#They keep delaying the delivery it's been almost a month! >:( | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thenightlymirror · 2 years ago

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Where to begin?

I’m totally fucked.

Of the 14 big monuments we had sitting in the back, some since 2021, we got three done by a local contractor I emailed personally. Then I went into Beast Mode and tried to get the grounds crew to get ready for 5 monuments when the granite company came next. Then, end of day before the delivery, I see that the foundation for the guy who’s been coming in every week, who’s father died two years ago, comes in saying “Listen I don’t want to cause a problem. I would take him to another cemetery if I could, but I can’t. Just please install his tombstone that’s already here.” I have personally issued the paperwork three times, with many pleas. And it’s not done.

I’m furious. I come in the next day, bring it to the GM, the superintendent, who has one of his main guys suspended for the week. My boss stops by and says “Oh, one of the grounds guys walked off today.” Later, in my office, she’s like, “It’s such a shame Bryan isn’t here this week, when we need him the most.” Like she didn’t piss him off and nearly get him to quit and then had to suspend him. Psycho shit. I’m running around like crazy, I find two markers that were never actually ordered because the rubbings were never submitted. I’m in the dirt, in a caved in grave, trying to do a rubbing on a caved in headstone in a caved in grave, of a young daughter’s little bunny rabbits to match for her sister’s tombstone. I get called back because they need the golf cart to cheer up some friends of a cop that got killed. I understand, but I’m just beat red, soaked in sweat, so pissed.

By the end of the day, the foundation is in. I ask the GM about the giant bench that needs to be installed. I haven’t checked that the foundation was installed with my own eyes, because I told the GM that it wasn’t done last week, and then she personally insisted they finished it after. I ask her again if it is done. I realize I don’t believe a word she says. I check. It’s not in. What the holy fuck. I cannot trust a single fucking person at this place.

The delivery never comes.

The next day I come down with some stomach illness and feel like I’ve been hit with a truck. They let me go, my trainer stays. She proceeded to have a horrible fucking day. We have a huge stack of shit to do that has been delayed because we are trying to get all these monuments and other random headstones and bronzes that have been piling behind the garage out. She gets nothing done because she keeps having new pissed off customers yelling at her at the front desk. The delivery truck arrives, insisted the foundation for that bench is there because the GM STILL INSISTS that is that case, treats her like an idiot.

The vendor got 7 monuments in. Not 5, not 4. Seven.

The trainer texts me crying on the way home. I left work at 11am. Hit the bed and slept until 4pm. She texts. I fall back asleep until 1am. I watch 30 minutes of Best in Show, sleep until 6:30.

Back behind the garage, there’s more progress than ever. You can almost see the ground. By deus ex machina, we are doing better than we ever imagined we’d be. I work slowly through the day taking stock. Drive by and sit with the coyote for a while. (I told Buck the coyote was named Junebug, after a friend of mine). I leave at 3:00 because I’m still tired. Wake up at 4am totally refreshed, finally realizing how sick I must have been.

Work through Memorial Day weekend. Only four days off this month.

Today, my trainer is finally back. It’s nice to see her. We plan to see a family in the afternoon who has the stone monument in stock, is still trying to make changes to the design, and also wanted it completed in 3 week. No. They try to cancel but realize they have no where to go, so we’re going to help them design it.

We go out to lunch. I bring my tarot cards. Her reading says that she has a precocious student who is going to inspire her toward a happily ever after. Whatever that means. Mine says that I am dreaming of escaping, either like a thief in the night, or sad, exhausted, and defeated, but in the end I stay, just barely ahead of the pack. She gets a phone call.

She’s gone for a long time on this call. I do another reading for myself, which this time is a lot more optimistic. The King of Pentacles.

She comes back to the table, her face is bright red, covered in tears. “Are you ready to go?”

“Are you okay?”

She can’t tell me what’s wrong. I ask “Did you get promoted?” She laughs. No. She says, “You can’t tell Carlene.” I have no idea what she’s talking about. It occurs to me that maybe they’re moving Carlene somewhere else to attack her boss. No. I tell her, “You know, this job. If you’re this miserable, maybe you should do something else. These days, they all add up.” They’re pulling my trainer out at the end of the week to work on something else. I’ll never be trained. Not really. We just sort of solved their emergency, and now I’m going to be one more memorialist at this location who has no idea what they’re doing.

She feels bad because I’m totally fucked. Her whole job is to coordinate and make us the best there is, and the company just doesn’t give a fuck. They just want to save money. I’m just trying to be like “No, it’s ok. You’ll be gone for a while. I’ll still call. I have Sandra. I’ll be fine.”

I give her 15 minutes in the car to just cry.

I’m getting the room ready to meet this family. She comes in. She says she can’t look at my face without crying. She leaves. The mother comes in, I’m alone, but I talk to her for a while and try to guide her through some process that I barely understand myself. The husband comes in. When the trainer comes in, it’s so obvious she’s fucking devastated. There’s two parents of a dead boy here, and she’s so fucked up.

I take the family outside to look at other monuments and explain the different engraving techniques to them. She gets a call, disappears for a long time. I come back in with the family once we decide on a few things and send her a text that we’re back in the arrangement room.

It goes well. We come up with a proof. I hand her a pillow from the couch and tell her to take off her glasses. I hit her a few times and she hits me back. Back in my office, I ask her if she needs a hug. She says no. She says she just needs to not be a baby. I have five files slapped on my desk at the end of the day for burials that need to be finalized. She’s trying to act happy when she goes, even though she’s still a wreck, which is all the more heartbreaking.

At one point, I am trying to pull up my bank account on my computer to see if I have enough money to walk out on my job, but I pause, and slow down, and get back to work.

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captainsparklefingers · 1 year ago

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AND ANOTHER THING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT REAL QUICK (I am so sorry to like the 5 people who come here for like meaningful content of any kind, it's just one of those days).

So as mentioned I've got a cold. It sucks. It's not super serious and it's not COVID or the flu but it still makes me feel like hot garbage. I don't want to go out. I don't want to do much beyond sleep, tbh. I need to eat something, but because I'm bad at food my grocery options in house are iffy and limited, and the whole 'feeling like hot garbage' is not conductive to cooking. I want soup. I do not have soup.

There is a ramen place in town that delivers and also uses Uber eats. Ramen would be good. It has soup AND noodles, so best of both worlds! But ordering food is expensive. Ordering delivery even more so. And did I impulsively buy a few things off Etsy earlier today (specifically two silicone molds for resin projects that I can't use because I don't have a pressure pot and it's almost winter and an expensive yet very pretty enamel pin of vex and vax for my pin board), even though I told myself I was gonna be really good and do very little fun spending this month, so impulsively getting delivery ramen would be a stupid idea.

I could make pasta. I have pasta! Pasta is good. But what nutritional value does it give me when sick beyond 'delicious carbs'? Not much. And did I eat some cake earlier that I absolutely should not have? You bet I did! I make great life choices, folks!

I have yogurt....I can probably just have that, yogurt is fine and good. And it's also not what I want.

Am I gonna just delay making any sort of decision? Probably. Is there a good chance that, out of laziness, I may just eat nothing or just have like some toast? Yes. Is any of this healthy? Nope, but here we are.

This has been 'stupid meaningless first world problems' with me, Sarah, who is using her Tumblr to basically rant into an empty void because it's better to do that than to keep all the thoughts in my head.

#don't mind me i'm just rambling #and I'm a mess #and I should really work on getting my shit together more #i mean I'm a fucking grown ass woman why am I like this

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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Over the past 16 months, perhaps the most discussed aspect of Washington’s policy toward Ukraine has been whether or not the U.S. Congress will continue providing Kyiv with weapons. The question has dominated the news and opinion pages for good reason: There is a loud but vocal minority, particularly among Republicans, that has promised either to increase scrutiny of Ukraine aid or to cut it off entirely. After this month’s deal on the debt limit, these calls have only intensified. The threat of an end to aid has raised the stakes for Ukraine’s nascent counteroffensive, too. Given that the United States is far and away the largest and most important military donor to Ukraine, any move to curtail military supplies would have profound consequences for the war.

And yet, the intense focus on the congressional political dimension overshadows several other, arguably more important aspects of Washington’s Ukraine strategy. As any war college student can rattle off, good strategy comes down to the alignment of ends, ways, and means. Put another way, good strategy involves clearly defining your objectives (ends), developing practical methods to accomplish them (ways), and then allocating sufficient resources (means) to turn these objectives and methods into reality. The debate over congressional support for Ukraine aid largely revolves around means. But what of the other two legs of the strategic triad?

Almost a year and a half into the war, the United States’ objectives—its ends—in Ukraine remain nebulous. While President Joe Biden is fond of saying that the United States will back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” he and his administration have been notably mute on defining what, exactly, “it” is. Instead, Biden has framed the outcome only in the negative: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.” More often, the United States publicly defers to Ukraine about its ultimate goals in its war. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, “In terms of the goals and objectives of Ukraine’s campaign, we’ll let the Ukrainians decide … what that will be.”

While this deference is understandable, perhaps even admirable—the Ukrainians, after all, are the ones dying, and should therefore set the terms for peace—the lack of the full-throated commitment to an outright Ukrainian victory over Russia has led to a tepid and, at times, even counterproductive approach to the second element of a sound strategy: the ways for reaching the ultimate objective. Whenever Ukraine asks for a weapons system, for example, a similar narrative has played out, time and time again. At first, the United States refuses, citing a mixture of operational and escalation concerns. Then, public pressure builds. Eventually, the United States changes course, but only after much delay. The most recent example was whether or not to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter aircraft, but the decisions about everything from M1 Abrams tanks to Patriot missile defense systems have followed a similar pattern.

Some degree of U.S. foot-dragging during the first few weeks of the war was, perhaps, understandable—back then, policymakers were still figuring out how the Ukrainians would fight. But slow-rolling deliveries has become less defensible the longer the conflict has gone on. Many of the initial, operational reasons for withholding certain weapons—like the idea that Ukrainian forces couldn’t be trained quickly enough on those systems—have been repeatedly disproved. Ukraine has shown that it can both rapidly master complex systems, like Patriot missiles, and also use them to great effect.

The preoccupation with escalation—another common line deployed when refusing weapons—is even more flawed. For starters, the idea that withholding weapons will somehow limit escalation and keep the war more contained and less deadly is questionable. True, Russia has not used nuclear weapons, but there are plenty of reasons Russia would not want to resort to them. And Western restraint has produced little Russian response in kind. Russia still tried to freeze, and then flood, Ukrainian civilians into submission; it has also engaged in widespread torture and shown no willingness to negotiate about anything other than Ukraine’s capitulation.

At the same time, when, after much hemming and hawing, the United States did provide Patriot missiles, M1 Abrams tanks, and now F-16 training to the Ukrainians, such actions did not spark the uncontrollable escalation cycle some had feared. As one might expect, Russia targeted these systems, like it would any valuable piece of military hardware, but so far its targeting has been unsuccessful. For the most part, the war has continued much the same as before—as a grinding war of attrition.

What’s more, the strategy of doling out weapons systems one at a time and with much delay has never made logical sense. If the idea was to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russia itself, Ukraine has never needed sophisticated Western equipment to do that. Ukraine has already, allegedly, conducted strikes inside Russia with old Soviet helicopters, non-U.S. drones, and cross-border raids. And why should the United States and its Western allies be so concerned about Ukraine attacking in Russia, anyhow? Russia may indeed retaliate. But the costs of any such retaliation would likely be borne by Ukraine—not by the United States and its allies. And it’s noteworthy that countries far closer to Russia and more vulnerable to Russian retaliation—such as Poland, Finland, or the Baltics—are all doubling down on their military commitments to Ukraine.

Moreover, if Washington wants to put Ukraine in the “best possible position” to negotiate an end to the war, then there is a need to reestablish deterrence. Russia must be convinced not only that further aggression is futile, but that continuing aggression would come at a cost. In political science jargon, this means establishing both deterrence by denial, which prevents an adversary from successfully accomplishing its war aims, and deterrence by punishment, which credibly threatens further costs should aggression continue.

In both respects, more powerful weapons help. The better equipped Ukrainian forces are, the more likely they are to blunt further Russian aggression and prevent Russia from achieving its war aims. Longer-range weapons—be they aircraft like F-16s, which several European allies have agreed to supply, or Army Tactical Missile System (ATACM) missiles in the future—allow Ukraine to strike at Russian targets behind the lines. These systems, in particular, can hit Russian positions in their supply lines all the way down into the Crimean Peninsula, a crucial aspect to the Ukrainian offensive.

Equally important, though, is the fact that the better equipped the Ukrainians are, the more they can impose costs on Russia and the more Russia will need to weigh the benefits of future aggression. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling once noted, deterrence is also predicated on the “power to hurt.” Giving Ukraine the power to hurt Russia may be an escalation risk, but it is also a necessary precondition to restoring mutual deterrence at the border. In other words, the United States’ cautious approach may be having precisely the opposite effect of what it intended to achieve: a longer, bloodier, costlier conflict.

Stepping back, then, the United States’ strategy in the war in Ukraine so far is a case in which the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Viewed individually, most decisions the United States has made in the war make sense. It is logical for the Biden administration to be opaque about its goals in the conflict and hesitant about providing high-end weaponry to a country engaged in an indirect conflict with a nuclear-armed major power. Similarly, it is understandable for Congress to want accountability for how Americans’ taxes are being spent.

Judged collectively, however, these decisions add up to a suboptimal, messy U.S. strategy for supporting a war. The vagueness of the ends, the indecisiveness of the ways, and the uncertainty in the means have produced a U.S. effort that is not as robust, quick, or forward-looking as it could or should be. This lack of strategic optimization has delayed needed support to Ukraine, and it may have even prolonged the conflict.

The challenge was foreseeable a year or more ago: Ukraine will survive as an independent state, continue to face a long-term threat from Russia, and run out of Soviet-era equipment—be it air defenses, tanks, or planes. Had the West acted more decisively and strategically, Ukraine would not only be in a better shape to undertake the counteroffensive it recently launched in southern and eastern Ukraine, but also be better-positioned for a more durable postwar settlement.

Thankfully, Ukrainian bravery and Russian missteps mean that the war remains winnable for Kyiv. The United States just needs the will and strategy to embrace that victory.

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kyruselevators · 2 years ago

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Requirement of an Elevator Maintenance Company

Elevator service companies provide an essential service in modern, civilised society, as almost everyone uses lifts, escalators, or lifts at some point. The lift has many practical applications, but rather than focusing on those, this essay will examine three of the most important ways in which lift services can be utilized. There are both directly and indirectly in which maintenance influences our daily life. In large and multi-level shops, Elevator Solutions in Gujarat helps to maintain a comfortable flow of traffic, and in smaller stores, maintenance helps with goods move-ins and move-outs, making what would have been an all-day effort much less laborious. It can also aid in avoiding delays or complete shutdowns in the manufacturing, assembly, and quality assurance testing of vehicles and other items that rely on assembly lines and related lift equipment.

