to voice acting.

she fuckin hates dolls. literally her worst nightmare is being trapped in some collectors’ doll rooms.

wanted connections.

melodrama ex (0/1) - the ex she wrote her breakup album about. can be any gender. i literally want this connection so bad kfdskjkadsfds

best friend (0/1) - someone who was with her throughout her... Transformation

squad (0/3) - bc who doesn't love a squad. this is the vibe i’m going for (sound warning)

icon (1/1) - someone lorrie looks up to and like... majorly doesn't wanna disappoint. - filled by kami!!!

musician buddies (0/?) - they bounce lyrics off of each other, you know how it is.

rival pop star (0/1) - idk i just think it would be Neat. maybe even with a plot that they had a major falling out and now they have to pretend to get along.

hookups (0/?) - or other messy shit

texting crush (0/1) - really weird concept but like... i imagine lorrie would have the number or snap or insta or whatever of this muse and they get talking after melodrama and she just... lays it all out. they don't really talk in person, but she feels really close to them and definitely develops a crush

weed buddy (0/1) - they come to her house and smoke and complain its great

friend turned enemy (0/1) - maybe someone who adored starr but doesn't like who she is now?????? idk idk

enemy turned friend (0/1) - maybe someone who thought starr was fake af but then meets lorrie being Herself and is just like "oh you're a Human" idk idk

bonus.

as a thank you for making it to the end of this fucking enormous intro, please take a moment to enjoy these tik toks reflective of lorrie’s personality (they’re also???? great on their own)

lorrie talking/singing to herself alone in her house

honestly she has tinkerbell vibes

drunk mouths speak sober thoughts

and thats on mental illness

#excess:intro #admittedly another novel #also i've been vibing to pure heroine all day and like #im going THROUGH IT #suicide mention tw #anxiety attack tw #drugs tw #also a notice i am not going to be making an open starter since... the event is TOMORROW so #i'll just reply to a few

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seouledbysisi · 5 years ago

Text

Something New

Chapter nine

Jaehyun

As he drove back home from the party he couldn’t wipe his big silly smile off of his face. He needed to talk to somebody and the only person he could think of to call was Brianne. After all they used to would tell each other everything and he couldn’t vent about his feelings to Sasha because that would just be too weird, right? He didn’t want her to think he was some love sick puppy even though that’s exactly what he was starting to feel like.

“Hey Siri!” He spoke in his deep tone. “Call Brianne.”

He waited for her to pick up. He figured she might be busy. On the last ring he finally heard her voice.

“Jeffrey, what a surprise!” She spoke on the other end.

He chuckled. “Why? We’re starting over on a new leaf. Get used to me calling you.”

He put his blinker on to veer onto the main highway. Sasha’s house was about thirty minutes away from his seeing as his parents lived in the suburbs of the suburbs. Yeah they were rich rich but he didn’t care. Their money was theirs not his and honestly after he graduated he couldn’t wait to get out of their grip, mainly his fathers.

“So to what do I owe this pleasure?” She spoke.

He could tell she was smiling. He could hear it in her voice. “I feel good. I needed to talk to my bestie!”

“Where are you, Jeffrey?” She asked with a giggle.

“Driving home. You know Johnny’s mom’s birthday party was tonight so me, Sasha and Ivy went. It was nice. Those people really know how to throw a party!”

Brianne sighed. “I totally forgot about that. I was planning on going but then Taeil said he needed tutoring, which he absolutely didn’t, but that’s not the point.” She rolled her eyes.

“Wait- that is the point. Why would he ask you to tutor him if he didn’t need tutoring?”

“Right! Like it was sort of a waste of time. I could’ve went to the party with y’all.” She took a deep breath.

Jaehyun chuckled. “You really are oblivious. If he actually didn’t need tutoring then he just wanted a reason to spend time with you, duh!”

“Why couldn’t he just ask me on a date?”

“Would you have said yes?!” He posed posed to her.

She giggled. “Probably not. I always think guys are playing around when it comes to me.”

