#Spring Cleaning Adelaide | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pocket-lad · 8 months ago

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CH 9- Nick Van Owen

“Oh,” Ian said. “That’s fine.” He thought about how deep and how fast the stream must look from Adelaide’s perspective, especially if she couldn’t swim.

“So, we can just go… I guess,” Adelaide said.

Ian didn’t move from his seat. “Have you ever tried?”

Adelaide looked up at him, confused and a little annoyed. “In what circumstance do you think I’d have the chance to swim? I haven’t found the lake in your walls yet.”

“Ha, point…point taken,” Ian admitted. Sitting next to her like this, Adelaide couldn’t even pretend they were on the same wavelength. They sat the exact same way, side-by-side, but he rose up taller than any building. She forced herself not to back away.

“You want to learn?” Ian asked.

“Not really.”

Ian laughed. “I can just hold you, then.”

Adelaide looked up, searching for his eyes, but they were simply too high. Ian didn’t realize how absurd that suggestion actually was, but it was either that or stay filthy.

“Okay,” she said quietly. Adelaide slowly peeled her jacket off her body, removed her bag from her shoulders, and took her knife off her belt, setting them all in a small pile away from the edge of the stream and stalling for as long as possible.

Ian lowered his hand for her to hop on. She did without hesitation, but that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part happened when his hand lowered toward the surface of the stream.

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait,” Adelaide yelled. She could hear the rushing water and felt cold flecks of it spring up onto her skin.

Ian paused, awaiting further instructions. When none came, he said matter-of-factly, “I won’t let you drown.”

“Yeah, but what if a fish tries to eat me?” Adelaide laughed, but behind the joke there was truth. She took a few deep breaths. “...I trust you….On the count of three?”

This was stupid. This was so stupid. She could live with mud. But before she could second guess herself, Ian was counting.

“One…two-” The cold water splashed against her body, forcing her backward against Ian’s hand. The shock was the worst of it, going from mildly warm air to freezing water. The movement of the water was off-putting as well. She knew if Ian wasn’t there, she’d get swept away in the current, never to be seen again.

Adelaide sputtered and splashed, trying to gain her bearings. When she finally stood up, she realized the water was really only up to her waist. She could do this.

She scrubbed at her face and arms as fast and as best she could, washing away the ground in dirt until she couldn’t see it or feel it anymore. She also tried her best to ignore Ian hovering over her. Knowing they were on a time crunch, she called it when she felt mildly clean.

Ian lifted her out of the water and set her shivering form on the ground next to her stuff.

“I distinctly recall saying on the count of THREE!”

“It wasn’t so bad!”

“It was actually weird and horrible and freezing, thanks. But also… thanks.”

“Of course. Probably one of - one of the weirder things I’ve…done,” he said.

“Alright, don’t look!” Adelaide said as she opened her bag to pull out her spare clothes.

“Okay,” Ian laughed, turning away.

Adelaide did feel a little nervous with Ian’s back turned, but knew she was being completely irrational, so she hurried up and changed into her new clothes. She was still pretty wet and her hair dripped down her back, but the dry clothes helped immensely. She couldn’t say she felt completely clean, but she felt a lot better. “Okay,” she said, calling Ian’s attention.

“Excellent,” he said. Before he hopped to his feet, he cupped some water in his palms and splashed his face. Water sprayed everywhere.

“Watch it!” Adelaide yelled.

“Ah…whoops,” Ian said, but he was obviously amused. He wiped his hands off on his clothes and held one out. When she stepped on, he cupped his hands around her and blew hot breath onto her body, hoping that would suffice as an apology.

Adelaide recoiled. "Ew, stop! Gross!" she exclaimed. Ian's breath smelled like a dying animal and the invasion of her personal space was too much. No matter how much she trusted him, she couldn't stand to be anywhere near a giant's open mouth. Even if the warm air felt kind of nice.

"Suit yourself," Ian shrugged. As he stood up, he set her on his shoulder and they heard Roland call off the break. Just in time. “We are gonna teach you to swim when we get back home, though.”

“We’ll see,” Adelaide muttered. She never had any reason to learn and shouldn’t ever have any reason to learn, but here they were.

They rejoined the group, and instantly Kelly asked to be carried. She looked exhausted, and Adelaide couldn’t blame the poor girl. Not only was Kelly facing threats no adult should face and was probably scared out of her mind, but the humidity and uneven terrain made for a very difficult walk. How was a child supposed to prepare for or deal with any of this?

“I can’t, sweetheart, I’ve got Adelaide,” Ian said.

Oh.

Adelaide felt very guilty all of the sudden. She knew Ian was struggling with their relationship and she didn’t want to be another wedge splitting them further apart. Also, she didn’t want Kelly to resent her (for multiple reasons). Also also, she certainly didn’t want to be a burden to Ian.

Without thinking much about it, Adelaide offered to ride with someone else. “No, it’s fine. I’ll, um, I’ll go with…um…” She was hoping Sarah was nearby. If she could trust anyone else here, it would be her. But with Sarah nowhere to be seen, she went with the only other option in the vicinity. “...Nick!”

Upon hearing his name, Nick turned in their direction, oblivious to the conversation.

“Della, she’ll survive. She has two completely functional feet. She can walk,” Ian said, but the sentence was pointed at Kelly.

“Seriously, I’ll be fine,” Adelaide said in a voice that did not sound fine. In fact, it sounded scared. “Nick, is it okay if I stay with you for a little bit?”

Nick looked dumbfounded. “Um…sure.” He hesitated then reached for Adelaide on Ian’s shoulder.

Adelaide yelped and Ian stepped backward with his hands up. Nick stood there, confused as to what exactly was happening.

“Okay,” Adelaide breathed, shaking. “So, uh, first of all. No grabbing. That’s - that’s not, uh…” She couldn’t finish the sentence, too frazzled. In the blink of an eye, Nick's hand could've yanked her off her perch and carried her off to God knew where. It was a stark reminder to always keep her guard up around Beans. Even 'friendly' ones. It also didn't help that she was still shivering from her time in the stream, unable to retain enough body heat while she was still wet.

“Here,” Ian said, and he held his hand out for Adelaide.

Adelaide began to regret this decision, especially after Nick reached for her. She obviously couldn’t back down, but she proceeded with much more caution, intently watching each of his fingers for any sign of movement. Not that she'd have much time to react. Clearly.

“I don’t bite,” Nick joked.

Adelaide knew he was joking since Eddie made that exact same joke earlier, but he didn’t know how real of a concern it was for her. She forced a nervous laugh. Why did Beans find that so funny?

Slowly, she shuffled onto Nick’s hand. Adelaide reminded herself she’d already been there before, back in the collapsing trailer, so she should be completely fine. Granted, he was holding her captive in a massive fist at the time, but he definitely didn’t hurt her.

“Do not go far,” Ian warned Nick with a pointed finger, then turned to pick up Kelly.

“I’ll. Be. Fine , Ian. I can already see you stressing out,” Adelaide assured him. She paused, then added, “Go talk to her.”

Ian gave her an imperceptible nod, grateful for the chance to talk (semi) privately with his daughter. But before he walked a couple paces ahead, he also made sure to give Adelaide a look that said, behave.

Adelaide rolled her eyes from down in Nick’s hand as she watched him walk away. The sudden realization that she was completely alone with Nick hit her like a truck, and nerves began to worm their way through her spine again. Realistically, Ian was well within earshot, but a million things could go wrong at any moment, and her mind conjured up all of them at once.

Adelaide looked straight up at the underside of Nick’s chin. She gulped, but was able to choke out a repeat of Ian’s request. “Please don’t go far.”

Nick knowingly smirked. “You got it.”

Trying to counteract her pathetic admission of nerves, Adelaide pushed off of Nick’s hand and immediately got to climbing up his olive green T-shirt.

Nick froze in his tracks, eyes wide and tracking her progress, arms hovering uselessly in mid-air.

Once Adelaide reached his shoulder, she gave a little smirk of her own. Giants freaked out when she did that, and though she wasn’t sure why, it made her feel powerful and mischievous. Good. Let them freeze.

Nick shook his head to clear the feeling of tiny people crawling up his body (causing Adelaide to give a quick, annoyed shout.) He expected Adelaide to say something, considering she asked to ride with him. When she didn’t, he was content to walk in amicable silence.

It was true that Adelaide had nothing to say; she didn’t even know where to start, so she just kept her mouth shut. Another reason was that she was focused on working out Nick’s walking pattern. It was still casual, but not as casual as Ian’s. They were similar heights, too, but the gate was just off enough to require concentration.

Eventually, Adelaide got the hang of it (mostly), and that also happened to be the moment Nick reached his maximum threshold of boredom.

“So…how’d you end up here?” he offhandedly asked.

Adelaide jumped, used to the pleasant silence. His voice was much louder than Ian’s. “Like here here, or…?” she clarified.

“Well, looks like we’ve got a lot of time, so,” He gestured vaguely to the space around him, giving Adelaide the floor. She assumed this meant he wanted the full story, which put her fight or flight instincts on high alert. Her first instinct was to tell him off, to let him know it was none of his business, but she had to remind herself that he was just curious. He was just trying to fill the time. So, Adelaide took a deep breath and tried to tell the most bare bones story possible.

“Uhh…I mean, I guess I lived in another state when I was little. Then I got kidnapped and shipped to Texas. I found Ian’s house, I lived there on my own for eight years, then Ian kidnapped me, but then we became friends, I guess, then he dragged me to Jurassic Park the First, and then he tried to get me to stay home from Jurassic Park the Second, but I said if he goes, I go, so. That’s how I got here. You?”

“Woah, woah,” Nick said, gesturing for her to slow down. “You can’t just drop something like that, like it’s nothing, then ask about my boring-ass life.”

“I’d hardly call it boring,” Adelaide interjected, thinking about all the cool shit she’d seen from him so far, and something told her that was just the surface. Whether Nick heard her or not, he kept talking.

“You were kidnapped?” The tone of the question was much more casual than Adelaide expected, as if he were asking how her day was.

Still, Adelaide’s defenses rose. She didn’t know his intentions with this information. “Twice. Why?” Her demeanor grew spikier by the second.

“Just making conversation, s’all,” he shrugged, sending Adelaide into his neck. She pushed off it, body rigid and alert. Then his words sank in. She relaxed a little. She was being ridiculous.

“No, right, sorry, um… just a little protective of information regarding my… kind, y’know?” she admitted.

“Understandable. I wouldn’t tell us either. Especially if-” he indicated the kidnapping.

“Yeah, um, the guy knew about us or specialized in us or whatever. He took us to sell as pets.” Adelaide made sure to emphasize the pause after that part, hopefully making Nick realize why his ‘pet’ comment offended her so much. She couldn’t bear to mention the part about her parents, so she didn’t. “I escaped somewhere en route and went to the nearest human house I could find. Blah, blah, blah, eight years. One day I get stupid or lazy or whatever and drop my guard, so Ian finds me and holds me hostage till I tell him information about myself.”

“And you still trust that guy?” Nick blurted.

Adelaide gazed up ahead at Ian, who was laughing with Kelly, while she thought about her answer. “Yeah, I mean, he let me go. And also he’s done a lot of things to build up that trust over time. Wouldn’t you do the same, if Ian weren’t here with me? If you found me on your own? Beans don’t react logically to people like me.”

“Hmm,” Nick hummed. “You know, if you allied yourself with the right people, we could take down guys like him and whatever organizations they’re working for.”

“And reveal our existence to the whole world? No thanks.” Ever since meeting Ian, Adelaide considered options like that, but at the end of the day, the risks far outweighed the benefits. And if, by some miracle, borrowers were able to rally public support, that still didn’t stop the government from doing what they wanted to do.

The silence dragged out for a while until Adelaide remembered to be polite. “And what about you? How’d you get here?” she asked.

“Money,” Nick said, but then elaborated. He talked about his background in photography and documentary filmmaking, how he traveled to the craziest places for odd jobs. It really did all come down to money in the end, but there were added benefits - women, awards, saving the Earth. He explained his affiliation with Greenpeace, which was some kind of organization working toward a ‘greener Earth’.

Adelaide listened in awe. She knew her scope of the world was much smaller than humans, but it never ceased to amaze her just how vast it really was. This was a completely different reality than she, and even Ian, experienced.

Their conversation was interrupted by Roland calling for another break. That seemed odd, considering they took one not too long ago, but nobody was complaining.

Nick plopped down on a log and Adelaide clung on for dear life. She started to ask a question, but Nick shushed her. She was going to protest until she realized they were eavesdropping.

“Come with me,” Roland said to some guy. “And you. If he’s alive, we’ll find him. The rest of you keep right on. Ten minutes, you’ll reach the ridge. Wait for us there.”

“Ten minutes, you’ll reach the ridge. Wait for us there,” Adelaide repeated in a bad imitation of Roland’s accent. She and Nick laughed, unable to help themselves. “Why is this guy in charge?”

“He is in charge because he’s an expert in his field - tracking, navigating, and hunting large predators,” Roland said, turning to face them. The smiles dropped from their faces as he approached, gun resting on his shoulder. “If you would like to lead the rest of this expedition, Miss Adelaide, then be my guest.” He stared down at her, waiting for an answer. Adelaide shot to her feet, eyeing the gun. It was maybe three feet long and looked heavy, and despite the fact that the most dangerous thing in her immediate vicinity was a Bean, the gun scared her infinitely more. They were deafeningly loud, and Adelaide knew that if she were to get shot with one, there wouldn’t be a trace of her left.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size,” Nick said, trying to keep antagonization to a minimum but having trouble.

“I have. Many times. And then it got boring.”

Nick changed the subject. “Who’re you looking for, anyway?”

“Dieter Stark. Disappeared maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“Good,” Adelaide blurted, drawing all eyes to her. (Or at least, Nick tried to look at her, but she was too close to his neck for him to see properly.) She shifted uncomfortably but held her ground.

“I know you may have had your differences, but no man deserves to die here-”

“Yeah, like Eddie,” Adelaide goaded. She didn’t know why she kept bringing the man up. It wasn’t like she was close to him, but the fact that he saved their lives without a second thought deserved respect. But in the end, it wasn’t about him. It was about making a point, making the InGen team feel bad. Adelaide felt a little guilty using his name for her prideful cause.

“-He is one of my men. He will not be left behind,” Roland finished without blinking.

“Easy for you to say. He didn’t dangle you by your leg.” Adelaide could feel herself digging a deeper and deeper hole. Her brain begged her to stop, but her mouth didn’t seem to care.

Roland crouched down quickly, putting himself closer to eye level. Adelaide jumped, then shifted closer to Nick’s neck, which at least provided the appearance of protection. Roland noticed this but chose not to say anything.

“Get out of my space,” Nick said, and Adelaide could feel him tense up.