There are three crucial ways in which Elevators Service Provider in Gujarat ensures the seamless functioning of people's lives on a regular basis. If you have ever resided in an apartment block, you know how much easier it is to move furniture when you have a huge vehicle at your disposal. This may save you hours of time and energy on moving day. Picture yourself trying to carry your heavy furniture up a steep, narrow staircase. Second, maintenance methods and equipment of Elevator Maintenance Company in Gujarat facilitate stress-free shopping for food and clothing throughout the year, particularly over the winter holidays, the fall back-to-school season and the summer months.

Large numbers of strangers can quickly and easily travel between levels and between different departments without having to wait in long lines or take the stairs. Elevators also facilitate travel throughout huge buildings such as hospitals, libraries, university buildings, etc. However, regular Elevator Maintenance is required to ensure continued safe and effective operation, as is the case with all electronic devices. Finally, lifts not only expedite and improve facets of the automotive sector or auto manipulation, but they also make scheduling and performing routine and emergency lift service much easier, which greatly simplifies indoor transportation. They help throughout the manufacturing process, including transport, inspection, security testing, towing, and delivery to retailers.

In some cases, the efficiency of a lift can be improved by servicing its external mechanical components. Old, tampered-with automotive parts might affect electrical functioning and need to be replaced. Sometimes things go wrong, as when the board needs to be changed or when something unexpected happens. Maintenance through Lift Maintenance in Gujarat provider is essential to ensure that lifts can keep carrying people safely, whether they are residents, patients, or anybody else.

When considering the maker as a potential service provider, a comprehensive lift maintenance and Elevator Installation agreement is a must. This results in total equipment responsibility being on the service provider. It functions quite similarly to a traditional insurance policy. This will help the budget manager prepare for yearly expenses. When trying to find a reliable lift repair company, there are several factors to consider. Make sure you get the proper one for your structure by doing study in advance.

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lostinthewiind · 4 years ago

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Piss Off Your Parents - Part 3

Ukai Keishin - Haikyuu

Synopsis: freshly turned 18, you want to prove to your parents that you aren’t a child for them to push around anymore. First, get a job at the local corner store. Second, use the store owner’s 26-year-old son with piercings and a cigarette addiction to piss your parents off. Third, accidentally fall in love.

Rating: PG

Warnings: none

Song → 18 by Anarbor

Previous →Part 2

Next →Part 4

Never before had you dreaded something more than you dreaded arriving for work the morning following your incident with Keishin. More than anything, you hoped he was thoroughly pissed at you and had left for work early that day so that the two of you wouldn’t have to see each other, but much to your displeasure and horror, when you stepped into the store that morning, he was sitting at the front counter, waiting for you.

How was he not pissed at you after what you had said to him?

When the sound of the front doors sliding open filled the otherwise silent building, leaving the keys in your hand useless as Keishin had already unlocked the store, you gripped the keys tightly and swallowed hard when he looked up at you. He didn’t say anything at first, maybe because he was waiting to see if you would make the first move, but after last night you were done making first moves when it came to him.

Averting his gaze and dropping your head low, you shoved the keys back into your pocket and headed for the back room to put your stuff away and get this day over with.

Just as you were about to open the door to the back room, Keishin cleared his throat and you stopped in your tracks, head turning to look at him without thinking about it.

“Good morning, Y/N.” This was the very first time he had greeted you first, and on top of that, the very first time he had ever used your name.

You weren’t sure how to respond, confusion and excitement mixing in your body to create an overwhelming concoction. “Good morning,” you mumbled in response before disappearing into the back before he could do anything else out of the ordinary, like God forbid initiate a conversation or something.

You took your sweet time getting ready, delaying heading out to the front of the store as long as possible to give Keishin ample time to leave. After about fifteen minutes or so, you emerged only to find him sitting right where he had been before, newspaper sprawled on the counter and a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Shouldn’t you have left by now?” The questioned slipped past your lips before you even had the chance to filter it through your head.

Eyes wide, Keishin was surprised that you had spoken to him almost as much as you were. “We’re expecting a big delivery today, so I’m sticking around,” he answered. “You’ve never handled one by yourself so my mom asked me to show you how it’s done.”

Your heart sank, your stomach twisted, your knees felt weak. So he was going to be here with you all day long? “Perfect,” you groaned, not even bothering to hide the sarcasm in your tone. “That’s just awesome. Great.”

“Listen, it’s not my idea of an ideal day either, but it is what it is,” he said. “So why don’t we just put last night behind us, chalk it up to exhaustion and the influence of alcohol on my part, and move forward?”

You quirked an eyebrow at him, the fact that you couldn’t seem to figure him out thoroughly starting to irritate you. “How are you not angry at me?” you questioned him. “I was . . . horrible last night.”

You had spent the entire night after getting home thinking about the horrendous way you had behaved. The things you had done and said made you feel awful and you couldn’t understand how Keishin wasn’t on the brink of smacking the shit out of you right now.

“It’s fine.” He flashed a smile, trying his best to prove that he wasn’t dwelling on the past. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

Looking around to double check that the two of you were the only ones in the store, you lowered your voice before speaking. “But I put my hands on you. You can really just forget that?” Heat swelled in your cheeks as you recalled the less horrible events that had taken place.

“I touched you too,” he reminded you.

“Yeah, but yours was an accident.” You weren’t sure why you were saying all of this stuff; it was almost like you wanted him to be angry at you. Who knows, maybe you did. “I called you a burnout.”

Keishin let out a booming laugh at that. “Take a good long look at me, kid.” He smirked, gesturing to himself. “You really think I’ve never been called worse?”

“I don’t think that’s the point,” you breathed out.

Keishin opened his mouth to speak, but before he let a word out, he changed his mind and pressed his lips together. In the meantime, he watched you, the cogs in his head obviously working hard. “You’re an odd one, you know that?” He stood up, walked over to you, and set a hand on your shoulder. “I said it’s fine, so just forget about it, okay?”

“Okay.” You nodded, finally giving in.

“Good. Now, get to work, because this place isn’t going to run itself and I’m only here to help with the delivery, so until then, I’ll be napping on the couch in the back. Wake me up when the truck gets here.”

Before you had a chance to respond, Keishin gave you a pat on the head and disappeared into the back room without another word.

You stood in place for a moment, unsure if the fact that he had forgiven you so easily was a relief or not. You didn’t allow yourself to worry too long about that though, because, like Keishin had said, you had work to do and the store wasn’t going to run itself. And, if your memory served you correctly, you had some sweeping to do in the back corner.

For about two hours, you fell back into your normal workday routine, completely forgetting about the events of the previous night or the fact that Keishin was napping in the back. That was, until you saw the delivery truck pull up in front of the store and remembered you had been given the task of waking the sleeping man.

Heading into the back, you moved slowly and quietly even though it didn’t matter if you woke Keishin since that was what you were supposed to do anyway.

“Keishin,” you spoke softly, not wanting to startle him. “The delivery truck is here.”

Of course, he didn’t even budge at that. Nervously, you stepped closer to the couch, unable to ignore the fact that Keishin looked completely different when he was asleep. The usual frown or cocky grin he sported was nowhere to be seen and he didn’t seem as intimidating when his eyes were closed and his breathing was so slow and rhythmic.

“Keishin.” You reached out and placed your hand on his shoulder like he had done to you earlier and shook him slightly. Still nothing. Rolling your eyes, you were unsure what to try next aside from shouting right in his face. If only he had warned you he was a heavy sleeper.

Deciding to try one last thing before you resorting to screeching, you leaned closer to his ear, planted your hand on his chest—a brief memory of how you had touched him last night flashing in your mind—and shook him once more while you spoke. “Keishin, the delivery truck is here,” you said, not whispering but also not being too loud.

Thankfully, the mixture of shaking him and speaking directly into his ear seemed to finally do the trick and his eyes shot open. Immediately, you jumped back, not wanting him to be weirded out by how close you were to him.

Eyes travelling up to meet yours, Keishin yawned and stretched his arms over his head. “Truck’s here?” he clarified.

“Yeah, it just arrived,” you told him, waiting for him to get up. “You should have told me you were a heavy sleeper. I was about to scream or pour water over you or something.”

Keishin cringed at the thought of that. “Well, thank goodness you didn’t. Next time, just pinch my nose or tickle me or something . . . anything but water.”

“Next time?” you asked. “You plan on taking naps on the couch often?”

“It’s my favourite place to nap. You should try it sometime,” he said before heading for the door. “Come on, let’s get this delivery over with. Try to learn fast so I don’t have to teach you again.”

“I’ll try my best.”

As you had pretty much expected, the delivery had been pretty straight forward. After helping the delivery man unload all of the boxes into the storage room and signing off on the delivery, the most time-consuming and complex part of the process was taking an inventory of the new supplies, which you picked up on pretty quickly.

Keishin showed you how to mark down the new delivery on the clipboard kept in the storage room and where to input the total count for each item. From there, all you had to do was make sure you had received everything and had the correct number ordered.

“Pretty easy, right?” He glanced at you out the corner of his eye as the two of you worked together at counting the inventory, keeping an ear open for customers in the process.

“Yeah, it doesn’t seem hard. Just time consuming,” you agreed.

“Exactly. We usually get a big delivery like this about once a month, then smaller deliveries throughout the week for more perishable items, as you already know.”

You nodded, quickly becoming lost in the repetitive task of counting and writing down the amount on the clipboard. Weirdly enough, you found that you didn’t actually hate taking inventory; the simple task was actually kind of calming and passed the time effortlessly.

“50,” you muttered under your breath, jotting down the number in the correct box right after you finished counting. When you turned back to start on the next box, you caught Keishin looking in your direction. “What?” You furrowed your brows at him. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “I was just thinking.”

“About?”

“You,” he responded, quickly elaborating when you shot him a confused look. “Well, more specifically, why you took this job.”

You shrugged as you continued working. “I already told you. I need the money.”

“Right, so you can move out on your own. But why?”

Your hands stopped grabbing items and your mind stopped counting, making you lose track. “Because I’ve been waiting for as long as I can remember to live my own life and now that I have the opportunity, I’m not going to pass it up.”

“But wouldn’t you much rather be going to school? Surely you don’t want to work in a place like this for the rest of your life.”

You sighed heavily. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

“I’m just curious,” Keishin said. “I want to understand you better.”

“I don’t think you could truly understand unless you experienced the childhood that I did.”

Stopping his work as well, Keishin leaned against the shelf and crossed his arms over his chest. “Try me.”

Rolling your eyes, you accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to give up. “First thing’s first, I’m not saying my childhood was tragic or anything. My parents didn’t beat me. They fed me and clothed me and everything a parent should.” You started, waiting for him to nod before continuing. “I was just never allowed to live my own life or make my own decisions. I ate what my parents wanted me to eat, I wore what they wanted me to wear. I took the classes they wanted me to, I was friends with who they thought would make a good friend. They went overboard on trying to get me to do what they thought was best for me. I was never old enough or mature enough to know what I really wanted. I lived in a controlling dictatorship.”

“What about soccer?” Keishin asked, proving that he had actually remembered the conversation the two of you had had on your first day at the store. “You told me you used to play.”

You smiled fondly at the thought of your high school soccer team. “That was the only thing I ever got to pick for myself . . . and it took months of convincing, and in the end, I was only allowed to continue because I was good at it. The fact that I genuinely enjoyed it never came into account for my parents.” Your smiled faded slightly. “Sometimes they even managed to drain the fun from that as well, but I refused to let them ruin it for me because it was the only thing I had that was mine.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Every day . . . but this is more important right now.”

Keishin was silent for a few moments while he processed everything you had said. “Sounds like everything needed to have a purpose.”

“Pretty much. If something had no chance of providing success in the future, it was a waste of time.”

“So the plan is to work so you can afford your own place, then go to school next year? How are you going to afford school?”

“Well, if I had followed my parents plan for me and started working toward a law degree, they would have paid for it. But since I’ve decided to do my own thing now, I’m just lucky they haven’t kicked me out of the house yet . . . so I guess I’ll have to get a scholarship or apply for student loans. I’ll basically be scraping by, so I’ve applied for a bunch of community colleges and I’ll go from there I guess.”

Fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, Keishin lit one before sticking it between his lips. “What do you want to do?”

You laughed slightly at that. “I have no idea. I was never allowed to have hobbies or interests, so I don’t even know what I like. I just know what I don’t like. If I could do anything though, I’d apply for the University of Tokyo. They have a great soccer program. I just want to play soccer again.”

Keishin smiled. “Just soccer?”

“For now, yeah. I’ve learned that I’ll have to take life step by step, so that’s the first major goal. I’ll probably take some first year classes and see what I like and go from there. I think it’s okay to not have a set-in-stone plan sometimes . . . after all, this is the first time in my life I’ve never had my future planned out for me. It’s kind of exciting . . . scary, too, but exciting.”

Keishin sighed contently as he watched your eyes light up when you talked about the things you wanted to do in the future. “Can I ask you something?”

You nodded. “Sure.”

“So what was the point of what happened last night?” he inquired. “And, while we’re at it, the past few weeks as well. How do I fit into this grand plan of yours?”

You felt your heart pound against your chest. “I thought we were forgetting about last night?”

“We are,” he assured you. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m just curious, is all.”

You thought for a moment, unsure how to phrase exactly how you were feeling. At first, you were inclined to take him up on his offer to not answer, but after how nice he had been to you today, you felt you owed him at least that.

“Originally, I was in a pretty messed-up head space and I wanted to use you to get back at my parents,” you told him truthfully, “. . . but after last night, I did some serious thinking and realized that wasn’t the case. What I really want is to prove to my parents that not everything that is different or ‘not according to plan’ is bad. You have an . . . alternative look about you,” you tried to phrase that as respectfully as possible, causing Keishin to chuckle, “but you’re not a bad person or, despite my harsh words last night, a burnout. You coach volleyball for high school kids and you help out at your family’s store and even though I’ve been pretty horrible to you, you’ve been nothing but nice to me.”

You paused, unsure if you should say the last part or not. “I don’t know, I just think that maybe if they met you, they might realize that I’m capable of making good choices for myself even if it doesn’t fit their predetermined mold of my life.”

“You think I’m a good choice?” he asked, taken aback by your honesty.

“Yeah.” You eyed him while he took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke spill from his lips. “Maybe not the nicotine addiction part, but hey, no one’s perfect.”

Keishin chuckled before putting his smoke out. “Okay, I’ve got a deal for you.”

You cocked a brow at him. “What?”

“If I pretend to be your boyfriend and help you fix things with your parents, you have to apply to the University of Tokyo and follow your dream of playing soccer.”

You were thoroughly perplexed. “Both conditions of that deal only really benefit me. What do you get out of it?”

He just shrugged. “Nothing.”

You scoffed. “Well, as generous and sketchy as that sounds, there is no way I would be able to afford the University of Tokyo on my own and I don’t think any amount of ass-kissing could make my parents agree to pay for me to go there to play soccer and figure life out.”

“Hey, one step at a time, right?” He used your own words against you.

You contemplated his offer for a moment. “You’re really okay with that? Even though you get nothing but more work out of it?”

“I suggested it, didn’t I?”

You couldn’t help the smile that spread across your face. “You’d really pretend to be my boyfriend? Even though I’m just some rebellious kid?”

“Your opinion of me changed,” he pointed out. “Why can’t my opinion of you change too?”

