#Wildfire Riot | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

inherdaze · 7 months ago

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dark red — megumi fushiguro

megumi x f!reader

18+ content, apocalypse au, slow burn, strangers to lovers

12k

summary: megumi finds himself growing closer to you as you both fight to survive in an infected world.

October 30th.

You eye your floppy, double-paged calendar lovingly as you uncap a marker, drawing a big ‘X’ across the date.

Your eyes scan over the top page of it. It has some corny close-up stock photo of a bird with the month October printed in big, cursive lettering. It’s the type of calendar that your grandmother would keep in her office, very neutral with nature images. And for some reason, it’s like your comfort object. It made you happy, reminded you of simpler things and simpler times. It reminded you of life before- before the infectious bite.

The bite is deadly.

Or, beyond deadly, since it doesn’t quite kill you.

Your brain only rots away and hunger pools at the pit of your stomach, the only thing to sedate it being human flesh. Ah, yes, the infamous zombie bite.

You and countless others had seen it plenty of times- in movies, in shows, in video games. Even funny little quizzes would pop up on your timeline, Who Would You Be In A Zombie Apocalypse?

Never would you have dreamed of it all coming true.

When you think about it, it happened so simply, so quickly, that the sequence of events could be plastered onto an elementary foldable. You think that’s what’s probably going to happen, in the future, when humanity re-establishes itself. When.

Not an if, but a when.

You were one of the few that strongly believed that humans could overcome such devastation and rebuild. Perhaps you could help in creating a better world.

It happened as such: A disease was created. Created. This fact alone angered the population enough to start riots, protests, petitions. It was the beginning of the end. A disease that was supposedly heavily concealed and secured was created by the government, until all the scientists working on restricting the disease escaped the laboratory, no longer themselves. They’d changed, transformed, and it had only spread like a wildfire from there.

With people constantly out on the streets to protest and express their disbelief and opposition to diseases being formulated in the first place, it was not that difficult for it to spread. And spread it did.

Humankind really took a hit. There was no organization, no plan, no stability to overcome the outbreak. The government was too busy trying to better their image and hide their mistakes that no one even considered a plan of action to tackle the sickness and the spread. It was literal hell. Infrastructure was being torn down, people were turning against each other, either locking themselves away from everyone else or going out into the world to try to play hero.

You had a sliver of luck on your side.

Now, you didn’t make it without pain and hardships, no, the world would simply be going too easy on you. But when you and your college friends decided to scram, to flee in prevention of being cornered, it played out rather nicely. Others had traveled back home, or hid themselves in their dorms, too scared to go out and face the world. Their poor choices usually resulted in them being practically overtaken with zombies, with nowhere else to run.

You decided to keep it simple. To keep moving.

Your plan was to move upwards, towards the North. When the disease had initially broken out and there was still debate on whether it was a legitimate issue or not, nobody had really taken it seriously if the government wasn’t taking it seriously. In the early stages, when everyone was wishy-washy and laughing about it on their timelines, an organization in the North was formed and said to have set up a base- just in case.

It worked out in your favor. Just a little bit.

You had left with your roommate, Nobara, and her girlfriend Maki. The three of you participated in all the chaos, too- what else could you have done? Law was no longer applicable. The three of you sought out to steal, to take, to do what you needed. You remember it all, the beginning of summer.

You focus back on your calendar. It’s late October now.

You were also completely alone now. Nobara and Maki had given up their lives when the three of you scrambled around a sporting goods store for weapons and had been targeted by a herd of zombies. Maki was the strongest, so she took it upon herself to fend them off until it became slightly overbearing. Nobara had jumped in to help, the both of them hollering at you to hurry and find a weapon and run. One last look into their eyes was all it took, for they knew the both of them wouldn’t be able to make it out alive.

You traveled alone, carrying a huge backpack with a bright red wagon trailing behind you at all times. All food, cooking ware, and clothing were stored in the wagon, protected by a tarp and a heap load of bungee cords. The backpack held all the little snacks, medicine, and bottles of hot water. It was never hot by choice. It just never cooled fully after you boiled it to fend away the bacteria.

In the very back pocket, where a laptop would typically be, was your crumpled calendar.��

Every evening was the same- you had a three-step routine to provide yourself a feeling of stability in the midst of chaos; 1) Hide yourself amongst the trees, 2) Cross off the day in your calendar, 3) Go straight to sleep. It was a routine that had a sense of simplicity and discipline that you so desperately needed. You could not let yourself forget to mark off the days (you’d probably lose your mind from the lack of track of time) and you absolutely could not let yourself stay awake longer than needed. Sometimes, you would explore an unwelcome corner in your mind. A corner that whispered that maybe you’d be better off just dying, at this rate. No more struggles, no more worries, just sleep. Luckily, the sounds of nature and the idea of a better future always pulled you out of that spiral.

You tuck your marker into your pocket and bring the floppy thing close to yourself before a feeling of embarrassment comes over you, as if someone is watching you from afar.

With heated cheeks, you scurry to sloppily stuff it back into the back pocket of your pack before curling up against it, pulling your parka tighter against yourself to go to sleep.

When you woke up, everything was the same. The world was still falling apart, and you were still alone.

You hauled yourself up and pat at your cheeks- they stung from the oncoming cold. You knew that winter would be difficult to handle- you figured it would probably be much worse than the summer. You’d just have to face it alone, with limited shelter and supplies.

You pulled on your backpack, tugged at the handle of your wagon, and went on your way.

You weren’t alone for long.

You walked at the edges of the forest, smart enough to not make yourself a target in the middle of the road, but you still needed it to guide you. You were well hidden among the trees, but were close enough to peek out between branches and leaves to make out the pattern of the street.

A loud snap had jolted you awake from your light daydreaming. You immediately stopped walking and slowly reached down to the wagon, trying to pull the tarp away as quietly as possible.

Your eyes flitted among the scenery, mind on alert as you reached for the only impactful weapon you had- a bat.