Roland ignored him. “You’d be happy to know, Miss Adelaide, that Deiter’s most likely dead. I will give him the courtesy of searching, but I highly suspect he’s gotten himself into more trouble than he could handle.”

With that, Roland stood up and took off. Adelaide let out a deep, long, sigh and wiped the sweat from her forehead. That man was intense.

“You like picking fights or something?” Nick asked.

“Do you?” Adelaide shot back.

“As a matter of fact, I do. You just gotta be able to finish what you start.” Nick stood up, leaving Adelaide with those thoughts. He called out to everyone to keep going, and the group obliged.

What made Adelaide the angriest was that Nick was right. She couldn’t act nervous and scared if she was going to antagonize Beans, and she couldn’t antagonize Beans if she was going to act nervous and scared. It was just so hard to keep her mouth shut sometimes. And on the other hand, Beans had no right to use their height advantage to purposely intimidate her just because she felt like there was something worth standing up for. At least, that’s how she justified it.

Movement caught Adelaide’s eye, and she saw Ian struggle to stand up. His leg must really be killing him, but she knew he would never admit it. She should probably go free him from carrying Kelly.

“Can you take me back to Ian?” she asked.

Nick also saw this and understood. “Yeah, sure thing.”

Ian was just about to lift Kelly up when he saw Nick approach. His heart pounded and his head immediately jumped to everything that could be wrong. When he saw Adelaide sitting calmly on Nick’s shoulders though, he relaxed.

“She’s sick of me already,” Nick said with a smile on his face, and before he could grab Adelaide, Ian’s hands were already there. Nick flinched, mildly uncomfortable with the invasion of his personal space, but Adelaide quickly hopped on Ian’s hands as he pulled them out of the picture.

He put her on his shoulder and nodded a ‘thank you’ at Nick, who returned the nod.

“You know I have to ask. Is everything-” Ian began.

“Yes, everything is okay. He didn’t hurt me, he didn’t call me any names. We had a lovely conversation,” Adelaide rattled off.

“Good.”

They walked silently for a moment as the sun slowly set.

“How’s your leg?” Adelaide asked. She figured she’d given it enough time so that her request to go back to Ian and her worry over his leg wouldn’t be connected. She was wrong. Ian saw right through her.

“Is that why you came back? Because you saw me, um…?”

“No!” Adelaide said a little too quickly. “No, um, Nick is um… I actually hate him now. He hurt me and called me names and we had a terrible conversation.”

“Mhm,” Ian said.

Adelaide changed the subject, but it still wasn’t a comfortable one. “How did it go? With Kelly, I mean?”

At this point, Kelly had already run off to talk to Sarah, so they didn’t have to worry about her hearing the conversation.

“It, uh…it went good. We had a talk, and it was - it was good.”

“Riveting,” Adelaide said sarcastically. Ian just laughed.

They walked on, and Adelaide told Ian about Nick and his adventures and how cool she thought he was. Ian listened patiently, but he knew people like Nick. He kept his opinions to himself, whether good or bad, not wanting to taint Adelaide’s opinions on the world.

It didn’t skip their attention that Roland and his men returned sans Dieter Stark, and after a little more walking, they decided to call it for the night and make camp.

Right. Camp. Sleeping. Sleeping in front of Beans. Falling into a state of unconsciousness with hostile Beans everywhere. It was in that moment that Adelaide decided she wasn’t going to sleep that night.

#jurassic park #ian malcolm #g/t #giant/tiny #jurassic park g/t #gt #size difference #nick van owen

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charlesandmartine · 6 days ago

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Thursday 7th November 2024

Up in time to see the sunrise at approximately 06.10 this morning. The time doesn't seem to vary much, if at all! Packed up and said goodbye to the little cabin overlooking the fields and the cows. Dog came to say goodbye. Our host was not around, but we guessed where she might be, and rightly as it turned out. She was working at the popup Café at the Hot Springs, so we called in to make our farewells.

Then, to Woolworths for a big shop; we don't know where the next town with a decent sized supermarket might be. Sadly there was a cathartic moment as we realised that the bottle shop would not be open until 2pm!!!

We set off without the SB required for the trip.

The wonderful thing about Australia is that when you set out, you really often have no idea what you are going to see or do. Our stop for the night was to be in Daly Waters, a drive of 276kms south down the Stuart Highway sharing with the huge road trains that rumble between Adelaide and Darwin. There are just two stops on route: Mataranka and Larrimah; if you are not concentrating, you will miss them. Now, as we approached Mataranka, a great example of unplanned gems was tantalisingly on offer to the left; Bitter Springs in the Elsey National Park. Seven k down the road was an empty car park for the Springs. Just a short circular walk took us around these beautiful Thermal pools, 34 degrees the year round, deep and such clear azure blue waters that fish and turtles had no hiding place. The pools, bitter because of the sulphur content, were set within a tropical woodland of Palms and shrubs. It was a little touch of unexpected paradise that exemplifies exactly the point that Australia suddenly throws these opportunities out at you if you are prepared to take the invitation. We sat listening to the flow of the pool and ate our lunch. Rumour had it that if there was nothing else in Mataranka, there was a bottle shop within a rather scruffy but highly functional supermarket. Sure enough, there it was on the high street, and within the supermarket was a caged off area holding said liquids, guarded by a state policeman, there to check IDs before purchase. Remarkably, with such a small selection of SB, we were able to choose a couple of brands we are familiar with and so happy days. Larrimah, we almost missed. Then, another of those little bits of interest that would have been easy to miss. A simple wayside monument marks the spot where one Alexander Forrest, grade 1 explorer of his time, made it from Western Australia finding an impossible cross country/ mountainous route in 1879 for a telegraph cable to join with the north/ south telegraph running along the Stuart Highway route. An immense task for him, 4 others plus 2 aboriginal assistants to accomplish. So, the unassuming monument, a facsimile of an original telegraph pole, marking this amazing achievement that almost cost their lives. is almost certainly missed by many whizzing by at 130km/hr.

Now, our stop for the night would not draw the attention of any seasoned TV travel program. It is a truckstop truth be told, attracting road train personnel and tradies mainly. This place does not feature on a tourist's itinerary. It has that raw honesty about the place, basic, perhaps clean, functional, and it is what it is. We had a welcome beer on arrival, and Martine took a dip in the pool. Yes, it has a pool! Sexist, men only attitude, possibly, rough and ready definitely, but it has a bit of a charm and a place in the real Australia category. As we waited for the beer taps to be sorted, we spoke to a red-neck Australian sitting with his wife on bar stools. Because I'm interested in the itinerant nature of many of the people we meet, I just asked him what brought him to such a remote spot in NT. He looked puzzled for a moment and replied, mum and dad I suppose.

We had a burger meal in, and I hesitate to label it such, their restaurant, and it was great. I had what was described as 'The lot' which pretty much sums it up! These Australians can certainly eat, and they really appreciate meat!

ps. Apologies for yet more mention and photos of thermal pools. It's what is around in these parts.

pps. Loads of frogs outside of our plush trucker stop room! Clearly this sort of thing must appeal to truckers?

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celestialsister0918 · 10 months ago

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Someone's Dirty Bathwater, Chapter 3

Chapter Rated EXPLICIT, 18+

Jackson Lamb x OC

Catchup if needed here. Prefer to read on AO3? Link to latest chapter.

This chapter is LONG, folks. As in 10k+ words. So buckle up! It's also quite explicit. And, as indicated in tags, it's a love story. So prepare for a dose of (Jackson Lamb-style) fluff with your smut. Making this man crass and romantic at the same time is an absolute blast.

The Gristle is a very atmospheric, almost seedy looking pub with a great selection of beers. The staff are all surly; the regulars are all miserable. It's Lamb's kinda place— a place he feels comfortable. As he walks in, he catches a glimpse of himself in a dirty wall mirror. He hasn't washed himself at all and smells as grim as ever. But he doesn't care. He knows he's got this girl in the bag.

Adelaide walks in wearing a delicate white dress with tiny floral accents. It’s very thin and almost gauzy. Sandals adorn her feet since it’s nearly summer. She wears youthful makeup— lilac on her eyes and pink glossy lips. Her soft curls are pinned back rather messily and loosely on top of her head. She smells like her perfume— a mix of cranberry lemon tea, spring flowers, and patchouli. She’s about the most breathtaking thing to ever walk into that dive bar.

If this was meant to make Lamb feel insecure, it works. As she walks past him, he can't help but stare at her with a mixture of shock and awe as she turns every head in the place. She's even better looking now than these past two days at Slough House.

And just like that, she passes him and is ordering a glass of wine at the bar.

“Riesling, please.”

The barman nods and pours her a glass. Lamb takes a seat at a very nearby table, eyes glued to her as she leans forward to talk to the barman. The scent of her perfume hits his nose, and he can almost taste her like a cocktail.

Adelaide acts like she didn’t see him, but she did. The truth is, she’s pretty stung that he did nothing to clean himself up for her. It feels disrespectful, like he doesn’t think she’s worth it. She should have just turned around and left, but instead she decides to enjoy a glass of wine and see if he even has a prayer of redeeming himself.

Jackson stares at her as he watches her drink her wine, taking in the sight of those shapely legs and those bare toes in her sandals. She's certainly dressed differently from the other girls in the pub, who are more casual in jeans or short skirts. But this Adelaide Spencer– she's special. Classy. She's like a rose in an alley, her fragrance lingering on his senses as he watches her. He notices a few lads staring at her too. He feels like beating them senseless for such an offense. Lamb wants her all to himself. He’s watching her very closely— very intensely— as only an old spy could. He clocks the way she moves, the curve of her back, the length of her legs...

Adelaide stares into her glass, not looking around. Some stupid part of her wants to cry for thinking this bastard could actually romance her. He’d been pulling her leg all along. And not in the good way he’d promised.

It's only when Adelaide glances back over at Lamb that he realizes he’s been staring a little too long. He's never been one to play it close to his chest if he's attracted to a girl, and he's definitely staring at her way too intensely for it to seem innocent. It takes a moment for her glance to register on his radar, and he tries to play his own down. But it's too late. She's definitely spotted his close examination.

“What do you want, Lamb?” she finally sighs, just a few feet of dusty pub floor separating them.

"Nothing," Lamb says, shrugging off his embarrassment. "Just watching what it is you do when you’re not trying to flirt with me. You're fascinating. Even when you're doing nothing."

“How kind of you to say.” Her voice is dry and annoyed. She really wishes he’d put in some more effort to make himself decent. She loves his long hair, loves his pudge. She thinks his very uneven shave is sexy. But she won’t abide grease nor unnecessary, dirt-caked, foul-smelling sweat. Again, it’s just a matter of basic respect. She’s even delivered him everything he needed to clean up, right to Slough House. He just didn’t care enough to do it

"Don’t think of it as dirty," Lamb says defensively, reading her thoughts with rolled eyes. “I just want to give you the chance to see me in my natural state. I mean, you're probably already thinking way too highly of me, so I'm doing you a favor by being myself."

She finally brings her glass of wine to join him at the table, mostly to avoid the stares of other patrons as they overhear. But she still looks angry.

“Why is that even your natural state?” she demands. “It can’t be comfortable! No one enjoys feeling dirty. Do you do it for attention? Have you just decided that negative attention is better than none at all?”

"Don’t you bother your pretty little head with the ‘why’ of it all," he replies. "And you're not going to try and tell me you don't like the way I smell. It's a kind of musk that radiates off me, isn't it? Something primal, something you find appealing. I can read you like a book, girl. I know what you'll be thinking when that wine is done. Or even before it's done."

She gapes at him, open mouthed. “How are you even that cocky? Really?” She just stares at him in disbelief. She also notices he’s not drinking. That makes her jump a little with surprise.

"Just playing the odds, girl. In my experience, women respond to that kind of cocky attitude— even women like you. There's a little devil in there waiting to be released; I can see it in your eyes. You want me to come sit right beside you and whisper all the naughty things I'd like to do to you. Or am I still not reading you right?"

She swallows and lowers her gaze to her wine again.

He studies the way she swallows; he can see her tongue gliding over her lips as she drinks. The sight distracts him, and his thoughts almost start to slip.

"It's time for the next part," he says, leaning forward. "Now I get closer and smell your perfume, and I say all those things we've been thinking but are too polite to speak. It's the most enjoyable part: where you say nothing, and I do all the talking, and you just let it happen."

She keeps her eyes to the glass, doing and saying nothing– as if daring him to follow through.

He’s reading her mind again. “You don’t think I’ll follow through, do you? Well, let me tell you – I've got a whole script for the rest of this evening." He gets up from the table and moves around to sit beside her. "Let me show you what's about to happen here..."

Adelaide immediately slides down the booth in response, but she soon finds the wall has stopped any chance of escape.

"No point trying to resist, sweetheart," Lamb chuckles. "I can already taste your perfume, but I want to get closer. I'm going to lean in and brush my nose against your neck and breathe you in."

He does just what he promised. He leans in and brushes his nose against her neck and takes the deepest breath he's ever taken. Then…

Jackson bites her neck. Gently at first… then harder. It’s a playful way to draw her in, and he hears her gasp. “Just a taste," he whispers. "I want you all over me, but I'm going to be nice and slow about it.”

Her veins betray her by trembling and sending a shudder through her, but her shiver is what spurs him on. It's exactly how he wants her to react. He wants something primal in her to wake up and take over her rational reservations. Her mouth is shaking, and he's tempted just to grab it with his, to put her in her place. The girl obviously wants to be taken, not coddled.

He moves his mouth closer to her neck again, his breath hot and wet. He’s not going to waste time. He bites again. Not quite deep enough to leave a mark but firm enough to show some genuine passion. She grips the leather of the booth with the hand farthest from him.

She doesn’t shove him away. Instead, she allows him closer and begins to flirtatiously pull at his necktie. She's eager to touch him, to have him touch her. She wants to feel his radiating heat on her face, on her neck, on her pussy... she's craving him in some depraved kind of way.

Jackson doesn't waste that opportunity. He slides one hand down the neckline of her dress and pulls it lower. And she lets him do it. She wants it. That fact only deepens the desire he feels for her, until he's almost to the point of being overwhelmed by it. The whole thing makes his heart and his cock feel like it's going to burst.

“Mr. Lamb, this is a very crowded pub,” she reminds him quietly. “I think you may need to let go of my breast.”

For a moment, it takes him back a step. He looks around and sees a few other pub guests watching with a mix of awe and discomfort. Lamb’s no fool— he knows what they’re thinking: a washed up old hobo like him and a hot ticket like her… and he got to second base?

"Let’s fucking go somewhere more private then," he declares, smacking the table with both palms.

Adelaide has taken a few seconds to recover now and shakes her head. “Only one place— Slough House. With only one purpose— to get the bottles I brought you today and put you in the goddamn tub in that washroom. Which has probably never been used. I only asked for one simple thing, and you couldn’t respect me enough to do it. If you want to touch that tit again, you’re going to do what I ask.”