“Fair enough,” you conceded. “Well, if you’re absolutely positive you won’t regret it when you wake up tomorrow morning, I’ll happily accept your deal. Thank you.”

Keishin turned back to the stack of boxes and promptly returned to the task at hand. “You’re welcome.”

You watched him work and quietly hum to himself while he did so. This time, it was his turn to catch you staring. “What?” he looked over at you.

“I just didn’t peg you for such a softy is all,” you joked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he scoffed at you. “Just don’t fall in love with me or anything, kid.”

You smirked. “Whatever you say, old man.”

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#ukai keishin #ukai keishin x reader #ukai #lostinthewiind #piss off your parents #x reader #reader insert #reader imagine #song fic #part 3 #haikyuu smut #series

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paigelts05 · 2 years ago

Text

[Blood] Zero Day [FNAF, Renegade AU]

Link: https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/Blood-Zero-Day-FNAF-Renegade-AU-926686908

Renegade File Server Location: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858029

Published: Aug 21, 2022

An innocuous glitch.

Inconsistencies that make it clear that a supposed 'one day task' is going to take longer.

The animatronics being more aggressive than usual.

The writing's on the wall: Fazbear Entertainment has a plan; one that seems to aim to turn a contractors maintenance firm into a testing ground for something sinister whilst seizing control over Ness's mind to make her into Vanny.

But sometimes all you need to do to throw a spanner into the works and delay such sinister schemes is to take a hit for a friend so you both can survive. That way, you can delay the inevitable enough for everyone to survive.

=°•.🌹 Story 🌹.•°=

Bit of a heads up, the story describes the response to the wound more than the wound itself, so it feels gorey with very little mention of blood and bone.

°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•🌹•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°

"Take it your date went well." Anna tapped away at her keyboard as she spoke to Luis, seldom making eye contact as she formulated another email to Fazbear Entertainment's 'Fazbear Funtime delivery Service'.

"Wait, date?" Luis found himself flustered on the spot.

"Your fifth date. Ness was gushing about it all morning." Anna shot Luis her usual side-eye, "Am I wrong about it being a date?"

"I guess they were dates, hu. It just felt too natural for me to think of it like that." Luis paused for a moment. He had been dating Ness for about a month and a bit now, and whilst yeah, the first time they went out for a coffee was a date, every time after the second just felt too natural, too normal. Does everything a boyfriend and girlfriend do together have to be classed as a date? "I... I'm not the brightest, am I?"

Anna's palm moved to cover her face - she was either having another optical migraine or was ticked off to the eleventh degree. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

Definitely ticked off.

"It was a great date. Dan wasn't kidding when he said that Ness REALLY likes me." Luis felt his face get warmer and warmer the more he spoke, "Every time I think she can't be more head-over-heels, she surprises me. First date, she grabbed my hands - it was kind of intimidating with how strong she is, but it was also really cute - and second date, she almost broke my ribs hugging me. The others were the same, but yesterday, ..."

Luis didn't know if he should finish that sentence, but Anna stared him down.

"She's already told me everything. There is nothing you can say I don't already know."

Luis's body found a way to be even more flustered than before. "She.... She kissed me... - on the cheek! She's so adorable!"

Anna rolled her eyes and sighed, "both of you are such dorks. Also Raha owes me and Mark ten. Now, any updates on anything?"

Luis was embarrassed, both about how flustered he was, and that there was a betting pool regarding his romantic life. He didn't exactly want to know the specifics of the bet, but he could guess.

"No, not really. Everything seems to be going fine. I'll probably help Steve with whatever he's doing. I'm all up to date on my tasks, and if something goes wrong, my computer will keep a record of everything."

"Sounds good. We've got three batches of boards to scan in. As a whole, it should take a few days if you're quick." Anna nodded, "I'll be dealing with the bear and helping Dan repair that robot that just came in so he doesn't have to nag Raha for the drill every ten minutes. Also some of those boards are already in the robots they sent us, so don't be surprised when Dan dumps a few more boards on you."

Scanning the boards was hard.

Deciphering the codes was harder.

The boards were uncooperative, refusing to connect, pretending that themselves or the computer they were connected to didn't exist.

Much like Fazbear Entertainment itself.

The code was worse. Way worse. Illegible and unintelligible, there was not a single peice of code that looked like actual words. The screen was a swathe of letters and numbers, as if everything on the boards was encrypted. But what use was encrypted code when it was sent to 'help expedite the process of building animatronics'? What use was it if they didn't know what it was or what it did?

Ness helped sort the boards both before and after they were scanned, Steve was operating the scanning software, and Luis was attaching the boards and sorting what came off them into folders, like what Ness was doing, but the digital version.

"You know, you two really click." Steve said as he scanned in a board sorted to the 'Classics' pile, "this one's classic Foxy."

"Thanks!" Ness said as her response to both the compliment on her relationship, and being passed the scanned in board. "I don't know what it is, but he's like an angel."

"Thanks." Luis tried to hide his reddened face with his jacket, but just looked really awkward in the process.

Ness giggled a little, but stopped when she heard footsteps.

"I've got more chips." Dan had walked into the room and seemed to have elected to ignore Luis being red as a beetroot, tangled in his jacket. He then turned to Ness, seeing as she was near the piles of chips. "Where do I put them?"

"On the desk next to Steve. Best we keep them away from the others." Ness replied, looking a little flushed.

"Guess I'll do these next then." Steve stated as he picked up a chip from the small pile Dan had brought in. "Better that than forgetting them."

Luis nodded, or at least seemed like he was nodding as he untangled himself from his jacket before he begun to get the board connected to the computer. Hardware was more his strong suit than Steve's, and Steve was the only one who understood the on-computer component of scanning the boards in, so this was probably the most efficient way to work.

After getting all the boards Dan sent thier way scanned in and most of the boxed boards done, Luis felt like something was wrong, so he excused himself to check on the server status.

A cold chill spiked in his chest, ran down his spine, and settled as a pit in his stomach as he saw that something was indeed wrong with the system.

A glitch, only small, but noticeable. Files that had moved on their own, and some bugged out text.

He blinked, and the issues seemed to right themselves, as if it knew somehow that it was being watched.

Whilst he hoped that it was a visual bug, he knew that something else was up.

Nothing was ever simple.

After taking a deep breath, he headed back to where Steve had been working, but as he saw that Steve was walking towards storage, looking rather exhausted, he followed.

"What do you need from storage?" Luis asked, trying to start a conversation, feeling that something was not right.

"Just... something to scan the larger chips. Then I'll get something for this headache." He replied.

"You look knackered." Luis told Steve, not as a boss, but as a friend. Hierarchy wasn't something he did, at all really: all being the co-owner of this place meant was that he did a lot of paperwork sometimes on top of his normal job. "I'll carry it for you when you find it. I don't want you getting hurt."

"Thanks." Steve smiled as the two of them walked into the storage room.

As they entered, something felt wrong. The air felt thin, but not stale. An eerie feeling crept over the two of them as they noticed a Foxy animatronic walking about.

It shouldn't be doing that.

The servers Luis maintained kept a list of every robot and thier status', as well as everything else they held, and as a part of his job as the systems and server admin he checked this data regularly, and this Foxy was not on-call.

And it hadn't been for a while.

The robot then stopped.

And looked at them.

Metal collided with the floor as the fox broke into a sprint, hook raised high, bolting straight towards Steve.

Steve previously had been looking for the thing he had came in here for, but he now stood like a deer in headlights. As Foxy drew closer, Steve stayed deathly still, shaking.

Realising that Steve was not going to move, Luis rammed into Steve himself, using one elbow to barge Steve out of the animatronics path, and his other arm as a futile shield between himself and the robot.

And as Steve stumbled to the side, Luis felt the robot's hook tear through the skin on his arm. He swore down that it had connected with bone, and he wanted to do nothing more than scream and cry, but he had to keep pressing on and get himself and Steve the hell out of here.

Luis could feel himself shake, but that was nothing compared to how Steve was frozen to the spot, shaking like it was minus ten Celsius. He grabbed Steve with his good arm and ran.

He bolted the hell out of storage, blocking the door behind him, and let out an almost deafening shriek for help as he entered the main part of this robotics repairing office.

Luis knew everyone's distinct footsteps as they ran to the room where he was. He had to know so he wouldn't jump when it was just one of them approaching when he was working. Everyone was shocked to see Steve shaking, and Luis bleeding from the arm, and despite his tan, almost as pale as Steve.

"Anna! One of the robots attempted to attack Steve." Luis felt the shake in his own voice, but the adrenaline wouldn't let him crash just yet. "I pushed him out the way, but I got hit instead. Rather me than anyone else though."

"Shit, someone fetch the first aid kit." Anna grimaced as she looked at Luis's arm. "And someone call Dr May. We'll patch him up now so he won't die, and she'll deal with the actual surgery stuff."

"It's just a scratch, I think I'll be ..." Luis couldn't finish his sentence before he collapsed. He could bearly control his breathing, and he felt weak. He was terrified and dizzy. Everything his body stoped him from feeling back in storage was coming through double. He felt sick.

Ness scrambled off and quickly came back with a first aid kit and saline fluid IV bag.

She knelt at Luis's side and quickly attached the IV drip to Luis before she begun to clean his wound.

Luis grimaced as antiseptic stung his wound. His vision was cluttered with patches of darkness, and the added pain of the various antiseptics Ness was using made it worse. That stinging pain made him want to pull his arm away, but he couldn't even muster up the strength for a light tug. Not that it mattered, as Ness's grip on his wrist wasn't one he could escape even if he tried. Not that there was any need.

Seemingly sensing Luis's distress, she shifted herself and Luis so that he was leaning back on her. Whilst it was an awkward angle for her to work from, Luis seemed far less fidgety than before.

Luis just felt like he was about to pass out. He could bearly see, and what he could see was tinted an odd shade. He didn't know if this was the fear kicking in with its delayed reaction, the adrenaline wearing off, or just the pain. But it was probably a mix of the three. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but he knew that he'd probably die if he did, so he forced himself to stay awake.

But, he thought to himself, the wound was just a slash to the arm. He'd seen worse. So why was he like this?

Then again, he has never been injured this badly before.

"That's not good." Ness's voice sounded like an echo in Luis's ears, hardly reaching him despite how close she was. "There's either a fragment of bone in this wound or on the floor in storage. And not a small one."

A chunk had been taken out of one of the bones in his arm?

That animatronics slash took a chunk out of his arm, and a bone inside of it.

Foxy took a chunk out of a bone in his arm.

Ok, he definitely made the right decision taking the hit for Steve. He would not have survived that to the chest.

The dizziness got worse. Even though he was on the ground, he felt like his body was balancing on a thin beam above an infinite void below. He tried to say something, but all that came out were pained grunts as he found that he had been clenching his jaw to the point where his teeth hurt.

"As far as I can tell there's nothing in the wound. It's clean, so I'll patch it up." Ness's voice sounded so distant... It was frightening. Luis looked up and she looked directly into his eyes - and she looked exactly like the woman from the hike that went wrong - but she sounded as if she was so far away.

He felt her fairly rough hands move over the wound on his arm, and pinpricks of pain kept him awake. Tiny stab after tiny stab kept him grounded in reality and told him that the wound was being stitched back together, yet with each small jolt of pain, his vision mutated into the same hallucination he had when he woke up after he'd fallen unconscious from falling down a ditch during that hike. The room looked different, far different to the tarpaulin that became a silk canopy. The roof just looked like stone. But Ness? She looked like the same golden clad princess he hallucinated her to be that day.

She had to be the woman he met that day.

But even if he lived, he wouldn't tell her. He didn't remember what she said that day, but he didn't want to chance anything.

He couldn't look around; he was too scared to. As when the hallucination faded, it didn't fade to reality.

It faded to black.

The sound of a woman whose voice he vaugely recalled lead him back to consciousness.

"Easy does it buddy." The bored and clinical tones told him exactly who this was, "you took quite the hit. Lucky I had some blood bags on hand."

As Luis opened his eyes, he saw a pale face with peircing blue eyes framed with long deep black hair glaring back at him.

Dr May.

(Why she preferred her first name was not something he had asked, but he wouldn't ask either.)

"So," May said, "you were out for some time. Your colleagues said that you had passed out just as I got here, and you've been out cold for over an hour. Is this your first time getting injured like this?"

Luis tried to reply, but no coherent words would form no matter how hard he tried. He tried to nod, but it hurt so bad.

"Can you move any of your fingers?" May asked, her tone unchanged.

Luis tried to move his fingers and was surprised when he felt his fingertips drumming on the floor. He still had the use of the hand on his injured arm. The other hand was obviously fine.

"Good. One for yes twice for no." May cleared her throat before speaking again, reiterating her first question. "Is this your first time getting injured this badly?"

Luis tapped one finger once.

"Ok." May nodded, "well, you're pretty damn brave for a first timer."

Luis wanted to reply, but he still couldn't get his voice to create any meaningful sounds.

"I guess that was a thank you." May inferred before continuing, "I've added a blood IV of, to put in layman's terms, the blood type everyone can receive, and Mark found that shard of bone your girlfriend mentioned to me when I got here. It was on the floor in storage. I only had to undo a third of the stitches she put in to fix that for you. Then I patched up the rest of the wound."

Luis felt his face flush red when May referred to Ness as his girlfriend, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

"It'll heal, but it'll suck for a while." May stared before she begun to strap the IV bags to Luis's upper arm before moving him into a sitting position.

He then noticed that Ness had remained nearby as when May sat him up, a woman was behind him to hold him in this sitting position, and the only other women here aside from Dr May were Anna and Raha, who were both still in his line of sight.

"Just keep the bags above where it's connected to your arm, and Ness'll remove them when they're empty." May looked at Ness to get her confirmation on the situation, and from the look on the doctor's face, it was likely that Ness was a little shocked, "yes, that does mean either you'll be staying around his place or he'll be staying around yours. But he'll be on the floor here for a while until he starts moving again."

Aside from small motions, Luis didn't have the energy to move. But he did feel that his breathing had steadied out, and he tried talking again. "Okay..." His voice was shaky and quiet, but he could speak again. That was progress.

"So, I'll stay here until I know for a fact that you're stable," May stated, "then I'll head off. Any questions you may have, just say them."

The room was quiet for a while, the only meaningful actions being the IV drips slowly draining thier contents into Luis's arm, and the slight chatter over what to do with the animatronics.

Luis focused on his breathing, as he figured that if he could keep that steady, he'd be ok.

After what felt like hours but was definitely only a handful of minutes, Luis was able to murmur a question.

"Is... Hallucinating when injured normal?"

"No." May's answer was blunt. "People don't usually do that."

"It's happened to me twice... But the first time... I was not as hurt as this... Just... Fell down a ditch and had a rocky landing... Passed out" Luis was bearly able to reply, a little worried now that he knew that what he was going through was not normal.

"I'd take a rolled ankle and some scrapes over that gash any day," Dr May huffed in what Luis assumed was a light-hearted manner. "The same hallucination or a different one."

"The same. And... I'd rather not say what I saw." Luis replied, "just that the first time... I saw it when I was waking up... And this time... I saw it when I was passing out."