You managed to successfully grab it, and you held it out defensively, waiting for something to come rushing at you. A few minutes pass and nothing happens.

Knuckles turning white from your grip on the handle, you stepped forward slowly, trying to find the source of the sound. It was a stupid move, you knew, but you also could not keep moving with the knowledge that there was possibly a zombie in the same woods as you. It would probably eat you alive- the idea and the zombie.

You try not to trek too far from your wagon, and you promise to yourself that after a couple more steps, you’ll turn back around and you’ll act like this never happened to save yourself from panic later.

Your little plan is interrupted when your eyes make out a figure not too far from yourself. It’s tall, and unnervingly still, with its back facing you. You can’t decipher whether or not it’s a human.

You squint and make out the movement of clean, steady hands. You see, in one hand, a little radio, crackling and emitting fuzzy noises. The other hand is occupied by something that you cannot make out. It’s at that moment that you know you’re safe- at least you hope so.

The sight of another human excites you so much, you cannot help the sudden adrenaline that surrounds your heart and the smile that reaches your face as you cheerily (and semi-softly) call out, “Hey!”

The person whirls around and suddenly your heart drops, the adrenaline mushing into dread, your smile faltering. He faces you with a gun, held up high, level with his eyes in order to aim properly.

He gives you a once-over before interrogating you. “What do you want?”

“Oh,” You sputter, limbs feeling heavy with fear. “N-Nothing,” You try, “Just…. just bumped into you here.”

“Okay,” He starts hesitantly, dark blue eyes showing you distrust. “Run off, then.”

Your heart drops even harder, this time. To think that he doesn’t want anything to do with you, that he doesn’t even want to talk, to meet another human. You assume he’s alone, too, since he’s got a backpack that looks much heavier than your own right on his back, straps tight.

It’s not that you necessarily expect anything from him- it’s just that this is a rare moment. You haven’t spoken to another person in months.

The crackling of the radio fills in the quiet between the two of you before he pulls you from your thoughts, “We can part ways, now.”

His voice is only slightly condescending, and he talks as if it’s an obvious fact.

“Wait,” You lazily blurt, hand reaching out just a little as if he had offered something for you to hold onto. “Don’t you want to be friends?”

He scoffs at you, embarrassing you. “Friends?”

“W-well, not friends,” You struggle, ears and neck heating up, “Just, yunno, partners or- yunno?”

“No.”

His blatant answer makes you wince. As much as he makes you feel small, a sliver of desperation shines through your timid form and you try again. “You know what I mean,” You breath out exasperatedly, “There’s nearly no one else left in the world. Might as well work together. We can take turns patrolling and sleeping, and especially when it comes to gathering supplies- like the buddy system, kinda- and things will run smoother. We can put what we have together.”

He knew you were right. He hated that he knew you were right.

Truthfully, Megumi had no intentions to create bonds and team up with people. He thought it would only slow him down, both physically and mentally- he went out of his way to avoid attachment.

He responds with silence, so you give it another shot.

“I’m moving North, too… if that’s… if that’s what you plan to do as well.”

It catches him, and you knew you had won him over. And he knew, that you knew, that you had convinced him enough. The way that he had faltered and his stern expression melted into one of surprise told you all that you needed to know.

You gave him a little smile to soften the blow of his loss.

“Fine,” He says through gritted teeth, letting his arm fall to his side in defeat. He sees you keep your eyes trained on the gun, so he tucks it away in an attempt to ease your nerves.

You tell him about your supply wagon and let him know he can probably lighten the load on his back by mixing his supplies with yours. While you lead him back down the path where you had abandoned your precious wagon, you try to get him to converse with you. His silent nature made you a little nervous, but you were deeply in need of human connection.

“Oh! By the way, my name-”

“No.”

You cough and look up at him, shock written across your features. “Huh?”

“We shouldn’t do that. Exchange names, I mean. It’s just the two of us, we’ll be fine without it.”

“Huh?” You call out again, this time louder and with more confusion. He shoots you a glare that tells you to shut up.

“But- why not? What am I supposed to call you?”

“I already said, it’s just the two of us. Who else could you be addressing? Exchanging names makes us friends. We are, by no means, friends.”

You watch him speak with an unbothered tone, eyes not even meeting yours as he empties half of his supplies into the wagon. Your mouth is slightly agape and you falter to respond, but as he swings his backpack around, a flash of black and white catches your attention.

“Are those…” You trail off before he finally makes eye contact with you.

“Are those plushies?”

You see him freeze, and his pale skin blossoms with color. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” You huff out playfully, almost circling him to get a better look at the little fluffy keychains that hang clustered together at the zipper of his backpack. Two tiny but puffy little dogs of opposite colors stare right back at you, felt tongues poking out and all.

“Huh. Didn’t peg you as a dog boy. Or an anyone boy, for that matter.”

“Are you done? We need to keep moving.”

“Alright, alright,” You huff, reaching for the handle of the wagon. He takes hold of it before you get the chance and starts walking, and you feel your heart smile at his silent offer to pull it for you. You didn’t think there was a deeper meaning to it, you were just happy that you didn't have to haul that heavy thing around for once. “No need to be snappy, Dog Boy.”

He only groans in response.

The rest of the day flies by in silence. You try your luck a few times to start a conversation, to pull anything out of him, but he’s so damn stubborn, either keeping his eyes focused on the path ahead or fiddling with his radio. The radio gives him an excuse to tell you to shut up, since he needs to hear if there are any broadcasts or incoming news- signs of life.

He finally speaks up when he claims it’s time to sleep.

The two of you settle against a cluster of tree trunks, and you repeat the same thing you’ve been doing for months on end- laying against your backpack, looking at your calendar with a glint of hope and desperation in your eyes.

Megumi watches as you pull and flatten it out before rummaging around for your marker. He narrows his eyes and tries to focus on the clunky piece of paper you seem to be carrying around.

He makes out the rows and columns of dates, an unimpressed look dawning on his face. “Don’t tell me…”

“Hm?” You hum lightly, beckoning him to continue.