"You know I don't like being ordered around," Lamb hisses back at her. “No pair of tits is worth that.” As soon as he says it, he knows it’s a mammoth lie. He’s just felt her pair, and they are certainly worth her asking price. Her little game of playing hard-to-get is cute, but he knows she wants him to take the reins. She wants to be taken. So he's going to do exactly that. Even if he has to play it her way a little.

“And you know I don’t like being disrespected,” she fires back.

Lamb pauses, considering his options. He doesn't like being ordered around, but he also hates the thought of denying himself what he wants most in this world. Usually it’s just whisky or cigs or bowls of sodium-laden carbs. But right now it happens to be Adelaide goddamned Spencer. He finally lowers his head, almost in surrender, and whispers, “Fuck it. What do you want me to do?"

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Let me give you a bath.”

The words send a shiver through him. "You really think if you bathe me, I'll suddenly start behaving more... appropriately?"

“I didn’t say I wanted you to behave more appropriately. You can keep your behavior quite the same— just with the removal of some grime and the addition of some blood orange spice.”

The scent of blood orange spice is indeed rather pleasant, he admits to himself, but then he wants to punch himself in the face for the thought. She’s scrambled his entire mind. He considers the idea for a moment, then finally nods his head with the most defeated sigh he’s ever uttered. His cock has completely locked his personality in the closet, tied it up with a rope, and thrown away the fucking key. "Fine. Let's get this over with. Just don't take too long."

Adelaide stands and follows him to his car. Her eyes widen when her sandals immediately become buried in cigarette boxes, fast food wrappers, and beer bottles— which litter his passenger floor board.

"I've been meaning to tidy that," he notes. "I meant to do it yesterday, in fact. But then some girl just insisted on coming to visit me at my place of employment. Completely disrupted my routine.”

This brings a smile back to her face. A small one. She really does love his jokes.

Lamb looks over at the passenger seat before starting the car. She has a pretty smile, and the sight of it does something to more than just his cock.

Adelaide still feels the spot on her neck where he nibbled her. It’s damp with saliva, and there is blood rushing to it. Almost as if her body’s immune system knows it’s about to put up a fight to protect from whatever microbes the decades have inflicted upon him. Oh well— at least he agreed to a bath.

Part of her feels a strong urge to wash her neck, to get that sensation of his teeth and breath off her skin. But she pushes it away. This is the man she wants. She wants to feel that hot breath on her neck, those teeth nibbling her skin more deeply. She’ll even accept her immune system being triggered by his microbiome to the point of total surrender.

Lamb reaches Slough House in no time, and they climb to the top floor together. He’s only a bit winded when they arrive, showing that he’s surprisingly fit in spite of the beer belly. Adelaide proceeds straight to the washroom adjacent to his office and fills the old, neglected tub. She’s not convinced such an ancient piece of ceramic will do much for his hygiene, but she supposes it’s better than nothing.

Jackson is already stripping his clothes off with little ceremony. She can't help but notice his body as he strips himself, and she feels herself becoming aroused quickly… strangely. His trousers slink to the floor right after his shirt and tank. He immediately slips his thumb beneath the waistband of his white nylon y-fronts.

“Stop!” she cries and covers her eyes. “Don’t you want some kind of modesty?”

"I'm the only one in the bath. I think I'd have noticed if someone else walked in." He pauses a second, then smirks and whispers: "Or are you worried one of these old boxes of rubbish will suddenly spring to life and start snapping pictures?”

“What about me?” she hisses. “You don’t care about me seeing all your goods just right off the bat?”

He chuckles. "What's it going to do to you if you do? I don't think it’s anything you haven't seen before. You’re a young one, but not that young.”

And with that, the y-fronts find their way onto the floor with the rest of his clothes. She only catches a glimpse of said “goods” before he plods his way over to the tub and lifts one leg over the side. He winces and hisses as his body hits the hot water.

Despite the scald, Jackson manages to lift his other leg over the side and slump into the tub. He's in a position of extraordinary vulnerability right now, like a giant turtle tipped over on its back. This is precisely what Adelaide enjoys. She likes that she has this power over him. She approaches him now, holding the bottle of soap, and she leans down over the tub to apply some on the sponge. Her eyes don't leave his chest nor the glimpse of his thighs peeking above the deep water.

“Go ahead and dampen your hair… please,” she instructs awkwardly.

"Why so eager to get me wet, darling?" Lamb asks. But he leans his head over toward the wall of the tub, allowing the water to soak into his tangled hair.

She decides not to make any comment on her own state of wetness, though the thought is tempting. She simply rubs the sponge over his scalp, scrubbing in circles.

The way she scrubs — softly, so gently— almost makes him moan. There's something about being cared for so intimately by someone like her. She makes him feel oddly… safe. And the way she keeps her eyes on him the whole time... it makes his heart skip a beat. Even when she's cleaning his scalp, it's tender and erotic… sensual.

“You actually like it,” she muses with a twisted smile, popping his nose playfully with the corner of the sponge before scrubbing elsewhere on his face.

"I guess I do," Lamb is forced to admit. His breath catches in his throat as she drifts over his nipples with the sponge, and in a way he both loves and hates it. He loves it because she's so close to him, and he can feel her steamy breath. He hates it because he has no control over any part of this situation, and his body seems quite ready to let it all go.

Adelaide works diligently, moving to his neck and chest again. He of course is “dad-bod” to the extreme, even if he’s not actually a father. Is he? She doesn’t even know. But she does know she finds him irresistible, and she chucks the sponge temporarily in favor of running her hands over his skin instead.

Her fingers electrify him. They feel so small and nimble, and she's caressing him everywhere— the inside of his elbows, the sides of his torso, the backs of his knees. She's not being as tender as she was with his face. No, now she's really getting into it... and that's when he loses it. He feels the rush of blood and warmth throughout his body; the feeling of her hands running up and down his skin is almost intolerable.

She has her work cut out for her in places like his scalp, feet, and fingernails. She marvels in wonder and sadness on why a man would neglect himself so much. Still, she notices he’s not drinking tonight. Given what she knows about alcoholics, it's quite odd that he can simply switch it on and off at will. Almost as if the bottle and maybe even the lack of bathing is an act. He is certainly a curious kind of man.

After nearly a half hour, trimmed fingernails, a thoroughly splashed dress, and a couple additions of hot water, she’s made quite a bit of progress. Jackson is now a lot of moans and very little quip, though he’s allowed a few to drop here and there.

“All right, I am NOT washing your arse for you,” Adelaide declares. “The manhood’s up for discussion, however.”

"Fine,” Lamb huffs. “I can wash my own arse. Don't worry about it." He lifts himself from the water, turning his backside to face the back of the tub. "It's nothing to write home about, anyway. It's just a normal arse.”

“What exactly is a ‘not normal’ arse?” she asks as she gazes at his pale backside. “Don’t we all have a normal arse?”

Lamb rolls his eyes. “All right. For example, yours is normal. But if I were to show you a picture— a collage, if you will— of an enormous, bulbous, pendulous arse… one that perhaps even covers a good portion of the back of this tub, you might consider that a ‘not normal’ arse. I’ve seen a lot of bodies in my line of work, sweetheart.”

She grins and shakes her head. “Ah, point taken. But you and I are quite normal in the arse department?”

"I think we both fall firmly in the 'normal’ category, yes.”

She likes this pointless conversation between them. It feels relaxed and fun. Jackson settles back in the tub, rinsing the sponge. The question of who will be washing his cock still looms.

"Alright, Lamb. Now your manhood needs attention. The word ‘smegma’ comes to mind, though that’s merely a hypothesis.”

"A hypothesis,” he repeats, scrunching up his face. She clearly thinks she’s so clever.

Adelaide bites her lip and giggles.

"Okay," he admits. "It's a little more than a hypothesis, perhaps. What's your hypothesis on how you're going to handle my cock?"

Her heart skips annoyingly. This conversation should be the furthest thing from arousing, yet here she is. She grabs a new, clean rag from the nearby vanity and gets it warm, then she soaps it up with the spiced blood orange wash.

“Like this, I suppose,” she replies, taking a breath to prepare.

Jackson tries to contain his laughter at the expression on her face— half nervous, half excited, but all the better for it. She leans down over him, and the sensation of her breath on his torso is almost unbearable.

“Let me find it in here,” she jokes, knowing he’s going to crucify her for that one.

"What did you mean by that?" he asks, his laugh dissolving into a growl as he grabs her by the wrists and pins her hands against the wall of the tub. He leans down close to her, his breath hot against her neck. His eyes narrow, and his voice softens. His whisper sends shivers through her: "What... do... you mean by that?" he repeats.

His voice takes her arousal to extremes.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Innocent statement. I have to find it before I wash it, is all.”

"Oh, yes." He eases the pressure on her wrists, and his voice falls back to its previous level. "By all means, search extensively."

She snickers. With resolve, she reaches beneath the water, fully aware at this point that it’s a tub of stink and grime. Maybe a shower would have been more sanitary. It doesn’t take long at all to find what she’s looking for. It’s presenting itself to her fairly obviously by now.

"There it is," he whispers, the low sound of his voice sending more shivers through her. "You better wash it well. Even then it’s not exactly going to win a beauty contest."

She tries to put herself in the mindset of a nurse washing a patient, but that doesn’t really work. She’s certainly far more involved. Her fingers tentatively circle the shaft while she washes the rest. He’s girthy for sure, if average in length. She is nervous about the condition beneath his foreskin but is surprised to see it’s not nearly as bad as expected. Again, he must turn on and off his hygiene habits like he does his drinking. She’s feeling quite confident when she moves lower to his bollocks. Her eyes widen at the size she finds there. No wonder he’s such an arse. He’s certainly entitled.

"Don't give them too much attention," he says, trying to maintain his composure, but he feels the warm flush rising in his face, and his heart begins to pound faster. "Not that much to look at. And covered in hair."

She swallows. “I can see that.”

"Well," he grumbles, "Not a lot I can do about that. I can't exactly shave down there. Belly a bit in the way. So... just get it clean."

“I didn’t complain,” she reminds him quickly. “Just discussing facts.”

"You don't have to discuss it,” Lamb reprimands sharply. “You could just leave it and do your job."

She drops the wash rag into the murky bathwater. “My job? I didn’t realize I was getting paid for this. This is supposed to be a date. Some kind of twisted, pathetic date… since you couldn’t be bothered to do this yourself.”

"Oh, right. Date." There's an awkward silence for a moment between them. She's right, of course. If he were on a date with her, they wouldn't be having a conversation like this. They'd be having...

“Yes, well. I think we had better move this along— get this bath done and done with,” agrees Lamb. “No need to make the date any more awkward than it is. It is a date after all, is it not? And I don't imagine you'd want things to get more, shall we say, 'intimate'?" Jackson raises an eyebrow, his face almost innocent as it searches for her current intentions.

She sighs. On the surface, she ought to run. But he stirs something not just between her damn legs but within her heart. She feels sorry for him and has the strangest urge to satisfy and care for his needs. “I think we have a while to go to ‘intimate,’” she replies honestly. “Perhaps a drink to set the mood?”

"Perhaps..." he agrees, trailing a finger along her cheek. She stands and tries to shake her dress out a bit. He has soaked it quite thoroughly with his thrashing in the tub. She notices immediately that the white fabric does her no favors. Luckily she’s wearing a bra. She hands him a towel.

Lamb struggles with an internal debate as he takes the towel from her. A debate that is quickly won by his imagination as he eyes the way the white gauzy fabric clings to her nude-colored bra.

As he dries off, Adelaide notices that the tub is overflowing with a considerable amount of suds and grime. His clean skin almost sparkles as a contrast. His eyes are tracking her every movement— a certain gleam in them as they look her up and down.

"I have to say," Jackson finally says, securing the towel around his waist and taking a step toward her. "I'm finding this whole fast-paced, cockamamie scenario between us very…”

She looks at him curiously. “Very what?”

"Very... interesting,” he finally says, closing the distance between them and leaning down toward her. "And that's what’s intriguing. You’re a bloody stranger to me, really, and yet…” He trails off, eyes flitting almost nervously.

“Jackson Lamb? Speechless?” she muses.

"A rare thing to see, agreed,” he admits. “Let me tell you why I find you so... enthralling." He leans down further, so that he's only an inch or two from her face. Their breath now plays tag with each other, and with each exchange, the temperature rises measurably.

“Please, do tell.” She smiles and settles back against the bathroom counter, where his proximity effectively has her pinned.

"Right,” he nods with an almost nervous sigh. “Your eyes. It’s just something about your eyes..." He brings his hands to her cheeks to turn her face toward him. He then leans in even closer, so that his breath is hot against her ear. "They’re just so damn addictive. I find myself gazing so deep into them I feel like I might fucking fall right in..."

So he could be romantic. In his own way. This was… something.

“Thank you,” she says softly. “You have nice eyes also. Very clear blue.”

"Really?" He smiles, almost boyishly. "I have nice eyes?" They're so very close now, their noses just a breath away from touching. "You're not just saying that?"

She shakes her head. He’s so close that his wet belly brushes her dress.

"Tell me something," he breathes into her ear. "Are you nervous, darling? Is your heart approaching cardiac arrest?" She can almost hear the sly wink in his voice even though her eyes are fixated on the floor.

She moves to look at the towel around his waist. She can see the outline of his erection through it, clearly indicating where he wants this to go.

“I’m assuming you know the answer because you can hear my heart very clearly beating,” she returns, finding that her jaw even shakes as she speaks.

"Yeah?" He pulls back just a little, until the tips of their noses are touching but nothing more. "What do you think would happen if I were to just..."

She looks him in the eye. “Just what, Jackson Lamb?”

Their eyes lock on each other, and their lips are so close she can feel magnetism in the air between them. Everything seems to slow down. It's like the entire world outside has stopped, waiting for them to close the distance that little bit further. All over her insane, ludicrous attraction to Jackson fucking Lamb.

“What are you waiting for? A signed contract?” she mutters. And she knows it sounds exactly like a line he would say.

"Maybe a little affirmative response might be nice,” he shoots back with a throaty chuckle. He leans forward, their mouths almost touching, and he whispers, "Maybe tell me you want it?"

His breath is surprisingly not bad, she has decided. Smoky and liquor-tinged, of course, but no halitosis. Nor are his teeth that bad. Maybe all the alcohol keeps his mouth disinfected. She thinks she might enjoy kissing him.

“I— I want it,” she says shakily.

And that's all the permission he needs. He pulls her to him, their lips crashing together, and their mouths immediately find their stride. She melts into his kiss, letting him take the lead. It feels so good to him— like his insides are crying at lost chances and cast-aside dreams– youthful… forgotten. Jackson’s so lost in the symbolism of that first kiss that Adelaide is the one who eventually pulls away.

