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thoughtfulfiction · 3 days ago

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The P Word

Author’s Note: Two fics in two days?

In 2013, Joe sent a dm to a recruiting analyst for scout.com, asking which camps he should attend because he was flying under the national radar.

Most four star recruits get about 20 college offers. He had 12.

At Ohio State he sat on the bench for three years, only gaining attention as a scout team player who would later have to graduate in three years just so he could transfer and get some playing time elsewhere.

That same scout team player would become the best player in college football and a Heisman trophy winner and the number one pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. A few years after that fateful private message to Dave Burk.

Robin Burrow had been there the entire time. Through every shining moment and the times that seemed rather dark. She drove two hours to do his laundry just to make sure he was physically and mentally healthy when he lived in Columbus, has attended every game since he began playing sports, made him snickers salad when he tore his ACL…and when he tore his scapholunate ligament in his wrist. All in all, she’s been a constant presence in the midst of all of the mayhem. To be frank, there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be than between him and anything that could possibly serve to harm him or cause him any pain, no matter how old he is.

That included protecting him from himself.

The last few months had been filled with joy. After the news of his engagement, the wedding planning process had been smooth. You and Robin along with your mom, had gone to several appointments together and Joe had even added his input in most of the details without you feeling like you had to twist his arm and force him to participate.

You were now in the home stretch of the most important day of your lives. Less than two months from now you’d be saying “I do” to the love of your life. And Robin had taken her role as future mother in-law very seriously. You knew that Joe was a mama’s boy, his brothers much older than him with their own mom, and it was clear to anyone with eyes that he was Robin’s pride and joy. But not in a creepy way that would get them to star in a TLC show. It was just very evident that she was proud of him and his achievements and that she didn’t mess around when it came down to business.

After one of your dress fittings, she pulled you aside. “There’s one quick thing I need to mention to you. You’ll be getting a formal document in the mail in the next few days. Nothing huge, just a formality that Peter and the team drafted up for you to sign. I hate the word prenup but that’s essentially what this is.” She said in a matter of fact way. “We just need to make sure to dot our i’s and cross our t’s if that makes sense. Get the boring stuff out of the way so that we can focus on showering you and Joey with our love on your special day.”

“No that makes complete sense, just send it over and I’ll sign whatever you need me to. Thank you Robin seriously, for everything. You’ve made planning this entire thing a breeze.”

She shakes her head with a genuine smile, giving you a warm hug. “This has been an honor, I’m so happy for the both of you sweetie. I’ll see you in a few days for brunch at your house? The kids are so excited they won’t stop talking about it.”

“Yes absolutely, I can’t wait either it’s been so long since we’ve gotten both families together it’ll be really fun.”

There weren’t many opportunities for your family to interact with Joe’s and vice versa, unless everyone met at a football game but that wasn’t exactly quality family bonding. That felt more like a collective screaming match where the adults pregamed with beer and the kids wore his jersey. Most of them didn’t really know what was going on in the actual game. So you and Joe were going to host both sets of parents, all of your siblings and their kids in order for everyone to really spend time together before the wedding.

A few days later, you were finalizing the menu with the catering company when Joe came home.

“It’s gonna be like Cheaper by the Dozen in here tomorrow,” he notes, grabbing a Body Armour from the fridge. “Are we sure we’re ready for this?”

“We kinda have to be. Should we do smoked salmon or shrimp crostinis?” You held up one of each and let him examine them. He snagged the salmon one first and took a bite then did the same with the shrimp.

“Definitely the salmon. What time is everyone getting here?” The catering people jot down their last notes and head out the door after you and Joe thanked them.

You could tell he was going to need time to mentally prepare in case he got overstimulated. “They’ll be here at 1pm, so you can probably get an early workout in and take a nap afterwards,” walking over to him on the other side of the counter, holding his face in your hands. “I know you get cranky when you’re tired and Uncle Joe needs to be at his best tomorrow because the kids will need a QB for their flag football game.”

He wraps his arms around your waist, sticking out his lips that are begging to be kissed. You happily grant his wish, pressing your lips against his, giving him a quick smooch. He asks for a few more, about to get lost in a full make out session when a stack of papers on the counter catch his eye. Joe pulls back so abruptly that your face smacks against his chest.

“Sorry baby,” he cradles your head, reaching around you to grab the piece of paper that’s on top. You take that as your cue to go after his second apology for nearly giving you a concussion. That chest is a brick wall.

The more he skims the words, the tighter his grip gets on the little sheet and the confused look on his face deepens. “Um…what is this?”

“What is what?” You give him a look that matches his energy.

He holds up the paper. “This. What is this? Where did you get it from?”

You look around the room to make sure you aren’t getting Punk’d. “Wait—are you being serious?”

“Do I look like I’m joking,” it wasn’t a question. He’s legitimately starting to look upset. “Who gave this to you?”

“Joe,” you let out a dry chuckle, “your mom did. Said it was a formality and that I should sign it and give it to her so she can hand it off to Peter so your lawyers can process it.” When your fiancé continues to stand there motionless in the middle of the room, that’s when it hits you. “Did—did you not know about this?”

He usually has something to say about everything, so watching him silently shake his head is a little scary. Joe places the first page of the prenuptial agreement on the table with a heavy sigh, visibly trying to compose himself. The man had the patience of a saint, known to have blow ups on the field but that was Football Joe. Off the field Joe was calm and rarely ever let things get to him. You’d probably only heard him yell twice in the entire time you’ve been together. And now he was dead quiet. You didn’t know what to do with that.

“Joe, your mom is just trying to protect you. Get this out of the way so that we can—”

“Please don’t try to defend her right now,” his tone was laced with venom, a seething anger you hadn’t seen before and weren’t too keen on getting familiar with. “I don’t like that this was just drafted, printed and handed to you without my permission. She and Peter shouldn’t have done that. And my mom definitely shouldn’t have ambushed you with this.”

Now he was being dramatic. “Robin didn’t ambush me! She told me a couple days ago and I thought you knew so I didn’t mention it.”

“I would never do that to you,” he says with a pain in his voice that makes your chest clench. “WE, you and I should be talking about this. Not my mom and Peter. Jesus.” He rested his arms on the counter, running his hands through his hair.

You hated seeing him get worked up like this, crossing the room again to place a comforting hand on his back. “Why don’t you talk to her tomorrow, I’m sure she didn’t mean to upset you. She most likely just thought she would do this for you so you didn’t need to worry about it.”

“That’s the thing, this isn’t something she should be doing for me. We’re getting married. You’re going to be my wife. There’s no reason she needs to be handing you documents on my behalf like you’re some fucking stranger. I don’t care how ‘busy’ I am. You come first.” You can feel the tension in his muscles even when he stands up to his normal height. He’s really trying to keep it together, giving you an empty kiss on the cheek before heading into his office to cool off. An hour later you head up to check on him, assuming he has his headphones on and can’t hear you, you find that the door is locked.

Tomorrow’s brunch is going to be very interesting to say the least.

Joe surprised you by being in bed by the time you came upstairs to get ready to go to sleep. You thought for sure he’d be on a run to clear his mind. As soon as you climbed in next to him he put his phone away, wrapping his arms around you and giving your body a squeeze.

Whatever private meeting he had with himself must have done the trick because he was actually letting you be the big spoon for once. His touch was soft and intentional, the previously icy aura was liquified and only warm and cuddly Joe remained. “Are you okay?” You asked him and he nodded without looking at you. He just interlocked your fingers in his before sitting up.

“Switch me.” You knew the little spoon wouldn’t last long. “That’s better,” he sighs kissing your head, feeling at home with your arm draped across his waist.

After a few seconds of silence he mutters, “I’m so sorry this is happening. Are you sure you want to sign up for a lifetime of this?”

You look up to meet Joe’s gaze to see if he’s trying to be funny. “A lifetime of you? I can’t think of anything I would want more. The rest of it is just extra, the good and the bad. As long as I have you I don’t care.”

His shoulders sag once again in relief, “good.” Joe peppers a few kisses on your neck, making his way up to your jaw, taking his sweet time until he got to your lips. A joyous hum leaves his mouth as the kiss grows deeper, each swipe of his tongue against yours makes you feel dizzy…love drunk. Nothing compares to the way that Joe kisses you, sensually careful but hungry at the same time, almost as if this is the last thing he’ll ever get to do. This kiss is different, it’s a promise to always protect you, to never let the outside noise sway what his heart knows is true. He’s found the one person in the world that consistently makes his heart sing and no one—not even his mom—will have the final say. And he was going to make that very clear.

When Joe sluggishly came down the stairs the next day rubbing his eyes after his nap wearing a hoodie and cargo pants, you were just thankful he wasn’t in sweats.