“Don’t tell me you carry that thing around and actually use it.”

“What else can I say? We’ll need it, in the future. Once everything starts going back to normal, people are gonna be like, ‘Oh no! What day is it? What season are we going into? Must we start a new calendar?’ And then, I’ll have my trusty calendar right here, with all the dates crossed off. Think about it. Very important.”

He remains quiet as you make big ‘X’ on the final date, October 31st.

“Hm. We met on Halloween. Funny, isn’t it? I think it suits you a little.”

He disregards your last comment and speaks with a monotone voice, “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Humanity will never recover- that thing’s useless. Just taking up space.”

You fall quiet after that. Normally, you think, you wouldn’t be too iffed by some pessimism. But his comment regarding your calendar and how easily he dismissed your hopes had hurt, just a little.

Maybe more than a little.

You instinctively held the thing a little closer to you, as if to protect it. You avoid his eyes and silently decide that the conversation should probably end there.

He sees you shift a little farther away from him, bringing the stupid thing closer to your chest. He can’t find it in himself to care.

You admire that cheesy stock photo on the top of the calendar before flipping the bottom page to sneak at a glance for the photo for November. It’s a scene of a pathway formed by trees, nearly dead trees, with the leaves caught mid-fall, yellows and oranges everywhere. November is, again, printed in large cursive at the top of the page.

You fold it back up and jam it into your backpack before pulling it down closer to your head, to use it as a pillow. You wrap yourself up in your parka and turn to sleep on your side, back facing Megumi. He sees it all from the corner of his eye and scoffs to himself, remarking how childish you are.

Steady hands lay his gun next to him, close to his head- just in case he ever needs it throughout the night. He sleeps firm on his back, but he turns his head to look at you just before he dozes off.

Bathing becomes much easier, now that Megumi’s around.

Before the two of you crossed paths, you would rid yourself of your clothes shakily, always leaving them on the rocks that kissed the lake. You couldn’t even clean yourself off properly, eyes always on the lookout for movement or an undead form to creep up on you.

You had begged him. Shamelessly. The whole morning consisted of you yapping away, Please, Dog Boy, there’s a perfectly good lake right there, and a rock for you to sit on while you wait and patrol. I’ll patrol after. I really, really need this bath.

He wouldn’t even look at you as he gave you a hard No.

Megumi was beyond dead set on moving forward. Over the last few days, he was always quick to shut you down and occasionally scold you for being so easily distracted and perhaps a little too light-hearted for your own good.

But this was your last straw.

He only caved in when you threatened to wipe some of your sweat off on him. You had never seen him recoil from something so fast.

After making him literally swear to not turn around and peek while you were bathing- to which he had rolled his eyes and told you he wouldn’t even dare to consider such a thing- you pointed to the rock for him to sit on before you began to strip. Megumi could only hear the light splashes of you walking into the water and your little cries of Oh my god, it’s so fucking cold.

You gladly took advantage of such a moment. Finally, you had got to scrub every corner of your skin, finally got to really wash at your scalp, all without looking around in fear of what’s out there.

And maybe you were taking a little too long, because after a while, Megumi coughed out to remind you that he was still there. His back was starting to hurt from sitting on the rock for so long without proper support.

“How much longer are you going to take?”

“Not too much longer,” You sing-songed, clumsily trying to dip your head in the water to wash out your hair.

He rolled his eyes to himself at the tone of your voice. You were much too playful for his liking.

“Don’t worry, Doggy,” You teased, though your voice was slightly muffled from your awkward position in the water. “You can bathe after this. Although, you might smell worse after- like wet dog.”

He could hear you laughing to yourself like a child.

Megumi never responded to your little lighthearted jabs.

Life goes on as it always has. With Megumi so quiet, sometimes you ponder if you had been better off just walking away from him that day. And, if he wasn’t quiet, he was always on your back about something.

(“Why’s this water so warm?”

“I boiled it. It’s from the lake. We can’t get sick, you know.”

“You poured hot water into an insulated water bottle?”

“My God, just- just drink the damn water, Doggy. Or don’t, not like I care. More for me.”

“Shut up. I’ll drink it.”)

The two of you were nearly on opposite ends of the spectrum, personality wise. You two would’ve probably clashed if you hadn’t taken things in such a jovial manner. He even started calling you Sunshine mockingly, as if to belittle you for being so stupidly bright and optimistic when the world was reaching its end.

The first time he called you that, you had actually smiled. He had to refrain from reprimanding you for being so… so...happy-go-lucky.

He couldn’t pinpoint as to why your preppy nature had irritated him so much, but his epiphany reached him one night when the two of you settled against a group of tree trunks, like you always did.

You were, as always, cuddled up with your little calendar. Megumi discreetly watched as you marked off the day, taking note of how you had to redraw the ‘X’ a few times. Your marker was drying out.

You were well into November, and you scanned over the rows of dates, spotting the box marked Thanksgiving. With your tongue slightly poking out, you poorly drew a little turkey inside the box.

He watched as you scanned over the top and bottom page again, but he felt like your mind was elsewhere.

“When’s your birthday?”

Your question caught him off guard, and he flustered as he quickly looked away, fearing that you had seen him watching.

“What?”

“Your birthday. When’s your birthday?”

He cast you an awkward sort of look. “December 22nd.”

“Cool,” You replied almost automatically before flipping the page of your calendar. Megumi’s eyes only slightly widened as he witnessed you try to cram the words Dog Boy Birthday in the little box marked with 22. He was unsure if he was meant to see that. He didn’t want to embarrass you by mentioning it, but he felt like it shouldn’t go unmentioned, either.

“You don’t need to do that.”

“Why not?” You were being genuine.

“Because,” He said without knowing what it was he wanted to say. “Because. It’s pointless.”

“Pointless this, pointless that.”

Your comeback wasn’t all that great, but you had brushed off his statement so easily- you had seemed to have grown accustomed to his little remarks, especially the ones with negative tones behind it.

