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

thenightlymirror · 1 year 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 · 1 year 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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neoninky · 1 year ago

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TWST Fanfic "Her Lost Voice": Chapter 17

Off topic note: anyone who wants/NEEDS to gush about TWST Chapter 7 happenings, feel free to flood my Inbox lol I be taking notes for my Diasomnia story (spoilers be DAMNED!!)

Chapter 17: Ready to Stand

The Sacred Crown bell echoed across the campus, igniting a school-wide mad dash to the main corridors. It was a smaller elite school but unlike their brother school or Night Raven, the girls of Sacred Crown had monthly exams instead of just midterms or final exams. At the end of each month, regular classes had a three-day testing period for every class: first, second, and third years alike. This month was no different in spite of the first festival of the year being just around the corner. Tests were finished, and the campus itself had been cleaned, pruned, and polished to perfection. Now, the results of all their hard work were being posted.

However, all of the fuss sounded like a dull hum to Cowrie as she stood facing the posting board, blank eyes forward. She heard the whispers, the gossip-mongering as it floated around her but none of that seemed to matter anymore. It hadn't for weeks. While the other girls were busy keeping tabs on each other or worrying about their grades, the new Cerulamare Dorm Leader was just trying to keep her head above water in silence. There was just too much going on outside that her trivial school life barely amounted to much anymore. It honestly felt like some weird stage production she was constantly stuck playing in while the real world kept moving on outside the small island.

Once the faculty finished posting the results, everyone around her reacted as her pale eyes remained fixed and unmoved. Her name had gone from Number 3 down to Number 11. A drop this drastic caused a few onlookers to start the latest gossip chain: "The Cerulamare Prefect is losing her edge."

A few of her students that supported her gave Cowrie words of encouragement but they were only met with indifference as the eel returned to her dorm room. Alone. What was interpreted as disappointment, maybe even depression, was a front. Once Cowrie was in her room, bookbag tossed aside, her eyes steeled into a determined gaze. All over her desk were handwritten letters. Each and every one was from Jade. To the untrained eye, it seemed like a bounty of affectionate, sweet nothings from her beau. Between the two young lovers, however, they knew how to exchange information in plain sight.

"I miss you terribly, my Cowrie. I cannot wait to see you again and tell you all about the new alchemy project we've been working on. It's almost finished and ready to put into practice..."

The 'alchemy project' being Elise's transformation back into a mermaid.

"Mother says hello, by the way, and apologizes that the care package will be delayed a bit longer due to storm systems over the Coral Sea..."

Luna, "the care package", is unable to contact her just now. And so on and so forth. Texting each other would be more convenient but letters were harder to track. Thanks to Luna's studies, the group now had a far more efficient method of delivery. The downside was that Cowrie herself wasn't as privy to everything going on because she was stuck on the outskirts of the situation. She understood the logistics but it still irritated her ferociously. Cowrie grabbed the scroll she had written that morning and put it inside the bottle Jade's most recent letter had arrived in. Seconds later, the paper disappeared in a flash. It reappeared in an identical bottle that sat on Jade's shelf next to his terrariums. Azul and Floyd had been given bottles of their own to keep them in contact with Luna whenever she had something to report. Or whenever she missed her love too much. Cowrie sighed and flopped on her bed just before burrowing under her blankets. She was exhausted, anxious, and frustrated all at the same time. Patience was never one of her strong suits. She was about to drift off when a thunderous knock on her door shocked her out of her bed and onto the floor.

"Cowrie??" It was her Vice Prefect. Cowrie groaned and marched over to the now squeaky door, staring up at the much taller girl on the other side.

"What, Ombra??"

Ombra was a very soft-spoken, near seven-foot-tall orca mermaid. The girl was sweet as can be but literally heavy-handed given her large stature. The repair bill for the dorm itself was setting a record. She fiddled with one of her black and white curls of hair before muttering, "O-Oh I'm sorry to bother you, Cowrie, but the Headmistress wants to see you in her office regarding Family Day coming up?"