She struggles to catch her breath. That kiss was fire. She felt every ounce of his desire in it. His body is still wet, just wrapped in the towel and not yet dried off.

“We should dry you,” she reminds him gently.

"Is that really what you want to do?" he asks with slight disappointment. "You don't want to... continue?"

She smiles. “You’re getting me all wet.”

"A little soap and water never hurt anybody," he replies slyly.

“You should remember that one.”

"I might just do that." His eyes are still on hers as he backs away and starts drying himself off. "You're a lot of fun, you know that, kid? Just when I think I've got you all sussed out, you do something to turn it all on its head. I wonder what you have in store for me now..."

Adelaide watches as the towel drops to reveal his entire form, no longer hidden by cloudy bath water. His muscles are soft all over except for his legs, which are strong. Clearly he still moves a lot in the field. Everything else has quite a bit extra to pinch, to love. And he is indeed quite blessed, as she’d noted earlier, in the girth department.

"Are you checking me out, woman?” Lamb demands. “I suppose you can’t help it— I wasn’t exactly subtle, you know, with the kiss and everything. I bet you’re on fire.”

“No, not subtle at all,” she agrees. “Nor is your body subtle right now. It’s quite obvious what you’ve got on your mind.”

He looks down rather approvingly at his own cock, which she has roused to finally peek beyond the reach of his belly. "Well, yes. Why in the hell would it be subtle? That bath you gave me was straight up pornography. I'm just picking up the vibes that you're putting down. Am I mistaken?"

He’s adorably flustered, and dare she say, worried that he may have misconstrued the whole bit. She watches him finish drying and set the towel on the vanity. He stands there fully naked, drumming his fingers and waiting for her response. Her mind is racing with pictures of the two of them together and exactly how she wants to ride him into the sunrise.

“No, you’re not mistaken,” she answers truthfully. They never even got to that second drink she swore she would need to set the mood. Turns out she didn’t need anything but him.

Lamb seems surprised. His eyebrows raise as she says it then narrow briefly, as if a thought has entered his mind. But if it has, it doesn't stay long as he breaks into a wide grin. "Well, in that case..." He reaches for her hands and brings her to him. "What do you say we get to the fucking portion of this evening’s entertainment?”

Her clit dances with the thrill of his vulgarity, and she finds herself trembling as she eases away from her perch. “You might want to take my dress off first,” Adelaide reminds him. “Our state of undress is a bit unfair at the moment.”

"Well, it's your dress,” he points out. “I wanted to be a gentleman and let you take the initiative." He leans forward and kisses her cheek. "Now, my dear, would you like me to help you with that?"

She nods and turns around to grant access to the zipper in the back. She’s very conscious of the wet spot he’s left behind on her cheek. Every point of contact between them seems like an irrevocable tattoo.

As he unzips her in one fluid movement, Lamb realizes how long it has been since he touched a woman this way. He is very aware of his breathing and that his heart is beating rapidly. Her skin is still glowing warm from the humidity of the room as he lets his hands joyously roam her exposed body.

His hands are rough… calloused and enormously pleasant.

"You're very warm," Jackson says, his breath erratic. "Is that from this damp room or from me?” He presses kisses down her arm, and she’s too distracted to answer. “My nerves feel bloody electrical shocks where your body touches it,” he continues. “What about that? Is that me, or you?"

“Us,” she replies simply. Her dress finally slinks to the floor.

Jackson steps back and gazes at her. She’s even more stunning naked than he’d dreamed. But he’s glad to see she’s not perfect. His eagle eye can spot a few flaws in isolation. Taken together, however, she’s a fucking goddess. He runs both hands down her body slowly, starting from her shoulders and working his way down over those impressive breasts; she really does have fucking fantastic tits. He traces the curve of her waist and then over her hips until his fingers find the small of her back. Then he draws a line up her spine and down again until it ends at the beautiful bubble of her bum, which he squeezes roughly and unapologetically. That brings a moan from her parted lips.

Jackson’s touches are half man-handle, half caress. Adelaide can feel a tingling each time his fingers run across her, and she is very aware of how that tingling sensation is building up inside her as if her entire body is becoming one single erogenous zone. She allows her eyes to close and falls back against him for support as he continues.

His fingers travel across her breasts and stomach, up and down in a slow and rhythmic pattern. She can feel his breath against her skin, and his clean scent is intoxicating. Her back arches slightly as he continues his foreplay, putting his cock dangerously close to violating her from behind. Every time she ruts against him like that, his fingers press against her a little harder, a little lower. But still he hasn’t reached the spot that’s now weeping for his touch.

When he hears her moan and feels her arch against him with more enthusiasm now, he pauses. "Am I hurting you? Are you alright?” Jackson knew damn well she was fine. But torture designed as chivalry was a fun game.

“Of course I’m alright!” Adelaide snaps breathlessly. “Haven’t you ever heard a woman moan like this before?”

"Not that I can recall, no." He smiles, gently spinning her around to face him. "I'm actually quite out of practice at this, so you need to tell me if I'm doing it right."

She scrutinizes his face and finds him very sincere. Once again she’s sad for him, and for all the things she suspects he’s missed, at least for the past few years. “You’re certainly getting there,” she whispers with a wink.

"So I can continue, then?" He nibbles her fingers as his eyes widen hopefully.

“Mmm-hmm,” she nods.

"Should I suck your tender little earlobe, darling, or bite the back of your neck?" He moves down and kisses the nape of her neck, then he kisses the side, then kisses the back again...

Her body immediately emits more wetness along with more shivers. The one spot on her neck is like a button with very long wires, transmitting sensation rapidly downward.

"That's a good reaction, right? A good sign I'm on the right track?" Jackson asks, hopeful once again.

How did he know? “What’s a good reaction?” she clarifies.

"That. The shivers. I like your shivers."

“Oh… those. Yes. Good reaction.”

"How much can I do before it becomes too much?" he asks with narrowed eyes.

“Just keep going,” she replies hurriedly. “I’ll say the safe word if I need you to stop. It’s ’Cartwright.’ I figured that would make you shrivel up like it’s a sub-zero day in Siberia.”

He grunted. "And what does one do after that? If you say the word, I have to stop what I'm doing, right? We have to stop everything and I have to wait while you get dressed. I have to get you a coat. Then you run off into the night and send some other sassy tart to deal with me on Monday.”

He’s overthinking this. She considers asking whether he wants a new sassy little tart, but decides against it.

“Just get back to business, Lamb. I doubt I’ll be stopping you.” She moves her buttocks against his arousal again, hoping this time his hands will land where she wants them.

"Are you quite sure?" he insists.

“Yes, Lamb! Goddamn it!”

He grins. “Finally a language I fucking understand! In that case..." He kisses her neck again, this time with a feral hunger. He moves a step back and spins her forward to caress her cheek before kissing her beautiful lips. His tongue ravages hers, and their panting increases heavily between kisses, their bodies becoming increasingly tangled with each other.

"You know, you really are rather good at this..." he comments slyly.

“Thanks for the compliment. You’re not so bad yourself.”

His hands roam down to her behind, and he pulls her in toward him, pressing his groin against her stomach. His mouth returns to her neck in an almost vampiric fixation. He is enjoying this immensely.

“What do you say we move this from the washroom to the sofa?” she suggests quickly. “I think that’s the only option we have here at Slough House.”

“Is it comfortable enough?” Lamb wonders aloud. “It's been used as a dumping ground for as many years as you’ve probably been alive. I think it was constructed into the building itself.” He pauses as he ponders. “I think you might be right, though. It’s the best we’ve got.”

“I did clean it yesterday,” she reminded him. “Not that it helped much. But we have to do this somewhere, right?”

"Sofa it is, then,” he relents. “I'm sure it won't take long to be distracted from the foul stench.”

She takes the lead toward the old piece of furniture, pursing her lips to control her laughter. The irony of Jackson Lamb complaining about a foul stench! She indicates for him to lie down.

Jackson finds he’s more than happy to let her take control, when it comes to this. He obeys, and she places one knee on either side of his body. She lowers herself until she’s pressed tightly against him. Gravity is his friend. Gravity has her two very luscious breasts like soft pillows of heavenly perfection against his old, lonely chest. He closes his eyes and groans.

She kisses him fiercely, her hunger no longer masked. The fingers of one hand drift into his now-clean hair, finding it soft and silver and quite beautiful. She feels his hand kneading her behind almost painfully, but it’s glorious.

"I was right," Lamb moans quietly. "Forgot all about this minger of a sofa already.”

Adelaide lowers her hips so she fully covers him now, and she begins to undulate against his pelvis to get the friction she craves. She finds she appreciates the soft cushioning he has there, as it makes this particular act far more pleasant.

The sight and sensation of her moving over him is the most erotic thing he's ever experienced, and he begins to move against her in turn. He's no longer teasing or being playful; he's just as eager as she is to move this the hell along.

Adelaide is dying to ride him but also doesn’t want this to end too soon. She wonders… maybe if they have a quickie now, he’d be up for more encounters in the future. Encounters where perhaps they could explore all the little foreplay delights they’d missed. Her body truly needs to skip to the main event after all this flirting and tension, and she suspects his does as well.

It's clear that her instincts are right. The sight of her moving over him is sending his body into overdrive; her soft skin rubbing against his and her sweet tongue on his neck is aphrodisiac times fifty. But part of him wants this to be as long and fulfilling as possible, because it's likely to be the only time. Not because he isn't attracted to her or that he doesn't want future sessions like this— that would be lunacy, given the pleasure he is currently receiving with every undulation she makes— but because he's already expecting a rejection of some sort. What else should he expect?

“I’m going to… to do it now… is that okay?” she whisper-warns in his ear.

Jackson lets out a low chuckle. "You don't need to ask me. It's not like you're going someplace I don't want you to."

Adelaide slides her hips down and locks herself over his cock with little effort on her part, given how swollen and on fire she is for him. But her eyes soon widen at the stretch. She was right about his girth.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and she takes meditative breaths to adjust.

"Do you want me to stop?" He's a little concerned by her reaction.

She shakes her head quickly and grins. “You couldn’t really stop anyway, unless you threw me off onto the floor.”

"You're probably right on that account, love. You want to keep going?"

She lets her hips respond, finally beginning some blessed movement. Jackson bites down slightly on her breast, his breathing now very erratic as she begins to move. He's already finding it difficult to hold back.

His bite sends her senses reeling. His cock feels incredible inside her. Stiff and veiny with the circumference to hit every magnificent spot. She could get used to this.

He hears her make soft little whining noises in pleasure, each one like a little dagger to the old spy’s heart. He wants to dedicate every resource he has left to eliciting these sounds from her every night of their lives. They make him want to move faster, but he resists— he wants their lovemaking to be long enough that she remembers it forever, even if she tries to tell herself she hated it.

“Feels so good,” she whispers, the words giving his ego a stroke it desperately needs.

"It does, doesn't it, darling?” he replies against the skin of her neck.

She grasps his hand and places it just below his belly, right where she will hit when she moves forward. Jackson knows what she wants and he places his finger accordingly.

The sensation her clit receives feels as though she's been hit by lightning. Her hips begin a sort of erratic spiral at this, causing a squeeze like nothing Jackson Lamb has ever felt. He's beginning to have trouble breathing… seeing… existing. How he’s survived so long a dry spell is now beyond his comprehension.

“You okay there, agent?” she whispers.

"I'll be fine." He's panting. "I just need a little moment..."

Adelaide shakes her head with a grin. “I think you need more of this…” and she pivots in circles again.

Her pace is perfect, her rhythm intoxicating. Her pussy’s like a fucking vise gift-wrapped in silk.

"I don't know if I can hold off much longer," he admits, his breath shallow and rapid.

“It’s okay,” she assures him with a sweet kiss.

"It's definitely not okay," he chuckles. "You're doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You're making this more difficult because you see that I'm enjoying it so much." His hips move slightly to match hers, wanting to show her he still has what it takes.

“Would you prefer not to enjoy it?” she teases, allowing him to take the lead with the upward thrusts he’s able to manage.

The way she seems to unhinge her hips to meet him is causing all kinds of new sensations in his body that his mind can't seem to grasp. He's so close to the edge; no man should be expected to hold on through something like this.

Adelaide can see Jackson is truly close and won’t be able to make it. So she lowers herself down and embraces him tightly, increasing the pressure against his hand and pelvis with the sole purpose of chasing her own pleasure, since she knows his is already certain.

And that's all she needs to do. He is lost to her. Fucking lost. His entire body tenses, all at once— a moment of sheer panic that could only mean either orgasm or death.

The sound of his groan is so satisfying to her, like he’s finally surrendering in their neverending battles. That plus his warm flood is enough to rouse her to her peak quickly, and she rides it out even after he’s finished, giving him aftershocks that shake his entire body.

"Oh god..." he groans, his words becoming slurred. "That... was... incredible. Fucking, fucking incredible.”

She allows herself to collapse on his chest, her nose buried in his clean, soft hair. Their bodies are stuck together with sweat.

“Yes… it really was,” she sighs.

"If we had to get stuck together like this for the rest of our lives, it wouldn't be so bad..." He closes his eyes and squeezes her tightly. "I guess there was a damn good reason that the service has kept me on this long after all. So this high holy day would arrive when I could fuck you."

She laughs. “So you could trash this place and I could come in and clean it up? Then clean you up… and then…”

He grins almost gleefully.

She raises up, cupping her hand into a fist on his chest and propping her chin on it. “Yes. And how would you describe this moment… this culmination?”

"I'd call it... euphoric,” he concludes. “And I'd call you... divine."

She presses a sweet kiss to his neck. Just then, they hear a creak of a door. Jackson pulls her tightly against him, shielding her in a way that she finds very attractive. He simultaneously listens intently for any further sounds.

"Someone is definitely here,” Adelaide confirms. “Your team working late tonight?”

"Work?” he huffs. “What’s that?” All the same, he kisses her shoulder in an effort to conceal any noises with their own. But his keen old ears still listen closely.

“We need to get dressed!” she whispers insistently. “What if we get caught?”

He tilts his head slightly and kisses her again. "Then we get caught. What if I were to do this?" He leans into her neck, nibbling once again.

“You want to get caught?” she asks with surprise.

"I don't think they've heard anything. Not yet,” he scoffs. “You've seen how inept they are. We have plenty of time for one final, passionate moment. Don’t you suppose?” His amused smile is adorable.

She laughs again and begins bucking her hips. He’s only halfway stiff at this point, but his hand is still in place. She is fairly sure she can chase another climax from that alone.

Jackson returns to devouring her neck, because he’s addicted. Then he raises himself to a sitting position so he can better kiss her as she chases her next high. The kiss immediately deepens as his fingers begin working her very messy folds in a purposeful rhythm. She is practically shaking by now; each movement he makes sends tingling sensations and causes her to grip his shoulders for support.