He hoped that wasn't too much information. He had been on a few hikes before that fateful day. Ness didn't know how many times before he had fell down a ditch and passed out (even if the answer was zero, but she didn't know that).

"And it only happens when you're injured and teetering between consciousness and unconsciousness?" May questioned further.

"I guess..."

It hadn't happened when they had been snooping around the old HQ, when they were cornered by William and Ness had been ordered to kill him, with the alternative bring that William would strangle him if she declined. She had managed to trick William into thinking that she had complied by beating him unconscious with her bat, and he didn't hallucinate when the bat came down on his head, and he didn't hallucinate when he woke up. So why now?

That day had more in common with what happened in the woods than today did, so why didn't he hallucinate then? But that would be to assume that there was a pattern.

"I see." May nodded, "If this becomes a common occurrence or you find the common factor that sparks these hallucinations, call me. It'll help me with future patients."

Luis nodded and the room went back to saying and doing nothing. Luis still felt weak, but he felt a little better. Not that 'a little better' was hard to achieve in his condition. He moved his legs and tried to stand, but his feet skidded back down before he could even get leverage on the floor.

Ness saw Luis struggle and figured that she knew what he was trying to achieve. She also knew that in his condition, he would not be able to do that, as despite the injury being on his arm, the fear and nausea would prevent him from being able to hold his balance for more than a few seconds, if that. She looked at Anna and said "Chair please."

To Ness suprise, Anna quickly left the room and came back with a swivel chair with arm rests.

The fabric cushioning of the chair should be better for Luis than the hard ground anyway.

Gently, Ness lifted Luis into her arms and placed him on the chair. She was relieved that he was in a stable enough condition to be able to sit on his own, yet she still feared that he may black out again at any second, so she stayed by his side. She did not want him to get hurt again.

May looked Luis up and down again. "How is your vision. Is it blurred?"

Luis blinked and tried to focus, but he couldn't. Everything just hurt too much to focus.

"I... Don't know."

May made a note on something on a clipboard and made a sour face. He assumed that was bad.

"Do you have pain anywhere else?" She continued to question.

"If I do.... I can't feel it."

Luis could only focus on his arm. Even though it had been patched up, the adrenaline from the initial incident had all but worn off and he felt the gash throbbing and pulsing with a searing pain like it was trying to scream on his behalf.

He had no idea how Dr May's brother managed to take injuries so well, but he figured it had something to do with experience. And previous employment to Fazbear Entertainment.

His arm flared up again and he hissed in pain. He didn't see what was happening around him, but he did see a brown and yellow blur move from his peripheral vision to be more in his line of sight. The brown gave way to an alabaster shape between.

Ness was really blurry.

He tried to focus, and even if it took a minute, he could soon define her crimson red eyes from the rest of her face and see the trio of scars on her cheek, and he could see her hair and how her bangs framed her face, and he could see the rainbow hair extension she always had in. Shakily, he held out the hand in his good arm, and she took it.

Something more than the floor or a chair to keep him grounded. Something to stop him from falling into the void of pain.

Focusing on Ness and Ness alone, his breathing begun to steady out as he let himself relax. Everyone was safe. He was safe. He figured that his body wasn't letting him acknowledge that. Or it did and just dropped him to harshly, one or the other.

Anyway, he didn't notice Dr May sticking a needle into his injured arm until she had already completed what she needed to do, and that was when she announced "I've given you something to numb the pain in your arm. Do not take any medication for the next six hours. Someone set a timer on his phone or something."

Anna picked up Luis's phone and set an alarm, whilst Luis looked towards Ness, who in some kind of instinctive response, also set the same alarm.

"I was about to say, he should have someone accompany him home and monitor his condition, but you seem to be one step ahead of me."

Both Ness and Luis turned bright red. Ness's usually white skin matched her eyes, and as for Luis, the flush of red was only slightly less noticeable on the fairly tanned Spaniard. Luis had considered asking Ness if she'd be able to stick around, and Ness was going to suggest going home with him to make sure he was ok. Neither had vocalised it yet, but now they knew the others intention, asking was just for the formalities of it.

"Can I stay round yours to make sure you're ok?" Ness asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah." Luis replied, trying to process what was blood pumping to his wound and what was blood vacating from that area to his face.

The duo smiled at eachother, meanwhile those who weren't monitoring thier injured colleague were hatching a plan as to what to do about the sudden hostility of one of the animatronics.

Mark, Dan, Steve, and Raha exchanged ideas before Dan and Raha headed over to the room that the Fazbear Entertainment animatronics were stored. A few minutes later, they came back, neither worse for wear.

"We were able to turn the safety back on, but who knows when that'll be flicked off again." Dan stated as he stepped into the room, "all of them seem to have this switch, so all of them seem to be prone to having that kind of behavioural switch."

"What kind of robots even have an unsafe mode?" Mark quiped as he sketched up a plan.

"Fazbear Entertainment ones." Raha shot back with all her usual bluntness.

"Well, Anna, love, we need to do something about the robots, just in case they attack again." Dan looked between Anna and the door to where the robots were stored, then back again.

"Well, did you guys have any ideas?" Anna said, "because I have one, but it's a last resort."

"Dumpster." Mark stated.

"No."

"Disassemble them and reassemble them when needed?" Raha suggested.

"No."

"I think we should lock them away somewhere. That way we can just unlock a door instead of rebuilding them." Steve suggested.

"But where," Anna's reply being more than one word this time mean that Steve was on the right track. But questions remained.

"Do we use the storage containers or the basement?" Dan proposed the only two options.

"The basement is a last resort, but given what they did to Luis," Anna grimaced as she saw how dazed Luis still was from his injury, "that's probably the right choice. The basement may be flooded, but I have a bad feeling that if we used a container, it may not hold. But the basement door? Blast proof."

"Guess that settles it." Mark stood up and grabbed his mop. The basement wasn't going to clear up the water that had leaked in itself.

"Alright." Anna clasped her hands and took a deep breath, "Me, Dan, and Mark will sort out preparing the basement for the robots to move in, and then it'll be just me and Dan moving them, unless anyone wants to volunteer."

Anna hoped nobody would volunteer. Mark was too spooked by Fazbear's machines to not be a liability to himself. Steve was still struggling to process what had happened back in the storage room between him and Foxy, and how Luis saved his life. They needed Raha up here in case something went wrong during the process of moving the animatronics. Luis was in no state to help, and Ness was keeping an eye on him.

'Moving them is a two man job anyway,' Anna thought to herself as she, Dan, and Mark went down into the basement to clean up any water puddles and place buckets. Meanwhile, Raha was fixated on the doors: any door that had a link to storage, she had eyes on. It was as if she was practically paranoid. But she had every right to be, given thier behaviour earlier today.

Thankfully, no machine came bursting through any doors, and the only door that opened was when Anna, Dan, and Mark left the basement, the scrape of the blast door on the floor making Raha jump a bit.

"It's all ready down there. Me and Dan will take care of moving the robots." Anna said as she strode over to the storage room, Dan following a bit behind. Mark was the last out and scurried to where Steve, Raha, Luis and Ness were grouped together.

"That basement still gives me the creeps..." Mark mumbled as he looked between the basement's blast door and the door to the room where the animatronics were all stored.

Anna looked over at Mark, "At least you won't need to go down there. If any of them need cleaning, I'll bring them up for you."

With a huff, she and Dan walked towards the storage room door.

"Is this even safe?" Dan hesitantly placed a hand on the door and looked towards Anna.

"No idea love. But we'll be safer once those things are in the basement." Anna replied as she pushed open the storage room door and barged inside.

The duo then begun to ferry the robots from the storage room to the basement. Every second Anna and Dan spent in the basement felt like agonising hours to the remainder of the crew up on the surface, but each time, the couple resurfaced, generally unscathed bar a subbed toe from a brick or off stair or mildly scratched hand from an errant peice of metal.

"And that does it," Anna breathed as she and Dan trudged out of the basement for the final time, "that was the last of them. We only take them out when we need to do work on them. This way nobody who doesn't need to come into contact with those things has to."

As Anna locked the basement door, Dan went up to the rest of the group.

"Is everyone doing ok?" He asked, scanning the anxious faces for a response.

"I was worried you and Anna were gonna die down there, but yer still here, so I'm fine." Raha replied, her blasé facade not working to hide that she'd been on-edge this whole time.

"Doing good." Mark added, "Nothing attacked us."

"Doing fine... I think." Steve sounded distant, but not his usual distant. He turned to Luis to see if he was feeling any better.

"Anxious." Ness admitted, shakily a little and unable to take her eyes off the basement door.

"I'm feeling better..." Luis gave a slight but genuine smile. He felt less dazed than before, so felt as if he could walk again without collapsing. But he wouldn't risk driving: not like this.

"That's a relief," Dan sighed, "any idea as to why the robot tried to attack Steve?"

"No." Luis shook his head, "I just tailed him into the storage room, and saw this Foxy walking around, and then it just charged."

Steve nodded and seemed deep in thought. He nodded to himself, but said nothing.

He had seen a visual bug on his computer after Luis had gone to check the network computer.

After Anna announced that they'd be all heading home early today due to this incident, Steve managed to catch Luis alone by the bathrooms.

"I think I know what's going on." Steve spoke in an assertive whisper.

"Yeah," Luis replied in a similar tone, "There is DEFINITELY something in the boards. Don't email ANYONE about this yet. We can't let Fazbear Entertainment know that we're catching on. They need to think that all of them have been scanned in on the same day."

Steve nodded as Luis spoke before replying himself, "I suspect these bugs will only get worse as we scan in more boards. If the robots wanted to go for the kill like it seemed, then they definitely banked on us being able to scan all of them in one day. I think some of the data from boards may be going through the system by themselves to turn the animatronics aggressive."

"I agree. But what do you think the point is?" Luis added. Ness, William's vessel was here. Why would Faz Ent' try and do something that could kill the person thier founder intended to use as a vessel?

"I don't know, but after we've scanned the last board in, I will be contacting Jim." Steve's tone was blunt. He had a contact in Fazbear Entertainment, and was going to pull any strings he needed to get to the bottom of this. He didn't want to feel like he was the reason why someone got hurt. Not again. Not after today.

"Alright." Luis's tone was equally blunt, a grim mutual understanding of thier situation. "Let's hope we can prepare well enough to counteract whatever this bug is and whatever may be in the rest of the boards. At least this incident gives us the heads up to prepare."

The duo nodded at eachother before heading out with everyone else to the car park. They were supposed to be scanning in the rest of the boards, and the only ones left were ones already in animatronics, a task Fazbear Entertainment expected to take one day, Anna expected to take three, but now it was looking like it'd take at least more than a week. And that was just for scanning: organisation would be worse, as just because a board came from an animatronic didn't mean that the board belonged to that animatronic. It'd be a game of 'guess the robot that's about to go ferral'. One nobody wanted to play.

They couldn't shake the feeling that things would get worse, because they knew for a fact that it would get worse from here on out.

With a grim nod, Luis and Steve headed thier separate ways for the night: Steve walking home and Luis heading to Ness's car.

Today's incident was over, but there was going to be more. Luis just knew it.

°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•🌹•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°•°*°

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itsdanii · 4 years ago

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Plant Reunion (Literally)

genre: slight crack, slight fluff

warnings: nothing, just ushijima being weak for his daughters

ft. timeskip! ushijima wakatoshi

You never expected to come home to your husband wearing a giant eggplant costume

$299 had been deducted from your account

You stared at your phone with wide eyes, the wheels inside your head turning as you think back to all the stuff you bought for the last two weeks.

"Are you alright, Mrs. Ushijima?"

You turned your gaze to your driver and smiled a little. "Of course. It's just.." You paused for a moment and massaged your temples, a new headache now starting to form. "Have I bought something expensive for the past few weeks? A bag? Jewelry?"

Your driver looked at you through the rear mirror before answering. "None that I can think of unless it's something you had delivered straight to your house. Even so, the guards will inspect the delivery men beforehand for security purposes."

You nodded slowly. "Right... Then was I scammed?" you whispered out of worry.

You squinted your eyes at your driver when you noticed how he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and as if sensing your stare, he cleared his throat and focused his eyes on the road.

"Aki, what do you know?" you asked in a serious tone, almost making him flinch.

"I.."

"Speak now if you want to keep your job," you threatened.

Instead of saying anything, Aki sighed and handed you his phone, your husband's contact name present on the screen along with their exchange of messages.

Mr. Ushijima: Aki, delay my wife's arrival as much as you can

Aki: I'm afraid I can't do that unless I know the reason, sir

Mr. Ushijima: Just do as I say. The house is too messy right now and I gave the maids a vacation leave

"Oh god..." you whispered to yourself as you kept on scrolling

Mr. Ushijima: I'll increase your salary for this month

Aki: Noted, sir

"Turn around," you instructed as you gave his phone back.

Panic made its way to your driver's face upon hearing those words. "B-but ma'am, Mr. Ushijima said-"

"Thrice. I'll increase your salary thrice the price. Just turn around and drive as fast as you can back to the house."

"But your meeting..."

"Aki, turn around. Now." You crossed your arms over your chest and rose an eyebrow at him until he gave up.

Doing a U-turn, Aki changed the navigation back to your household with a nervous look.

"I can explain," was the first thing your husband said as soon as you stepped inside the house.

Your eyes scanned the whole living room in silence, your eyes going over the mess before you focused on your husband and the rest of the former Shiratorizawa team who are all dressed in their vegetable costumes.

Toys were littered on the floor along with several empty wrappers of candies and chocolates.

Moreover, there sitting on the floor are your two daughters together with Satori and Semi, big smiles visible on their faces with something which looks like nutella smeared on each other's cheeks.

"Room," you simply stated to your husband before making your way upstairs with him following you like a lost puppy.

"My love-"

"Not a word, Wakatoshi."

Your husband could only gulp before looking downstairs, only to see the rest of the team giving him a sympathetic smile.

The moment you both reached your shared bedroom, you locked the door and faced him with your arms crossed over chest.

"Ushijima Wakatoshi, care to explain why I received an email stating that $299 had been deducted from my account, why you tried to delay my arrival, almost bribed Aki and gave all the maids a vacation break? On top of that, the first thing I saw when I came home are you, my daughters and the rest of the team all dressed in giant vegetable costumes?!"

You stared at your husband as he tried forming the right words, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

"You're even dressed like an eggplant," you muttered as you sat yourself on your bed out of stress.

"My two princess were crying when you left and I found out that the team was planning to give us a visit so I gave Satori your card to buy some vegetable costumes," Wakatoshi explained in a tiny voice and walked over to your figure.

He rested his head on your shoulder, burrying his face to the side of your neck like a puppy. "Sorry, my love."

You sighed and placed a hand on the back of his head to run your fingers gently through his hair. "You could've just bought them a new doll house or something. Why did you have to waste such amount of money just for that ugly vegetable costume?"

"Mirei wanted a life sized eggplant and Nanami wanted a giant tomato." Ushijima lifted his head to look at you with a pleading expression. "I just wanted our princesses to be happy."

"Alright, but promise me that next time, you'll consult me first. 'Toshi, I know that you have more than enough money but $299 dollars just for vegetable costumes? And Satori doesn't even look like a tomato."