That’s when his revelation crashed over him. It hit him so strongly, and he was frozen in place as you mumbled a goodnight before cuddling up to your clunky backpack.

You were so precious. Because despite all your banter, you were always playful about it, and when you weren’t being playful, you were being genuine. You always openly offered him things, the fair share of your supplies, always told him to get some sleep while you keep watch, always told him to eat up, have the last of your water bottles, always looked out for him in little ways that he did not bother to return. And, what irritated him so much about it was that you were so vulnerable, open, shamelessly smiling and laughing alone or at him, trying to get him to laugh too. And he hated how you had done all this, offered so much to him, remained open to him, only for him to constantly chastise you and feed you despairing comments.

He wanted you to put up more of a fight. He wanted you to be able to be okay, without him. Megumi criticized himself after having that thought. He knew that your nature didn’t equate to weakness, but he couldn’t help but let his mind wander off a little….

You were so easy to trust him. At any moment could you have given up something to him and he could’ve just ran off with it, leaving you empty handed and destined to literally die. He thought that if something were to ever happen to him, and you kept going on with your open, kittenish self, that someone would come along and take everything you ever knew and had.

Thinking of it made his chest pinch. He felt guilty for criticizing your calendar, the symbolization of all your hopes, on the day that you met. If he hadn’t realized this all now, he may have become the one to take all that you knew and had, figuratively. The way that he had belittled your dreams for the future had already spoken for itself.

He laid down to finally sleep after swallowing down his thoughts, and he turned to look at your sleeping form, wantonly. He wanted to be better to you.

Suddenly, he thinks about how weird he looks, watching you sleep. His ears flush red and he turns to sleep on his side, back facing you, as if he needs to cover his tracks from the peering trees.

You’re woken up by a string of broken, awkward groans.

You assume it’s Megumi. Your eyes are crusted with sleep, so you don’t even bother to flash him a teasing look as you lightly jab, “Hush, Doggy.”

He doesn’t respond with his usual sneer or command to shut the hell up, but with an even louder, pained groan.

You sigh to yourself. He’s probably having a nightmare. You feel generous enough to break him from his terrors and lazily sit up, roughly rubbing away at your eyes and reaching over to him.

Your hands meet a still, soft and sleeping form, completely at peace.

You do a double-take when the feeling of his form contradicts the pained sounds he’s making and suddenly, you’re up and wide awake, especially when you come to realize that the groans are not coming from him.

Whirling around to find the source, you come to see a beat-down zombie, tumbling its way towards you both. It’s missing a leg and its steps are off-kilter, slow, and if you had it in you to laugh at it, you’d probably laugh.

“Holy shit,” You whisper to yourself, body stilling out of fear. For a few seconds, you can’t bring yourself to do anything, and the creature crawls closer, despite it being so slow.

You finally come to your senses and weakly shake Megumi to wake him up.

He’s knocked out cold. You figure that it’s from exhaustion- the both of you had been taking a beating from your recent drop in supplies. The last thing the two of you ate was a granola bar for yesterday’s breakfast. It wasn’t even a whole granola bar- Megumi split it in half for the both of you. You had let him have the last drop of hot water, too. The both of you were running on empty.

You trip over yourself and hastily pull on your backpack, still focusing on getting Megumi to awake.

“Dog Boy,” You whisper-yell, lightly kicking at his leg. It’s ridiculous, you think. All of this is ridiculous. You have only a sliver of time to spare, thanks to the zombie moving at the speed of molasses, so you settle yourself behind Megumi and wrap your arm across his torso, beneath his own arms, your grip on him loose as you drag his body further away. Your main priority now is getting away, creating distance between you and the undead figure. As you tug on him, his gun slips out into the sunlight and you gasp, using your other hand to grab at it shakily.

You had no idea how to use it.

You hold it up to the sun and try to look for the little safety knob that you often heard that guns have. You spotted it, but you couldn’t tell if it was on or not.

You’re sloppily scooting back, heaving Megumi with you, nearly falling backwards from the weight of your backpack. If you’re being honest, the two of you hadn’t even gotten that far. With Megumi attached to his backpack, he was heavy, and with your newfound weakness from exhaustion, the two of you probably only moved five inches max.

The creature looms closer, and on second thought, maybe using the gun isn’t that smart of an idea. It would be noisy, easily giving away your location and the two of you would instantly become magnets, become bait. You wouldn’t be able to drag Megumi away fast enough to save yourselves.

You eye around for your bat but it’s much too far. It’s tucked away under the tarp on your wagon and the zombie is already too close, surpassing the wagon- there’s no way you could get it without actually surviving.

Tears prick at your eyes. No, you think, now’s not the time. Your hands are shaking- you’ve never been this close to a zombie before- and you’re thinking fuck it, your arm letting Megumi go to steady your grip on the gun.

Megumi drops down on the ground with a thud as you release him, but you don’t have the time to fret over it and ask if he’s okay. You think your ears are playing tricks on you when you hear a groan that’s a little too close.

You wrap your hands around the base and stupidly close your eyes as your finger lands on the trigger.

Everything after happens too fast for you to register, almost like a dream. You feel cold hands wrap around your own and tear the weapon away from you, and then a few loud bangs go off, and then it’s quiet.

“Christ,” He mutters, voice caked from sleep. His eyes are droopy, and he looks so jaded, you’re preparing for him to chew you out about how stupid you were being before offering a list of what you could’ve done better.

But he only slumps from fatigue, closer to you, nearly into you. He’s the weakest you’ve ever seen him, but guilt nips at the edges of his heart for making you go through such a thing.

“Are you okay?” He finally breathes out, lifting his head to meet your eyes.

You’re taken back at the sudden display of concern.

He sees your face flash with unfamiliarity as a response to his question. The guilt makes its way past the edges and into the depths of his heart, now. He hopes it’s not too late. He hopes that he hasn't already become that person for you, the one that takes everything you know.

“Yeah,” You say quietly from the shock of it all.