“Hi there Sleeping Beauty, I’ve already gotten a few texts that most of them are about five minutes out.”

“Great,” he grunts, parking himself on the couch, “I’m starving,” he scoots around trying to subtly adjust himself.

Joe stares at you , running his hand down your thigh. “Hungry…for food right?” You give him a pointed look.

“Yeah, yeah for food. What did you think I meant?” He laughs as he catches the pillow you launch his way and scoot far enough away that he can’t grab you.

“Don’t. Today really needs to be a stress free day. Can you promise you will be nice and not yell at your mother?” And with that statement he is no longer in the mood.

“I will not yell at my mom,” he crosses his arms over his chest with a scowl only like a youngest child could. “Can’t promise I’ll be nice.”

Before you can negotiate any further the doorbell rings and your first guests arrive. Nieces and nephews come running in, suffocating you with hugs and the youngest one tugging at Joe’s legs demanding to be picked up. Less than 30 minutes later the entire backyard is filled with kids playing tag, drinking juice boxes while the adults enjoyed the appetizer spread.

Joe wasn’t making it blatantly obvious that he was mad but he wasn’t exactly hiding it either. He kept the greeting with his parents short, keeping his distance throughout the afternoon focused on entertaining the kids and playing the perfect host.

“I just realized I never asked,” Codie, one of Joe’s sister in laws speaks up. “Where are you two going for your honeymoon?”

“Bora Bora! I can’t wait,” you respond, topping off her wine glass.

His brother Dan’s ears perk up. “We were thinking about going there for an anniversary trip. Are you guys staying in a resort?”

Joe shakes his head, “I got us an underwater bungalow. The view is supposed to be insane.”

“Yeah I bet,” your dad notes.

“Take lots of pictures,” his dad adds in.

He waits for a second taking a mental note of his mom’s silence throughout the conversation, nudging you to make sure that you’re on the same page. By the time everyone was gone you needed something stronger than wine. Robin and your mom insisted on helping you clean up but you let them know that the caterers were coming back to grab everything. As you bid your family goodbye and thanked them for coming, your mom whispered in your ear, letting you know that the man inside was a keeper. You responded by telling her you intended on keeping him.

Once the door was fully closed you could breathe a sigh of relief…until you heard Robin ask Joe what was going on with him.

Here we go.

Joe didn’t respond. He just went up to his office and came right back down with the prenup in hand. “Care to explain?”

“Oh,” she looked rather unfazed, “Peter and I thought that—”

“And that’s where you went wrong,” Joe interrupts, voice surprisingly even. “You and Peter don’t get to ‘think.’ You don’t get to do whatever you ‘think’ I need. You have to ask me.”

You can tell she’s visibly taken aback at how this has gone. “It was not at all my intention to go behind your back. You’re just very busy and now with wedding planning and everything else, it just made sense to get it put into place so you’d have one less thing to worry about.”

“Mom, I get that. But you crossed the line here. I’m an adult who would’ve liked to have a mature conversation with the person I am going to marry about a topic that is extremely uncomfortable for everyone. It is not your job to play the middle man here. There is no middle man. This is between y/n and I.”

The tension in the air was getting a little too thick for your liking. You stood next to Joe, running your hand down his arm trying to diffuse the situation as much as possible. “Okay I think you’ve made your point. Robin, I am not at all upset with you, this can all be resolved rather—”

“I am upset with you mom. There was no reason to hand over that document without at least giving me a phone call,” Joe counters, starting to stand in front of you a bit like he’s physically shielding you from her.

“Now Joey I don’t think your mom meant any harm,” Joe’s dad speaks up seeing his wife almost in tears. “Why don’t we all just take a breather here.”

You nod in agreement.

“I’m so sorry, to both of you. In hindsight that wasn’t the best way to go about it but like you said this is uncomfortable. I thought keeping it casual would remove some of that awkwardness and I just made it worse. I really am sorry.”

Joe still seemed unmoved but you really didn’t think she needed to apologize this much. He just told her he appreciated the sentiments but that she needs to recognize that’s he’s an adult, telling them goodnight and immediately heading upstairs.

You’re left to walk them out alone, giving them both hugs goodbye. “Honey I’m so sorry,” Robin states again, “I never want you to think that I don’t love you or that I was intentionally going behind Joe’s back. I was just making sure we have all of our bases covered so we aren’t sweating the small stuff on your big day. I hope you can forgive me.”

“You’re totally fine, I understand. And I agree. I think he just got a little freaked out at the reminder that his life is abnormal. He wants things to be simple and sometimes they just aren’t. That probably stressed him out a little. Or a lot.”

It feels good to leave their tense interaction with her smiling. Even though it didn’t reach her eyes like usual, it was still a small step forward.

“How can you not be upset about this?” Joe asks after brushing his teeth.

You focused on what was going on at your sink, taking your time to complete your skincare routine. “Because I see where both of you are coming from. You have every right to be angry at her for doing this behind your back. But at the same time I understand why she feels like she should get a jump on protecting your assets.”

“Protect my assets…” he scoffs, “…from you? What’s mine is going to be yours.” He hands you a towel after you wash your face, having memorized the steps at this point.

“Yeah ok, legally. But your accomplishments and accolades are yours. That’s how you got here and your mom saw all the blood, sweat and tears that went into you being in the position you are today. She may have overstepped a little but you’re still her baby at then end of the day and sometimes it’s hard for them to recognize that they have adult children who are fully capable of making their own decisions.” He grabs the moisturizer off the counter and places it in your hand as you laugh, whispering thank you. “My mom has done the same to me, not to this extent obviously because we’re in completely different tax brackets but—they just want to make sure we’re okay no matter what.”

Joe leans against the counter, deep in thought. Growing up with his dad coaching it was usually just the two of them, she drove him to basketball and football practices and tournaments, took him to school and worked the entire day at school and came home still ready to dedicate all of her time to him if he asked. “I was too harsh wasn’t I?”

“A teeny bit? Maybe? I do thoroughly appreciate you looking out for me though. Going to bat for me against your mom of all people.”

He shrugs, giving you a hug from behind, resting his chin on your head. “She protects me so somebody’s gotta protect you. That’s what I’m signing up for and I promise to always take that job very seriously.” I should put that in my vows, he tells himself. He leans over a little more to press a kiss against your temple.

“Is that a promise?”

“That is a promise,” he holds out a pinky, making you gasp as you turn around.

“Isn’t a pinky shake you and Ja’Marr’s thing?”

Joe looks at you sheepishly, smiling so wide his eyes crinkle. “I won’t tell him if you don’t.”

You lock your pinky in his, kissing the smile off of his face.

That night before he went to sleep, he texted his mom telling her that he loved her. You gave them privacy when she came over the next day, smiling and hugging it out so you assumed everything went well. You hoped to have open communication with your kids even as adults one day, but did not envy the journey that your parents were constantly navigating. This once tiny person you created and had to make sure to teach them everything was now not only getting married and had established their own life but in Joe’s case everything was heightened. She’s been there through her son being the overlooked player who Urban Meyer said threw like a girl to now if he so much as has a paper cut an entire city of people, a whole fanbase is worried and asking for minute by minute updates on his condition. You couldn’t imagine the whirlwind that must be.

So you were going to sign that prenup whether Joe liked it or not.

“We need to decide on bridal party gifts,” Joe suggests a week later. “I was thinking about getting the guys customized golf carts. They could be delivered straight to their houses after the wedding or I could have them dropped off the day we get and they can drive around the property whenever they need to get somewhere? What sounds better?”

“It sounds like you’ve had this very specific plan and just couldn’t wait to make your big announcement. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

Joe laughs, grabbing his water. “You can give them all Cartier bracelets, have the wedding date engraved on the inside. That’d be pretty cool.”

Cool and expensive. “Don’t do that, I can actually hear what you’re thinking.” Curse him for knowing you so well. We’re only gonna do this once, might as well do it right. Make it a great experience for everyone we love.”

“Fine. You’re right. But we are not doing an ice sculpture then.” He gives you a blank stare but says nothing, both of you know that it’ll be coming back up sooner rather than later. “There is something else we need to talk about though.”

He rolls his eyes, deciding this is the perfect time to get up and put his plate in the sink, like you can’t just follow him. “We really don’t have to do this.”

“Oh but we do. Joe seriously we’re gonna have to figure this out. It’s important.”

He lets out a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling before putting his eyes back on you. “I’m just uncomfortable with any conversation that plans a breakup. I don’t ever want to breakup.”

“Then let’s not breakup and we won’t even have to worry about any of this. We’ll discuss the details, I’ll sign it and we’ll never talk about it ever again. Deal?”

You place a hand on his cheek and he kisses the inside of your hand before he speaks. “Deal. I can’t wait to marry you. Even got a countdown on my phone.”