Ushijima nodded, taking your hand in his to place a kiss on your palm. "I promise. I'm forgiven, right?"

"Yes, you are. You're lucky I love you."

likes, comments and reblogs are appreciated ♥️

an: im halfway done with the part 4 of rejecting you and regretting it when this idea came to mind 😭

#haikyuu fluff #hq fluff #hq imagines #haikyuu imagines #haikyu x reader #haikyuu drabbles #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #ushijima fluff #ushijima wakatoshi #ushijima imagine #ushijima scenarios #ushijima x reader

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suddencolds · 4 years ago

Text

Bad Timing | Genshin Impact

During Windblume festival, Diluc ends up hosting in an event in a venue that’s suitably decorated. Unfortunately, he just happens to be allergic to the flowers.

(This might be the most self-indulgent allergy fic I’ve ever written, haha. DIluc snzfic + pollen allergies + company from someone... unexpected.)

—

It starts as a miscommunication.

It’s harmless enough. Donna, whom Diluc vaguely remembers seeing outside of the flower shop just adjacent to Angels Share, makes an arrangement with Charles to decorate the Dawn Winery. An act of gratitude, or something along those lines—just in time for Windblume Festival.

At least, that’s how Charles tells him about it, just as Diluc is about to leave from his shift the night before the party.

“Decorations?” he asks. “I see. I will have to give her my thanks. Did she speak to Adelinde about it?”

Charles ponders this, taking his place behind the counter. “I’m not sure,” he says. “She says she hopes it’s to your liking, though.”

It’s all Diluc can do to nod. Decorations for Windblume usually mean one thing, but there’s a reason why the tavern is scarcely decorated, and it’s not that he doesn’t have the means to decorate. The tavern’s current undecorated state—with the exception of pressed-dry flowers or flowerless vines strung around the second floor railings—is meant to accommodate… well.

He doubt Donna knows, because he’s never had a reason to bring it up in conversation. As far as truths go, it’s somewhat embarrassing. For now, he can only hope that her act of kindness isn’t as extensive as he thinks.

—

It’s an oversight, for sure, but it’s not until he steps foot into the main hall of the winery, two hours before the event’s inception that he realizes the extent of it.

The winery is crowded with flowers. There are snapdragons and cecilias strung up around the balconies, windwheel asters in neatly arranged bouquets on every available table, dandelions and wolfhooks cresting the fireplace. Vines of ivy and windwheel aster blossoms are woven around the staircase railings.

Instinctively, he raises a hand to cover his nose and mouth, as if to shield himself from it all. There’s a telltale itch already settling in his nose.

It’s a beautiful sight. But Diluc is very, very allergic.

He flings every window open—surely the air from outside must be an improvement—and bolts out of the building as soon as he can. Just from a few minutes of occupying the winery, he’s already congested, and his eyes are brimming with allergic tears.

The event—a celebration of the anniversary of the Dawn Winery’s founding, that happens to align closely with Windblume every year—is going to last for five hours. Moreover, there will be esteemed guests present, with which he’ll have to discuss business matters, which means that he has to be present.

Diluc shuts his eyes. Seasonal allergies are not anything that will cause him lasting harm, he’s sure… except, perhaps, to his professionalism. The winery has been in a financially good place these past few years, which means there’s barely any pressure on him to prove his own competence. His presence is more for show than for anything else. This should be fine. A five hour celebration, and then he’ll be out of here. He can ask the maids to deal with taking down the decorations later.

—

He arrives early, stands as far from the floral decorations as he can—it’s difficult; they’re everywhere—to make sure everything is in place. Despite his efforts, the winery is practically a flower garden, thanks to Donna’s well-intentioned arrangements. It’s not long before he’s sniffling again.

His eyes are starting to water, too. He wipes them gingerly on the cuff of his sleeve, sniffles, and nods his acknowledgement to the guests that are starting to file in.

“Sir Ragnvindr,” someone he recognizes as a business associate says to him, holding a flute of champagne. “How are you on this fine evening?”

How does he look? Diluc sniffles again. “I’m well,” he says, rather curtly.

“Mondstadt’s Windblume Festival is certainly a sight,” the associate is saying. “I’m glad I stopped by town at such an opportune moment.”

Diluc can’t think of anything he’d want to do less, right now, than entertain someone’s small talk. “It is one of Mondstadt’s most… hiIh!— most esteemed annual traditions… hiih-!” Damn it. Not now.

The itch in his nose is back. Luckily, the associate either doesn’t notice his predicament or doesn’t find it worth commenting on.

“Is that so? Tell me more about it.”

Diluc sniffles again. Anything to keep his nose from openly running. “I’m... sure… hiIIH-!” Barbatos, he needs to sneeze. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation right now. “...There are many people here more qualified to recount Mondstadt’s hiIhh-!… history… snf!… than I am.”

The associate raises an eyebrow, cocking his head. “Have you not lived here all your life? The previous owner of the Winery was Crepus Ragnvindr. I was under the impression that he was—”

“My father,” Diluc confirms, before he’s ducking away to stifle a sneeze, almost perfectly contained, into his wrist.

“hiIH’NGxt!” He gasps, sniffling, and presses his wrist closer to his face for the second. “hh…. hiiIH’NDGxt!”

It’s two sneezes, but they’re barely relieving. He raises his head, blinking. “Excuse me. Your assumptions are correct, though I…” he makes the mistake of rubbing his nose—something about the gesture just makes him need to sneeze. “hiIH… it’s been awhile since I’ve, snf, had the chance to properly celebrate, and longer still since… hIIh-!... since I’ve heard the history.”

“That’s strange,” the associate says. “You have lived in Mondstadt your whole life, yet you don’t know it’s history? Then again, I heard that you left for a few years, so maybe you feel no attachment to it.” It’s a thinly-veiled insult, but Diluc is too distracted to address it. He wants nothing more than to sneeze freely, but he’s sure that it would be loud, and it’d draw more attention than he wants right now. For now, he settles for raising a hand to—

“hiIH’DGXxt!” God, his eyes are watering, and the sneeze—though stifled—is forceful enough to jerk him forward, his shoulders shuddering.

The associate cringes. “It is a shame that you are spending the festival unwell.”

“I’m fine,” Diluc says, “Just… snf, just… hih!… HIih’GGKXt-shiu! ngh...” He needs to get out of here. Stifling offers virtually no relief at all, and he’s not going to stop sneezing anytime soon, from the looks of it.

He sighs, rubs his nose on the back of his hand, tells himself he can handle a few extra decorations. “Sorry. Did you, snf, have business matters to discuss?”

The associate’s expression hardens. “As you know, we have been ordering from the winery for a couple months now. I regret to inform you that there have been a few—”

Diluc blinks quickly. He can already feel his breath wavering—the start of another long, embarrassingly desperate buildup, probably.

“—troublesome incidents, specifically regarding the delivery of the wine. The delivery vehicles have been delayed on a handful of occasions—”

“hiIH! snf… hIIiih…”

His nose is tickling with such ferocity it’s almost torturous. He needs to get outside. His allergies are tolerable out in town in the open air, as long as he walks quickly enough and avoids all of the more festive installments. But here, in an enclosed space so thoroughly decorated, in a living room with mediocre circulation at best, surrounded by more flowers than he’s ever seen in his life…

“—just last week, the delivery cart was stopped by an assembly of hilichurl archers that destroyed nearly half the stock. Three weeks before that, the carriage caught the notice of one of Liyue’s Ruin Guards. I expect you are aware of these incidents?”

Diluc clears his throat. “I am. An excess of wine was sent back—hiiH! … in both cases, snf!- as soon as word of these setbacks… hIIH... reached the winery, snf.” The congestion is starting to settle in his voice, dulling his consonants. “You yourself… HIIh-! verified that the shipments m-made… hIIH-! it back to you… HIIIh!”

Sevens above. He doesn’t want to sneeze again, in front of someone who’s looking at him with a combination of disgust and condescension. But he knows, by now, that the most he can do is delay the inevitable.

“Ah,” the man waves a hand dismissively. “We did get the wine eventually. But it was still delayed, you see. Quite—”

—Diluc gasps sharply. “HIIIih-!”

“—an unprofessional experience, to say the least.”

His shoulders tense, as he jerks forward again, catching a barely restrained sneeze between the pinch of his fingers. “hihH'GXNt...! snf, hIIH… HIIH’NGDTtsh!” His body shudders with the release; he can feel the pressure of the sneeze settle behind his eyes, along with a dull ache—he’s going to give himself a headache if he keeps this up. “hiih-!... hiihHH…” This would be less humiliating if he could just sneeze and be done with it. Instead he finds himself caught in buildups that go nowhere, with a tickle in his nose that refuses to abate. “HIIIH… hIH’GZSchhh! snf… hhH-!”

Barely a breath in, his breath is already hitching again. He ducks into his sleeve, cringing, just in time for—

“hh… hiiH!... hh... HIIH’GXnT—shEw!!” The failed attempt at stifling is strangely relieving, all things considered, and he exhales shakily, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

“Sir Ragnvindr,” The associate says pointedly. “I’m sure you can see where the problem lies. Delays are not exactly conducive to business.”

Diluc bites back an irritated retort. Delivery to Liyue from Mondstadt is bound to have its complications, given the concentration of enemies outside of the two cities; he’s sure this associate is aware of that, too. He has no control over whether the deliveries get interrupted, and he’s pretty sure it’s the associate’s fault for not putting the orders in in advance.

“What… snf… would you suggest, then?”

The associate smiles. “Given our longstanding role as customers, I believe monetary compensation would only be fair.”

Diluc sighs, scrubs at his eyes with one hand. “You can bring it up with Elzer. He is usually the one to handle these sorts of things,” Diluc says. “In the future, though, to save both of us the trouble, it would be best if you would... snf!... take care to place your orders in advance.”

The man stares back at him, his lip curling. “I beg your pardon?”

“The roads between here and Liyue are dangerous. I cannot always guarantee a safe delivery,” The tickle in his nose is back, relentless. If he’s going to sneeze again, the last thing he wants is to do it in front of this associate. Instead, he turns on his heels, sniffling. “Excuse me.”

He just about bolts from the room, past the floral decorations and up the staircase. The second floor is darker, lit only by the ceiling chandelier. He all but slumps against the wall. His nose is still itching, and he raises a gloved hand as his vision goes watery and indistinct—

“hiIIH’IISCH’iiuu! Hh… hDDt’TTZCSh’u!”

He doesn’t have time to wonder if anyone’s heard. Suddenly he’s gasping again, fumbling for a handkerchief, pulling up one sleeve so he can wipe his nose on the back of his wrist when he doesn’t find one. “Hiih… hiIIIH… snf-!”

The tickle falters just as suddenly, leaving him on the precipice of a sneeze, suspended in ticklish wait. He rubs his nose again, in hopes that the pressure on the bridge of his nose will be just irritating enough to coax out a sneeze, but...

It leaves him panting, his eyes still shut as he stands there, his breath still shaky with anticipation.

“hiIIH…! snf…” Nothing, still. “HIIIh...”

He rubs his nose again, hard, on the back of his wrist. Maybe if he could just sneeze—give his body relief in the fit it so clearly wants—it will solve his predicament for the next fifteen minutes, at least.

He just has to find somewhere quiet.

He rounds the corner on the second floor, stumbles through the door at the end of the hall out onto the balcony. The fresh air is immediately relieving, and he sucks in a long breath, leaning forward on the balcony railing. With the exception of some of the Dawn Winery staff, no one’s outside, and he doubts any of the guests will have reasons to spend enough time on the second floor to find the door that leads here. He figures it’s as good a place as he’ll find, for the time being.

The itch in his nose still burns, almost intense enough to make him shiver. Cecilias are wound around one of the balcony’s wooden rungs—he wonders, momentarily, if it’d be worth it to—

The door behind him swings open. He startles.

“Oh,” someone says from behind him. “...sir Diluc.”

It’s Rosaria, from the church. He doesn’t know much about her—he can probably count the number of words they’ve exchanged on one hand. She’s at the Angel’s Share every Thursday with Kaeya, downing drinks faster he thinks could possibly be healthy—though she must know her limits, given that she never seems to get as drunk as some of the knights do. Now, she eyes him warily.

There’s a windwheel aster clipped to the lapel of her shirt.

“Didn’t expect you to see you here,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you like, the most important person here?”

“Something like that,” he says.

“Then I suspect there’s a reason why you’re hiding out here.”

He doesn’t answer. How can he? “Ah, well, it’s fine,” she says, sounding unbothered. “Whatever reason you have, it doesn’t really matter to me. Hope you don’t mind if I smoke.”

He sniffles, turning away to wipe his nose on his wrist. “I… don’t.”

“Okay. I figured you’d be happier if I did it outside, anyways.” She steps into place next to him, digs through her pockets for a cigarette. “Think you could light it?”

He lowers his hand and turns to face her. Before he has a chance to light it, though, something about the proximity of the flower on her shirt is just enough to set him off — the next breath he takes leaves him gasping, his eyes watering immediately as he ducks violently into his elbow.

“hiIH… nGKTt!”

He’s not even close to done. “hiIH… hiiihH…. HH-!! snf-! hHiih’NDGXtT!”

“Bless you,” she says. “Are you sick?”

“Your… shirt…” is all he manages to gasp out, before he’s pressing his elbow tighter to his face, muffling another sneeze into the fabric of his sleeve—

“hiIH’IIIGXTtt… HIIiH-! Hiih… HIIH’IISsch’iu! Excuse me... HIih’GGKXt!!...”

“Oh,” she says, sounding like he’s just let him in on a secret. “You’re allergic.”

“Unfortunately,” he admits, feeling his face grow hot.

“You should’ve said.” She unclips the windwheel aster from her shirt, gives it half a look, and flicks it over the edge of the balcony.

“Wait,” Diluc says, his eyebrows furrowing. “I didn’t mean to… hiIIh-! snf... imply you should get rid of it.”

Rosaria smiles unreadably. “I wasn’t wearing it by choice. A friend coerced me to. Is it just windwheel asters that set you off?”

“It’s… hiiiiH… it’s just about everything… hiIH’ITTSChh! hiIH… NGKTT-shiiu!” It’s getting harder and harder to stifle, but it’s already embarrassing enough to sneeze in front of her in the first place.

“Everything, huh? Sounds awfully inconvenient.”

He lights her cigarette with his vision. “Thanks,” she says, and immediately pulls it in to take an appreciative drag. “Kind of suffocating to be inside with so many businessmen for so long, if you ask me.”

He sniffles harder, rubbing his nose on the cup of his sleeve.“I… snf…! I’m not going to be stopping anytime soon. You should probably… hiih... find somewhere else to smoke… hiiH... hiih’GKTT-!”

“You know,” Rosaria says, after a beat. “You’d be done sneezing sooner if you didn’t hold them back like that.”

If Diluc wasn’t blushing before, he’s sure he must be blushing now. It’s embarrassing to hear her address his sneezing in such a straightforward manner—he’s starting to see why she gets on so well with Kaeya.

“I’m fine, thanks… hiih… hiiH’NGXT’Sshh! HIIH’GKTT-! ugh...” Maybe she has a point—the stifling is starting to make his head hurt, and he hunches forward, still sniffling, to lean more heavily on the railing.