Megumi falls silent after that, tired.

A few beats pass and he speaks, “We need to keep moving,” He says weakly, convincing himself more than you.

“Yeah.”

Lethargy is a plague between the both of you.

Megumi tells you that you both need to find a store, and fast. He pulls out a map from one of his backpack pockets, and it’s so torn and dampened with water and other questionable substances that you can barely even make out the lines.

But he reads it like a pro. He misses the look of admiration in your eyes when he finally concludes that it would be smarter to move in closer towards the suburban area. He says there’s a higher chance of strip malls and markets to sneak around and take from. You trust his word.

The trek there is nearly torturous.

It’s getting colder, and you try not to think about how the two of you will survive when winter hits. Your feet ache and ache, and you’re sure that you’re slowing Megumi down- you swear you see him slow down his steps just the slightest. You have to refrain from complaining like a small child, asking over and over Are we there yet?

You finally reach a parking lot, and you think you could nearly drop down to your knees and kiss the gravel.

Your sense of euphoria is interrupted as a horrible stench reaches your nose. It’s unmistakable; it makes you double over and slap a hand over your nose and mouth, coughing roughly as you feel a series of gags coming on.

Dead bodies were sporadically laying across the parking lot, some human, some zombie. Megumi looks at you pitifully, then looks away as you live through your coughing fit, not wanting you to feel worse about being seen in such a state.

“‘So bad,” You finally manage to wheeze out, cueing him to look at you.

He reaches into the wagon, towards the end of it, where the clothing was stored all lumpy. He had to slowly pull out whatever it was he was looking for so that nothing else spilled out, and he tugged one end of it slowly, revealing it to you.

A big, lumpy scarf that has the most terrible pink camouflage print all across it. It’s horrendous, really. You remember you had stuffed it into your wagon a few months back, thinking about how you’d probably need it later.

Now was later.

He steps closer to you, close enough that it’s distracting and you nearly freak out at the proximity. He sees your confusion spark across your face and he hushes you before you even start. “To help with the smell.”

That’s all he says as he reaches behind you, gently wrapping the scarf across your head, leaving you enough room to breathe but making it secure enough so that the scent is muffled.

“‘M so tired, Doggy.” Your voice was stifled by the heavy fabric.

“I know,” He says, and he does.

You then feel bad for voicing your little complaint. Megumi was just as tired as you were, perhaps even more, and he hadn’t complained once, nor did he scold you for being a crybaby like you thought he would.

Once he saw that you were satisfied with the scarf and concluded that you wouldn’t bend over and gag again, he smoothed his hand over his jacket awkwardly. “I’m gonna go inside and find more stuff. Are you okay with me taking your wagon and your pack?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Megumi has to lean in closer to hear your voice. “I understand if you don’t want to trust me with all your things.” “Our things,” you enunciate.

“It’s-” He starts, then pauses abruptly. He doesn’t want to keep creating a divide between the two of you. “Yeah. Ours,” He affirms, searching your eyes for a reaction. He can tell you’re smiling stupidly (cutely) behind the scarf.

“You’re sure?”

“More than anything.”

He thinks, for a second, that your answer means something more. But you play it off, immediately taking off your backpack, so he chastises his previous thought as he takes your nearly empty pack into his hands. “Are you gonna stay out here?”

“Mhm. I’ll try ‘n find a place to sit.”

“Okay. I won’t take long, I promise.”

“Thank you.”

He turns on his heel and walks in a straight line towards the entrance of the store, where you can make out the broken and crooked sliding doors that had probably been jammed so many times before they gave in.

You take note of how many vehicles have been haphazardly left behind in the parking lot, mostly likely during moments of panic.

If only...

You begin to search the parking lot, bending down to get a clearer sight of all the miscellaneous objects scattered across the ground. Something glints in the corner of your eye, and you perk up, rushing towards it before scooping it up in your hand.

It’s a clunky, round keychain that says Dog Dads Are The, and right below the text is an image of a dog taking a dump.

“Huh,” You huff out with a little smile, “Perfect.”

You take hold of the set of keys that are strung along the ring and single one out- vehicle keys. They’re the type of keys that you have to manually insert into the lock in order to actually open the car door.

As soon as you stand up straight, you search for the oldest looking car throughout the entire parking lot. Your eyes fall upon a truck that looks like it’s been to hell and back, little scratches and scuff marks lining the sides with splotches of blood on the doors. You note that it only has two doors- the two of you will really have to squeeze in.

If you ignore the poetic spots of blood, it's one solid color- a color that resembles dirt, you think. It looks like a little old farm truck, with crates stacked in the bed, and there’s a little figure of a cow swinging from the rear view mirror.

You try your luck and insert the key, to which it fits. Your heart has never fluttered so viciously before.

Turning the key, you see the little button on the inside of the door pop up. The door swings open ungraciously, a creaky sound ringing out. It makes you freeze, looking around to see if you had alerted anything that could be lurking.

You decide to hold off until Megumi comes back. It’s completely dead quiet, and he might freak out inside the store at the sound of an engine.

Just as he promised, he didn’t take long. He steps out to see you sitting in the truck with the door open, your knees brought close to your chest, and although the both of you are incredibly grimey, spent and hanging on to your final threads, you look so peaceful curled up like that. He thinks that maybe he would’ve liked to see you like that, under better circumstances.

“Sunshine,” He starts as he gets closer, and you open your eyes and unravel from your coiled position.

Megumi shuffles towards the bed of the truck and starts unpacking the wagon into the back. “Got some food,” he offers, unloading a loaf of bread that has yet to go stale. You hold it like it’s precious, waiting for him to unpack everything into your new truck.

“Does it have gas?”

“Dunno,” You say tiredly, and hopelessness sneaks up on you again. Perhaps you had put too many eggs in one basket.

“Move over.”