Family Day was the opening day of the festival. As a prefect, Cowrie was aware of the schedule but had no idea what that day had to do with her specifically. The small eel just scoffed at the interruption and staggered out of the dorm without another word to anyone.

The Headmistress' office was unnervingly organized, pastel, and smelled like a grandmother's powder room. It always made Cowrie feel itchy. She sat in the very ornate and stiff seat before the Headmistress' large desk, doing her best to listen as paperwork kept being piled in front of her.

"-you'll have off campus visitation rights for two days but for the remainder of the festival, your presence on campus as a Prefect is mandatory."

Cowrie blinked her sleepy eyes, "...What?"

The retired Fairy Godmother sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, "Pay attention, Miss Cerith! Your guardians have confirmed their attendance for Family Day but have also asked that you be able to visit them while they stay in the city off campus. Given your family's uh...condition, I know they probably don't get to come to the surface very often so I have the approval forms right here-"

Cowrie's brain burst into a wildfire. Her WHAT now?! She grabbed the forms from the desk and quickly read over them. She found herself with even more questions as she saw her 'guardians' names and signatures: Indigo and Ivy Cerith.

"Who is Ivy and when the hell did he get married?!" she shrieked just before getting bopped on the head with the Headmistress' wand.

"Miss Cerith! Language!"

Another letter appeared inside Azul's bottle as he was listening to the recorded message Elise had sent him two weeks ago. Was this the third or fourth time he sat and listened to it? Azul wasn't sure anymore. The words had passed from Elise and this Spindle fellow to him and he passed them via ink and paper to Luna for confirmation. He knew Elise wasn't stupid but he'd be damned if he didn't fact-check every last syllable uttered by a stranger, renounced by the enemy or not. He continued to listen and reached for the letter stamped with a crescent moon inside the bottle. Luna didn't disappoint. Not only was Spindle telling the truth, but he had an insider perspective.

Azul's vault opened with a heavy thunk to what used to be his contract collection. Now it was more or less a store room for important ingredients or hidden 'treasures'. Spindle's voice played over the phone as Azul opened the wooden box his grandmother had given Elise. In place of the dagger was the vial given to him by Reine, now full.

"I started to show signs of magic when I was about ten years old...my unique magic manifested very quickly, though it was hard to control at first..."

Azul smiled at the completed serum in the vial before sliding the chain holding it around his neck. It took several tries but he was confident this was the perfect combination to return his darling to him once and for all. Spindle's distant voice continued as Azul locked the vault.

"Proteus was the first to witness it soon after he started working for my father. He told me it was better to keep it a secret since my father didn't care too much for magic...I was young so I didn't know any better at the time. Soon after that, Proteus went to Lorelei Ashengrotto for help since he didn't have any magic of his own and he wanted mine, but she turned him away. I didn't know about any of this until it was too late."

Luna had confirmed this was true, straight from her mentor's mouth. Madam Lorelei was always open to helping those who sought her out but helping someone take the magic away from another, much less a child? Ridiculous. Azul scoffed at the notion. His grandmother had too much pride in her abilities, natural and learned, to do such a thing. The irony of his disdain wasn't lost on him given his past endeavors. But there was a vast difference in common thievery and striking a deal with full disclosure! So it was no surprise that Proteus made the desperate move that he did...

"There are others not as well known or revered in our neighborhood. Proteus turned to one of them. I'm not sure which one. They don't leave any tracks behind. But they gave him a spell that would take magic and give it to him. He could only use it once though. He used it against me while I was asleep but something happened, something went wrong...I started to wake up and I tried to resist but failed. That's how my throat was injured and I lost my voice. No one else knew about my magic and Proteus mastered it quickly enough to help my father prosper by trapping his enemies or their families. So even if I could speak, who would believe me?"