“That’s probably the single most adorable thing you’ve ever said.” He pulls his phone out to show you a countdown app with a timer down to the hour the ceremony is supposed to start. A picture from your engagement shoot is set as the background. “I can’t wait either. I love you, so much.”

“I love you more.”

#Joe burrow #Joe burrow x reader #Joe burrow imagine #Joe burrow fic

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anthrofreshtodeath · 2 years ago

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I lasted eight whole days and then this short character study punched me right between the eyes this morning. Crossover stuff is coming to me like visions and that's weird because it doesn't usually happen that way. I'm blaming it on the fact that I've been listening to The Communion of Saints a lot recently.

Jane taps away at the keys in front of her, catching up on the incident report about the body found outside Amherst yesterday afternoon. It had been a two hour drive there and back, and she’s starting to wonder if this is the type of case where she needs to hole up in a ratty motel for a week. Or longer, given that this is the third desiccated body they’ve found, the third time they’ve had to trek to Western Mass and look tragedy in the face, with no suspects to speak of.

And with the feds already involved, it might be easier if they all toughed it out in one place. She pulls her Pats mug up to her lips for a pull of strong, black coffee, and smirks to herself. Right on cue, the elevator dings, and her ears twitch at the quiet shuffle of rubber soles on buffered linoleum.

Speaking of the feds.

“Mornin’ Rizzoli,” says Booth, a morning person of the highest order. Jane thinks that if there were in fact a fraternal order of morning people, Booth would lead them. His chipper AM attitude actually reminds her of Maura, so it's both annoying and endearing.

She hides this complexity of feeling from him and shrugs. “Glad you left the ‘good’ off. Reviewin’ these crime scene photos kinda makes it hard to see the bright side.”

Booth takes his blazer off and heads toward the loaner desk Korsak had set up for him. Jane makes it a point to avoid looking at him, just sets her gaze forward and takes another drink. Booth draps the jacket over the back of his office chair. “Especially without coffee - hey hey! Here we go, Steelers!” He breaks into that boyish smile at his discovery, the one that stretches from one side of his mouth to the other and sketches in the lines around his eyes. He’s still standing, leading with his pelvis when Jane finally glances his way, and he holds the black Pittsburgh mug in his hand. “How’d you know I got one of these back at the office?” He is happy in one of the simplest of ways, and Jane knows, because it’s how she had felt when she spotted the New England one next to it at the store.

“I’m a good listener,” she snarks, batting her eyelashes at him and crossing her legs when she swivels her chair in his direction. He laughs, and she lets out a deep little chuckle, too. “Coffee’s shit, but at least now you’ll have something homey to look at when you drink it.”

Booth’s desk is right next to the homicide coffee pot and he pours some into his new cup. “‘S’gotta be a punishment or somethin’,” he grumbles when he takes one sip before all his accouterments. “Law enforcement coffee and stale gym socks - match made in heaven.” His face turns dour for a moment, then he decides on the sugar and the powdered creamer. Unlike Jane, he dumps copious amounts in his coffee, enough to mask the flavor. “Thanks for this,” he says when it’s just right, holding his mug up to her before lowering himself into his chair. He rolls up to his FBI loaner laptop and powers it on. “Any headway this morning?”

Jane crosses her arms, sighing right at the photos open on her own desk. “Unfortunately, no. Indecipherable cruelty and unsolved murders are a match made in heaven, too,” she answers.

She feels him studying her glare, and it is strange to know exactly what he is going to say before he says it. She had it with Frost, but that had taken time. “Match made in hell is more like it,” Booth takes his own FBI version of the file and thumbs through the pages. He is gruff. The young sun shines through the window over Jane’s desk and catches his watch, so he puts his wrist down to prevent it from shining in Jane’s eyes. “Whoever killed her, he wanted her to suffer.”

“Yeah well,” Jane begins, “this job and healthy relationships don’t really mix. Hardly ever in the same room together, whether on our side or their side.” She points at the photos he’s taken out to study, referring to the victims and perpetrators they often encounter.

Booth adopts her dogged bitterness perhaps because it’s also his. “Guess that’s true for you and me both,” he replies lowly.

Jane hears him loud and clear, however. “You gotta work with any of yours?” she chances, though she knows the answer. She just knows when she sees Booth order Dr. Brennan’s lunch at a diner, when he stands close to her as she peers over a half-buried skeleton in Western Massachusetts.

Booth looks up, and he stares at her. His square jaw sets. Jane is looking in a mirror. “You’re a good observer, too,” he says, but his mouth doesn’t smile even though he’s taking the syntax right out of hers. “And I’m only not mad because I see what goes on between you and Doctor Isles. And it may be round two for you guys, but you’re definitely in the ring.”

“A prize fight is a good way to describe it,” she says. Defensiveness is her first instinct, the Rizzoli way, but she chooses not to refute him because, strangely, she wants his trust. With the case the way it’s going, and no real partner since Frost passed, she’ll need him. And he’ll need her - which’ll eventually necessitate the full telling of both of their heartbreaks.

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Booth grumbles. He returns to his paperwork and takes another gulp of coffee. Just to steady himself.

Jane nods, and she knows he’s seen her even if he’s not looking. “Ready to get back to work?” she asks, again even though she knows the answer.

“Please,” Booth says in the commanding tone. Then after a few beats, he breaks out in the smallest of grins and nods to her mug. “Do your job,” he teases, using the Patriots catch phrase against her just like he’d used the Steelers one to thank her. He finds himself amusing, half-laughs when she glares at him.

But when the moment passes, they return to the fallen woman who deserves their best.

Whoops

I meant to do some mindless smut prompts (still might!) but then accidentally came up with this instead. Apparently the dialogue/character study for the Bones crossover is bubbling up ahead of schedule, so here's some of that. We are still a long, long way off from a story, but We Shall See.

___

“These Amherst guys really dropped the ball,” Jane’s voice carries from the dense thicket of trees to the small clearing where Maura currently stands. Well, bends, really, crouching so that the leather of her boots touches the fabric of the skirt on her thighs, while the fog around her seeps into her skin even under her blazer.

For a moment, because of the tenor of that voice, deep and rich and extra liquid, Maura forgets that Doctor Brennan is crouching right next to her. “Bony nodules fusing with the upper symphyseal face…” Brennan drones, peering into the very visible pubic skeleton of the victim’s remains, using a brush to displace some of the dark soil around them.

“About twenty years old,” Maura murmurs, because Jane is emerging and though she should be concentrating on what Brennan is saying. It is good that they have the understanding, the shorthand that they’ve developed over the last two months, because Maura can compartmentalize analysis of remains to the way, way back of her brain. And she needs to, with the way that Jane looks when she approaches the body.

“Listen, y’know, I’ve seen it a thousand times, these little departments - they don’t talk to each other. They putz around trying to figure out their one murder, and when they hear there’re more close by just like it, they bury their heads in the sand,” Booth, the one federal collaborator that has actually looked like a companion next to Jane, says when he takes his place beside her, index cards in hand.

Maura is far too focused on Jane to more than glance at the way he studies Doctor Brennan.

Since Booth and Brennan’s arrival in late February, Jane, of course, has resisted Booth’s federal authority at every turn. Her disdain for the FBI has burned as hot as ever, even though he has wielded that authority with grace, if not a little impatience at the local authorities who had no idea they’d been seeing identical killings at clustered dumping sites in the reservoirs for six months, because they don’t communicate. Jane had flown past impatience and into anger when Maura and Korsak had convinced her to help out, again at the behest of those silly local authorities.

On the condition, of course, that she and Agent Booth collaborate. And then, a strange thing started to happen. They are similar in so many ways, truly: they both take their coffee black, two sugar. They live for sport and they speak with many of the same colloquialisms that confound both Maura and Brennan - Maura had been glad to realize she wasn’t the only one. They harbor the same thirst for justice, though Booth’s appears very tied up in the law and service to his country, while Jane’s nestles somewhere in her heart, independent of law though it sometimes coincides with it.

In short, given the things that they have in common, they began to bond. Sort of. Booth, a morning person by military experience, rises early, and Jane loathes to be last to a crime scene, to an autopsy, to a bone examination, so she rises early now, too. Maura actually gets to see her for more than four minutes every morning before she has to clock in and start the day. Not that she had wanted to see Jane for more than four minutes every morning, but that was before Booth arrived and the peculiar changes had begun. Now, Maura considers it scientific inquisitiveness more than anything else. Despite living in two separate apartments, Booth and Jane arrive at headquarters at the same time. Booth holds the door for her, and she swipes the both of them in, a symbiosis that baffles Maura to this day. Booth used to walk in with his own coffee from the cart across the street, but ever since Jane had shown him the artisan beans Maura had bought for her, he follows her up to third floor homicide and they brew a pot together. Jane had even bought him a Steelers mug to drink his in when she found out about his love for them, and she bought herself a Patriots one to match. Booth stands and likes to hold an object like a ball or a hockey puck when he thinks, while Jane sits in her chair, long legs perched up on the desk, but they both narrow their brows and draw their mouths into hard lines when they do it.