You scoot to the opposite side of the seat to make room for him. He plops down in the driver's seat and you perk up to hand him the keys, “Look, look.” Untangling all the keys from each other, you proudly hold up the keychain to his face. He furrows his eyebrows at first, but then his face melts into an amused expression as he reads over the whole thing and gets the joke.

“Very funny.” He rolls his eyes, but you know he’s being lighthearted.

He takes the key and inserts it, holding his breath in hopes that it’ll work, that the heavens are on your side today.

They seemed to be, since after a few turns, the engine sputtered and coughed, and soon enough, it was settled. Megumi checks the gas level and nods approvingly to himself. He explains that it’s enough to get you a bit farther, but it’d be smart to keep an eye out for gas stations, or, better yet, other vehicles.

You unwrap your scarf from around yourself and begin to unveil the loaf of bread as well, breaking the fluffy food in half to share. The two of you eat in silence, save for the low humming of the engine. You’re too tired to talk.

Through the window, you see that it’s getting darker, and you remember your calendar. As you shuffle around to pull it out, Megumi seems to remember something as well, as he takes his bag into his lap and unzips one of the front, small pockets.

You don’t notice his hesitation as you bring out the floppy thing and lay it on the dashboard, smoothing all the wrinkles away.

He stares into his backpack pocket. He knows it’s okay to be vulnerable with you. He wants to be vulnerable with you. Embarrassment rushes up his neck and to his ears, but you don’t notice. You’re too busy shaking your old marker to force some ink to come out.

“Here,” He breaks the silence, voice cracking from the lack of use. “Here’s…. I figured you might need it, I…” Megumi shuts himself up as he sloppily tosses you a pack of permanent markers.

The way your face lights up makes it all worth it. He thinks he could face this type of embarrassing feeling every day if it makes you this happy.

“D’awwwww,” You coo, poking fun at him. You’re as jovial as always, eyes bright as you uncap one of the markers and mark the day off, marveling at how smoothly the marker glides.

He speaks up before he can stop himself. “I’m sorry.”

You pause and look back at him, the look on your face encouraging him to go on.

“I mean, I’m sorry for… what I said on the day we met. About your calendar.”

Your demeanor lightens again.

“Ah, that- don’t worry, Doggy. I don’t even think about that, barely even remember it. It’s okay. You’re good.”

He knows you’re being genuine, and that you really do forgive him. He sees it in the way you brush it off, going back to your markers and looking at them like they’re made out of gold. He feels something in his chest lighten, like the guilt from that night had been weighing him down this entire time.

Once the both of you finish your chunks of bread, and after you tuck your calendar away, you curl up on opposite sides of the seat and sleep the most comfortable you have in ages.

Everything’s a breeze now that the two of you have the truck.

It’s easier to fend off the cold, and the both of you have more energy since you don’t have to walk anywhere. The days seem to fly by faster, and with each passing day, you see Megumi opening up to you a little more. He’s not as harsh as he used to be, and even when he does mock you, it’s playful and light. There’s no more malice laced in his tone.

He’s softer now, cares more now. He accepts your invitations and attempts at making it concrete that it’s the both of you, together, as survival partners or whatever he likes to call it. Your stomach feels warm whenever he agrees or accepts your little comments about things being ‘ours’, referring to you as ‘us’ and ‘we’ rather than correcting you to ‘I’ like he used to.

It’s not enough for you, though. You can’t help but want a little more. You’re thankful that the two of you greet December, because a) you’re grateful to have even survived this long, and b) it’s much colder now, so he doesn’t question you that much when you coyly try to cozy up to him before bed, complaining about how you’re freezing and that you’ll die of frostbite.

He sees through your little act. He never mentions it, but he does. Megumi’s more than happy to let you have your fun.

Megumi’s usually the one who sneaks out into stores to refill your load of supplies, and you stay cozied in the truck. He says it’s because at any moment, if any one of you are away from the vehicle, someone just like you could easily take it. His statement is true, but he doesn’t mention his second, secret little reason- he likes to know that you’re safe and warm in there.

One day, though, you try to kiss up to him so that he’ll let you loot with him.

The morning starts off with you feeding him little compliments that are definitely out of pocket.

“Your hair looks rather nice today, Dog Boy.”

“Oh….yours, too.”

“Mhm. And that jacket you stole fits you well, I think. Really, uh, matches your vibe.”

“Yep.”

“Yeah. Your scarf looks real… real snazzy, too.”

That pulls a laugh out of him- he had been borrowing your pink camouflage scarf. He knew something was up, and you knew he did. You just wanted to get on his good side, at least for today.

“What is it that you want, Sunshine?”

“I wanna help you today, when you go fetch supplies.”

He’s driving, but you think that if he was doing anything else, he’d stop his movements. He recovers as fast as he had reacted and clears his throat. “Why?”

“I need some stuff.”

“Stuff.”

“Yeah.” You hope he doesn’t ask for elaboration.

“I’ll think about it.”

You let out a groan and let your head rest against the window, putting on a dramatic little show so that maybe he’ll cave.

He doesn’t seem to be caving in any time soon, and from afar, you can see the parking lot. You’re eyeing him nervously, unsure if you should bring it up or not, but you make the first move when you hold onto the door handle as if you’re preparing to get out once he parks.

He’s hesitant, takes his time to park and drives through the lot as if every space was taken. He could’ve taken up three spaces, if he wanted.

“Doggy. Stop stalling.” “I just think you’d be safer if you stayed here.”

“I’ll be fast. I’ll get what I need and then come right back.”

That seems to ease his nerves, so he silently agrees and parks perfectly between the two lines before shutting the truck off.

You walk together to the entrance of the store, but as soon as you make it inside, he laughs to himself when you make a beeline to the sweets aisle. He couldn’t believe that you made such a fuss to join along just to get some of those mini cakes.

You stay true to your word and gather what you need before making your way back to the truck, keeping an eye out for Megumi. You hope he doesn’t see the small chocolate muffin that you’ve stuffed close to your chest in a weak attempt to hide it. He’d probably make fun of you.