"Despicable..." Azul muttered before turning off the message. He had heard enough. Now he understood his grandmother's warning on a visceral level. The Octavinelle prefect snapped his fingers and lowered the magic barrier that had soundproofed his office. Even though he was nowhere near his home, Azul couldn't be too careful. Everything needed to go according to plan that everyone involved had put so much effort into building over the past weeks. Just as he was about to leave, another letter appeared in the bottle. This time, it was his grandmother's handwriting.

"Everything is set for your homecoming party. Your mother is asking about the present sent for our guest."

"Well, well. That is excellent news," Azul smugly grinned as he held the serum in his hand and planted a kiss on the glass vial before tucking it into his shirt. He quickly scribbled a reply before sending it right back, once again relishing in Luna's clever little invention. Portal magic was no walk in the park for most mages and yet she had outdone herself using the same magic to connect one vessel to another.

The sun was going down as Spindle waited for Elise by the Castilene family's dock. Normally he preferred to be in the water but...well his mistress insisted he get used to being on two legs. It just "made things less complicated" in the long run. He stared down at the clothes on his now human form and those strange things on his feet. What were they called again? Shoes?? The flower princess had others help him get dressed and explain how to do it himself but it was still hard to get a firm handle on. He at least got the hang of making his own dry land potions after Elise's thorough instruction. Spindle straightened up the best he could as he saw Reine approach with bodyguards and his mistress at her side. Elise beamed with pride at him as she walked up to him, "He makes a very dashing human, doesn't he?"

He felt his face grow warm as Reine smiled and agreed, "He's a fast learner too. You've done very well in such a short amount of time, Spindle."

He tried to bow but nearly fell over, making his face burn with more embarrassment, "Th-Thank you, Your Rose Highness."

Elise hooked her arm with his to help him board Reine's ship, "Don't worry. You'll get used to this form in no time," Elise lowered her voice as they reached the deck, "There is something very important I need you to hold onto for me, Spindle. You'll know when the time is right for it. Until then keep it hidden, alright?"

Once the two of them were settled on the ship's deck, Elise handed the eel something wrapped in fabric. He tucked it inside his jacket without question.

His mistress rewarded him with a soft peck on his forehead, "Good. Now relax. It'll be a short trip back to Sacred Crown. Just stick with me, ok?"

Reine couldn't help but giggle at the two of them. Had she not known any better, she could have sworn Elise's new companion was a puppy beastman, not an eel.

The Sacred Crown Prefects stood in a perfectly straight greeting line at the front gates as they opened a few days later. It was tradition to greet each group of visitors starting with students from their brother school, then other schools, Night Raven, and the returning Fourth Year students usually brought up the rear, and then specifically for this event, visiting family members and alumni. Alumni from Sacred Crown, Royal Sword, and Night Raven had all received invitations meaning that there were a lot of people to go through...which only made Cowrie's eye twitch even more.

"Hey...are you good, Cowrie?" Petra whispered to the visibly irritated mermaid on her left. The Cerulamare prefect didn't bother hiding her impatience even as the Headmistress gave her usual speech to the crowds as they entered.

"Sure," she answered very bluntly as she tapped her foot and gave a half-baked greeting to any random person that walked by her. Her eyes scanned for any one of a few familiar faces and only felt more irritated when she didn't see them right away. Cowrie's mood lightened once she started seeing more NRC uniforms enter through the gates. Even some friendly faces from Octavinelle stopped to chat with her which eased her a bit. They weren't the ones she was looking for but the Octavinelle boys had always treated her, Luna, and Elise very well. Probably a certain trio's influence, no doubt. However, there was always at least one in every dorm to ruin a good thing...

One such boy was getting a bit too friendly for a certain eel's taste. He was a third year in the same class as "Dorm Leader Azul", something he was proud of clearly, and a merman as well. A merman that took note of the very unique shark tooth necklace around Cowrie's neck.

"Hey, that's a nice piece, Cowrie-chan," he began to lean in to get a closer look, making the female eel's eye start to twitch again, "Where did you get it?"