None of these things is why Maura stares. They’re not why Maura has started staring for the past month now. No - one day, when they all had made the drive to Amherst to check out a newly discovered body in a conservation area, shots had rung out while they examined the remains. Jane had ushered Maura and Brennan to the Medical Examiner’s van they’d arrived in, gun drawn, and Booth had pulled one from his side to defend them.

That was hot in and of itself, Maura couldn’t deny. The protectiveness honeyed up her insides, even though the shooter had been a resident that thought the four of them were trespassers on the land. But, as soon as they were alone at the scene, Booth and Brennan on a call with experts at the Medico-Legal lab of the Jeffersonian Institute, Jane had grumbled an apology about not being prepared enough to save Maura. Maura had rolled her eyes, because the hero complex was part of what caused their divorce in the first place, but then Jane had shown up at BPD the next morning with a double shoulder holster under her blazer.

One nearly identical to Booth’s.

Maura feels more unmoored now than she did the first time she saw it poking out from under black fabric, because, in late April, it’s warm enough to forego the blazer and Jane wears two firearms in a russet brown leather holster completely exposed to the outer air. Booth hasn’t influenced her long black slacks or her worn-in leather boots with the chunky heel, or the way she tucks in her ironed white shirt, leaving just the two top buttons undone to show her undershirt. No, he’d just - indirectly - given her the perfect accent for it all.

“Hey Maura. Doc,” says Jane, greeting the two, angling her left hand in front of her hips, slotted downward so that her fingertips hang inches from Maura’s face while she pulls on a purple nitrile glove.

Maura flinches when the material snaps into place on Jane’s wrist. When she looks up at Jane’s face, Jane smirks, like she knows. Like she knows the entire trace of Maura’s thoughts from when she arrived with Agent Booth until now. Maura looks back down, lightly touching the bones in front of her. “Detective. Agent Booth,” she greets cooly, proud of herself.

“Sorry for the uh, delay, Bones. Not sure how ya run into traffic in the middle of nowhere, but we did,” Booth’s proximity to Brennan is much less charged than Jane’s proximity to Maura, like he’s just arrived home after a long day, even though it’s morning. His body relaxes, his face softens. Brennan’s doesn’t change.

“It’s Mass. We run into traffic in our sleep,” Jane quips.

“We should have all ridden together. Doctor Isles’ GPS system is very advanced,” Brennan says, and when both of them stand, she turns to Maura. “I’m not surprised. He insists the routes he takes are the best way, even if he’s never been to a location before. He ends up adding minutes to the drive.” She purses her lips in a serious little tease, and Maura realizes they’ve had effects on each other, too. Brennan has pushed Maura’s dedication to objectivity, Maura has given Brennan a few more social hazing techniques, even if they are only to get under the skin of the law enforcement partner with which they work.

Maura smirks, then looks right at Jane. “He does, does he? Sounds familiar,” she says. Jane shakes her head, and stands close, peering over Maura’s shoulder at the shallow grave in which the victim was found. Maura knows a challenge when she sees one, and she doesn’t back down. She can smell lavender, gun oil, leather, and strong coffee. She thinks about crossing her legs, and then abandons the thought - she lets the arousal, the attraction happen, exactly as Jane intends. She will let Jane deal with the fallout. Like, for example, the tiny tug she places on Jane’s belt as she pretends to use the leverage to climb up from uneven terrain around the grave. What will Jane do with it?

“He does,” confirms Brennan. “I much prefer riding with empiricists.”

“Oh come on, I don’t do that. Do I do that?” Booth puts his arms out in defense of himself, a pen in one hand and stack of fluorescent-colored cards in the other. His tie hangs narrow and long like an arrow right to his hips. His is more pronounced, but his shoulder-to-hip ratio reminds Maura of Jane’s.

In the background, Brennan says something along the lines of you *absolutely* do, but it is Jane’s whisper that Maura hears more clearly. “You like ridin’ empiricists, too?” growls Jane, now too close to even pretend this is a professional interaction.

Well, Maura had tossed a tater, and Jane just walloped it over the fence. Maura taps an index finger against Jane’s sharp jawline, much like a pitcher who doesn’t watch the home run of the guy who just took him to the moon. “I like riding whoever can keep up with me,” she says, low and sweet in the way Jane has always liked.

Jane blushes, but keeps her stony gaze ahead. “Hmm,” the hum rumbles in her throat. “You sayin’ I can’t keep up with you anymore?”

“I think, even after everything that we’ve been through, you’re still the only one that can keep up with me,” Maura tells her.

“So you don’t like ridin’ empiricists,” Jane teases, “you shoulda just said that.”

“We’ll get back to Boston around lunch time, if all goes well. Meet me at home,” Maura orders. She doesn’t elaborate.

Judging by the way Jane widens her stance, crossing her wrists in front of her hips, Maura doesn’t need to elaborate. “I think Booth and I are gonna work right through lunch,” she says.

Maura looks down at those crossed wrists - if Jane meant it as a homing beacon, Maura won’t deny her. “I could, too, but then we’d have to meet in my office. Right next to the autopsy suite, where the esteemed Doctor Brennan will be working. Do you really want an audience?”

At that, Jane drops the facade. “Hell no,” she grumbles. “Beacon Hill, noon.”

Maura doesn’t reply, she simply turns toward the group of crime scene techs behind them. “Remains go to the Chief Medical Examiner’s office. Doctor Brennan will advise on how best to transport them. Split your team; I want them back in Boston as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Doctor Isles,” a few young people call out to her, just before she makes her way back to the cluster of vehicles parked along the narrow road to their left.

___

“Hey, hey, c’mere!” Jane has screeched her unmarked to a stop on the street right in front of Maura’s courtyard, and she is whispering harshly. Maura has just arrived a few seconds before her, and is walking briskly toward the front door.

Maura makes it just before she is turned around by the wrist and puts her forearms on Jane’s chest for balance. They brush against the leather straps of Jane’s holster and she bites her bottom lip. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m the one who invited you.”

Jane holds onto Maura’s waist with one arm, and uses her other hand to swipe the small of Maura’s back through her dress, like she always had before. It’s muscle memory, it’s habit. She looks toward the walkway that leads to the guest house around the corner. “Ma home?”

“I saw her at the cafe. So no,” Maura answers honestly. The pleasant slickness between her legs has morphed into an uncomfortable coating, hot and wet, and Jane’s automated affection is not helping.

She hasn’t had sex in two months and she tires of her hand.

“What’re we doin’, huh?” Jane asks, like she’s regretting the choice to come, and yet, she steps closer. Embraces Maura more completely. Knocks their foreheads together. “You made it pretty clear when the divorce went through that you don’t wanna be with me anymore.”

Jane’s two guns press against Maura when they wrap around each other, one at her breast, one in her side. She whimpers right into the kiss that she chooses to silence Jane. She has an entire repertoire of them, some soft and comforting, some merely for greeting, others to convey gratitude or trust.

This variety, however, is to impart an immeasurable amount of lust.

She moves her hands to slide up Jane’s starched white shirt at the biceps, squeezing and feeling as she makes her way to Jane’s shoulders, fingers pressing into brown leather just before they slip under it to knead the tense muscle there. All of that merely accompanies her lips, her tongue, all melding with Jane’s as they row together in a dance they haven’t danced in long weeks.

And Jane can hardly bear it. She drops her whole body against Maura’s, pushing her into the closed door, separating Maura’s legs with one of her own. Maura clutches at Jane’s hip, pushing her closer, starting a slow grind. Jane breaks their kiss, drops her lips down to Maura’s neck, and sucks just strongly enough to avoid marking her. Her right hand presses into Maura’s breast, pushing it up, rubbing against the lace just under Maura’s blouse while Maura breathes heavy breaths, panting upward when her head leans back into her door.

In the shade, the April air is just cool enough to require some bundling, but Maura is so warm under Jane that she wants all of her clothes off. “Let’s go inside. Now,” she orders. Jane steps back, fishing through Maura’s bag for her keys until she retrieves them. When Maura stares at her, Jane turns Maura around by the hips so that they are both facing the door, but Jane is unlocking it while pushing up against Maura’s backside.

“Had to give my key back, remember?” She says in Maura’s ear just before she licks the shell of it. “So now I gotta use yours.”