When everything’s done and he meets you back at the truck, he’s slightly surprised to see that you hadn’t eaten your little sweet during ‘dinner’. He doesn’t have the energy to confront you about it.

Today’s the day, you think.

It’s difficult and very painful to conceal your excitement for all the hours that you spend at Megumi’s side. You try to calm your nerves by making lots of conversation with him, now that he’s more responsive. At first, you were the one to talk about your family, your old friends, how you grew up. Lately, though, in his mission to be more vulnerable and open with you, he reciprocates and tells you about his past, here and there.

Night falls. He’s closing up one of his stories about one of his old teachers that usually made you laugh till you cried. It makes you laugh this time too, except your heart is racing and you can feel your palms getting a little sweaty.

The both of you go quiet as you eat lightly, taking only a few bites before calling it a night.

“I have a surprise for you,” You suddenly say, and his face is plastered with confusion. “I need you to close your eyes.”

He’s so obviously taken aback that you snort at him. “Just for a second, it won’t take long. Please.”

He complies and places his hands over his eyes to reassure you that they’re for sure closed and that he can’t see anything. Megumi hears you rummaging around in your bag that you kept at your feet, hears you tear something open, and then you fall quiet.

You kind of want to throw up. You don’t know why this feels so difficult, why it’s making you so nervous. In the past, when Megumi was mean to you, you think that this might’ve been easier, because you’d be able to tell what reaction he would give.

You can’t tell anymore.

You collect yourself together before you speak up, finally, “Okay. You can look now.”

He removes his hands to see you sitting sideways in your seat, to face him. Your feet are tucked beneath you and you hold out a sloppy, slightly smeared chocolate muffin with an unlit candle stuck on top.

“Happy birthday, Dog Boy.”

Your voice is so soft and quiet, and he feels something take over him for a second. It’s strong, this feeling of adoration and something else he’s too nervous to admit, even to himself. He’s about to ask how in the world you would know that today’s his birthday, because he didn’t even know- but then he remembers the night you had written it into your calendar.

“You,” He begins, nearly breathless. “Thank you.”

You smile up at him and scoot closer, pushing the muffin towards him so that he could take it. He does, and he removes the candle and puts it on the dashboard, letting it roll away carelessly.

The muffin looks miniature in his big hands, which is to his advantage as he splits it into two, effortlessly. He offers you a piece and you take it with a big, gushy smile on your face. You don’t see him smiling back at you endearingly.

You’re bashful like the two of you are having a lunch date in a school courtyard. You want to look at him, revel in his features, but you don’t want to be caught staring either.

You throw yourself a bone and let yourself glance at him. He’s finished his piece, and all he’s doing now is swiping the crumbs off of his jacket. As he shifts around, you see a smudge of chocolate right by his lip.

“Wait,” You start, leaning closer. “There’s frosting on your lip.”

“Here?” He pokes his tongue out on the wrong side, and you have to bite back a little smile.

“No, no- I’ll get it for you,” You offer, leaning in even closer to him, nearly crawling right on top. You stick your thumb out gently, your touch feather light as you bring it to the corner of his lip and wipe off the small spot of frosting.

You linger on purpose, and his breath hitches.

“Sunshine,” He breathes, hands frozen in the air. He’s unsure of where to put them.

“Mhm?”

“Can I,” He starts, hesitates, then starts again. “Can I kiss you?”

Your smile speaks for you, but the moment that you let out a breathy yes, he cups your face and slots his lips against yours. He’s so soft, despite it being winter and the both of you constantly dry and chapped. He holds you, moves you like you’re a glass doll, so cautious and gentle. Megumi begins to shift the both of you, sitting up before pushing you down onto the seat.

It’s awkward. The truck is so small, the both of you clunking around, but you two take it like champs. He breaks away to give a little laugh against your lips, easing the tension, and it’s so wonderful, so beautiful, that you waste no time pulling him back down to kiss him just a bit harder.

You figure that he’s hesitant, and you appreciate that he isn’t pushy and trying to cross all boundaries at once. You know that if you only wanted to kiss and call it a night, he’d be perfectly okay with that.

But you’re as greedy as ever, and you want more of him.

You start playing with his lips, pulling away to softly bite at them, dart your tongue across the bottom one. It makes him freeze for a second, feelings of surprise and excitement engulfing his heart, but then he indulges. Megumi gently pulls your bottom lip into his mouth and sucks on it, thumb softly caressing your jaw.

And you’re so starved, having gone months without even shaking someone’s hand. His actions make you gasp out softly, and he feels driven to pull more out of you.

Megumi catches himself in his thoughts and pulls away again, “This- Is this okay?”

You’re melting beneath him. You nod rapidly, begging silently. “Yes,” You huff out, precious smile coming across your lips. “Please.”

He nods and then dives back in to kiss you square on the lips before moving lower, planting kisses down your neck as much as he can before your puffy parka interrupts him. He smiles fondly and looks up at you, seeing if you would notice the obstruction.

“Oh,” You let out, face hot. “Sorry.”

You’re so embarrassed, but Megumi thinks he could just eat you up.

You prop yourself onto your elbows as best as you can, messily unzipping the jacket and flinging it away. It’s not like it goes far, anyway. You hear the zipper scratch against the glove compartment as you thrash it away, and it makes the both of you laugh breathily.

You watch as he takes it upon himself to do the same, undoing the buttons on his own jacket before carelessly tossing it behind him. The two of you are now just in long sleeves and cargo pants, and he looks at you with an inkling of concern. “It’s still cold,” He whispers, now that he’s lowering himself back over you, “Leave it on, yeah?”

You want nothing more than to rip your shirt off, but you know he’s right. You know that if you take it off, the bite of the cold would probably dampen your mood.

You can only nod obediently, eyes begging him again, for a kiss.

Megumi sneaks back down again to pick up where he left off, kissing along your neck and down to your collarbone before your shirt blocks off the rest of your chest from him. He’s moved his hands lower to rearrange your legs, to make it more comfortable for the both of you, and you’re so pliant beneath him, wanting all of his touches.