"My mate," she said pointedly while scanning the crowd for the man himself. The third-year boy laughed at the word.

"Your mate? You only have the one or are you just testing the waters?"

His comment snapped Cowrie's attention right back to him, "The hell does that mean?"

The smirk on his face made her skin start to crawl, "Well I mean you and your sister. You're sirens, right? It's to be expected given your nature. I figured your knock-out sister got around, but you? You don't seem like that type of girl but maybe you just hide it better..."

Petra overheard the boy's suggestive commentary and grabbed his arm, "Hey! You're holding up the line, dude. Move along."

Cowrie fumed, ready to take a chunk out of this rude boy herself! She suddenly squeaked as a strong pair of arms wrapped around her waist from behind and pulled her back into a firm chest.

"Yes, please do..." the familiar voice's possessive tone caused Cowrie's face to flush. All the color that burned her face suddenly drained from the NRC boy's terrified expression.

The Octavinelle third year jumped back, startled, "V-Vice Prefect Leech!"

Jade Leech gently held his mate to him as he rested his chin on top of her head. His smile didn't reach his eyes as they pierced into his rude dormmate, "You're being terribly crass to my devoted pearl. Listen to the lady and move along before I decide to be less...forgiving."

The boy darted off without another word. Cowrie looked up at her mate as he turned a much softer, sweeter even, gaze down to her as he tucked a stray hair behind her ear. He didn't dare let her go. She wasn't sure which gesture frazzled her more, "Jay Jay??"

Jade looked at her as if there wasn't a whole group of her peers surrounding them in that now more intimate moment. The normally more reserved twin's voice was heavy with affection, "Ahh, my Cowrie...I've missed you."

The greeting line was completely derailed as Jade leaned down and kissed Cowrie without any hint of shyness. Cowrie's heart skipped, if not straight up hopscotched a beat or two as the other prefects around her stared and cooed enthusiastically at the sight. Clearly Jade had lost his mind but Cowrie was in no condition to question it. It wasn't until he released her that she ripened into a perfect tomato red.

"J-J-JAY JAY!" Jade chuckled as she whined and swatted his arm. The fact that a few of the girls had their phones out made things even worse, "Y-You decide to be all lovey-dovey in public NOW?!"

His smile only broadened, "Oooh? You don't like it, my little tadpole?" Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing alright. Well besides teasing his adorable future wife, the wide birth boys from his dorm and others suddenly gave him and Cowrie did not go unnoticed by either one of them.

Cowrie huffed and stomped her foot, "I never said that. Just...if you wanted to claim territory, at least give me a heads-up first! ...And...I uh.." Her expression was sour but her face was shimmering at this point, "...I missed you too, Jade."

Only he could hear her pouty, mumbled confession but hearing his full name on her lips did wonders for his already fantastic mood, "Oya...so cute," he grinned making Petra and Manari snicker on either side of the couple.

"My, my, I've never seen Jade behave so sweetly before. How precious."

Cowrie turned to Jade's pleased companions that were now approaching the couple. Azul was practically glowing in his freshly cleaned and pressed uniform, walking tall and ready for anything. He seemed to be wearing extra cologne as well. Floyd was just the same as always as he flopped on the other side of Cowrie, making it a sloppy group hug.

"Cowriiiiie-chaaaaaaaan! You're even cuter in your uniform! So little and girly. Heh did you make the skirt shorter though? Just for Jade, right?" he giggled smugly. Cowrie's face glowed pink. Yes, it was true that she did roll the edge of her skirt higher than what was dress code regulated but HE wasn't supposed to be the one to notice it!!

The younger Cerith sister was reaching her limit at breakneck speed, "Shut up, Floyd! You guys go to the courtyard and wait there until I'm done! It's straight that way. Geez!"

Jade planted another kiss on Cowrie's cheek, earning more excited coos from the other girls, before helping Azul drag his frustrated twin further into the campus like a big fussy toddler.