The door opens at her behest; Maura fixates on the vascularity in Jane’s hand reaching forward and twisting the knob. Swollen rivers of blood under smooth olive skin, and then, a flash of memory of her own tongue on them, tasting herself after Jane had pulled out of her. Naked, fingers in her mouth, body to body, silk sheets on her overheated flesh, on Jane.

Maura pushes through all the way, reaching back to slip her hand into the front of Jane’s pants, just far enough to tug her forward into the house. “Upstairs?” she asks, but Jane has picked her up, and put her on the dining room table.

“Can’t wait that long,” says Jane, kissing Maura again, pushing her blazer away and then fumbling with the zipper of her skirt.

“Good, me either,” Maura says. She undoes Jane’s belt, phone and badge still affixed to it, and then pops open the button on Jane’s slacks. That’s followed by the zipper, and then Jane’s pants droop until they pool around the halfway point of her thighs: just enough to expose the black boxer briefs tight on each leg. The waistband sits neat and snug around Jane’s very trim, very sexy midsection, and Maura cannot resist. She puts her hand under it while Jane is still trying very hard to do away with her skirt. “You’re as wet as I am,” Maura puffs into their union.

Jane catches it in her mouth and swallows it. Then she scoffs. Maura feels the hitch of Jane’s voice back in her own throat, the downturn of Jane’s lips against her own. “Who could tell? It’s like tryin’ to get to the holy grail, here,” she groans.

Maura laughs while she rubs against Jane’s sex, not slipping in yet, but wanting to. “Let me help you,” she says, and when she lifts her hips, Jane finally lets the skirt drop to the floor. Maura kicks her boots off, and moans when Jane weaves her fingers into the elastic of her thong. “I want to be naked,” she tells Jane. “I miss being naked.”

Jane nods seriously. “Should we go up to bed then?” she asks, looking down at her own clothes. “I got a lot to take off.”

Maura shakes her head. “No, I want you to keep all that on,” she says. Indeed, the image of Jane now, double holster on with her sleeves rolled up to the forearm, pants undone and sagging just under Jane’s starched shirt tails and underwear? Just as sexy as Jane with no clothes on and swimming with Maura under the covers.

Jane’s brow goes up, just as she tugs Maura’s panties down. She brings her long fingers back to touch Maura, and now they are both playing with each other. “The hardware, too, huh?” asks Jane, though her smirk says she knows the answer already.

“Y- oh. Yes,” Maura gets out of her blouse, out of her bra, when Jane slips inside her. Jane pulls her close with the other hand, imprinting on her side like a Florentine sculpture, holding her close while she stretches in the hedonistic pursuit of her own pleasure, head thrown back, eyes closed, hands cradling Jane’s head close to her chest while she arches her back.

Jane nods, and Maura remembers that they had been having a discussion. “You can take it,” she says, with a naughty grin that draws Maura forward. Her lips kiss mostly teeth, but Jane moves inside of her slowly and she wants to open herself up to more.

She lays down on the table, head just supported by its lip, the curve in her spine exaggerated when she gets exactly what she wants: more Jane, deeper Jane. “I can take it,” she purrs, looking up to find Jane’s gaze, to see Jane’s reaction to her suggestive retort.

Jane blinks her reply before adding another finger, before kissing up Maura’s ribs to her sternum, before rubbing the apex of Maura’s sex with an expert thumbpad and unraveling her into screams that echo throughout the brownstone.

They’ll have to think of ways to explain their long absence after Maura decides she is not done, and needs to see Jane naked after all. Needs to have Jane come apart in her arms. In her bed.

Divorce be damned.

#lauren writes crossover fanfiction #haven't done crossover since the rizzles/lost girl days of like 2013 #this one is so slow going because I have no feel for character voices #I suppose that means prepare for a lot of these little studies before the big thing arrives #in summary: jane and seeley talk to each other in NFL to avoid talking to each other in *feelings*#I'm still forcing my self not to write any chapter length anything for at least another ten days

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joeys-babe · 1 year ago

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Backstory

You and Joe defied all odds as high school sweethearts. It was the basic story; you were on the cheer team while he was the quarterback of the football team. Everyone around you said it wouldn’t last, and once Joe was committed to Ohio State you started questioning if your relationship would last as well.

Even with Joe in Columbus and you in Athens completing your senior year of high school, it was you two against the world. You FaceTime’d every chance you got and it seemed that long distance brought you two closer. When Joe transferred to LSU and was taking all online classes, it was a lot easier for you two to have time together.

It wasn’t long till Joe was back in Ohio with the Bengals, you seriously couldn’t be any more proud of him than you were when he was the #1 pick of the draft.

In 2022 when the team won the AFC Championship, Joe surprised you with a quick drive down to Athens where he would propose to you in the most romantic way possible. You both celebrated the engagement with your families around you.

That offseason started when the team lost the Super Bowl and though Joe was devastated, he couldn’t be too sad knowing that he was marrying his best friend that offseason.

Just right before the next season started you found out you were pregnant, and you and Joe were ecstatic. You’d soon find out that you were expecting twins.

These Imagines follow you and Joe through the NFL, parenthood, and living the best life possible.

Out Of My League flashbacks to high school, OSU, and LSU here!

(☆ = Trends or pranks on Joe!)

Imagines

Get It On* ☆

Kiss Me* ☆

Birthday Boy

Touchdown Celebrations

A Day In The Life

Let Your Love Flow*

Caught Up In You

Easter

Birthday*

You’re All I Need To Get By*

Mary Jane’s Last Dance

My Man* / Two Of Us*

Take It Easy

Crazy Love / I'm So Tired

Feel Like Makin’ Love*

Blurbs

Take My Breath Away

Water ☆

Say You Love Me ☆

Drive My Car ☆

Santa

Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’

Baby, It's Cold Outside ☆

Lights

Wonderful Christmastime

Strawberry Acai ☆

Can’t Help Falling in Love ☆

Isn’t She Lovely

Yogurt ☆ / Can't Take My Eyes off You

With A Little Help From My Friends ☆

Dinosaur ☆ kinda

Hickey ☆

Boyfriend ☆

Blank Space ☆

Psycho ☆

Angel Eyes ☆

Joy Of My Life ☆

I Love a Rainy Night

The Real MVP (Flashforward)

#joe burrow #bengals #joe burrow imagine #joe burrow x reader #joey b #cincinnati bengals #joe burrow fan fic #joe burrow smut #joe burrow universe #Spotify

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mydaddywiki · 9 months ago

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Andy Reid

Physique: Husky Build Height: 6′3″ (1.91 m)

Andrew Walter Reid (born March 19, 1958-) is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL. Reid was previously head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999 to 2012. From 2001 to 2012, he was also the Eagles' executive vice president of football operations. He is the only NFL coach to win 100 games and appear in four consecutive conference championships with two different franchises.

Since being hired as the head coach of the Chiefs in 2013, Reid helped revitalize the struggling franchise into one of the league's best with 10 postseason appearances, eight consecutive division titles, six consecutive AFC Championship Games, four Super Bowl appearances, and three Super Bowl titles.

He kinda reminds of a younger, bigger Wilford Brimley or an older Tim Hooper. Mmm… the things I would do to this man. I won’t go into any details other than they involve my dick. Or my ass. I'm flexible.

Reid is married with five children, three sons and two daughters. So my "loves to fuck" theory applies. Heavy, older and with a stach you could lose family members in, he certainly ranks as a Daddybear to behold. Reid has appeared in commercials for State Farm with Patrick Mahomes and for Snickers. But I'd prefer him doing underwear commercials where he's drawing a mustache on my face… with his penis.

#Andy Reid #mydaddywiki sports figures #football coach

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battleangel · 1 month ago

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Pigs Eyes & Crying Elephants: Sentient Beings Manifesto

A commercial with a crying elephant & the eyes of a pig.

I saw the elephant commercial for an animal welfare group last Tuesday during NXT.

That is what started all of this.

I was vegetarian for two years from 2013 to 2015 meaning I didn't eat any meat or seafood but I did eat eggs & consume dairy.

Then I started eating meat again in 2015.

Then about a year ago, I decided I would eat vegetarian during the week (Monday through Friday) and then eat meat & dairy on the weekends -- so my diet was 75% vegetarian for the past year.

But I was still eating all the chocolate, cheese & all of the dairy tingz.

Then I saw a commercial last week during NXT with a crying elephant. It really got to me.

I started during research on elephants & emotion. Turns out elephants pass the "mirror test" and are self-aware.

So are dolphins.

That led me down a rabbit hole where I started researching the emotional self-awareness of other animals and was surprised to find similar findings for pigs, chickens and cows.

And monkeys -- rhesus macaques are endlessly tortured for human medication. They are extremely self-aware and emotional.

I questioned myself on why my 75% vegetarianism diet shouldn't be 75% plant-based (vegan).