"Come on, sweeting..." His voice is low and rough as he speaks the archaic term of endearment. Once again she’s distracted from pure carnality by the fact that Jackson Lamb touches her damn heart. She can hear familiar noises downstairs, and now she knows it’s one of the Horses, not an intruder.

She is panting, knowing Jackson is going to make her come quickly. His fingers slosh in their combined mess, twisting and curling against her front wall in the most delicious torture.

"That's it. Keep moving,” he encourages her. “Just keep enjoying it, love.” He catches her gaping, desperate mouth and kisses her deeply, filling her senses with smoke and whisky and his trademark taste. His grip on her hips is tight and possessive and borders on painful, but hell if she cares. The old spy’s fingers are magic, and they’re her singular thought. Soon her eyes are rolling, this impending orgasm even more pleasurable than her first, if that’s possible.

She hears his filth in her ear, “Come all over my fingers— sweet, wet cunt.” It’s enough to make her shriek and shake as everything explodes and surrenders to him.

"Well, wasn’t that impressive?” comments Lamb. “And loud… for a woman who doesn’t think we’re alone.” He wipes his wet hand on a nearby jacket, adding ‘pussy’ to the garment’s collection of smells.

They definitely aren’t alone. In fact, after her final shriek, the noises downstairs slow down. She’s pretty sure whoever it was is in shock.

Jackson grins triumphantly and pats her bum, encouraging her to dismount. "They must be mortified. Let’s go and greet them.” He trudges to the washroom to recover their clothes.

The man was delirious from sex. He was barely making sense as he threw his shirt back on.

"We could be fucking perfect, you know,” he continues. He's becoming a little frantic in his attempt to describe his feelings, and even though they’ve only just separated, he grabs both of her hands. "Everything exactly how it should be. You and me. Together. Setting up some pretty little life. Not letting a soul get in our way. Especially not the bloody service. Find some remote village somewhere, so picturesque it makes you sick. Live there as a family. Our son will have your gorgeous looks, and you’ll teach him how to be polite. Perhaps he could get my hair? Some of my sarcasm would be nice too… for when the polite doesn’t work. It just sucks royal bollocks that I didn’t find you sooner. I—”

Lamb pauses, realizing how ridiculous his words sound. If he hadn’t forced himself to forget how to blush years ago, he’d be as red as a garden beet. He clears a sorely unattractive wad of phlegm from his throat as he stuffs his shirt into his trousers. "Sorry. I got carried away there. Can you believe I'm the same man who told you to shut the hell up when I first met you? Fucking lunatic, I am.”

Adelaide places a hand on either side of his face, cradling him for a brief second before absentmindedly replacing her dress. She stares at him in awe. He’s positively animated, his skin glowing, eyes twinkling— his smile sheepish and sincere. His words sound ridiculous, yes, but she finds herself touched by them nonetheless. And of course she hears in them the regret for the life Jackson Lamb never got to lead. She’s made him remember all that, and the gravity of it isn’t lost on her.

“Don’t apologize. Please,” she says softly. “All that sounds beautiful. And I’m touched that the man who told me to shut the hell up would think of having those things with me. All because of one night of hot sex,” she adds with a grin, knowing he won’t want it too sentimental. “I really must be a damn good pussy.”

"In the most vulgar sense of the word," he confirms. "But it wasn't just that. It was you. It was every single thing about you. You may be an obnoxious little twat, but you're a bright, funny, beautiful one. And that's what makes this perfect."

Adelaide’s heart is racing again, not with desire but with emotion. Her brain can’t find any rational reason to deny them being together, and that’s terrifying.

“Yes. We do complement each other rather well,” she says carefully.

His hands stroke her cheeks, and one of his fingers finds her lip. "Tell me you’re mine,” he commands her. She knows he’s going for dominant, but she clearly hears the uncertainty underneath.

“So… you want me to be your girlfriend?” she asks, also unsure of what’s a game and what’s real.

His face spreads into a smirk that seems to shave a few years off of him with its youthful brightness. "Girlfriend doesn't even come close to it. But... yeah. I want you to be my girlfriend. And more. I want you to be my wife. I want you to be my whole bloody world. What do you have to say to that?”

The veins in her head were pulsing so hard she was convinced she’d die of an aneurysm right here on the Slough House floor. “You— you want to marry me? The same girl you told to fuck off?”

"Yeah. That one. An old bloke like me doesn’t have the luxury of time." His words are barely a whisper, though his eyes couldn't be more intense, like he wants to inhale her. His thumb is back on her lips, subtly prying them apart. Her tongue snakes along his thumb, for comfort if nothing else. He seems to know that particular touch will ground her. And it does, almost instantly, her breath catching in her throat as it does so. He kisses her again, his hand returning to the back of her head.

“I’ll need a ring,” she says defiantly, once she recovers. “Nothing fancy, but I want it official.”

"It'll be the biggest, sparkliest damn ring you've ever seen," he promises. "And you'll wear it on the finger I put it on, until I die and set you free, or you die and someone has to hack it off.”

Part of her thinks he’s toying with her. She swears she hears mockery in his tone. There’s no fucking way Jackson Lamb could be that sentimental to want all that, could he? Maybe he’s just never gotten the chance before…

As if reading her thoughts, he cups her face. He looks so sincere; maybe she should take him at his word? Because in some small part, she wants to. She wants to believe he wasn't teasing her, that he really is serious. She wants to believe this is her bloody insane happy-ever-after. She wants to be loved by this man.

“You mean it, don’t you?” she asks quietly. “And if you don’t… just know this is very very cruel.”

"I mean it,” he confirms with a sigh. "I've never meant anything more. I was never much for any of this shit... it never seemed practical. But just thinking of you as my wife... well, fuck it. It makes me happy, damn it. Happier than I've been in a long time, and not just because we've done bits. Well... mostly not."

Adelaide grins. This kind of conversation she can handle. “I fully plan on doing bits again regardless of nuptials,” she informs him.

He smiles. "In that case, I'm game too. But I do want more than that. It's not just the sex that's got me hooked. It's everything: the way you look at me, the way you push my buttons, the way you make me smile; the way you talk me into doing shit I don’t want to do..."

She runs her hand up the worn fabric of his dress shirt. She doubts he’s purchased a new one in decades, but the result is his whole body feeling comfortable, like a favorite old tee.

“Let’s do it,” she laughs, shaking her head.

He stares at her then slowly nods. "Let’s make it happen, Spencer.” A thought strikes him. "But before you wear the ring, there's one more thing I need to ask you."

Her eyes jump to him quickly. “Yes?”

"Will you promise to let me call you a cunt, once a week?"

She softens. “Among other things, I’m sure.”

"There we go!” Lamb proclaims. “Nothing like a healthy relationship." He buckles his belt with a wink.

“And I can call you a smelly fucking dick?” adds Adelaide.

"I'd be offended if you didn't." He kisses her.

She nods and picks up her purse. “I think I’ll like marriage.”

"And I think I'll love being your husband. Let's get out of here before anyone distracts us with their bullshit..."

That proves to be impossible. The moment Adelaide’s foot hits the bottom stair, she encounters Louisa. “Umm… hi, Guy. What are you doing here so late?”

Louisa freezes. She isn't a fool; she knows something is up the moment she sees an out-of-breath Adelaide way past midnight in Slough House. Jackson begins a clunky descent down the stairs.

“Lamb?” Louisa asks in disbelief.

“Guy?” he returns. “Don’t you have a one-night stand you should be tending to?”

“Seems you beat me to it… somehow,” she remarks, stone-faced. She looks at Adelaide, surveying her, then suspiciously at Lamb. “Are you alright, Miss Spencer?”

"I..." Adelaide’s at a loss for words. She knows exactly how this looks, but she can't think of a convincing explanation.

The awkward silence is broken by Lamb, who finally reaches the bottom of the stairs. "Guy? Quitting time was seven hours ago. Go home."

Louisa clearly doesn’t want to let this go until she believes this was fully consensual. And that’s very, very difficult to believe.

“Adelaide, you sure you’re alright? I want to hear you say it.”

“Oh, get on with it!” snaps Lamb. “She’s fine!”

"I'm fine," Adelaide affirms, trying to sound as natural as possible, but failing. There's nothing natural about what just happened. In fact, even though they're trying to play it off, this whole situation is bizarre, and the world will continue to let them know, unequivocally.

“I’m getting married,” Jackson announces jovially, and he pours a shot of brandy from the decanter on the hall shelf. He raises it toward Louisa in a toast motion with a smirk.

"You're wh... what?" Louisa stares at him. “To the new agent?”

“I’m— special projects, not an agent,” Adelaide manages to remind her.

Louisa surveys her dubiously. "Oh, yes. And clearly such an obvious match. Why, you're almost exactly the same age, right?"

Adelaide is pretty sure Jackson’s about 25 years her senior, if she had to take a guess. She supposes that is a bit icky to outsiders looking in. “He has a few years on me.”

Louisa just shakes her head and leaves Slough House without another word. It was clearly too awkward for her. Adelaide turns to Jackson with a shrug.

Jackson smiles at her as he downs the rest of the drink. All of the Horses would know by morning what had happened, but he’d deal with that bullshit Monday. He also wants to know what brought Louisa Guy back to work just before midnight. But for now, he wants to drink the rest of the bottle and pass out naked with his future bride. In the morning, he’ll wake her up with his kisses… kiss her until every other goddamn thing in the world fades away. And when she wakes up and looks at him, she’ll know it’ll be like this every morning after.

“You want to see my place?” Adelaide asks Jackson as they make their way to the door. “I gather it’s a hair cleaner than yours.”

Jackson chuckles. "Well, I am a grubby man, no doubt. I'd like to see your flat. Though I hope it doesn't smell like mine does. I bet it smells like... I dunno. Cake and sweets? All the good stuff."

She watches as he locks Slough House’s door behind them and grins.

“I don’t know… do I remind you of cake and sweets?” she laughs. “Maybe you should lick those fingers of yours and find out.”

He raises an eyebrow; there’s that sharp and sassy side that he finds so attractive. "I'll be doing a lot more than just licking my fingers,” he assures her.

She follows him back to his trash heap of a car. “Oh yeah? Sampling the wares first hand?”

His voice is silky. "I intend to get up close and personal..." He holds the car door open for her.

“I see,” laughs Adelaide. “I’m beginning to think I can envision my wake up call tomorrow. That is, if you’re sober enough to wake up first.”

"I'm an old spy, sweetheart. I could stay awake all night and still be up with the sun. Believe me." He winks and pulls into the empty late night streets.

#gary oldman #fanfiction #jackson lamb #slow horses #smut #love stories #ao3 #ao3 link #older man younger woman #original female character

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indecentpause · 1 year ago

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Since Feeling Is First: Chapter Nine/The End

cw: misgendering

The rest of January is much the same as the first two weeks were: quiet, uneventful, too warm for the season but still much too cold to be spring yet. People still whisper, but they don't stare as much anymore. You're not sure whether or not it's better that way. You keep your eyes ahead of you as you make your way through the hall, walking in a straight line. You refuse to make eye contact with anyone, but at least you don't have to push anyone aside to get by. They part on their own, afraid to touch you. It's not until you make it to the art room that you see a copy of a new flyer taped to the center of the door. Spring musical auditions. Guys and Dolls. You roll your eyes. What a garbage play. Maybe you won't try out after all. You know they'll cast you in one of the nonspeaking backing roles when the only role you'd be interested in playing is Adelaide, and they'd never let you sing a woman's part. They always have, despite the fact that you could easily play any gender or character they'd cast you as. You sigh softly and push the door open. Micah, Vince, and Audrey are there, circled around the table you all share. Micah has a partially finished painting in front of him, with lots of blues and greys. You smile to yourself. He got his canvas for the triptych. He lays down a few more strokes, then cleans his brush and starts to clean up for when class starts about ten minutes from now. "Hello, guys and dolls," you chirp as you sit. "So you saw the flyers," Vince said. "You going to try out?" You shake your head. "Probably not. I don't like that play very much." "But it's so cute!" Audrey says as she turns to you. You stick your tongue out at her. She sticks hers out back. Micah returns to the table just in time to process your conversation. "You're a senior, though," he says. "This is your last chance to perform here." "Not necessarily," you say. "Sometimes they do little short plays with only three or four characters. They aren't as popular as the Fall and Spring plays, but that's okay." "Sometimes," Micah says. "But it's your decision, obvs." "Obvs," you mimic. He snorts at you and wipes a bit of spilled paint off the table.

read it on wattpad here

or ao3 here!

And here we are at the last chapter! I don't have anything else at a point where I can share or update chapters on a regular basis, but keep an eye on my tumblr for updates and excerpts from The Black & Blues, about two queer 18-year olds who leave their homophobic town to start a band in the big city; and The Most Beautiful Puzzle, about two 20-somethings with ADHD solving a murder case that has been suspiciously closed.

General taglist: @abalonetea @only-book-lovers-left-alive @poore-choice-of-words @leadhelmetcosmonaut @jasperygrace @drippingmoon @thelaughingstag @athenswrites @kaiusvnoir @magic-is-something-we-create @idreamonpaper @wip-nook @papercutsunset @winterandwords

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redsamuraiii · 1 year ago

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Our Japanese Obsession

The Business Times explores the fascination with Japan in Singapore, which continues to grow at the speed of a Shinkansen.

Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash

Everyone has a personal story to tell about Japan's hold on them. Apart from Mr Goh, Lin Weiwen's 11-year 'addiction' led him to quit his job in July just to spend two months in Japan and work on a book on Japanese wines.

"For some time, I'd been thinking of how to combine my love for Japan with my profession," says the former editor of Wine & Dine magazine. "I knew I wouldn't have time to do this and stay in my full-time job. So I decided to leave."

He became fascinated with Japan - besides watching Ultraman cartoons on TV as a kid in the early 80s - when he started learning the language in 2005. Once you do that, "you're already embracing its culture", he believes. Plus he always enjoyed Japanese food and movies - "especially the works of Akira Kurosawa and Takeshi Kitano" - and had Japanese friends at university in Adelaide, who shared stories of home with him.

Photo by Jeremy Santana on Unsplash

His first trip to Osaka in 2008 was an experience everyone can identify with.

"Things were orderly, streets were safe and clean, people were helpful and service was top notch. Here was a country that in many ways resembled Singapore and yet was different in just as many ways. It was familiar and foreign at the same time - that was its allure."

That allure takes different forms for different people. "The music was what hooked me," says Dawn Yip, group operations director of the Jean Yip group. "Almost all the Cantonese and Mandarin songs were translated from Japanese in the 80s and 90s. The melodies were so beautiful it made me want to go there to study music and singing."

She was a teenager at the time, and was "very impressed with the way they do things - they're very organised and take a lot of pride in everything". Now she visits every year for work, food, the changing seasons and to practise the Japanese she learned in school. "It's the aesthetics, the way they carry themselves and behave."

Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash

"The Japanese believe in eating well and in doing your work well, whether you're a bus driver, waiter or business owner. It's about treating the environment and people with respect - this attitude is why I love Japan."

Take a bowl of ramen, says Mr Lin. "It's simple, comfort food but presented with care. The char siu slices, spring onions, egg, squirt of garlic oil. They have their own position in the bowl like planets in the universe - they don't overlap. It may be a 500 yen product but the person doing it is giving a 1000 yen effort, making sure everything is in its rightful place.

A bak chor mee hawker is not going to say, 'I'll put the minced meat here, fish balls there'. It's a $3 dish and a $3 effort. It's not a bad thing. It's our culture. We were not raised to pay attention to detail, or to take pride in trivial or simple tasks. The Japanese are. It's something we can learn from them."

Photo by Sofia Monteiro on Unsplash

Not a single person we spoke to can imagine the obsession with Japan abating any time soon. Come hell or high water (and occasional typhoon), we'll be there. So, see you desu neh?

Full Article : businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/our-japanese-obsession

#japan #japanese #japanese culture

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muddyorbsblr · 2 years ago

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the 5-day Holy All-Weekender Agenda

(there ain’t nothing holy about this agenda let’s be real, sorry Jesus)

I don’t usually publish my all-weekender agenda but I figured it’d be fun since this is an exceptionally long weekend and I got a lot planned (and I need to post it somewhere to kind of hold myself accountable y’know?)

So anyways…here it is…tadaaaaa…

write & post: ‘why him?’

catch up on Hostile F*cks (Holy Orders: Mercy & Final Bids) by @lokisgoodgirl

read Spring Heat by @joyful-enchantress

progress reading Dreams of the Deadly by Adelaide Forrest

progress sorting through my watch queue backlog on YouTube (this is a whole thing I won’t get into but it’s a doozy let’s leave it there)

phase 2 planning for ‘fitting the profile’

start writing ‘relinquish the crown’ season 1B (maybe ‘from a world away’ will go up this weekend too who knows)

work on consolidating my book TBR

work on updating the Tumblr TBR

clean my lil writing/reading nook (it’s a MESS)

fix my shower corner because that is ALSO a mess 🫠

And by the time that’s finished it’ll be Monday evening and I’ll have to go back to the land of the 9-5 🥴🫡

#agenda #long weekend #let’s see how many of these i actually get to do

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copper-wasps · 1 year ago

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pop off, dude had no right to try and grab yall, enjoy your memory cards

The camera cuts on, the video feed showing the same bland motel room from before. The faded blue paint and drab gray carpet, emboldened by the dying light of sunset filtering through the old curtains. The constant shifting and angle suggests someone is holding the camera- Adelaide, it seems, given she isn’t on screen.

“Yeah, she went off, alright.” Her voice sounds close to the speakers, the video zooming in to focus more clearly on the other girl in the room.

Lorelei sits on the edge of one of the beds, a ziplock bag full of ice held over her right hand. She rolls her eyes at Adelaide’s comment, giving her a look that can only be described as, ‘So what?’.

“Don’t give me that look. I thanked you once we got back, didn’t I?” Adelaide’s voice huffs, zooming back out as she walks across the room- the angle lowers, the squeak of springs making it obvious she’d taken a seat on the other bed, “I’m just worried about the trouble that might cause us, is all. What if he goes to the police? He might’ve caught the license plate on camera as we drove off.”

Lorelei huffs out an exasperated sigh, setting her bag of ice aside- the knuckles of her right hand black and purple with bruises, raw patches showing where she’d split a couple of the knuckles open. She reaches over for her whiteboard and marker on the nightstand, scribbling down a response before turning it around to face Adelaide and the camera.

-First off, he should’ve kept his hands to himself, it was deserved. Second, good thing its not our car.-

Adelaide sounds rather miffed when she speaks again after reading the message, “No, but it is Rose’s car! The last thing we need is the police coming after us for assault and auto theft.”

Lorelei only rolls her eyes in response, waving her uninjured hand in a gesture akin to, ‘Yeah yeah, whatever.’.

Adelaide sighs, falling quiet for a moment before she speaks again to ask another question, “Where did you even learn to punch like that anyway? Cause I’m pretty sure you broke his jaw.”

Lorelei lays her whiteboard down in her lap, erasing it with the edge of her shirt before writing down her response, taking longer this time before she finally holds up the board again.

-My dad. I got bullied a lot in middle school, and he wanted me to know how to defend myself before I started high school. That dickhead wasn’t the first person I’ve had to slug like that, so I guess the lessons came in handy.-

Adelaide seems to pause for a moment after reading that response, before asking a bit slower this time, “So…your dad taught you how to throw a punch like the one he threw at my dad in that one entry?”

A smirk crosses Lorelei’s face as Adelaide says it, quickly erasing what she’d written down to scribble out something new,

-He sure did. Wanna recreate it? I can’t yell at you, but I can still punch you.-

Adelaide reads that and snorts out a short laugh, the video jostling ever so slightly as she does so, “No thanks, I just healed up from falling down that cliff. I don’t need anymore bruises.”

Lorelei cracks a small grin at that, giving an easy shrug as she cleans off her whiteboard and sets it aside on the bed, resting the marker on top.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go take a shower- try not to punch anyone else in the meantime, Rocky.” Adelaide tells her as she stands up, the camera following the movement with a slight blur to the image.

It barely catches the way Lorelei shoots the other girl a bird before the video cuts off.

#marble hornets #alternate universe #jay merrick #tim wright #ask blog #answered asks

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realfreshcleaning · 1 month ago

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Gutter Cleaning in Adelaide: Keep Your Home Safe and Sound

Gutters play an essential role in protecting your home from water damage by directing rainwater away from your roof and foundation. However, they’re often one of the most neglected parts of home maintenance. Without regular cleaning, gutters can quickly become clogged with leaves, twigs, and other debris, leading to blockages that prevent water from flowing correctly. That's where professional gutter cleaning services in Adelaide come into play.

Why Gutter Cleaning is Essential for Homes

In Adelaide, especially during autumn, fallen leaves can build up in gutters, resulting in blockages that make it impossible for rainwater to drain away properly. This buildup can cause several issues for homeowners:

Water Damage: When water overflows from blocked gutters, it can leak into your walls and foundation, leading to costly repairs.

Pest Infestations: Clogged gutters are an ideal breeding ground for pests, including mosquitoes, ants, and even rodents. By keeping your gutters clear, you reduce the risk of unwanted pests.

Roof Damage: Stagnant water in your gutters can cause them to become heavy and eventually pull away from your roof, damaging both your gutters and your roof itself.

These issues can be easily avoided with regular gutter cleaning. Ensuring your gutters are clear will protect your home and save you money in the long run.

Why Choose Professional Gutter Cleaning in Adelaide?

While some homeowners may consider gutter cleaning a DIY job, there are many benefits to choosing a professional service like Real Fresh Cleaning.

Safety: Gutter cleaning requires climbing ladders and working at heights, which can be risky without the proper equipment and experience. Our trained team handles the job safely, so you don't have to worry about any accidents.

Thorough Cleaning: Our professional team ensures a deep clean by removing all debris and thoroughly flushing out your gutters. We check for any existing damage or blockages that might have gone unnoticed.

Preventative Maintenance: When you hire Real Fresh Cleaning, our team inspects your gutters and downspouts for any signs of wear or potential issues. This helps catch small problems before they become big, costly repairs.

Saves Time: With our expertise and professional equipment, we get the job done quickly and efficiently. This allows you to spend your weekends doing the things you enjoy, while we take care of your gutters.

How Often Should You Have Your Gutters Cleaned?

The frequency of gutter cleaning depends on several factors, including the number of trees near your home and the local weather conditions. In general, Adelaide homeowners should aim to clean their gutters at least twice a year, typically in early spring and late autumn. If you have a lot of trees around your property, consider having your gutters checked more frequently to ensure they stay clear and functional.

Real Fresh Cleaning: Your Trusted Gutter Cleaning Service in Adelaide

At Real Fresh Cleaning, we understand the importance of keeping your gutters in top condition. Our gutter cleaning services in Adelaide are designed to prevent blockages, water damage, and other issues associated with clogged gutters. We provide a comprehensive cleaning solution that will leave your gutters free-flowing and ready to handle any rainfall.

Our team uses high-quality equipment and techniques to deliver the best results. We pride ourselves on our attention to detail and commitment to customer satisfaction. Whether you need a one-time cleaning or regular maintenance, we’re here to help.

Get in Touch Today Protect your home with professional gutter cleaning from Real Fresh Cleaning. We offer reliable and efficient gutter cleaning services in Adelaide to ensure your home remains safe from water damage and other gutter-related issues. Schedule your cleaning today for a hassle-free experience and peace of mind.

#Real Fresh Cleaning

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bluebins12 · 2 months ago

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Adelaide Skip Bin Hire

Here at Blue Bins, we help you reduce your environmental impact and make it easy for you to integrate recycling into your rubbish removal process. Our mini skips Adelaide are the perfect size to suit your domestic waste removal needs, allowing you to throw away your trash properly and with peace of mind. Whether you’re moving out, moving in, remodelling or simply having a spring clean, you can complete your project with convenience by arranging for our mini skips Adelaide to be delivered to your door.

#Adelaide Skip Bin Hire

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adelaideclean · 3 months ago

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Cleaning And Maintaining Outdoor Seating Areas For Restaurants

A restaurant's outside sitting area frequently makes an impression. A neat, welcoming atmosphere can greatly improve the dining experience, but it takes constant work to keep it going.

Here's a guide to help you maintain the best possible condition for your outside space:

Everyday Maintenance

Sweep and Clear: Take a few minutes each day to remove leaves, trash, and litter. Eliminate any leftover food or spills right away to keep bugs away.

Wipe Down Surfaces: Use a light disinfectant to clean tables, chairs, and other furniture. Be mindful of high-touch regions such as tabletops and armrests.

Check Umbrellas: Make sure umbrellas open smoothly and are firmly fastened. In order to get rid of stains and filth, clean them often.

Keep an eye on flooring: Check your outdoor flooring frequently for damage or discolouration. Deal with problems right away to stop things from getting worse.

Deep Cleaning

Consider hiring a commercial cleaning in Adelaide for the following services -

Pressure Washing: Use a pressure washer to thoroughly clean your outside space and get rid of tough dirt and grime.

Examine the furniture for damage, worn cushions, and loose screws. As necessary, replace or repair.

Plant Care: To keep your area feeling new and welcoming, water and care for your outdoor plants.

Control of pests: Take proactive steps to keep vermin, flies, and ants under control.

Seasonal Upkeep

Winter Preparations: Cover or store outdoor furniture and equipment to shield it from inclement weather.

Spring Refresh: After winter, give the whole place a thorough cleaning, paying special attention to getting rid of mould, mildew, and winter detritus.

Summer Readiness: Make sure that all of your shade structures, including awnings and umbrellas, are ready for the upcoming heat wave.

Fall Cleanup: Get ready for winter by raking leaves and other debris from your yard and storing any outdoor furniture that won't weather the cold.

Additional Tips

Employee Training: Make sure your employees are knowledgeable about cleaning procedures and capable of handling spills or messes from customers.

Customer Comfort: To improve the customer experience, provide outside amenities such as heaters, fans, or blankets depending on the weather.

Frequent Inspections: Find possible problems early on by conducting routine inspections.

Sustainability: To reduce your impact on the environment, use eco-friendly cleaning products whenever possible.

Adhering to these principles can keep your outdoor dining area neat and welcoming, improving client happiness and your restaurant's appeal. Hiring Adelaide Professional Cleaning Services is crucial to maintaining the cleanliness of your outdoor seating area. Remember that a clean and well-kept exterior area can make a big difference in your restaurant's overall success.

#Adelaide Professional Cleaning Services #Commercial Cleaning Adelaide #Adelaide Commercial Cleaning Services

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amcsupplies · 4 months ago

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Transform Your Home with These Candle Fragrance Oils

For a very long time, people have loved candles for their capacity to set the tone, bring back memories, and create ambience. The fragrances they release are equally as magical as their flickering flames. The undiscovered components that completely transform the ambience of your house are candle fragrance oils. Knowing the power of fragrance oils is essential whether you're making personalised candles or just adding lovely scents to your living area.

What are Candle Fragrance Oils?

Candle fragrance oils are concentrated liquids specifically designed to add scent to candles. They are specially crafted to ensure a balanced and long-lasting aroma when the candle burns. These oils come in a wide range of scents, from floral and fruity to woody and exotic, suitable for every preference and occasion.

Choosing the Right Fragrance Oil

Selecting the perfect candle fragrance oil is like choosing a perfume for your home. Consider the mood you wish to create in each room:

Adelaide candle making supplies offer a variety of fragrance oils that capture the essence of different seasons and emotions. For a cosy winter evening, opt for warm vanilla or spicy cinnamon. In spring, fresh floral scents like lavender or jasmine can breathe new life into your space.

When crafting personalised candles, think about the recipient's personality and preferences. A scented candle tailored to their tastes not only shows thoughtfulness but also ensures they will enjoy it to the fullest.

Crafting Personalised Candles with Adelaide Moulding and Candle Supplies

In Adelaide, enthusiasts and artisans a like turn to Adelaide moulding and candle supplies for top-quality ingredients to create their Own signature candles. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned crafter, having access to a wide array of candle fragrance oils is essential. These oils are designed to blend seamlessly with various waxes, ensuring a consistent scent throw and longevity.

Enhancing Your Home's Ambiance

Scented candles Australia-wide are cherished for their ability to transform spaces. Beyond their visual appeal, they infuse rooms with captivating aromas that evoke memories and emotions. Here's how you can use candle fragrance oils to enhance different areas of your home:

Living Room: Opt for inviting scents like citrus or sandalwood to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere for guests.

Bedroom: Choose relaxing scents such as lavender or chamomile to promote restful sleep and relaxation.

Bathroom: Fresh and clean scents like ocean breeze or eucalyptus can make your bathroom feel like a luxurious spa retreat.

The Art of Scent Layering

For those who enjoy experimenting with scents, scented candles Australia offers endless possibilities for layering fragrances. By strategically placing different candles with complementary scents throughout your home, you can create a multi-dimensional olfactory experience. For example, pairing a floral candle with a citrus one can evoke a garden in bloom, while mixing vanilla with spice can evoke warmth and comfort.

Benefits Beyond Aesthetics

Aside from their aromatic qualities, scented candles can also have therapeutic benefits. Certain fragrances, such as lavender or bergamot, are known for their stress-relieving properties. By incorporating these scents into your daily life, you can create a more tranquil and harmonious environment.