"Good luck with all that ruckus, Cowrie," Petra snickered beside her, "And congratulations, Mrs. Leech~"

Cowrie had a snide comeback at the ready but it died in her throat as the next group of visitors entered the gates. Her baby blue eyes widened with a wild mix of emotions all at once as two figures stopped in the middle of the path to face her.

"Sorry, we took so long, sister."

Luna hadn't aged whatsoever. She just looked more elegant now than ever before: she was fashioned, curated specifically to not only make a statement but represent her brilliant mentor as a proper apprentice. She was dressed in a fitted black turtle-necked dress with a luscious purple fur shawl around her shoulders. Pinned in her sleek black up-do was Madam Lorelei's signature spiral shell on a gold hair comb. Around her neck, Luna proudly wore the necklace Floyd made for her as if it was the world's finest jewel. On Luna's arm was their brother, Indigo Cerith, dressed to the nines in a classic black suit and tie and standing on human legs as if he did this in his sleep. He looked amazing and yet stranger cleaned up so nicely. Any complaint or retort fell by the wayside as Cowrie's eyes clouded over with salt water the minute she rushed forward and threw her arms around her siblings.

"You're both here, that's all that matters," she mumbled into Indigo's chest.

Indigo wrapped an arm around his baby sister and pulled her close with a soft grin, "There's someone else you need to see."

Cowrie froze for a second before pushing away from him with a huff, "Is it this Ivy person? Who the hell is she, huh?!"

Luna chuckled as Indigo awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, "You'll meet her soon enough. But no, not her. Someone else...someone very important."

Azul's eyes stayed trained on the movement of the crowd passing them by as the trio waited in the large courtyard. His confidence was still high enough to cover up any nervous energy trying to surface but he frowned when she was nowhere to be seen.

"Is that a pout I see?" Jade teased him. The eel was still in a very good and smug mood with no intention of hiding it from anyone. Floyd's playfulness had quickly morphed into impatience as both he and Azul were waiting for their own reunions. He growled at the general atmosphere and huffed, "We're here, where are they??"

Azul checked his watch, trying and failing to hide his own antsy feelings, "Calm yourself, Floyd. We've only been here ten minutes."

Floyd turned on Azul about to launch straight into a sour-fueled mood when his eyes filled with stardust, lazer focused up the path where they had come from. Jade and Azul both knew who he was looking at before they even turned around, still, they found themselves even a bit flustered by the siren's glow up. Luna broke away from her brother as she locked eyes with her beloved with a smile that rivaled the sun.

"Floyd, honey! There you are!" Her sweet tone radiated warmth. Before Floyd could say a word, Luna was right there with her arms around his neck and her rich red lips planted on his. The eel melted in her arms with a soft moan. Jade half expected his brother to collapse or explode on the spot. Perhaps both.

Azul silently commended his grandmother on the stylistic choices she made for Luna but also on how Luna's magical aura had clearly flourished under her tutelage. Normal humans struggled to notice these things but mermaids and beastmen could easily register them with their keener senses. To Azul, Luna's growing power surrounded her like a high-quality perfume: alluring, unique, and even a bit disarming. The siren in question gravitated toward the octopus with a kind smile. Floyd was too blissed out to be upset about her temporary departure.

"Luna, you are absolutely thriving," Azul greeted her with a proud grin, "I can see how well Grandmother is treating you."

"Azul-kun," she gave him a grateful kiss on his cheek, "How can I ever repay your wonderful generosity? Actually...don't answer that. I already know one way. Come with me."

The sparkle in her golden eyes as she took him by the hand made Azul weirdly excited and anxious all at the same time. Luna cooed to her love that she'd return shortly but he was already bothering 'big brother' Indigo alongside Jade.

"Ooh Big Brother, you're taller than I thought you'd be!" Floyd chuckled.