And I realized that I didn't want to give up exactly two things: cheese & chocolate.

And hell no, I didn't want the vegan alternatives.

But I started researching the dairy industry which then led me to researching CAFOs (commercial agricultural feeding operations) aka factory farms aka hell on earth aka infinity mirrors of animals being tortured endlessly.

10 billion land animals are slaughtered every year in the United States. Millions a day.

Is that really necessary?

Then I realized that the dairy industry was the plot to a dystopian sci-fi novel:

Women are forcibly impregnated, their babies taken from them immediately after being born — the baby boys are killed within 1 to 4 days, the girls are imprisoned to be forcibly impregnated just like their mothers.

The impregnation cycle is relentless and there are absolutely no breaks between artificial insemination - impregnation - birth repeat.

The woman are also given artificial growth hormones to force them to grow bigger & more quickly — the easier & quicker to impregnate them.

The women are kept in stalls that are so small & overcrowded they cant even move or turn around.

The women never see natural sunlight.

They are only allowed out of their stalls to give birth.

They are forced to endlessly lactate and pumped by machines so mercilessly that they bleed.

I still didn't feel that I could give up cheese 75% of the time.

Then I questioned myself on why not.

I have done very restrictive very low calorie diets in the past. I used to work out 2 hours a day, 6 days a week. I used to have a six pack.

I broke my 13 year addiction to the NFL & won't even be watching the Super Bowl once a year as of this year.

Why then is not eating cheese 75% of the time a seeming impossibility?

That was honestly how I felt.

So, I googled and found this:

Cheese contains casein. This is what causes such intense cravings. It also contains casein fragments called casomorphins, a casein-derived morphine-like compound. Dairy protein has opiate molecules built in. When consumed, these fragments attach to the same brain receptors that heroin and other narcotics attach to. Casomorphins cross the blood brain barrier and attach to dopamine receptors.

Cheese is literally 10% as addicting as morphine.

Yet they (do ask yourself who they is) have the motherfucking audacity to say it is "no more addictive than anything else that could be addictive, like Pringles or fast food."

First of all -- they are simply proving the point as those foods -- OPFs or overly processed foods & fast food -- also are highly addicting by deisgn, they are literally made to be. Study after study has confirmed that the most addictive foods are foods that are highly processed, high in fat, high in sodium and/or sugar.

Checks out, right?

What foods do you consider the most addicting?

Probably Oreos, potato chips, pizza, french fries, mozzarella sticks, fast food, donuts, cookies, brownies, pretzels, burgers like anyone else.

Right?

They are designed that way on purpose.

They create addicts on purpose for profit.

Cancer, diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, artherosclerosis, blood clots, immune system disorders, heart disease, stroke, heart attacks are all caused by diet & lifestyle.

It is a very lucrative business for them.

A million people are already on Wegovy babes?

It's a set up.

They make the food that makes people sick and they make the medicine that people buy after they buy the food that makes them sick. The above diseases did not exist at the current rate even 100 years ago. It's due to OPFs (overly processed food), PFAs (forever chemicals), toxins, sugar substitutes, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (transfat), high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, monosodium glutamate, dextrose, sucralose, lecithin, emulsifiers, aspartame, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), bioengineered ingredients, pesticides, artificial flavors & colors, preservatives, synthetic lab-made chemicals.

Capitalism is nothing but a death cult.

Wake up.

They are literally made that way on purpose & designed to be addictive.

But the way that casein is addictive is truly unique because it is binding itself to receptors in our brains the way that morphine & heroine does.

So, I decided I want to do something that is sustainable in the long-term 15 & 20+ years from now. I am 43.

I don't play an all or nothing zero sum game of zealotry where it's something that is impractical.

I look forward to the weekly meals with my husband.

We have been together for 17 years and have been married for over a decade.

I've looked at thousands of recipes over the years and have curated a Top 100 list of our absolute favorite receipes plus ones that I want us to try.

We always make a meal on the weekend & post the pictures on his Facebook.

While we eat our weekly meal, we talk, hang out, watch stuff on Youtube, baseball, basketball & wrestling.

It's one of the things we look forward to doing together as a couple the most.

He is the quintessential "meat & potatoes guy" but when I started eating vegetarian 75% of the time last year, he agreed to eat vegetarian 3 to 5 days a week.

He does eat meat & dairy the other days of the week.

I have decided that maintaining our weekly meals ritual as a couple is important to me.

So, for this to be sustainable it has to allow for our weekly meals to have meat and/or dairy -- and also, during the holidays, I want to be able to eat meat and/or dairy.

Other than that, Monday through Friday, my plan for the rest of my life is to eat a vegan (plant-based) diet 75% of the time -- no meat, seafood, dairy or animal-based or derived ingredients or by-products.

I immediately went through my apartment this morning once I had decided on this & was disappointed at how many of my snacks weren't vegan -- Annie's Organic granola bars, Nature's Bakery Bars & literally all of my remaining Halloween candy (Take 5, Reese's Cups, Crunch, & candy corn).

I gave it all to my husband in a bag this morning for him to take to work.

Since they are snacks that I ate on a daily basis, it is better to remove them from the apartment as my goal is to now eat vegan (plant-based) diet 75% of the time, Monday through Friday.

Staring at a bag of my absolute favorite non-vegan candy corn isn't exactly going to help me achieve that.

Vox When asked in an interview on the Climavores podcast why farms aren’t regulated to reduce pollution, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said there are simply too many farms to regulate, and that conservation efforts should be voluntary

According to Civil Eats, a nonprofit publication covering the US food system, nearly all animal agriculture operations are exempt from federal protections under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the agency doesn’t respond to 85 percent of worker fatalities on animal farms.

Most states exempt livestock from anti-cruelty laws, and many states have passed “ag-gag laws,” which criminalize activists and journalists for simply recording what goes on at farms.

All 50 states have so-called “right to farm” laws, which prevent citizens from suing farms for nuisances like pollution and odor that degrade their quality of life.

A recent analysis from Stanford University researchers found that from 2014 to 2020, the US livestock sector received about 800 times more public funding than the meat, egg, and dairy alternatives sector.

Farmers are heavily overrepresented in government, with 25 current members of the US House of Representatives, or their family members, having collected millions of dollars in agricultural subsidies. That’s almost 6 percent of the chamber, even though just about 1 percent of Americans live on farms. The dynamic is the same at the state level.

Corn and soybean production, most of which is dedicated to ethanol and livestock feed, accounts for half of all crop cash receipts.

Don't you think some of the children literally starving to death right now in North Gaza in Palestine could have used some of that corn & soybean? No? The livestock that we don't need to eat because we don't need meat to survive needed it more than the children literally dying from starvation right now in North Gaza?

Vox Raising livestock requires far more land and water than growing plant-based foods — and produces far more pollution.

Over the past decade, the animal-agriculture industry has been behind the introduction of "ag-gag" bills in more than half of all state legislatures across the country. These dangerous bills are designed to silence whistleblowers revealing animal abuses on industrial farms. Ag-gag laws currently exist in six states, penalizing whistleblowers who investigate the day-to-day activities of industrial farms, including the recording, possession or distribution of photos, video and/or audio at a farm.

The USDA never conducts surprise audits, or any audits at all, to verify the company is telling the truth. It is, in essence, an honor system. The USDA also has an incredibly low, and often nonsensical, bar for what passes as humane treatment.

Over the course of more than a dozen shifts at multiple Foster Farms facilities, the investigator �� who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations — documented workers slamming birds into crates, kicking and hitting chickens, and numerous instances of forklift drivers running over birds.

The investigator recalled making eye contact with a bird shortly after they were run over by a forklift. “They were being crushed and everything was being pushed forward, and they had their beak open, and they had this look on their face like they knew that they were dying,” the investigator told me. “And then I watched them flap and struggle for a moment before passing.”

The investigator chalked up most of the cruelty to the chaotic, fast-paced work environment imposed by supervisors during long, grueling shifts.

But you wouldn’t know that from its marketing or its “American Humane” certification.

Chickens raised for meat in America -- 98% of land animals that get slaughtered each year in factory farms -- are five times bigger today than they were in the 1950s! In 1957, chickens on farms raised for meat were 907 grams. In 1978, chickens on farms raised for meat were 1,808 grams. In 2005, they are 4,202 grams! WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????

Vox American Humane allows for the standard chicken slaughter process: shackling chickens upside down, dunking them in a bath of electrified water to stun them unconscious, slitting their throats, and then placing them in a scalding vat to loosen their feathers.

Despite all that, the resulting meat can still be advertised as humane, sustainable, and produced from healthy birds.

Currently, chickens and other poultry birds have zero federal legal protections while on the farm or in the slaughterhouse.