Conclusion

Candle fragrance oils are more than just additives; they are essential tools for transforming your living space into a sanctuary of scent. Whether you're creating personalised candles for loved ones or simply indulging in a bit of self-care, choosing the right fragrance oils is crucial. With the wide selection available from Adelaide moulding and candle supplies, you can explore endless combinations and create a home that not only looks beautiful but also smells divine. Embrace the magic of scents and discover how scented candles in Australia can enhance your everyday life.

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adelaideprofessional · 8 months ago

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Revitalize Your Sleep Environment with Expert Mattress Cleaning in Adelaide

Are you struggling to get a good night's sleep? Your mattress could be the culprit. Over time, mattresses accumulate dust mites, allergens, and other pollutants that can affect your sleep quality and overall health. That's where Adelaide Professional Cleaning Services comes in with our specialized mattress cleaning solutions tailored for Adelaide residents.

Our professional mattress cleaning services in Adelaide are designed to deep clean and sanitize your mattress, ensuring a healthier sleep environment for you and your family. With our state-of-the-art equipment and eco-friendly cleaning products, we can effectively remove dirt, dust, stains, and allergens, leaving your mattress fresh and rejuvenated.

Why choose Adelaide Professional Cleaning Services for your mattress cleaning needs? Firstly, we understand the unique cleaning requirements of different mattress types, whether it's memory foam, latex, or traditional spring mattresses. Secondly, our experienced team is trained to handle even the toughest stains and odors, restoring your mattress to its pristine condition.

By investing in regular mattress cleaning in Adelaide, you're not only improving your sleep quality but also prolonging the lifespan of your mattress. Plus, a clean mattress contributes to a healthier indoor environment, reducing the risk of allergies and respiratory issues.Don't let a dirty mattress disrupt your sleep any longer. Contact Adelaide Professional Cleaning Services today for expert mattress cleaning in Adelaide, and experience the difference a clean mattress can make to your overall well-being.

#mattress cleaning in Adelaide

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hellsitesonlybookclub · 10 months ago

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It can't happen here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 1-2

THE handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies' Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.

Here in Vermont the affair was not so picturesque as it might have been on the Western prairies. Oh, it had its points: there was a skit in which Medary Cole (grist mill & feed store) and Louis Rotenstern (custom tailoring—pressing & cleaning) announced that they were those historic Vermonters, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, and with their jokes about imaginary plural wives they got in ever so many funny digs at the ladies present. But the occasion was essentially serious. All of America was serious now, after the seven years of depression since 1929. It was just long enough after the Great War of 1914-18 for the young people who had been born in 1917 to be ready to go to college... or to another war, almost any old war that might be handy.

The features of this night among the Rotarians were nothing funny, at least not obviously funny, for they were the patriotic addresses of Brigadier General Herbert Y. Edgeways, U.S.A. (ret.), who dealt angrily with the topic "Peace through Defense—Millions for Arms but Not One Cent for Tribute," and of Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch— she who was no more renowned for her gallant anti-suffrage campaigning way back in 1919 than she was for having, during the Great War, kept the American soldiers entirely out of French cafés by the clever trick of sending them ten thousand sets of dominoes.

Nor could any social-minded patriot sneeze at her recent somewhat unappreciated effort to maintain the purity of the American Home by barring from the motion-picture industry all persons, actors or directors or cameramen, who had: (a) ever been divorced; (b) been born in any foreign country—except Great Britain, since Mrs. Gimmitch thought very highly of Queen Mary, or (c) declined to take an oath to revere the Flag, the Constitution, the Bible, and all other peculiarly American institutions.

The Annual Ladies' Dinner was a most respectable gathering—the flower of Fort Beulah. Most of the ladies and more than half of the gentlemen wore evening clothes, and it was rumored that before the feast the inner circle had had cocktails, privily served in Room 289 of the hotel. The tables, arranged on three sides of a hollow square, were bright with candles, cut-glass dishes of candy and slightly tough almonds, figurines of Mickey Mouse, brass Rotary wheels, and small silk American flags stuck in gilded hard-boiled eggs. On the wall was a banner lettered "Service Before Self," and the menu—the celery, cream of tomato soup, broiled haddock, chicken croquettes, peas, and tutti-frutti ice-cream—was up to the highest standards of the Hotel Wessex.

They were all listening, agape. General Edgeways was completing his manly yet mystical rhapsody on nationalism:

"... for these U-nited States, a-lone among the great powers, have no desire for foreign conquest. Our highest ambition is to be darned well let alone! Our only gen-uine relationship to Europe is in our arduous task of having to try and educate the crass and ignorant masses that Europe has wished onto us up to something like a semblance of American culture and good manners. But, as I explained to you, we must be prepared to defend our shores against all the alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves 'governments,' and that with such feverish envy are always eyeing our inexhaustible mines, our towering forests, our titanic and luxurious cities, our fair and far-flung fields.

"For the first time in all history, a great nation must go on arming itself more and more, not for conquest—not for jealousy— not for war—but for peace! Pray God it may never be necessary, but if foreign nations don't sharply heed our warning, there will, as when the proverbial dragon's teeth were sowed, spring up an armed and fearless warrior upon every square foot of these United States, so arduously cultivated and defended by our pioneer fathers, whose sword-girded images we must be... or we shall perish!"

The applause was cyclonic. "Professor" Emil Staubmeyer, the superintendent of schools, popped up to scream, "Three cheers for the General—hip, hip, hooray!"

All the audience made their faces to shine upon the General and Mr. Staubmeyer—all save a couple of crank pacifist women, and one Doremus Jessup, editor of the Fort Beulah Daily Informer, locally considered "a pretty smart fella but kind of a cynic," who whispered to his friend the Reverend Mr. Falck, "Our pioneer fathers did rather of a skimpy job in arduously cultivating some of the square feet in Arizona!"

Seething with the notion, she got herself clear into the office of the Quartermaster General, but that stuffy machine-minded official refused her (or, really, refused the poor lads, so lonely there in the mud), muttering in a cowardly way some foolishness about lack of transport for canaries. It is said that her eyes flashed real fire, and that she faced the Jack-in-office like Joan of Arc with eyeglasses while she "gave him a piece of her mind that he never forgot!"

The culminating glory of the dinner was the address of Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, known throughout the country as "the Unkies' Girl," because during the Great War she had advocated calling our boys in the A.E.F. "the Unkies." She hadn't merely given them dominoes; indeed her first notion had been far more imaginative. She wanted to send to every soldier at the Front a canary in a cage. Think what it would have meant to them in the way of companionship and inducing memories of home and mother! A dear little canary! And who knows—maybe you could train 'em to hunt cooties!

In those good days women really had a chance. They were encouraged to send their menfolks, or anybody else's menfolks, off to war. Mrs. Gimmitch addressed every soldier she met—and she saw to it that she met any of them who ventured within two blocks of her—as "My own dear boy." It is fabled that she thus saluted a colonel of marines who had come up from the ranks and who answered, "We own dear boys are certainly getting a lot of mothers these days. Personally, I'd rather have a few more mistresses." And the fable continues that she did not stop her remarks on the occasion, except to cough, for one hour and seventeen minutes, by the Colonel's wrist watch.

But her social services were not all confined to prehistoric eras. It was as recently as 1935 that she had taken up purifying the films, and before that she had first advocated and then fought Prohibition. She had also (since the vote had been forced on her) been a Republican Committee-woman in 1932, and sent to President Hoover daily a lengthy telegram of advice.

And, though herself unfortunately childless, she was esteemed as a lecturer and writer about Child Culture, and she was the author of a volume of nursery lyrics, including the immortal couplet:

But always, 1917 or 1936, she was a raging member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

All of the Roundies are resting in rows,

With roundy-roundies around their toes.

The D.A.R. (reflected the cynic, Doremus Jessup, that evening) is a somewhat confusing organization—as confusing as Theosophy, Relativity, or the Hindu Vanishing Boy Trick, all three of which it resembles. It is composed of females who spend one half their waking hours boasting of being descended from the seditious American colonists of 1776, and the other and more ardent half in attacking all contemporaries who believe in precisely the principles for which those ancestors struggled.

The D.A.R. (reflected Doremus) has become as sacrosanct, as beyond criticism, as even the Catholic Church or the Salvation Army. And there is this to be said: it has provided hearty and innocent laughter for the judicious, since it has contrived to be just as ridiculous as the unhappily defunct Kuklux Klan, without any need of wearing, like the K.K.K., high dunces' caps and public nightshirts.

So, whether Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch was called in to inspire military morale, or to persuade Lithuanian choral societies to begin their program with "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," always she was a D.A.R., and you could tell it as you listened to her with the Fort Beulah Rotarians on this happy May evening.

She was short, plump, and pert of nose. Her luxuriant gray hair (she was sixty now, just the age of the sarcastic editor, Doremus Jessup) could be seen below her youthful, floppy Leghorn hat; she wore a silk print dress with an enormous string of crystal beads, and pinned above her ripe bosom was an orchid among lilies of the valley. She was full of friendliness toward all the men present: she wriggled at them, she cuddled at them, as in a voice full of flute sounds and chocolate sauce she poured out her oration on "How You Boys Can Help Us Girls."

Women, she pointed out, had done nothing with the vote. If the United States had only listened to her back in 1919 she could have saved them all this trouble. No. Certainly not. No votes. In fact, Woman must resume her place in the Home and: "As that great author and scientist, Mr. Arthur Brisbane, has pointed out, what every woman ought to do is to have six children."

At this second there was a shocking, an appalling interruption.

One Lorinda Pike, widow of a notorious Unitarian preacher, was the manager of a country super-boarding-house that called itself "The Beulah Valley Tavern." She was a deceptively Madonna-like, youngish woman, with calm eyes, smooth chestnut hair parted in the middle, and a soft voice often colored with laughter. But on a public platform her voice became brassy, her eyes filled with embarrassing fury. She was the village scold, the village crank. She was constantly poking into things that were none of her business, and at town meetings she criticized every substantial interest in the whole county: the electric company's rates, the salaries of the schoolteachers, the Ministerial Association's high-minded censorship of books for the public library. Now, at this moment when everything should have been all Service and Sunshine, Mrs. Lorinda Pike cracked the spell by jeering:

"Three cheers for Brisbane! But what if a poor gal can't hook a man? Have her six kids out of wedlock?"

Then the good old war horse, Gimmitch, veteran of a hundred campaigns against subversive Reds, trained to ridicule out of existence the cant of Socialist hecklers and turn the laugh against them, swung into gallant action:

"My dear good woman, if a gal, as you call it, has any real charm and womanliness, she won't have to 'hook' a man—she'll find 'em lined up ten deep on her doorstep!" (Laughter and applause.)

The lady hoodlum had merely stirred Mrs. Gimmitch into noble passion. She did not cuddle at them now. She tore into it:

"I tell you, my friends, the trouble with this whole country is that so many are SELFISH! Here's a hundred and twenty million people, with ninety-five per cent of 'em only thinking of SELF, instead of turning to and helping the responsible business men to bring back prosperity! All these corrupt and self-seeking labor unions! Money grubbers! Thinking only of how much wages they can extort out of their unfortunate employer, with all the responsibilities he has to bear!

"What this country needs is Discipline! Peace is a great dream, but maybe sometimes it's only a pipe dream! I'm not so sure—now this will shock you, but I want you to listen to one woman who will tell you the unadulterated hard truth instead of a lot of sentimental taffy, and I'm not sure but that we need to be in a real war again, in order to learn Discipline! We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning. That's good enough in its way, but isn't it, after all, just a nice toy for grownups? No, what we all of us must have, if this great land is going to go on maintaining its high position among the Congress of Nations, is Discipline—Will Power—Character!"

She turned prettily then toward General Edgeways and laughed:

"You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General—just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns—'fess up! With your great experience, don't you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps—just maybe—when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes, so that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne'er-do-weels, then maybe, to save their lazy souls and get some iron into them, a war might be a good thing? Come on, now, tell your real middle name, Mong General!"

Dramatically she sat down, and the sound of clapping filled the room like a cloud of downy feathers. The crowd bellowed, "Come on, General! Stand up!" and "She's called your bluff—what you got?" or just a tolerant, "Attaboy, Gen!"

The General was short and globular, and his red face was smooth as a baby's bottom and adorned with white-gold-framed spectacles. But he had the military snort and a virile chuckle.

"Well, sir!" he guffawed, on his feet, shaking a chummy forefinger at Mrs. Gimmitch, "since you folks are bound and determined to drag the secrets out of a poor soldier, I better confess that while I do abhor war, yet there are worse things. Ah, my friends, far worse! A state of so-called peace, in which labor organizations are riddled, as by plague germs, with insane notions out of anarchistic Red Russia! A state in which college professors, newspapermen, and notorious authors are secretly promulgating these same seditious attacks on the grand old Constitution! A state in which, as a result of being fed with these mental drugs, the People are flabby, cowardly, grasping, and lacking in the fierce pride of the warrior! No, such a state is far worse than war at its most monstrous!

"I guess maybe some of the things I said in my former speech were kind of a little bit obvious and what we used to call 'old hat' when my brigade was quartered in England. About the United States only wanting peace, and freedom from all foreign entanglements. No! What I'd really like us to do would be to come out and tell the whole world: 'Now you boys never mind about the moral side of this. We have power, and power is its own excuse!'

"I don't altogether admire everything Germany and Italy have done, but you've got to hand it to 'em, they've been honest enough and realistic enough to say to the other nations, 'Just tend to your own business, will you? We've got strength and will, and for whomever has those divine qualities it's not only a right, it's a DUTY, to use 'em!' Nobody in God's world ever loved a weakling— including that weakling himself!

"And I've got good news for you! This gospel of clean and aggressive strength is spreading everywhere in this country among the finest type of youth. Why today, in 1936, there's less than 7 per cent of collegiate institutions that do not have military-training units under discipline as rigorous as the Nazis, and where once it was forced upon them by the authorities, now it is the strong young men and women who themselves demand the RIGHT to be trained in warlike virtues and skill—for, mark you, the girls, with their instruction in nursing and the manufacture of gas masks and the like, are becoming every whit as zealous as their brothers. And all the really THINKING type of professors are right with 'em!

"Why, here, as recently as three years ago, a sickeningly big percentage of students were blatant pacifists, wanting to knife their own native land in the dark. But now, when the shameless fools and the advocates of Communism try to hold pacifist meetings— why, my friends, in the past five months, since January first, no less than seventy-six such exhibitionistic orgies have been raided by their fellow students, and no less than fifty-nine disloyal Red students have received their just deserts by being beaten up so severely that never again will they raise in this free country the bloodstained banner of anarchism! That, my friends, is news!"