Indigo's stoic expression didn't budge nor did his crossed arms as he rolled his eyes at the twin's bluntness. He was by no means short in his human form. He had to be at least six foot five, but the even taller twins still leaned down to talk to him just to be cheeky. Cowrie felt like she was standing in the middle of a forest of black uniforms and tailored suits, almost straining her neck just to look up at the guys surrounding her.

Luna and Azul walked along the stone path away from the large courtyard towards a more solitary park area with a lake.

"This was always one of her favorite hideaways when we were still on campus. Don't be too upset with her for keeping you waiting, Azul-kun. She was intercepted, unfortunately..." Luna's voice lowered as the two of them reached the shoreline. The siren placed a finger to her lips before pointing across the lake to the bridge. Azul nearly choked on his own breath at the sight of her, his beloved Elise.

She was standing on the bridge talking to someone but even with her back turned to him, she was a vision. Her long, curled dark hair tumbled down her back with white lilies braided in behind her ear. The dress she wore was a modern Rose Queendom style but instead of the usual red or white, it was lavender with a black waterfall waistcoat, giving it a customed look. White rose emblems had been pinned into her lapels, proving that she had been taken under the royal family's wing. Azul felt a swell of pride and awe that wasn't even daunted when he realized who Elise was talking to. The shock of red hair on the intruder did make him frown, however. Luna gently tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the water with a mischievous smirk.

"I was never here," she sing-song whispered before walking back to the courtyard. Azul didn't hesitate. He quietly slipped into the water and shifted into his true form, making his way stealthfully as possible towards the bridge as he sank beneath the water's surface. Azul felt a tremendous shiver of energy electrify him to the core before he even peeked out of the water. He knew it well, it had the same base feeling, scent even, as before but now it had grown tenfold. He knew it had to be Elise's magic. The octopus quietly settled just below where Elise and Rielle stood.

"I'm sorry for how I behaved before, Rielle...I wasn't thinking clearly."

She sounded like she truly regrated whatever had happened between them. What had happened while she was away? Azul had to fight to not let his paranoid imagination get the best of him as he quietly listened from the shadows. He made the mistake of moving ever so slightly over so he could see the two of them better...just in time to see Rielle touch Elise's hand in a way that was way too friendly for Azul's tastes. The octopus' tentacles twitched angrily under the lake's surface as Azul clenched his teeth.

"You were upset, Elise. I understand. But I meant what I said before. I am sorry for everything that has happened to you. I've been regretting it for weeks..." Ugh, damn those doe eyes and that innocent prince charming act! Azul was seconds away from spitting a bullet of ink right in his ear until Elise moved away from the prince, turning away from the side Azul was on, thankfully. She didn't seem nearly as eager to be close to him as before, much to Azul's delight.

"I haven't. I don't regret any of it, honestly. Well except for giving you my first kiss, that is," she said plainly. The octopus' internal fit was outrageous: happy that Elise didn't regret anything that led her to him-er-where she was, but also infuriated that Rielle was her first kiss and not him. He at least took solace in the fact that he had and would continue to be given all her other kisses.

Rielle, clueless to the death glares he was receiving below, blinked his wide eyes towards the much more distant girl and her response, "Really? You weren't terrified of those shady con artists? ...They didn't try anything did they?"

Elise just laughed before giving the dumbfound prince a dry look, "You assume too much, you know. Azul, Jade, and Floyd were perfect gentlemen to me the entire time. They cared for and protected me! But I suppose that's too difficult to believe because someone decided to rush headlong into a wild deal without reading the fine print, huh?" Azul internally preened as Elise effortlessly knocked Rielle down a peg or two.

"I learned from my mistake," the prince quipped, "It makes sense that they treated you with some sort of kindness, Azul was probably trying to cover his slippery tracks-"

Rielle stopped short under the white-hot glare Elise turned on him, "Azul outwitted you. Yes, it was a bit underhanded and I got roped into it, but that was because of YOU. I made my amends with him and I've seen his truest colors. Don't act like you have any room to point fingers when you're just licking your wounds, Rielle! Azul has shown me more care, honesty, and compassion in one season than you ever had in years so don't you dare speak badly about him!"