During their short stint on behalf of the Washington, DC-based animal rights group Animal Outlook, the investigator documented hours upon hours of the typical horrors found on chicken factory farms: tens of thousands of birds stuffed into dark warehouse-sized barns, many of them severely injured with gruesome lesions, injuries, and deformities. At more than one point, birds are deprived of feed or water, and there was also a rat infestation and footage of bugs crawling in the chickens’ feed.

The conditions are visibly at odds with Tyson’s advertising claims that it treats animals humanely and raises “happy” and “healthy” chickens.

“It’s just a living nightmare,” the investigator, who requested anonymity due to the covert nature of undercover investigations, told Vox. “A video just does not do it any justice.”

Despite the horrific findings, they’re not all that different from the conditions documented at other farms that raise chickens for Tyson and Tyson’s competitors. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says chicken producers using the label “free-range” must provide birds “continuous, free access to the outside” for over 51 percent of their 6.5-week lives.

Is 6.5 weeks a life?????????????????????

In another portion of Animal Outlook’s footage, when the investigator asked the farm manager why so many chickens couldn’t move, he was blunt:

“They’re just fucked up.”

According to a 2021 ProPublica investigation, humane-labeled chicken is often processed in the same slaughterhouses, owned by companies like Tyson, as conventional meat.

“You almost couldn’t design a more torturous setting,” she said, adding that the video shows dying and dead chickens in “advanced states of decomposition” with the potential to “spread infectious disease to the other birds, human workers, and unsuspecting Tyson customers.”

WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????????

Animal Outlook’s investigator also documented bugs crawling in the chickens’ feed, and rat infestations — problems echoed by the Tyson technician in the undercover video.

“The little baby chicks are gonna peck at those bugs, eat them, and then they’re gonna die,” Tyson’s technician told the farm manager in a conversation recorded by the investigator.

“You got rats in there, you got fresh rat activity in all your houses.” Despite these known issues, Animal Outlook alleges Tyson delivered fresh chicks to the farm.

As journalist Eyal Press, author of Dirty Work, a book on jobs in morally troubling industries like poultry, put it in a Vox podcast interview: “On the rare occasions when the curtain is pulled back and we see this dirty work going on, the blame goes to the lowest-ranking people at the bottom, and that’s very convenient for society.”

Ofcourse it is -- society still wants their Wendys Spicy Nuggs.

Vox However, holding meat companies legally accountable for how they treat animals is exceedingly difficult because there are no federal laws that protect animals while on the farm, and birds are exempt from federal slaughter and transport law.

Chickens raised for slaughter are bred in "high stocking densities", meaning they are unable to "move freely to flap their wings" or show "natural behaviors".

"They [Frankenchickens] have been bred to eat at an extraordinary rate so they put on this completely inappropriate weight gain just to get to market as quickly as possible."

If you are a starseed, understand our mission is to break up & dismantle Big Meat & Big Ag (& ofcourse Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc...): LPE Project

Today four massive companies – JBS, Tyson Foods, National Beef, and Cargill – control over 80 percent of America’s beef. Three companies – JBS, Tyson, and Smithfield Foods – control 63 percent of America’s pork. Two of those – JBS and Tyson – also control 38 percent of poultry. The grain, seed, farm equipment, agrochemical, livestock genetics, and animal pharmaceutical industries have likewise become highly consolidated.

These companies possess dominant market power as both sellers of meat and buyers of livestock, which they used to raise prices for consumers and lower prices paid to farmers.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Earl Butz – who at the time served on multiple agribusiness boards – to lead the USDA, opening a revolving door between the industry and the agency that has swung non-stop ever since.

Under Butz, subsidies for fossil-fuel-intensive monocultures led to a glut of cheap grain, which in turn led to factory farmed animals. “Since factory farms could buy grain for less than it cost farmers to grow it, they could now fatten animals more cheaply than farmers could,” wrote Michael Pollan.

In the last year, top companies in every major American meat sector – beef, pork, chicken, and turkey – have been subject to civil suits and/or federal investigations for conspiring to keep prices high. One lawsuit estimates that chicken industry price-fixing alone costs the average American family of four $330 per year.

The primary reason multinational meat conglomerates have flourished, and meat prices have remained artificially low, is that our government massively subsidizes them at everyone else’s expense.

Our government subsidizes Big Meat directly by allocating the bulk of federal crop subsidies to large farms growing animal feeds, by financing animal factory infrastructure, by buying billions of dollars of their products, and much more. In exchange for this support, taxpayers get hijacked federal agencies, policies shaped by pro-industry academic research, a less responsive democracy, and forceful industry lobbying to keep it that way.

It does this by failing to regulate the environmental impacts of factory farming, including the industry’s role in contaminating air, poisoning drinking water, and driving the climate crisis; by failing to require safe conditions for slaughterhouse workers; by denying most farmworkers the rights to form unions and earn minimum wage and overtime pay; by exempting “common farming practices,” no matter how cruel, from most state animal anti-cruelty statutes; and by failing to restrict the industry’s use of antibiotics (used to speed growth and keep overcrowded animals alive) despite the resulting increase in drug-resistant infections.

Farmer suicide rates are now 3.5 times that of the general population.

It is now commonplace for pigs (and their diseases) to be trucked hundreds of miles across the country without food, water, bedding, protection from extreme temperatures, or adequate space.

BedlamFarm.com One of these happenings was the discovery by scientists in New York in the 1950’sthat by adding tiny traces of antibiotics to animal feed they could increase the growth rates of animals.

With these new tools, farmers could concentrate animals in confined areas on a scale never before possible.

This was soon to be called “factory farming” by the few voices raised in alarm. The term has never been complimentary..

At the same time as the geneticists made their discoveries, Earl Butz, Dwight Eisenhower’s Agriculture Secretary, defined the new future.

It isn’t clear if Butz, a crude by visionary agriculture economist, saw the coming future or created it.

Farms, he said, and farmers had to consolidate, corporatized, embrace economies of scale, just what most family farmers would never do. The economists picked up this cry, and the family farmers never had a chance.

Butz was serious, perhaps prescient. He meant that in order to survive, farmers must pursue a new corporate model for farms – maximize profits, minimize loss.

Corporations jumped into farming big-time, buying giant tractors, hiring biologists and geneticists to redesign animals and turn them into unhealthy freaks with short live spans and no resistance to illness, parasites, or viruses, setting up distributions systems that could even sell milk and meat overseas.

On the corporate farms, when a cow gets sick, it is instantly put to death, veterinary care cut into profits, the cow just goes to slaughter.

The average live span of a milk cow, says the Agriculture Department, plunged from 12-15 years to two years by the 1990s. Cows on corporate farms never set foot outside, some never left their stalls, get no exercise, and are bored almost senseless.

Where is our humanity?????????????????

There is no stimulation in their lives, no change of scenery no hed for these herd animals, no walk, grazing, or hanging out with other cows, a cow’s favorite activity.

They live as long as they can produce more and more milk, and when they can’t, they die.

For animals, life became an Orwellian horror show, their very bodies, and spirits taken from them as they were genetically engineered to be profit centers, not animals with human caretakers and individual personalities and traits.

So have the chickens and pigs, many of whom live their lives without ever standing up in factory farms, mostly in the mid-central United States.

Most Americans will never see what is happening to these animals or even hear about them.

The people who increasingly have taken over the care of the animals we eat are sometimes the cruelest and most immoral people who have ever come within a hundred miles of a farm.

Comment to the above article: A quick google search reveals legislation proposed to add oversight to use of antibiotics in animals in 2018, 2017, 2013, 2002- all fought by Big Pharma. Often with the same ferocity and tactics used by Big Oil to fight against regulations to slow climate change.

ForksOverKnives: The USDA is tasked with setting the nation's nutrition guidelines. Yet this is in direct conflict with its primary interest: ensuring the profitability of producers of foods such as dairy and meat. These foods are known to increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Is it any wonder that programs administered by the USDA and funded by the Farm Bill preferentially feed school children and the poor unhealthy foods that cause chronic disease?

The farming practices that underpin our healthcare crisis also degrade our environment. To grow vast swaths of these monoculture crops, enormous amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are required. Many of these agricultural chemicals are suspected endocrine disruptors and carcinogens that are thought to alter human DNA down through the generations.

During my lifetime alone, annual worldwide pesticide production has increased from 200,000 tons to more than 5 million tons, according to estimates from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It has gotten to the point that many of these chemicals now rain down upon us. These pesticides wipe out beneficial and native wildlife such as honey bees, monarch butterflies, and songbirds.

A Happy Meal? If, by eliminating Farm Bill subsidies, the cost of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese were to rise from, say $4 to $15, eating habits would likely shift toward eating healthier foods, especially if at the same time, a program were put in effect to incentivize the consumption of whole plant foods. In fact, a large nationwide program in South Africa has already demonstrated that the public will consume more fruits and vegetables when these healthy foods are subsidized.