She shrugs. “Okay. I’m just saying, I wouldn’t mind. Why’d you decorate the winery like that, anyway? It seems awfully… masochistic.”

“A misunderstanding. Donna’s doing, though… hiiiH!... it would have been ungrateful if I had taken the decorations down... hiiih... hiIH’GkkT!!” — caught neatly in the palm of his hand. “hIih… hiIIH… nGSSCHh! snf…”

“Sevens, Diluc. Drop the formalities and let yourself sneeze. I’m getting a headache just listening to you.”

He frowns, lifts his hand from his face, only to clamp it back on when he realizes what a mess he’s made out of himself, his skin prickling with embarrassment. “If you’re certain...”

She scoffs, taking another drag of the cigarette. “Trust me. I couldn’t care less.” Usually, smoke doesn’t bother him—his pyro vision would be significantly more inconvenient if it did—but now, with his nose so sensitive, it’s exactly the last push he needs to send him over the edge.

“hIIH.. HIIH…” He blinks through teary eyes, his grip tightening against the railing. “HiiH… iHH'GZCHh-iiu! Hihh… hhD’TTschH’iu! snf.. hiIH... HIHH'iischHiew!”

The relief from letting himself sneeze is immediate and almost dizzying. He gasps again, taking a step back from the balcony. The next sneeze snaps him forward at the waist.

“hiIH’ISCHhiuu! hiIih… GKKTT-’SHiuu!” Rosaria disappears back into the manor, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear her leave, but he’s too out of it to properly react. “Hiih… hiIh… HIIH’ISCCHh’yuu!” He sniffles against his wrist, his shoulders just about slumping with the relief, before they’re tensing again just a few seconds later. “hiih… hiiih.. hiiIH’NGTTT-SHIu! Hiih… HiiH’IIIISCCHh’iuu!”

He groans, sniffling, resisting the urge to bury his head in his hands—it seems like an appealing enough option, if not for the fact that he’s been covering with one of them. The door behind him opens again.

“Thought you might need this,” Rosaria says, and hands him a handkerchief. He takes it gratefully. It’s only after he’s blown his nose into it—quietly—that he trusts himself to speak.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’ll find a time to give it back when it’s clean... snf.”

She blinks at him, her eyebrows furrowing as she looks him over. “Geez, you look awful. I’ll ask Kaeya to stop by later so he and I can take down the decorations for you.”

It’s surprisingly sweet. “You don’t have to,” Diluc says, wincing at the congestion in his voice. “I can get it... dealt with… hiih’IISSSH’iuu!”

“Your maids can, you mean. Still, it will be faster if we help out... your bedroom’s on the second floor, isn’t it?”

When he nods, she shrugs, leaning back casually against the doorframe. “Even more reason to get it cleaned up faster, then. Would it kill you to accept some help for once in your life?”

Diluc sniffles, folding the handkerchief neatly. “I suppose not. I... appreciate it, then.”

She smiles at him. “It’s the least I can do. I’ve been leeching off your free alcohol this whole afternoon, so we can call it even.”

#sneeze fic #snzfic #snz fic #sneeze kink #snz #gen/shin im/pact #i wrote the first 1.7k of this in 1 day -> told myself it was too indulgent and shouldn't see the light of day -> left it for 2 weeks #sucked it up and finished it today #so here we go. my first allergy fic on this blog #(maybe my first allergy fic ever..?)#so it was new for me... please forgive me if it doesn't rly work #my fic

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jimhines · 3 years ago

Text

2021 Writing Income

Welcome to my 14th annual blog post about writing income. I've been doing this partly to dispel the myth that writers are swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin, and partly as a data point to help newer writers get a slightly more realistic (I hope) idea what they might be in for.

Keep in mind that I'm just one data point, and no writer's career is exactly the same as any other's. But one datum is better than none, right?

Prior Years: Here are the annual write-ups going back to 2007: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

In 2016, instead of a personal income write-up, I did a survey of almost 400 novelists about their income.

My Background: I’m a primarily “traditionally published,” U.S.-based SF/F author with 14 books in print from major New York publishers. The first of those books came out from DAW in 2006, and I've averaged more or less a book a year since then. (The past few years are an exception. I'll talk about that later.) I have an agent, and have been with them since about 2004.

I've self-published a middle grade fantasy and a few short collections. I’ve also sold about 50 short stories to different magazines and anthologies.

I’ve never hit the NYT or USA Today bestseller lists, but my last five books have been lead titles for my publisher.

I'm currently a solo parent of a teenager (at home) and a 21-year-old (away at college). I work a half-time day job, partly for the paycheck, but mostly for the benefits. I would love to say I write every single day, but sometimes life has other plans.

2021 in Summary: I'm going to focus on the writing here, because otherwise I'll spend the next 5000 words griping. I mean, come on -- we didn't even get Betty White celebrating her 100th birthday? F***ing 2021.

Okay, writing stuff. Right...

This was another slow year in terms of publication. Terminal Peace had been delayed already because of my family's medical crisis throughout 2019. I got the book turned in back in September of 2020, but thanks to COVID and some business issues my publisher was dealing with, it won't be published until August 2022. I think the only publication I had last year was a reprint of "Gift of the Kites" in Arcana.

I did, however, write a new middle grade novel my agent is shopping around, and I got about 90% of another book rewritten. That will hopefully be ready to go on submission within another month or two.

We also sold Russian rights to Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen, which was a lovely surprise.

So while I produced almost two books, 2021 was a year with no original Jim C. Hines publications, which is a bit frustrating and discouraging. It also makes the income numbers more interesting, at least to me.

2021 Income: The biggest check came from the Delivery/Acceptance payment for Terminal Peace. While I delivered that manuscript in September 2020, the payment didn't make its way through the system and get to me until 2021. I'm kind of glad, because otherwise this year's numbers would be a lot more depressing.

Royalties from my audio publishers and my U.S. publisher made up the next most significant chunk.

In total, before taxes, I brought in $24,243.50 in writing income. That's down more than $7000 from last year, which isn't terribly surprising. It's still better than I did in 2019, aka The Year From Hell.

Continued at https://www.jimchines.com/2022/01/2021-writing-income/

#writing #writing finances #2021

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peralta-guaranteed · 4 years ago

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Hey I absolutely love your account and if it’s not much of a bother can you write hcs or a fic where Amy was in Rosa’s place in the active shooter situation of season 5 episode 20 and how would Jake react and deal wit it. Thank you <3

Oh dang, that's such an interesting prompt and I'd love to write an actual fic about it at a later point, when I get a good coherent idea for it. That said my first ever B99 Fic kinda deals with a similar situation where Jake has to handle Amy being taken hostage while he's off duty... including my very first baby Mac writing (here it is)

Headcanon-wise this already got long:

- she only wanted to make a quick detour before their shift for some errands and to get a package he'd ordered and forgotten about, that had been sent to a pick-up place instead of their apartment, so they'd agreed to split up - she takes the car and comes in a bit later, Jake gets to work on the subway and comes in early because he has a big case waiting for him

- he actually gets stuck on the subway for about 30 minutes because of some delay and silently curses the fact that the one time in months where his girlfriend doesn't drive with him to work, he'll be late again and will never hear the end of it from anyone

- but once he does get in there's definitely no teasing as they're all already set around the radio, listening to the active shooter situation that he realises was the reason for his subway delay (he'll later scold himself for not getting out and checking what the situation was, because then he would've been there with her)

- he also realises, after Holt gives him some info, that the situation is right down the block from the pick-up place - seconds before the radio crackles on with Amy's voice, giving her last name and badge number

- he's pretty sure he can feel every single set of eyes in the precinct zoom in on him in that moment, not that it matters because he doesn't notice anything anymore except for the ice-cold rush down his back and his heart racing and yeah that's probably a small panic attack

- Rosa is surprisingly the one who gets him away from it all and into the breakroom, pushing him into the sofa and breathing with him until he can actually get air on his own, and telling him that things will be okay and that Amy can handle herself and would never do anything too rash, but he knows her 'comforting lie' voice after all their years working together

- he obviously immediately makes plans to go downtown and help her, and unlike with Rosa's situation a stern talking-to from Holt is not enough to stop him. Terry has to physically lift him and carry him back to the breakroom twice as he tries to go for the gun storage / supply room / idk what it's called basically where he wants to stock up before heading out

- they all split their time between listening to the radio updates and checking in on him / sitting with him to keep him calm, trying to distract him with other topics but barely any of it works (Holt comes closest simply by the fact that he doesn't try to divert his attention, but rather acknowledges his fears and talks him through it with the direct, almost brash way he has)

- but then the radio reports shots fired and several officers down/injured and Terry has to lift him away a third time and needs to hold him for quite a while until he stops trying to wiggle free

- Amy comes in about half an hour later, her arm bandaged up - she didn't get shot but injured herself in a fall while trying to help carry out a wounded officer

- not that she can really explain because she's caught in a deathgrip-hug by Jake as soon as she steps out of the elevator and while everyone else definitely wants to swarm on her as well, they respectfully keep their distance as Jake shivers in her arms

- after making sure she's absolutely okay and letting everyone hug her once, Holt sends them both home for the day (and strongly considers asking Rosa or Terry to drive them but Amy assures him she can do it)

- they kind of act like nothing big has happened once they're home, mostly started by Amy who is busy getting her purse in order and walking to the kitchen for the delivery menus and chatting and trying to forget what happened or could have happened, but Jake is back to koala-hugging her as soon as she stands still enough

- "Sorry I couldn't get your package" she tries to joke and that's weirdly when the dam breaks and they both start crying from the tension and fear and built-up emotions while hugging each other

- the rest of the day is spent on the couch / in bed, switching between holding each other close to their chest and talking it through, with an extra big order from the Polish place and lots of soft kisses and whispered reassurances

#b99 #brooklyn 99 #peraltiago #jake peralta #amy santiago #headcanons

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jawritter · 4 years ago

Text

Merry Christmas Sweetheart

Summary: Time doesn’t heal all wounds, sometimes it just drives them into our bones and festers there, until forgiveness is a four letter word, and it’s to late for second chances.

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Written for: @spnchristmasbingo

Square Field: Presents

Word Count: 2048

Beta’d by: @miss-nerd95! Thanks again love!

Warnings: Language, Heart break, Heavy angst, (This one is gonna hurt your feelings), Not really a very happy ending, a bit of a cliff hanger, Tears, past heartbreak, unrequited love. I think that’s it.

A/N: Merry Christmas @msmarvelouswinchester!! Lol, glad I found someone who loves their feelings hurt as much as I do! LOL. Hope you all enjoy this one! Please don’t copy my work! I promise my next bingo one shot will be fluffy. I was just really in my head when I wrote this one.

***MASTERLIST*** ***BECOME A PATREON***

It was cold today, especially for Austin. Your breath fogged in front of you with each puff of air from your lungs that burned in the bitter cold. A light dusting of snow fell around about, not much to keep everyone locked in their homes, but enough to gather on the top of cars that were parked out in the lot just beyond the safety of the airport terminal hanger that you were standing in front of with your bag slung over your shoulder, hands stuffed deep in your pockets.

The congestion of traffic appeared to be even thicker than what you remembered it being, even for the holidays. Everyone that walked by to get into cabs or ubers, seemed to be absorbed in their own little bubbles; either talking on phones or to one another as they made their way to their awaiting ride.

If you listened hard enough, you could hear the faint sounds of the customary cheerful music of the holidays playing in one of the little shops inside of the airport as the doors opened and closed not so far behind you. Off in the distance you could see the Christmas lights strung up in an elegant way on a lamp post and draped over shrubbery in the fading light of another day. It almost looked like a scene from some shitty Hallmark Christmas special, and it made your stomach churn uneasily.

It had been eleven long years since you had stepped foot on Texas soil, and you were seriously considering getting the hell out of here before he showed up, but it was too late to turn around. You could always tell him you missed your flight, or it got delayed by the weather so you just cancelled it, but you just knew that he wouldn’t buy it.

“Come on Steve,” you grumbled to yourself as yet another car pulled away from the hanger you were waiting under, and a happy, probably newly married from the looks of it, love-struck couple nuzzled together to fight against the bite of the cold wind that whipped around and sliced through your bones.

You probably would have been better off calling an uber to pick you up, but hey, Steve didn’t charge, and you really didn’t want anyone else to know you were here. Not yet atleast, mostly because you didn’t know if you were even going to stay.

Just as you were about to take your phone out and call him, the pair of headlights you had been waiting for pulled up in front of you.

You didn’t even let the car come to a complete stop before you pulled the door open and slipped inside, shaking slightly from the cold as you pulled the seat belt over you, meeting a pair of green eyes that were so not what you expected to see, and your heart dropped to your feet.

“Hey,” he said, his deep voice sounding like warm honey against the chill that was still making you shiver, and you hated the way you could still so easily drown into it. You were going to murder Steve when you saw him again.

“What are you doing here?” You asked through gritted teeth, and you could have sworn you saw him give out a shaky sigh as he pulled out onto the road.

“Steve mentioned he was picking you up today, and I told him I’ll do it because I wanted to see you,” Jensen said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel and shifting nervously, avoiding the death glare that you were giving him. “You left the night I told you Danneel and I were getting married, and I never saw you again. Not even a fucking word. Then I heard you're coming here, and I wanted to see you. I missed my friend.”

“The term ‘friend’ is a matter of one sided opinions, Jensen,” you told him shortly, not missing the way he flinched yet again out of the corner of your eye before trying to subtly readjust himself in his seat.

An awkward silence fell in the car, and you did your best to stare out the window and not at the man that was driving. Even though your eyes were trained on the blurry and dimly lit scenery you could still sense his every move, smell his cologne in the thick air that laid stagnant between you, hear every deep sigh that left his perfect lips as he struggled with words he wanted to say, but nothing would sound right; nothing felt right anymore.

“What are you doing in town,” he finally asked cautiously, as if he knew that one wrong move would set you off and you were suddenly demanding he pull over so that you could walk the rest of the way to Steve’s.

“Business,” you answer sharply, not in the mood for small talk, but it looked like Jensen thought awkward conversations won over awkward silences and pressed further.

“Business? This close to Christmas?” he asked, but your nerves were beginning to wear thin, and the old scars on your heart felt like they were being torn open inch by inch the longer you sat next to the man that had put them there all those years ago.

“It's real estate,” you snap, turning to face him in the seat fully in your building frustration. “Does your wife know you're here right now?”

You watched as the rebuttal question cut through him as if you had thrown a sword right at his chest. The visible shift and the clearing of his throat as he avoided your sharp gaze was speaking loud, but it only added to your growing confusion that was still somewhat blinding your judgement with old grief.

Jensen cleared his throat as he turned onto Steve’s street, still avoiding your gaze. “What kind of real estate?” he asked, trying to divert the topic, and your blood boiled under your skin.

“So you're just going to answer my question with another question? That’s real mature Jensen,” you snapped as he pulled in front of Steve’s little place, and put the car in park.

“Because I don’t want to talk about Danneel, I wanted to talk about you. I told you, I’ve missed you. You were my best friend Y/N, why did you leave me without so much as a goodbye or even a fuck you if you were so mad at me, and then show up again all these years later on 'business,' I deserve some answers too.”