At this point, Rielle had been backed into the bridge's railing by the angry girl. Had he not been so busy swooning over Elise's passionate defense of him, Azul would be silently praying for her to shove the prince right over the edge.

"You...you fell for him, didn't you?" Rielle's voice was soft and careful, "For Azul Ashengrotto, really?"

Elise's grin was unapologetic, "Yes. I absolutely did. It feels nice to not only find someone better who reciprocates, but who also appreciates me without question. Whether or not you see it, it is the truth. I hope you'll be lucky enough to find the same for yourself, Rielle."

HA! Azul was buzzing! He had to submerge just to get a hold of how unabashedly elated he was. He couldn't wait to get that marvelous woman back into his arms as quickly as possible. The prince was thrown by the girl's brutal honesty, however, in her declaration, there wasn't a hint of unkindness towards him personally. Had someone insulted Emily to his face, would he have behaved any differently? Remembering her, though, made his heart ache. He had never felt so foolish, but...perhaps it was for the best.

"I wish you both the very best then, Elise," his smile was a melancholy mixture of sadness and acceptance, "I too hope that I am lucky enough in the future."

The former princess offered him a genuine smile, "Goodbye, Rielle."

As Elise left the bridge, one of her lilies fell loose and drifted down to the water below. An eager tentacle caught and gently held onto it as Azul jetted back to the shore faster than he ever had in his life. Elise was almost to the entrance of the park when she was suddenly spun around to face her delighted now-human-again sweetheart.

"My love, you are even more exquisite than I remember," Azul's charm was on full blast as was his admiration for the woman now in his embrace. He smoothly put the magically dried lily back into her hair as he pressed his lips to hers. Elise's surprise only lasted a second before she batted her eyes coyly at him.

"Oh? Did you like what you heard, Azul?" ...of course, she had known he was nearby. Clever little minx.

"...I suppose that was a breach of your privacy but hopefully a heart as deliciously sweet as yours will forgive me, dearest?" Azul lifted her hands to his lips as if they were glasses of wine without a hint of shame.

Elise giggled and shook her head, "Oh I suppose it could..." she paused to drape her arms around his shoulders and take back that stolen kiss, "...Handsome."

The pet name made Azul's face burn through the entire blush spectrum as his debonair aura vanished in seconds. Another giggle and a kiss, "Hmm, yes I like that name. It suits you, handsome."

"You...are even more dangerous than I thought," he mumbled shyly before clearing his throat, "More importantly, now that I have you all to myself..."

He removed the vial from around his neck and showed it to Elise, making her eyes go wide.

"I believe this is it, love. Forgive my impatience but we've both waited long enough.

Elise clasped it in her hand, feeling her entire body bristle with anticipation, "Let's test it right now then-"

A hush drew them both to a harsh pause. It began as an almost untraceable hum and rose to a full-bodied sound. Azul and Elise turned towards the far side of the lake as they just heard it blossom into a song.

"What is that...?" Azul's voice was barely a whisper.

Elise moved in a haze without a word but clasped Azul's hand in her own after putting the vial's chain around her neck. She pulled him along with her as she followed the shore to the other side. There were more trees and underbrush growing thicker as they followed the song. It sounded too familiar. Elise's mind questioned whether it was real or if she and Azul had somehow crossed over into the same dream. It was a woman's voice that led them to the furthest corner of the lake, one nearly hidden by willow trees that had always reminded Elise of home.

There was all at once the singer, bathing in the water with her long, familiar black hair and monochrome patterned skin. Elise's mind played a trick on her at first.

"Luna? Why are you-" No, that wasn't right...

The woman's song stopped as she turned to face the young couple, her long stripped tail pulled against the chain that kept her from swimming away. Her golden eyes widened at the sight of the former princess as if she were a ghost. Elise's mind froze: Luna really did look so much like her mother.