“That’s why he asked you to study. I guarantee you he’s been watching your moves and he knew exactly how to approach you and look it worked.”

“Yeah and he may have asked me on another study date but he said we didn’t have to study this time around.”

“So he wants to take you on a legit date then, Bri. Keep up, he likes you!” Jae laughed as he pulled into his driveway. He cut the engine.

Brianne giggled. “Well look at there, I’ve been asked out and didn’t even notice. He is a cutie though. I should probably text him with an answer.”

“Yeah and that answer better be a yes!” He paused for a moment. “Bri, I- I really like her. Like I know you don’t want to hear it but-“

“No I do! I’m totally good off of you. We’re best friends and that’s all I ever need us to be. Tell me all about it.”

He laid his head back on the head rest. “She’s great. I see why my parents love her so much. She just understands me like no one ever has. I feel like she actually sees me even though I’m scared as shit to show her all the ugly things.”

Brianne smiled. “She’s that kind of person. I’ve been like the worst friend ever to her lately and she still has stuck around. She show compassion when most people wouldn’t. So what are you going to do about these feelings?”

That big silly smile appeared on his face again as he stepped out of his vehicle and headed to his front door. “I want her to be mine. But is it too soon to ask?”

“There’s no time like any time. Cease the day, my friend!” She approved. “Plus I overheard that Taeyong is trying to get her back so you might want to act fast.”

He opened his door and noticed suitcases in the foyer. “Mom?!” He yelled.

Brianne groaned. “Did you really have to yell in my ear?”

He had honestly forgot that quick that he was on the phone. The packed suitcases caught him off guard.

His mom appeared in view. “Your dad is gone so if you’re coming with me I need you to get you stuff right now!”

He eyed her curiously. “What are you doing?” He asked with wide eyes.

“I’m leaving your father. This is the last time I be his fool. Are you coming or not?”

“Where will we go?!” Jaehyun was taken aback.

She grabbed his face to stare into his big brown eyes, “trust me, Jeffrey! Okay?”

He nodded in silence.

Brianne didn’t know what to say. “Um- hello?” She spoke on the other end of the phone. She could tell Jae was running upstairs from his breathing and the stomps she could hear.

He gasped. “I’m so sorry I forgot you were still there, I have to go but we definitely need to talk about the whole Taeyong thing.” He cut the phone line quickly and began packing his things. The only thing he cared about was his clothes and shoes. Everything else could stay as far as he was concerned.

After about an hour he met his mom downstairs. “So where are we going?”

She smiled. It was a sad smile but a smile nonetheless. “I bought a condo outside the city. Your dad doesn’t even know about it.”

Jae simply nodded.

“Follow me in your car.”

Jaehyun pulled his things to his car and packed them in. “Mom!” He yelled as something dawned on him. “Doesn’t he have trackers on these vehicles?”

She shook her head. “He did but I removed them. Let’s go!”

He drove closely behind his mother. He felt like maybe his mom had been planning to leave for a while but she just couldn’t find the proper opportunity. Now she had one he guessed.

After about forty five minutes they pulled up to a building of condos.

He admired it. He knew she had spent a pretty penny on it. He helped her with the kids.

After they got everything in he smiled at the inside. “How long have you had this?”

“About a year. I needed my ducks in a row.” She sighed as she stared out the window.

Jaehyun rubbed her shoulder. “You deserve so much better, mom. From me and from him. I don’t want to be like him.”

She looked over to him. “Then be better. You have what it takes to be a decent man, just do it.” She rubbed his cheek.

He smiled a little. “I’ve been hiding something from you-“ he started.

She crossed her arms. “Nothing you do is ever mystery to me, Jeffrey.”

He smirked. “So you’re telling me you already know what I’m about to reveal?”

“Maybe. What is it?”

“I’ve been hanging out with Sasha and her friends lately. I’m staying out of trouble I swear.”

She smiled. “Oh I know if you’re hanging with them then you’re definitely not in any trouble. Just don’t revert back. Sasha is a good girl and she has many aspirations. Don’t mess that up for her.”