You shook your head and bit back the tears that the taunting memory of the night you’d boarded a plane to New York with only a bag full of clothes, and the shattered pieces of your heart ripped through your out of repair.

You turned away from his broken gaze that still managed to make your heart clench, and gripped the handle of the door tightly, ripping it open and letting in the chill of the night air that only seemed to grow colder due to meeting Jensen to blow into the car.

“Oh you missed me so much, didn't you?” you asked, pure venom seeping into every word as your eyes threw daggers into his astonishing green orbs in the dim light that illuminated the small space between you.

“Did you miss me when you stood before God and our friends when you did your vows with that whore? After everything when I’d stood by your side, after all the years we had been together, did you miss me then? How about when she gave birth to your three children, and you were standing there in the delivery room with her? Or better yet, how about every time you were balls deep in that bitch while I was only in the next room, listening to you rip my heart out and stomp on it over and over again? You didn’t miss me then Jensen, you don’t miss me now. You feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. You can only feel what you feel and can't change what you want, but apparently pretty narcissistic bitches are more of your taste than people who actually care about you. I was right there in front of you for years and you never gave me the time of day, but one month on a movie set with her and ‘you were so in love. I left all those years ago because you left me a long time before I even landed in New York. So don’t sit here and act like you missed me, when you never saw me there at all like I wanted you to. Don't make me feel bad for leaving when you know it hurt me less than staying here.”

You tore your eyes away from him before your emotions could get the best of you, and stepped out, making your way into Steve’s home to hide from the past that was still sitting in the car outside, staring out of the window as the snow fell on the windshield.

Jensen bit down hard on his lower lip, trying not to choke on the sobs he refused to let out.

See, he had missed you, he’d missed you so damn much. He had missed you when he looked at the woman he settled for instead standing at the altar across from him on his wedding day, only marrying her because it was what people were telling him that it was the right thing to do. That she was in the same industry, and the marriage would be good for the two of them. He missed you during every milestone his kids made that never got shared with you, wishing it was you by his side. He didn't love his kids any less, but even though they weren't yours, he wished he’d have been able to share them with you like he’d always wanted to share everything. He couldn’t count the times he’d hidden away to call you, just to hear your voice, but chickened out over the years because he’d known he hurt you, he’d always known but let you get hurt just to play it safe.

That time you were talking about, how you'd heard Danneel and him before they had announced their engagement, he didn’t know you were even there. Danneel had come onto him and he was a little too drunk to say no. Not that he hated her, because he never could hate her, she’d done nothing wrong. It was his twisted mind that painted you underneath him every time they were together, not her.

Jensen took off his ball cap with force before throwing it at the dash and running his hands harshly down his tear stained face. He’d lost you all those years ago and never told you how he felt, and now it seemed like he was too late.

The cue he’d staged, the house he’d decided to look at that he had his lawyer call her to tell her that his client wanted to buy from the best realtor in New York, all to tell her that he loved her, always had and always will and that he knew how huge of a dick he had been by ignoring her feelings for his own selfishness. It looked like it was too late for any of it anyway.

His hand drifted to his pocket, pulling out the small, neatly wrapped box that contained his and Danneel’s wedding rings. He was planning to show them to you tomorrow for Christmas. He was going to tell you that they were over, and that he wanted to fix what he’d broken all those years ago with you if you'd be willing to let go of his stupid mistakes. He wanted another chance, but it was much slimmer now.

Jensen flipped the box in his hands before getting out of the car, trudging through the white blankets of snow to the front door, and placed the little box carefully on the step before he stood, leaning heavily against the door frame, trying to stop himself from falling apart.

“Merry Christmas Sweetheart,” he brokenly whispered into the unforgiving wind. Leaving his present to you, as well as his heart on his best friend's front door.

Forever Tags: @deanwanddamons @rvgrsbrns @chevyharvelle @onethirstyunicorn @i-love-superhero @akshi8278 @lyss-dw79 @magssteenkamp @lemondropirwin @squirrelnotsam @hobby27 @spnbaby-67 @mrsjenniferwinchester @defenderrosetyler @screechingartisancashbailiff @thecreatiivecorner @aflamboyanceofgays @vicmc624 @busy-bee-angel-misska @justanotherwinchester @brilovesdeanwinchester @idksupernatural @lyarr24 @amandamdiehl @love-jackles-37-blog @miraclesoflove @Waywardsistershy @emoryhemsworth @dean-winchesters-gardian-angel @softsebastian @tatted-trina6 @anaelsbrunette @hayleeharling @flamencodiva @coldmuffinbanditshoe @bxbyizzy @dirty-pan-goblin @itmejado @supernatural3002 @teresa-67 @thoughts-and-funnies @hearteyes-j2 @miss-nerd95 @writers-whirlwind

#jensen ackles #jensen ackes one shot #jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles fanfic #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles angst #spn fanfiction #jensen x reader #jensen x you #spn fanfic #spn one shot #dean winchester #jawritter #spnchristmasbingo

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cafedanslanuit · 4 years ago

Text

day three — death

pairing: jumin x mc

words: 1.1k

a/n: i may or may have not cried while writing this. i think most people don’t understand how serious and traumatizing it can be grieving for a pet, especially when you considered them family. but somehow i think jumin could understand. and i try to explore that in here.

in loving memory of camila (2014-2017)

You’ve never seen him so broken.

He hasn’t shed a tear since you left the vet’s office, carrying the white little body wrapped in a blanket -her favourite blanket- to the way to the car. Your whole body trembles as you cry and he puts an arm around your shoulders, trying to comfort you. Somehow, it makes you feel worse. You should be the one comforting him. After all, she was the closest thing to a child he’s ever had and now all that’s left is a limp body of what used to be Elizabeth the 3rd.

None of you say anything until you reach the penthouse. You mention about burying her in the rooftop garden and Jumin nods silently, reaching out to take his phone out of his pocket. You stop him in his tracks and shake your head, explaining you have you do this. Together. He just looks at you, eyes empty of emotion and nods once more.

Jumin keeps finding white hairs all over the apartment. You call the cleaning service and cancel it for the rest of the week. The next few days, Jumin and you start collecting all of the fur Elizabeth left behind and put them in a small wooden box. You notice him burying his fingers in the box, feeling the texture between his digits with a dazed look.

He thinks that if he gathers enough white hairs he can build the cat back.

A part of you thinks so too.

You make sure Elizabeth’s new home always has fresh flowers. Every time you go to the rooftop, you ask Jumin if he wants to go with you. He refuses, claiming he has work to do. His tone is soft, caring, almost as if nothing is bothering him. As if he isn’t hurting. As if his grief wasn’t as big as yours. After a small smile, he turns his eyes to the paperwork in front of him again. You wait a moment for him to change his mind but he doesn't. You ask if he needs more time but he keeps working, as if he hadn't listened to you. It doesn't take long for you leave.

Jumin turns into a ghost. The man you loved and married isn't there anymore. The void in his eyes never fully goes away, not even when he shares dinner with you. He nods in the right moments and never interrupts your story, but you notice he isn’t really there.

He hasn’t been for a while.

You see him burying himself in work again.

One afternoon, you receive a worried phone call from Jaehee, about Jumin raising his voice to one of the employees. In all the years she had worked under him, she had never seen him lose composure, but now there was a secretary silently sobbing on her desk. You thank her for the call and promise to talk to him. You end up breaking your promise, after falling asleep when it was one in the morning and Jumin still isn’t home. When you wake up, there’s a lingering warmth on his side of the bed, but your husband has left the penthouse once more.

One night, you mention him about doing a free vaccination campaign for cats in a poor neighbourhood. You tell him the campaign can have Elizabeth’s name and that you’ve spent the last week working on the project proposal and maybe he should take a good. It would be a good way to honor her memory, you say. He nods mind-absently and asks you to put it on the kitchen counter so he can have a look later.

Two weeks later, you clean the fine dust layer on the folder and decide to bring it up on another occasion.

Jaehee looks at you worriedly as you stir the coffee in front of you. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ you tell her, a knot forming in your throat. ‘I don’t know how to help him’. Your friend looks at you and squeezes your hand in comfort. She knows there isn’t a lot she can say and so do you. You take another sip of your drink and ask her about Zen’s play again.

It’s been months since you’ve seen Jumin sitting in the living room when you get home. He’s usually still at the company or locked down in his home office but now he’s looking at the night’s sky, his back to you in profound silence. You close the door behind you softly and take off your high heels, walking to your husband slowly. Just when you’re about to reach him, you see his shoulder shaking, his head looking down and the unmistakable sound of a sob. You lighten your steps and kneel on the sofa next to him, your hand on his back while asking him what’s wrong.

You look down and see a tiny pink collar on his hands, the ripped bag lying on the floor. A delayed delivery.

“She’s gone,” he whimpers, his face flushed and filled with tears. There’s so much strain in his features, his veins a little more visible and his eyes red, letting you know how long he had been crying. Matching tears fall silently across your cheeks, and you gently turn him your way, embracing him with a hug. It takes him a couple of seconds, but then he circles your waist with his arms tightly, crying on your chest loudly.

You stroke his back with soothing motions with one hand, while the other caresses his dark locks. And even though he’s breaking, your heart finds peace in the midst of your husband’s grief: he’s finally back.

“When does it stop hurting?” he asks hours later, his voice hoarse and broken.

“It doesn’t,” you reply softly. He looks up to you confused and you take the chance to wipe the tears off his face. “But we learn to live with it until one day her memory brings us a smile rather than tears.”

Jumin nods and buries his face on your chest again. He doesn’t cry again but he doesn’t let you go either. You keep on caressing his back and hair in silence.

Later that night, he finally follows you to the rooftop and sits down in front of Elizabeth’s grave as you change the flowers. You tell him a sweet story about her and he replies with another one. In between tears and weak laughs, stories come and go until the sun starts rising again. He makes sure to let Jaehee know he’s not coming to the office today before he crawls into bed with you. You receive him with open arms and he falls asleep almost immediately after he rests his head on your chest.

Jumin comes back the night he realizes she’s not coming back.

But it was also the night she was born again in his memory.

#mystic messenger #mysme #jumin han #mm jumin #mysme jumin #jumin x mc #jumin han x mc #mysmeangstweek

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janetbrown711 · 4 years ago

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"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," wakko?

Wakko never thought of himself as a worrier. He always held out hope that somehow, someway everything would work out- that Good would prevail and Evil would fall. He believed with all his heart it was his and his sibling’s destiny to defeat Salazar. He knew Dot was going to get better, and that Yakko would finally be able to relax for more than just five minutes.

However... being on his own for the first time challenged that.

He had taken the baker’s advice and went straight to the apprenticeship with the blacksmith. It had been excruciatingly difficult, and Wakko put a lot of blood sweat, and tears into the work he did. He had been revolted to find out that he was only paid a ha’penny a week. Sending letters had cost at least three ha’pennies so by the end of week one, he had had to get crafty.

He ‘borrowed’ paper from the blacksmith and wrote as neat and concise as he could manage before putting in the one ha’penny and the letter in an envelope (also ‘borrowed’ from the blacksmith) and snuck it into the mailman’s bag when he wasn’t looking. As for how he got food, he would take a piece of fruit or bread from the man when he wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t easy to do though, the blacksmith was a good person; he was stoic and old, hardly ever talked, except the occasional warning to Wakko that he shouldn’t touch or eat something, despite how delicious it looked. He was patient, though at the same time very distant. It was hard for Wakko to read him.

However, Wakko had gotten too comfortable too fast, as he had gotten caught stealing the blacksmith’s food and he fired him, said it was “a betrayal of his trust”. His words had stung Wakko, and he left without fighting, but not without taking a few pieces of paper and envelopes- Yakko and Dot would kill him if he didn’t write.

The letters.

Wakko thought he would love writing them, but it got harder and harder the more time passed. Wakko embellished how he was doing a lot, but he could tell Yakko wasn’t being entirely honest either. His words were fancy and he tended to dance around questions Wakko had asked. Wakko wished he had the energy and paper to argue with him, but he didn’t. He hated being lied to, but they quite literally couldn’t afford to bring it up.

After he got fired, he wandered and worked as an errand boy for a senile, but wealthy woman. He didn’t like it though- she was rude and she constantly spat on him, or hit him with her cane, which left him with nasty bruises.

He was almost thankful when she dropped dead one day.

He stole as much silverware, stamps, papers, and envelopes as he could fit into his hat before he alerted anyone of what had happened.

Still- seeing a corpse hadn’t been... pleasant.

It reminded him that, yes, death was a thing and was inescapable and could happen to his little sister at any moment while he was gone.

Needless to say, he did his best not to dwell on that, and sold all of the silverware as soon as possible and gave almost all the money to Yakko in the letter he wrote.

That should help delay Death for a while... hopefully, Yakko could buy her a new blanket, or a shawl. She always got so cold in the winter with just her skirt.

Wakko then went to work as a berry picker at the farm of an old cat couple with a few other children his age, though none of them liked talking. However, he only worked there for the month of May because he had gotten fired once they found out he had been eating more berries than he turned in. Wakko was hungry, and the farmers didn’t pay him enough for him to afford enough food anyway, Wakko thought that was bull.

However, he quickly regretted that decision when he had gotten a letter from Yakko that admitted that Dot was going through another rough patch. His brother wrote that he and Dot missed him a whole awful lot, but that they weren’t giving up yet. At least that was nice...

Still, Wakko couldn’t help but feel guilty. His selfishness had gotten him fired from two jobs, and because of that, his siblings were suffering. Sometimes he wished he could just magically fix everything with the snap of his fingers, but he knew that wasn't how it worked. If it was, he would’ve done it already.

After that, he was determined to find a job that would stick. Unfortunately, that was only getting more difficult, as the town that had once been not quite prospering still functioning well enough was starting to fall apart due to the King’s taxes only rising. The only good thing that came out of that was that prices were starting to lower which meant that if he could find a spare coin on the ground, he could probably actually afford something. However, that also meant jobs were going down, and so it was damned near impossible to find something to do.

Wakko had spent a whole month without a job. He lived on the street and picked up fallen coins and didn’t write- couldn’t write- a single letter. The last one he had sent had been about the farm, and he had lied and told Yakko it had burned down so he couldn't write to there anymore. Wakko could imagine how worried Dot and Yakko must’ve been. The thought of their worry kept him up at night.

Still.

A little voice in his head told him not to give up, that he come to far to call it quits now. He promised he’d return in a year, and that’s what he’d do.

“Bravery is not the absence of fear, it’s doing something in spite of it.”

Wakko had a vague memory of someone telling him that a very long time ago, but he couldn’t recall who.

During the late summer, he had worked different jobs every day. Some days, he’d deliver packages for a fraction of what the king’s mail delivery costed, others he’d return library books, and on some, he’d shine shoes. It was exhausting to run around for days on an empty stomach, but somehow he managed to scrape on by with just enough money to send to Yakko and Dot and survive.