"Junonia...?" Elise couldn't believe it but there she was. Who else could she possibly be?!

The mature siren's face seemed to recall something familiar about Elise and the look of recognition pricked something in the back of the human girl's mind. Her lips broke into the smile of a proud mother.

"You have grown so much, Princess," Junonia's voice was full of kindness. Elise felt a stir in her heart just from the sound of it.

"You know who I am?" Azul looked just as puzzled as she was.

The siren chuckled lightly, "Of course, how could I forget the brave young princess that rescued my Cowrie? I am so grateful and happy that the girl I rescued from drowning in that storm turned out to be such a wonderful human."

Elise felt the ground nearly crumble under her feet as she remembered the sound of the sea's furious waves and the thunder from all those years ago. The song...Junonia's song...she had heard it before. Many, many years ago at first. The second time that night on the balcony. And now...she barely recognized the sound of her own voice as it left her tight throat.

"What...what did you say?"

Tagging: @nuitthegoddess @iscarlettappel @foxwitchaine @1ndigowitch @wysteriadelights @evieyouknow @ladyrosemoon @victoria1676 @aiimee9 @honey-milk-depresso @espada188 @feldya

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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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palmoilnews · 8 months ago

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Ukraine’s sunflower oil exports up in 2023/24 season so far with Black Sea grain corridor help Ukraine increased sunflower oil shipments in the 2023/24 season running from October to September after the Black Sea grain corridor was set in force, inspiring the exporting companies to extend exports through the Odesa region ports and use their well-developed infrastructure. Ukraine shipped about 2.7 million tonnes of sunflower oil from its sea ports during the October 2023-February 2024 period, almost 30% up from 2.1 million tonnes during the same period last season, according to Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry data, when a year lasting the U.N. and Turkey-backed Black Sea grain initiative was in force. The average shipments jumped to around 570,000 tonnes of sunflower oil per month between November 2023 and February 2024 period from around 420,000 tonnes during the same period last year, thanks to the use of modern facilities located in the Black Sea deep-water ports. Ukraine mostly exported sunflower oil from its Danube ports by small ships, carrying around 6,000-7,000 tonnes after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022. Shipments from Ukraine by big ships, carrying up to 40,000-45,000 tonnes of sunflower oil were complicated and limited because ships waiting for the inspections for over one month near the Turkey coasts, despite the Black Sea grain agreement between, brokered by the U.N. and Turkey, operated between August 2022 and July 2023. Sunflower oil deliveries towards the crossing borders in the western part of Ukraine were slow and complicated. Concerns of many-day delays in deliveries because of the farmer protests across the European countries during the recent months also prompted the Ukraine-based crushing plants to shift sending their ships from the ‘Big Odesa’ ports to the E.U. and Middle East-based consumers. “The existing port capacities are larger compared to the landline routes,” one Kyiv-based trader said. The crushing plants and the exporting companies were not willing to share any information or details on their ships heading to the Ukrainian ports or sailing out as well as cargoes intended to be shipped to keep the ship and the port workers safe as much as possible. The southern regions of Ukraine and the sea ports of the Odesa region have been the targets for Russian missile and drone strikes. After the latest deadliest Russian attack on Odesa city on March 15, the residents faced power outages as well as gas and water cut off, with over 15 people killed and around 70 people injured while the port terminals operations were disrupted, and grain shipments slowed down. The alternative export route from the war-hit Ukraine, the ‘Black Sea export corridor’, emerged in September 2023 after Russia pulled out of the U.N. and Turkey backed agreement called ‘Black Sea grain deal’ promoting free and safe agriculture exports from Ukraine in mid-July 2023. Ukrainian farm exports reached 7.3 million tonnes in February 2024touching , the highest volume shipped in March 2023 (7.4 million tonnes) under the ‘Black Sea grain deal’, Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry data showed.

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kyruselevators · 2 years ago

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Requirement of an Elevator Maintenance Company

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lostinthewiind · 3 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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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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