"Look here, Mr. Edgeways, if you think you can get away with this sadistic nonsense without—"

As the General sat down, amid ecstasies of applause, the village trouble maker, Mrs. Lorinda Pike, leaped up and again interrupted the love feast:

She got no farther. Francis Tasbrough, the quarry owner, the most substantial industrialist in Fort Beulah, stood grandly up, quieted Lorinda with an outstretched arm, and rumbled in his Jerusalem-the-Golden basso, "A moment please, my dear lady! All of us here locally have got used to your political principles. But as chairman, it is my unfortunate duty to remind you that General Edgeways and Mrs. Gimmitch have been invited by the club to address us, whereas you, if you will excuse my saying so, are not even related to any Rotarian but merely here as the guest of the Reverend Falck, than whom there is no one whom we more honor. So, if you will be so good—Ah, I thank you, madame!"

Lorinda Pike had slumped into her chair with her fuse still burning. Mr. Francis Tasbrough (it rhymed with "low") did not slump; he sat like the Archbishop of Canterbury on the archiepiscopal throne.

And Doremus Jessup popped up to soothe them all, being an intimate of Lorinda, and having, since milkiest boyhood, chummed with and detested Francis Tasbrough.

This Doremus Jessup, publisher of the Daily Informer, for all that he was a competent business man and a writer of editorials not without wit and good New England earthiness, was yet considered the prime eccentric of Fort Beulah. He was on the school board, the library board, and he introduced people like Oswald Garrison Villard, Norman Thomas, and Admiral Byrd when they came to town lecturing.

Jessup was a littlish man, skinny, smiling, well tanned, with a small gray mustache, a small and well-trimmed gray beard—in a community where to sport a beard was to confess one's self a farmer, a Civil War veteran, or a Seventh Day Adventist. Doremus's detractors said that he maintained the beard just to be "highbrow" and "different," to try to appear "artistic." Possibly they were right. Anyway, he skipped up now and murmured:

"Well, all the birdies in their nest agree. My friend, Mrs. Pike, ought to know that freedom of speech becomes mere license when it goes so far as to criticize the Army, differ with the D.A.R., and advocate the rights of the Mob. So, Lorinda, I think you ought to apologize to the General, to whom we should be grateful for explaining to us what the ruling classes of the country really want. Come on now, my friend—jump up and make your excuses."

He was looking down on Lorinda with sternness, yet Medary Cole, president of Rotary, wondered if Doremus wasn't "kidding" them. He had been known to. Yes—no—he must be wrong, for Mrs. Lorinda Pike was (without rising) caroling, "Oh yes! I do apologize, General! Thank you for your revelatory speech!"

The General raised his plump hand (with a Masonic ring as well as a West Point ring on the sausage-shaped fingers); he bowed like Galahad or a head-waiter; he shouted with parade-ground maleness: "Not at all, not at all, madame! We old campaigners never mind a healthy scrap. Glad when anybody's enough interested in our fool ideas to go and get sore at us, huh, huh, huh!"

And everybody laughed and sweetness reigned. The program wound up with Louis Rotenstern's singing of a group of patriotic ditties: "Marching through Georgia" and "Tenting on the Old Campground" and "Dixie" and "Old Black Joe" and "I'm Only a Poor Cowboy and I Know I Done Wrong."

Louis Rotenstern was by all of Fort Beulah classed as a "good fellow," a caste just below that of "real, old-fashioned gentleman." Doremus Jessup liked to go fishing with him, and partridge-hunting; and he considered that no Fifth Avenue tailor could do anything tastier in the way of a seersucker outfit. But Louis was a jingo. He explained, and rather often, that it was not he nor his father who had been born in the ghetto in Prussian Poland, but his grandfather (whose name, Doremus suspected, had been something less stylish and Nordic than Rotenstern). Louis's pocket heroes were Calvin Coolidge, Leonard Wood, Dwight L. Moody, and Admiral Dewey (and Dewey was a born Vermonter, rejoiced Louis, who himself had been born in Flatbush, Long Island).

He was not only 100 per cent American; he exacted 40 per cent of chauvinistic interest on top of the principal. He was on every occasion heard to say, "We ought to keep all these foreigners out of the country, and what I mean, the Kikes just as much as the Wops and Hunkies and Chinks." Louis was altogether convinced that if the ignorant politicians would keep their dirty hands off banking and the stock exchange and hours of labor for salesmen in department stores, then everyone in the country would profit, as beneficiaries of increased business, and all of them (including the retail clerks) be rich as Aga Khan.

So Louis put into his melodies not only his burning voice of a Bydgoszcz cantor but all his nationalistic fervor, so that every one joined in the choruses, particularly Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, with her celebrated train-caller's contralto.

The dinner broke up in cataract-like sounds of happy adieux, and Doremus Jessup muttered to his goodwife Emma, a solid, kindly, worried soul, who liked knitting, solitaire, and the novels of Kathleen Norris: "Was I terrible, butting in that way?"

"Oh, no, Dormouse, you did just right. I am fond of Lorinda Pike, but why does she have to show off and parade all her silly Socialist ideas?"

"You old Tory!" said Doremus. "Don't you want to invite the Siamese elephant, the Gimmitch, to drop in and have a drink?"

"I do not!" said Emma Jessup.

And in the end, as the Rotarians shuffled and dealt themselves and their innumerable motorcars, it was Frank Tasbrough who invited the choicer males, including Doremus, home for an after-party.

CHAPTER II

AS he took his wife home and drove up Pleasant Hill to Tasbrough's, Doremus Jessup meditated upon the epidemic patriotism of General Edgeways. But he broke it off to let himself be absorbed in the hills, as it had been his habit for the fifty-three years, out of his sixty years of life, that he had spent in Fort Beulah, Vermont.

Legally a city, Fort Beulah was a comfortable village of old red brick, old granite workshops, and houses of white clapboards or gray shingles, with a few smug little modern bungalows, yellow or seal brown. There was but little manufacturing: a small woolen mill, a sash-and-door factory, a pump works. The granite which was its chief produce came from quarries four miles away; in Fort Beulah itself were only the offices... all the money... the meager shacks of most of the quarry workers. It was a town of perhaps ten thousand souls, inhabiting about twenty thousand bodies—the proportion of soul-possession may be too high.

There was but one (comparative) skyscraper in town: the six-story Tasbrough Building, with the offices of the Tasbrough & Scarlett Granite Quarries; the offices of Doremus's son-in-law, Fowler Greenhill, M.D., and his partner, old Dr. Olmsted, of Lawyer Mungo Kitterick, of Harry Kindermann, agent for maple syrup and dairying supplies, and of thirty or forty other village samurai.

It was a downy town, a drowsy town, a town of security and tradition, which still believed in Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and to which May Day was not an occasion for labor parades but for distributing small baskets of flowers.

It was a May night—late in May of 1936—with a three-quarter moon. Doremus's house was a mile from the business-center of Fort Beulah, on Pleasant Hill, which was a spur thrust like a reaching hand out from the dark rearing mass of Mount Terror. Upland meadows, moon-glistening, he could see, among the wildernesses of spruce and maple and poplar on the ridges far above him; and below, as his car climbed, was Ethan Creek flowing through the meadows. Deep woods— rearing mountain bulwarks—the air like spring-water—serene clapboarded houses that remembered the War of 1812 and the boyhoods of those errant Vermonters, Stephen A. Douglas, the "Little Giant," and Hiram Powers and Thaddeus Stevens and Brigham Young and President Chester Alan Arthur.

"No—Powers and Arthur—they were weak sisters," pondered Doremus. "But Douglas and Thad Stevens and Brigham, the old stallion—I wonder if we're breeding up any paladins like those stout, grouchy old devils?—if we're producing 'em anywhere in New England?— anywhere in America?—anywhere in the world? They had guts. Independence. Did what they wanted to and thought what they liked, and everybody could go to hell. The youngsters today—Oh, the aviators have plenty of nerve. The physicists, these twenty-five-year-old Ph. D.'s that violate the inviolable atom, they're pioneers. But most of the wishy-washy young people today—Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere—not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs! Like this smug pup Malcolm Tasbrough, hanging around Sissy! Aah!

"Wouldn't it be hell if that stuffed shirt, Edgeways, and that political Mae West, Gimmitch, were right, and we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don't want on a bet!) to put some starch and git into these marionettes we call our children? Aah!

"But rats—These hills! Castle walls. And this air. They can keep their Cotswolds and Harz Mountains and Rockies! D. Jessup— topographical patriot. And I am a—"

"Dormouse, would you mind driving on the right-hand side of the road—on curves, anyway?" said his wife peaceably.

An upland hollow and mist beneath the moon—a veil of mist over apple blossoms and the heavy bloom of an ancient lilac bush beside the ruin of a farmhouse burned these sixty years and more.

He was a tall man, Tasbrough, with a yellow mustache and a monotonously emphatic voice. He was fifty-four, six years younger than Doremus Jessup, and when he had been four, Doremus had protected him from the results of his singularly unpopular habit of hitting the other small boys over the head with things—all kinds of things—sticks and toy wagons and lunch boxes and dry cow flops.

Mr. Francis Tasbrough was the president, general manager, and chief owner of the Tasbrough & Scarlett Granite Quarries, at West Beulah, four miles from "the Fort." He was rich, persuasive, and he had constant labor troubles. He lived in a new Georgian brick house on Pleasant Hill, a little beyond Doremus Jessup's, and in that house he maintained a private barroom luxurious as that of a motor company's advertising manager at Grosse Point. It was no more the traditional New England than was the Catholic part of Boston; and Frank himself boasted that, though his family had for six generations lived in New England, he was no tight Yankee but in his Efficiency, his Salesmanship, the complete Pan-American Business Executive.

Assembled in his private barroom tonight, after the Rotarian Dinner, were Frank himself, Doremus Jessup, Medary Cole, the miller, Superintendent of Schools Emil Staubmeyer, R. C. Crowley— Roscoe Conkling Crowley, the weightiest banker in Fort Beulah—and, rather surprisingly, Tasbrough's pastor, the Episcopal minister, the Rev. Mr. Falck, his old hands as delicate as porcelain, his wilderness of hair silk-soft and white, his unfleshly face betokening the Good Life. Mr. Falck came from a solid Knickerbocker family, and he had studied in Edinburgh and Oxford along with the General Theological Seminary of New York; and in all of the Beulah Valley there was, aside from Doremus, no one who more contentedly hid away in the shelter of the hills.

The barroom had been professionally interior-decorated by a young New York gentleman with the habit of standing with the back of his right hand against his hip. It had a stainless-steel bar, framed illustrations from La Vie Parisienne, silvered metal tables, and chromium-plated aluminum chairs with scarlet leather cushions.

All of them except Tasbrough, Medary Cole (a social climber to whom the favors of Frank Tasbrough were as honey and fresh ripened figs), and "Professor" Emil Staubmeyer were uncomfortable in this parrot-cage elegance, but none of them, including Mr. Falck, seemed to dislike Frank's soda and excellent Scotch or the sardine sandwiches.

"And I wonder if Thad Stevens would of liked this, either?" considered Doremus. "He'd of snarled. Old cornered catamount. But probably not at the whisky!"

"And the Jew Communists and Jew financiers plotting together to control the country. I can understand how, as a younger fellow, you could pump up a little sympathy for the unions and even for the Jews—though, as you know, I'll never get over being sore at you for taking the side of the strikers when those thugs were trying to ruin my whole business—burn down my polishing and cutting shops— why, you were even friendly with that alien murderer Karl Pascal, who started the whole strike—maybe I didn't enjoy firing him when it was all over!

"Doremus," demanded Tasbrough, "why don't you take a tumble to yourself? All these years you've had a lot of fun criticizing— always being agin the government—kidding everybody—posing as such a Liberal that you'll stand for all these subversive elements. Time for you to quit playing tag with crazy ideas and come in and join the family. These are serious times—maybe twenty-eight million on relief, and beginning to get ugly—thinking they've got a vested right now to be supported.

"But anyway, these labor racketeers are getting together now, with Communist leaders, and determined to run the country—to tell men like me how to run our business!—and just like General Edgeways said, they'll refuse to serve their country if we should happen to get dragged into some war. Yessir, a mighty serious hour, and it's time for you to cut the cackle and join the really responsible citizens."

Said Doremus, "Hm. Yes, I agree it's a serious time. With all the discontent there is in the country to wash him into office, Senator Windrip has got an excellent chance to be elected President, next November, and if he is, probably his gang of buzzards will get us into some war, just to grease their insane vanity and show the world that we're the huskiest nation going. And then I, the Liberal, and you, the Plutocrat, the bogus Tory, will be led out and shot at 3 A.M. Serious? Huh!"

"Rats! You're exaggerating!" said R. C. Crowley.

Doremus went on: "If Bishop Prang, our Savonarola in a Cadillac 16, swings his radio audience and his League of Forgotten Men to Buzz Windrip, Buzz will win. People will think they're electing him to create more economic security. Then watch the Terror! God knows there's been enough indication that we can have tyranny in America—the fix of the Southern share-croppers, the working conditions of the miners and garment-makers, and our keeping Mooney in prison so many years. But wait till Windrip shows us how to say it with machine guns! Democracy—here and in Britain and France, it hasn't been so universal a sniveling slavery as Naziism in Germany, such an imagination-hating, pharisaic materialism as Russia—even if it has produced industrialists like you, Frank, and bankers like you, R. C., and given you altogether too much power and money. On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy's given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had. That may be menaced now by Windrip—all the Windrips. All right! Maybe we'll have to fight paternal dictatorship with a little sound patricide—fight machine guns with machine guns. Wait till Buzz takes charge of us. A real Fascist dictatorship!"

"Nonsense! Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough. "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly! We're a country of freemen."

"The answer to that," suggested Doremus Jessup, "if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is 'the hell it can't!' Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees? Could Hitler's bunch, or Windrip's, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?... Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?... Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn't happen in America! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours! We're ready to start on a Children's Crusade—only of adults—right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!"

"Well, what if they are?" protested R.C. Crowley. "It might not be so bad. I don't like all these irresponsible attacks on us bankers all the time. Of course, Senator Windrip has to pretend publicly to bawl the banks out, but once he gets into power he'll give the banks their proper influence in the administration and take our expert financial advice. Yes. Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. 'Nother words, have a doctor who won't take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!"

"Yes!" said Emil Staubmeyer. "Didn't Hitler save Germany from the Red Plague of Marxism? I got cousins there. I know!"

"Hm," said Doremus, as often Doremus did say it. "Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics. I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis!"

"Think that's nice language to use in the presence of the Reverend Falck?" raged Tasbrough.

Mr. Falck piped up, "I think it's quite nice language, and an interesting suggestion, Brother Jessup!"

"Besides," said Tasbrough, "this chewing the rag is all nonsense, anyway. As Crowley says, might be a good thing to have a strong man in the saddle, but—it just can't happen here in America."

And it seemed to Doremus that the softly moving lips of the Reverend Mr. Falck were framing, "The hell it can't!"

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