Despite the feeling that summer would last forever, autumn arrived and it was the harvesting season. Wakko had heard that farms were in need of help, and he went off to go work at the pumpkin farm that was just a few miles out from town. Wakko had been delighted when he heard about the opportunity and had run seven miles to get there before anyone else. The farmer, a middle-aged Rabbit, had been pleased with his enthusiasm but warned him that he couldn’t pay much and that most of his payment would be in food and shelter, but Wakko didn’t care. He hated sleeping in alleys with a passion and swore never to do that again. Plus, he knew Yakko and Dot were probably pissed at him for not writing for several months, not giving him an address to write to, or anything. Plus, Wakko was not going to pass up on an opportunity for someone else to pay for his food.

However, he had thought working on a farm during the spring was hard, autumn was much, much harder. The town where he worked somehow managed to get more snow than Acme Falls, and earlier, so he often had to wake up before the sun rose and attempt to “fight off the freeze” as the farmer called it. Wakko didn’t care what it was called, it was agonizing. He ended up with blisters and sore arms and had even cut himself on the ax he used to chop branches quite a few times.

However, none of that mattered when he read the letters Yakko and Dot sent. Wakko hadn’t realized just how much he had missed them until he saw their handwriting on the paper in his hand.

Dot had apparently gone through another rough patch during the time Wakko couldn’t write but had gotten much better, even being able to go out of the ‘house’ and take walks by the river. Yakko wrote that Dot still missed him terribly, and was really mad that he hadn’t written in forever. Yakko then went on a tangent about how much it had worried him, but that he was still relieved and happy that Wakko was safe and okay.

Wakko’s reply had been full of apologies and embellished about his current situation (saying things like ‘i have an actual bed and it’s really comfortable’ and ‘the food is amazing’ and ‘i barely have to work at all’ and ‘I haven’t even hurt myself once!’). He didn’t want to worry Yakko any more than he already had.

In truth, the farmer wasn’t a very nice person, though he was nice enough to provide shelter and food for Wakko and the few others that worked alongside him. However, he did get annoyed when Wakko injured himself, and didn’t provide bandages, so Wakko would have to make do by tearing up pieces of his pillowcase. Soon enough, he tore it all up and there was no more pillow, which hadn’t been fun for sleeping. He also shouted and swore a lot, but Wakko mostly tuned it out, having had good practice after the senile dead lady.

Still, a job was a job, and Wakko wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world. He was able to keep up his promise with one ha’penny being sent home every two weeks, which Yakko noted was becoming “more and more useful in Acme Falls, as the economy was clearly in shambles”, whatever that meant.

Unfortunately, the harvest came to an end sooner than Wakko had hoped and he was back on the streets in the blink of an eye. He had a few survival strategies he had picked up from observing his older brother over the years, but surviving on the streets in the snow was a lot, a lot harder than surviving on the streets, not during the snow.

And even more unfortunately, there were little to no jobs available anymore. The only ones that were available required him to walk far distances in the snow even during snowstorms. Of course, he took them, but they were grueling and made every muscle in his body ache.

And so he resorted to his least favorite solution: stealing.

Whenever he’d walk past the market, he’d snatch an apple or a loaf of bread if he could manage and hide it in his package until it was safe and he could eat it. He stole matches so he could start fires in the garbage. He stole books that belonged to the library for kindling for said fires. He felt insanely guilty every time, but no matter what way he looked at it, there was no other option.

His main motivator had been survival. He knew he needed enough money for a ticket home in December, but knew that that’d be near impossible if he attempted to pay for his own things- especially with the taxes taking nearly all of the money he had earned with doing the jobs- and god only knew how guilty he had felt that he hadn’t been able to send any money home for Dot. Still... he figured coming home would be an at least okay replacement.

He hoped.

He wrote letters but didn’t give return addresses, fearing what Yakko would say again. He knew he must’ve been outraged that Wakko hadn’t written or sent money in awhile, and he prayed Dot was doing okay and that they didn’t need the money he wasn’t able to get.

He didn’t have the heart to write about his worries about not being able to come home after all...

Wakko shivered as he thought of that, before snapping back into reality realizing where he was. He had an awful tendency of getting distracted while he was doing errands, it was a problem.

Especially if he was trying to focus on nabbing some food. If he didn’t focus, he was likely to get caught.

Shaking his head to get back to the present, he looked around and saw an empty stall selling some type of fruit he hadn’t seen before, but figured it’d be enough. He casually sauntered on over there, and began to walk past before snatching one with his tail and quickly putting it into the box of books he was returning to the library for an old dog man.

“Hey! Kid!” Wakko froze when he heard a voice behind him. He peeked over his shoulder and saw it was the man who owned the booth.

“Stop right there!” He shouted. Wakko bolted.

He ran through the crowded market, but unfortunately for him, he slipped on some ice on the path and came crashing to the ground, books going flying everywhere, and his fruit was squashed to a pulp.

“Hey-! Kid- are you alright?” The man’s anger faded into concern and Wakko muttered to himself and trying to gather his stuff, ignoring the throbbing in his head, and stinging in his-likely scraped- knee. Eventually, he heard the man approach him, but to his surprise, he started helping Wakko put the books back into the box. Wakko didn’t look at him much, but could feel the man giving him pitiful looks.

“Look- I know what you’re gonna say and you’re wrong. I-i... I swear that I’m a good kid, okay?” Wakko sniffled as he put a blue-colored book down.

“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort,” the man replied, handing Wakko a green book. Wakko took it hesitantly, still not willing to look him in the eyes.

“I was going to offer you some more of that fruit you took, but you ran in such a hurry, I couldn’t get my words out,” He said. Wakko didn’t know if he believed that.

“I-i just need enough money for my sister and a train ticket...” Wakko mumbled. The man nodded.

“You got family?” He asked. Wakko nodded.

“Sister and brother in Acme Falls,” he said.

“That’s quite a ways away. I suppose you came here for work but that ain’t working out well, is it?” He asked. Wakko frowned and didn’t answer. He wasn’t liking his tone...

“Here, I’ll give you a bag of clementines if you’ll let me. I can even help you with those books if you need,” The man said, standing.

“I can take care of myself,” Wakko scowled, but realized that was probably a really stupid thing to say. He was starving...

“B-but I’ll take the clementines...” Wakko added. The man nodded, and stood up, and headed back to his booth. Wakko did his best to ignore the looks the crowd was giving him as he followed.

“Here you go, sixteen clementines. That should do you good for quite some time. Oh- and here,” The man dug under his booth and Wakko stood awkwardly with his tongue sticking out.

“This should get you a train ticket, and hopefully enough left over for those siblings of yours,” he said, handing Wakko a little brown sack. Wakko gawked at it.

“I-i can’t accept all this. I’m sure you need it,” Wakko refused.

“Nonsense. I got all the clementines I could want. And besides, I don’t need to ride on a train to return to my family any time soon,” He waved it off.

“B-but the king’s taxes-”

“I know how to make due. I know you need the money, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll accept,” He pointed at Wakko, and Wakko realized he wasn’t wrong. He just wished he could do something for the man in return, but knew he couldn’t.

“Th-thanks mister... it’s been a really long time since someone’s been this nice to me,” he looked at the ground.

“No problem kiddo. Stay safe out there, winter is a dangerous time. Might want to bandage that knee of yours,” He pointed to Wakko’s bleeding knee. Wakko nodded.

“Thanks, will do, mister,” he said, grabbing the sack of clementines, putting it in the box with the books, and put the little brown bag of money in his hat. He then waved goodbye and headed on to finish his task, get paid, them immediately lose said payment to taxes, but smiled internally. The tax collector didn’t know about the money in his hat, so he didn’t collect it.

It looked like Wakko was going to be able to come home after all.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

#animaniacs #my fics #wakko warner #wakkos wish #yakko warner #dot warner

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thisiswhatshefelt · 4 years ago

Text

For Olivia

Summary: Line cook Johnny "Coco" Cruz has made many bad decisions in his life, but his biggest regret is not being a part of his children's lives. He reconciles with his teenage daughter, Letty, so he’s hopeful when he shows up on his four-year-old daughter’s doorstep. Shanice Hunter, a newly-appointed guardian, is determined to protect Olivia from anything— even if that means her own father. Story Warnings (overall): Other than some mild language and alcohol/drug use, this is some pretty fluffy stuff. For me, anyway. Multi-chapter. Pairing: Chef!Coco x Black!OC Words: ~1.3k

Chapter One They’ve never met. She’s never even seen a picture of him. But when Shanice opens her door and sees the tattooed man standing in her doorway, she immediately knows that he’s Johnny Cruz.

The process isn’t as long as everyone warns her it would be, but it is incredibly tedious. There are complicated forms to fill out and hearings to attend, but she forces herself to trust the process. She’s patient. And after three months, she officially becomes the legal guardian of the four-year-old girl standing beside her.

Their things are unpacked, yet Shanice keeps the flattened boxes stacked in the storage room on the deck. It’s been weeks since moving into this new apartment, and fear keeps her from tossing the boxes. She’s afraid some technicality will delay the process, or that her best friend, Mel, will change her mind about the whole thing.

But Shanice is awarded guardianship almost too easily, but she wraps her arms around Olivia tightly when it’s official. They hug this way every night after they kneel and send their prayers off with soft ‘amens.’

The embrace comforts Shanice more than it does the little girl whose body has lost way too much weight. Olivia’s much too young for all of life’s uncertainty. She’s already learned not to trust a promise, and her appetite wavers without something definitive. She pushes food around the plate at every meal as the not yets and the soons get old, sometimes forcing spoonsful of her dinner down for Shanice’s benefit.

Olivia’s small hand holds onto Shanice’s pinky and forefinger as she looks up at the man in the doorway. He stares back at her, shoulders suddenly heavy now with what Shanice will later learn is shame. He’s looking down at what has flourished in his absence.

Shanice sometimes tries to imagine his face, but he’s shapeless in her mind, and it’s hard to put a face to something without form. To catch smoke in her hand. Olivia has the same round, expressive brown eyes that give her away, and she has those same ears that are too big for her head.

Johnny’s ears are even more emphasized by his long hair that he tucks behind them. Tattoos peak out from the cuffs of his sleeves and the neck of his sweatshirt like weeds slipping through cracks in a wall.

He clears his throat before taking a half step forward. There are so many features that he and Olivia share, but his are masked in a furtive shadow even as he’s flooded with light from her apartment. Entirely too nondescript. He’s wearing dark jeans and an unmarked black hooded sweatshirt like he’s been trying to stop the darkness from clawing at his back.

Shanice shields Olivia, pulling her back and out of view when he inches forward.

“Sorry to come at you so late at night,” he says, tearing at the silence. “Uh, I’m Coco- I mean, I’m Johnny Cruz, Miss. Can we talk?”

“Go to your room, Olivia,” Shanice tells the girl, but it sounds as though she’s scolding her.

The curt tone is misdirected, meant for the recognizable stranger at the door. She looks behind her and watches as the little girl’s eyebrows weave together with confusion. She retreats to her new room with half her attention still focused on the door. Shanice gives a tight smile, attempting to reassure Olivia as the door pushes in but doesn’t completely shut.

“She’s beautiful,” the man lets fall from his mouth in a small yet untidy heap.

When the doorbell rings, Shanice thinks it’s the pizza she’d ordered for dinner that Wednesday. She still has the money in the pocket of her pajama pants, but she wished she’d brought the metal bat she keeps under her bed instead.

Johnny. She might have heard the name mentioned years ago, but the memory feels like a faded dream or a faint taste of déjà vu on her tongue.

“What do you want?” Shanice nearly pushes the words at him through her teeth as she speaks. She’s asking so much more with her question.

Are you going to take her away?

“You don’t gotta worry about me fuckin’ up your home or nothing,” he starts, clearing his throat more out of apprehension than necessity. He continues his researched speech, “I don’t wanna disturb nothing you got goin’ on here. I’m tryna make some amends in my life, and I’d be grateful if you would allow me to meet her.”

“How is meeting her not a disruption?”

He shakes in head, frustrated. “Naw, I meant…I’m not here to ask no custody or no bullshit like that.”

“You goddamn right, because I’ll kill you before I let that happen.” It’s intended mostly as a figure of speech, but she steps forward with one hand clenching the doorknob and the other clenching the money in her pocket. There isn’t anything figurative about the way she feels then as her hands tremor.

But Johnny doesn’t even seem surprised. This is something he must have expected from the list of imagined scenarios.

Out of the corner of her eye, Shanice sees the pizza delivery boy walking up the stairs with her food, and she suddenly realizes how the scene must look. She’s in a faded UCLA shirt and fuzzy pajama pants as her eyes are wide with every bit of contempt her body can muster. She relaxes her eyes, then her limbs follow as she finally remembers to breathe.

“Um, large pepperoni pizza?” the delivery boy tentatively puts forward the food, extending his lanky arms.

“Like I said,” Johnny begins. “I’m not tryna to inconvenience you or her, so I’m gonna go. If you wanna reach me…”

She watches as Johnny pulls a worn piece of paper from his pocket and slip it in the fold of the pizza box before turning and running down the steps of her place.

It takes a too-long, awkward moment to pass before Shanice remembers the delivery boy is still standing off to the side with containers of food in his scrawny hands. She apologizes as she slips him the money while simultaneously grabbing the boxes and she’s soon back inside the apartment. As Shanice puts the chain on the door, she has the strong urge to barricade it with the couch.

“Mushroom!” Shanice calls out as she washes her hands at the kitchen sink. “Pizza’s here!”

The door to Olivia’s room slowly opens and she looks around the living first before walking out of the room.

“C’mon, come wash your hands,” Shanice beckons from the sink.

Olivia joins her at the sink, pulling her step stool from the corner of the kitchen. She glances up at Shanice, squishing soap suds between her fingers.

“Who’s’at man?” Olivia blurts out.

There it is.

Shanice knows the inquiry must eventually come, but she doesn’t expect it this soon. Not before she has time to think of what to say.

“He’s just…” she shakes her hand, accidentally pumping more soap back on her hands to rinse for the second time. “He’s an old friend,” Shanice manages.

“How come you looked so mean at him?”

“Well, he’s mommy’s friend-”

“Oh,” Olivia’s eyebrows knit again, completely understanding. She’s seen a lot of Mel’s friends- old and new and temporary. “So…” Her face contorts with one eye scrunched as if she’s looking through a kaleidoscope. “…so he bringed a pizza?”

“No, Mush,” Shanice laughs at the conclusion Olivia draws. “I’m hungry, are you hungry?”

Olivia’s attention lands on the warm pizza now on their counter, but her favorite are the garlic rolls. Shanice is fearful that Olivia will go back to pushing her food around every time a meal is presented. Her cheeks are slowly beginning to fill, though. The childish chub is returning to her face as her appetite slowly begins to pick up. She’s less folded into herself, walking more like a child and less like a shadow.

They eat on the couch, watching A Goofy Movie while Shanice is the one who picks at her dinner tonight. Her stomach is in deep twists and doesn’t leave any space for anything else as she thinks of what’s to come from Johnny Cruz.

Next chapter: Two

#mayans mc #mayans mc fanfiction #mayans fanfic #mayans fanfiction #coco cruz #johnny cruz #coco x oc #thisiswhatshewrote #poc!fanfiction #poc!fanfic #woc writer #poc writer #black oc #mayans mc x oc

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