“Why did you just single her out?” He questioned.

She laughed. “I told you that nothing you do is a mystery to me. I know you like her. I knew you would before y’all met.”

“How would you even know what my type is? I’ve been away at boarding school forever. You’ve never met any of my girlfriends.” As if he had had any to begin with. Let’s just say he wasn’t the commitment type before now. He was just having fun and breaking hearts while at it but he didn’t want to be like that anymore. Sasha has changed the game. She was the main character and he was just trying to find his way in her world.

She stared at him. “How could you not fall for her? She’s amazing in so many ways. Just call it mother’s intuition.” She walked back towards the master bedroom. “Get settled in. You’ll need your rest for school tomorrow.”

Ivy

She searched through Johnny’s drawer for some comfortable clothes to wear. She quickly pulled out a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt. She noticed an unopened box of condoms. She eyed them wondering how long he had had them. Was it just in case it had he been planning for the moment. They were very comfortable with one another so they undressed and dressed freely in front of each other but they had never had sex. Or at least never went all the way.

She heard the knob turn to his door so she hurriedly stashed them back in his drawer and stepped back from the dresser. She hugged his clothes against her body. She didn’t know why she felt embarrassed now.

He eyed her for a moment then he slipped his shirt off. His gym shirts hung low off of his hips.

She could see his “V” and boy did it make her hot.

“Babe, are you okay?” He asked as he turned his covers back and jumped into the bed.

She snapped out of her trance. “Yes.” She whispered. She didn’t mean to say it like that though she was just caught up in the pure lust of him. An entire man underneath his clothes. She had seen him like this before but maybe seeing the condoms had her imagining things that she probably shouldn’t.

He patted the side of his bed. “Come lay with me.” He pleaded.

She shook her head. “I think I might need to use the bathroom?” She said as if it was a question. She ran into his bathroom. She splashed water on her face. “Get your shit together, Ivy!” She spoke to herself quietly.

He wondered what the hell was wrong with her. She was acting so awkwardly and that was one thing that she wasn’t.

Ivy grabbed her phone as she braced herself on the countertop and called Sasha. “I need you to talk me down!”

Sasha giggled. “What is it, Ivy?”

“I think I’m ready to have sex.” She whispered. She knew the walls weren’t that thick so if she didn’t want him to hear her she needed to stay quiet.

“You what?” Sasha could barely hear her.

“Sex, Sasha! I think I’m ready!” She said a bit too loud. She covered her mouth, if she could slap herself she would’ve.

Johnny had been standing by the door so he heard that. His eyes flew open wide. He had been ready but she didn’t seem so into it so he never asked.

“Are you going to tell me this is a mistake or not, Sasha?!” She stared at herself in the mirror.

Sasha sighed. “Y’all have been together since sophomore year. Who am I to tell you what to do with your body. Do you think y’all will be together after we graduate?”

“I can’t picture my life without him honestly. It scares me that we might be taking separate roads but I still want him. I love him, Sasha.” Tears formed in her eyes as she thought of the future.

Sasha smiled. She wanted a love like that. “Do what your heart tells you to do.”

“Thanks Sasha! I love you.” She hung up.

Johnny stood at the door. He wasn’t even going to try to act like he hadn’t been listening.

She opened the door and bumped into him.

He caught her in his arms and simply held her. “I love you too.” He smiled and tipped her chin up so she could see him. “I don’t care where I go in this life or any other life, I’m taking you with me.”

She let a tear escape.

He wiped it. “And also I’m ready to have you in every way possible but I want it to be special for both of us so just wait a little bit. You won’t regret the wait.” He kissed her lips softly then nipped the bottom one with a light chuckle.

-stay tuned

#nctzen #nct 127 #nct u #jaehyun #taeyong #moon taeil #nakamoto yuta #johnny suh #seo johnny #haechan #jungwoo #doyoung #mark lee #fanfic #story #stories #kpop #kpop idols #soft hours

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