Making Us Sick Makes Them Money The 17 percent of GDP (about $3.2 trillion) the nation now spends on health care will rise to 20 percent of GDP by 2025, according to The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CDC estimates that 86 percent of this money is not actually spent on making people healthy; it is spent on treating and sustaining chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and dementia. The medical evidence shows that most of this chronic disease is the result of the food we eat and can be prevented and even reversed by eating a plant-based diet.

Fish have it worse in one way -- they have ZERO legal protections.

AnimalEquality Commercial fishing is cruelty to animals on a colossal scale, killing nearly a trillion animals worldwide every year. Ships the size of football fields use techniques such as longlining and gill nets.

Gill nets, which range from 300 feet to seven miles in length, create large walls of nets that fish are unable to see. They inadvertently swim into them and many will suffocate or bleed to death.

In the United States, fish are not covered by the Humane Slaughter Act. This results in a wide variety of cruel slaughter methods dependent on industry, company, and species.

Fish are usually removed from the water and left to suffocate and die. They desperately attempt to escape as their gills collapse preventing them from being able to breathe. Larger animals, such as tuna and swordfish, are usually clubbed to death. This often leads to an animal being injured but regaining consciousness and the process having to be repeated several times.

There are 1.3 billion farm raised fish in the United States.

Vox It’s unsurprising that fish have been ignored. They live underwater, so we rarely interact with them. They can’t vocalize or make facial expressions, so it’s much harder to understand them than mammals and birds. And research has shown that the further animals are from us on the evolutionary chain, the less likely we are to try to protect them.

In commercial ocean fishing, the welfare concerns are mostly relegated to the final minutes or hours of a fish’s life — they’re typically left to suffocate to death on deck, which can take under an hour or up to several hours.

Other welfare issues include rough handling and the inability to express natural behaviors, like migration and nesting.

One of the bigger findings of the past two decades has been that fish have nociceptors, sensory neurons that detect and respond to damaging or threatening stimuli — a strong indicator they experience pain.

But just like with other species, researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that fish behave differently in adverse conditions (for example, they limit eating and activity) and stop these behaviors when pain relief is given.

They don't WANT to believe fish feel pain because it will lower their profits -- read the above again & honestly tell me that those fish don't sound like they were in pain & then relieved from pain -- so should they be left alone on ship decks to suffocate to death for HOURS???????????

Wild-captured fish experience agonizing final moments no animal should have to endure, as pressure weighs on their bodies when they’re quickly pulled up out of the ocean’s depths in nets, and they begin to suffocate.

Death, too, is cruel on fish farms, where many fish are killed slowly by suffocation or in ice water.

Existing in these cramped environments is a far cry from the lives fish would experience in their natural habitats. For one example, salmon may swim spans of hundreds of miles to reach the ocean from the streams in which they hatched, and much farther as they reach feeding grounds, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Sometimes, salmon will spend years at sea before returning to their original stream to spawn.

Extraction of groundwater for aquaculture has been found in one study to accelerate sea level rise by causing land to sink.

Pigs on factory farms are often cannibalized, forced to eat meat from fellow pigs.

WHERE IS OUR HUMANITY???????????

Where is humanity?

They are sentient beings: capable of feeling pain, and experiencing a range of emotions. Scientific evidence has revealed that fish are far more intelligent than people assume. They have long-term memories, complex social structures, problem solving abilities, and some have been seen using tools.

Fish are even crushed to death & literally cut in half while alive!

Where is humanity?

Porkopolis It is near impossible in the industry to encounter a conceptual or ethical limit proposed for sows biological reproductive capacity.

AnimalsAustralia Farrowing crates are cold, hard metal cages with steel or concrete floors. In factory farms around the world, it’s standard practice to transfer mother pigs to a farrowing crate 7-14 days before she gives birth to her new piglets. After birthing (in a process known as ‘farrowing’), she remains confined in these metal ‘maternity’ crates for 3-4 weeks until her piglets are weaned.

Farrowing crates are so small a mother pig can barely move – she can only sit, stand or lay down slowly, and with difficulty. Pigs are naturally very clean animals, and when given the choice, never toilet where they eat, sleep or play. Instead, they will often travel far away to relieve themselves. But trapped in a farrowing crate, she can only take one step forward or back and is forced to urinate and defecate right where she stands. For mother pigs, this unhygienic behaviour causes her extreme stress, discomfort and heightens her risk of disease.

Despite having the intelligence of a 3-year old child, who can solve puzzles and even play video games, have amazing memories, can sense the passing of time, foster lifelong friendships with other pigs and expresses empathy for humans and pigs alike, these loving animals continue to be industrialised and treated like 'products', rather than individuals who feel - and express - an enormous range of emotions. She is someone, not something.

Eggs are Not Eggscellent Cages are extremely cruel, and sadly they are just one of many cruelties chickens are forced to endure in the egg industry. In all commercial egg systems – cage, barn-raised, free-range or organic – male chicks are considered ‘worthless’ and are killed on their first day of life.

Female chicks are raised to replace hens who are sent to slaughter at just 18-30 months old — a fraction of their natural lifespan. As newborns, the tips of their beaks can be cut off without pain reliefto reduce aggressive pecking fueled by frustration when they cannot move freely, forage, or establish a natural social structure.

Because the males bred into the industry won’t grow up to produce eggs they are ‘disposed of’ by gassing or maceration -- literally being shredded to death while alive.

And later that year, at Sparboe Farms in Iowa, undercover investigators documented hens with gaping, untreated wounds laying eggs in cramped conditions among decaying corpses.

Leo Tolstoy - 1891 Essay A village pig is dragged outside for slaughter. The animals “human-looking pink body” screamed in a “dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man”.

After the screams subsided and the animal was killed, even the gruff carriage driver accompanying Tolstoy lets out a heavy sigh.

“Do people really not have to answer for such things?”

Almost 200 years later, do they answer for such things?

My question to anyone reading this (unless you are already a strict vegan) is:

What can you do to reduce the overall suffering & harm done to sentient beings (all animals including fish & cetaceans) that is realistic & repeatable over the long term?

Me, personally I do not see the point in being some total zealot that never eats anyhing with bone char again if it isn't sustainable over the long term.

Vegans call it doing what is "practical & possible".

I believe it is also very important that it be sustainable over the long term or else what was the point?

Now, I will end this by asking you the same question I asked myself:

What can you do to reduce the suffering & harm to sentient beings (all animals including fish & cetaceans) that fits the following two criteria:

Realistic

Repeatable over the long term

I also want to say this if you are a starseed reading this -- we need to work with everyone.

This isn't some kind of ideological purity test or a flex as I see a lot of that within the movement for animal rights & activism. This is about sentient, self-aware beings that are emotional, social & cognitively functional getting the living shit tortured out of them.

This is about the fact that 90% of the world's population as of today eats meat.

This is about 10 billion farm animals being slaughtered in the US every year for food.

This is about 99% of farm animals in the US being killed in factory farms.

This is about 90% of the 10 billion farm animals being slaughtered in the US being chickens.

This is about fedral subsidies that make a cheeseburger $4 when it should really be at least $15.

This is about big meat & big ag spending tens of millions every year to bankroll politicians for favorable policies.

This is about landmark legislation from the EPA & Congress not applying to the agricultural industry that causes the majority of land, air & water pollution & waste.

This is about the fact that there is no Big Broccoli to counter the meat & agricultural cartels.

This is about Trump winning.

It's not about fighting over bone char, cholecalciferol & cross contamination.

It's not about a competition on who can utilize the least animal byproducts (like the paint on the walls in your home & the tires in your car).

It's not a who's the best vegan dick measuring contest.

We need to work with everyone given what we are about against.

The 10 billion number has not dropped. And actually, people are consuming more meat.

Although there have been legislative wins and imitation meat like Impossible & Beyond Meat are promising.

They have the lobbying machine, political apparatus, laws, subsidies & constant commercials & ads on their side. When's the last time you saw a commercial for vegetables?

Now, when's the last time you saw a commercial for Sonics, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Pringles, Lays, Reeses Cup, Snickers, Twix, Applebees, Chilis, McDonalds.

We need to work with omnis, flexitarians, pescatarians, people that don't eat pork, people that don't eat chicken, people that don't eat beef, people that don't consume dairy.

That's not watering down or diluting a message.

It's decentering zealotry so we can actually get somewhere in our fight for animals to be recognized as sentient beings with their own inalienable rights.

That is maybe 100 to 250+ years off.

We won't get anywhere if we stay on reddit debating about whether brown sugar is okay if it is processed with bone char.

Keep that in mind. The animals are counting on us. ✨✨✨