His hands reach the button of your pants, “I’m gonna…” he starts, but never finishes. He’s caught up in the way you lift your hips to help him slide down your pants, caught up in the sight of you in your underwear.

As soon as he tugs them off and pushes them to the side, you hiss as the cool air kisses your skin, and he’s quick to soothingly rub at your thighs, hands trailing down to your calves.

“I know,” He soothes, warming you up. “I know, baby.”

Megumi wants to take it slow, he wants to be able to ride out the moment, but the way you whimper at his touch pushes him. “Fuck- fuck, okay.”

His movements and options are limited due to the space of the truck. He can’t necessarily do everything he wants with you, but he's grateful for the moment regardless.

He moves back down to kiss you, slightly softer this time, with his forearm propped beside your head to keep him up, and his other trailing up and closer to the space between your thighs. Just the movement of his fingers gently dragging across your clothed cunt is enough to have you rutting up into his hand, desperate for more, tired of his slow pace. He’s swallowing all your sounds, but he pulls back as soon as he slips his hand beneath your panties, wanting to hear you this time. Cold fingers meet your folds and you twitch, legs nearly closing around his hand, and he smiles as he tuts at you. “Relax,” He breathes out against your jaw before softly nipping at it, kissing it.

You’re already wet, and he smiles to himself cheekily before lazily rubbing his fingers against your entrance to slicken them. It makes you sigh out, so pretty and light, and he just loves the way your chest rises and falls.

What he loves even more, though, is the moan you let out the second that he starts circling your clit, the way your hands tighten their grip on his shoulders. You’re trying to push yourself up against him, trying to feel more, but all he does is smile into your neck, absolutely basking in the way you need him so badly.

“Please,” You finally cave, voice airy as you softly drag your nails across his back to get his attention. “More, please, I want- I want you.”

He reaches up to plant a kiss on the corner of your lips. “All you had to do was ask.”

He smoothly pulls down your underwear entirely, and just the sight of your arousal clinging onto the cotton fabric is enough to have him swallowing, adam’s apple bobbing. Megumi slips only his middle finger into your core at first, and it’s enough to satisfy you for now, walls fluttering. His fingers are so long, and you think about just how big his hands are, and it’s enough to make you whine in your own little fantasy.

He takes his time in pumping it in and out of you before slipping his ring finger inside, picking up the pace. Your thighs tighten around his hand and you sloppily try to pull him down closer to you, hiding your face into the crook of his neck as he curls his fingers. The palm of his hand presses against your clit and you cry out, fingers latching onto his hair as you start your little spiel of babbles.

“Right there, right there, oh my god, there, there-”

You cut yourself off as he speeds up, your cute little incoherent sounds encouraging him. He wishes he could see your face, see the look in your eyes, but you can only squeal into his shoulder and knock your knees against his legs as you feel something within you tighten.

“Right here?” He teases, fingers curling against your warm walls, and the feeling of it is enough to make him hang his head low, panting, cock straining at the thought of how you’d feel around him.

“Mhm,” You choke out, too far gone to try and say something to tease him back. Your head drops back onto the seat and you feel your back arch up against him, heat swarming in your abdomen as you chant out breathily- Yes, yes, yes.

Megumi feels you tense up, and then you’re twitching, crying into him as you come undone all over his fingers, earning a groan from him. He works you through it, lets you have your fun before your vision is blurring and you’re half heartedly pushing his hand away.

You fall limp beneath him and watch him with a hazy mind as he brings his fingers up to his lips, lapping at them, sucking them clean.

You turn your head to the side, suddenly feeling shy. He smiles down at you, “Don’t try to be modest, now.”

It makes you laugh weakly, makes you swat at his chest so softly that it feels like a mere tap. He dips back down to pepper the junction of your neck and shoulder in kisses, occasionally licking and biting, hoping little bruises bloom across your skin.

The both of you freeze when you feel something hard poke at the inside of your thigh.

Megumi groans, and you know he’s embarrassed. He buries his face into the side of your neck, hand slipping beneath your shirt to massage at your waist.

You want him now, fast, before the two of you call it a night, and you want to call out for him.

But you can’t just say Dog Boy, please fuck me.

It makes you wince at yourself, but you’re too shy to ask for his name now.

“Baby,” You finally breathe out, your hand running up and down his arm.

He hums contentedly into your neck.

“Need you,” You start quietly, taking his hand in yours and guiding it to your heat. “Need you inside me.” You swear you hear him groan a low Fuck right into your skin.

He heaves himself up, eyes glossed over with lust and a glint of something that makes your heart skip a few beats, but you don’t want to jump the gun with that just yet. You can only hope that he sees the same thing in your eyes, too.

Megumi sloppily works on undoing his pants, heaving a content sigh when you rushedly swat his hands away and take the task into your own hands.

He stuffs his pants past his knees, frantically trying to kick them off his legs as fast as he can.

You nearly whine at the sight of him, like this, all for you, in front of you.

He moves down to kiss you, pushing you back down to the seat, making sure you were lying comfortably. He takes his cock into his hand, smoothing it over your wet folds back and forth to prep himself.

You’re panting, lifting your hips, urging him on.

He finally aligns himself with your slit, but pauses for a second.

“Megumi.”

“H-Huh?”

“My name’s Megumi,” He suddenly confesses as he pushes his tip in slowly.

You think you carry the universe in your chest. It feels like it’s expanding, endlessly, painfully- a delicious type of pain. You’re too caught up in the newfound intimacy of learning his name that your jaw goes slack as soon as you feel him bottom out within you, breaking you from your trance.

You feel so full.

“Megumi,” You cry unabashedly, moving your hips, encouraging him to move.

He groans, big hands planting themselves on your hips as he begins with slow thrusts, drawing out the feeling. He hits all the right places, but the pace he’s going at is devastating.

You’re whining, begging, babbling out for him to go faster, to fuck me, please, please Megumi, and the sound of your pretty voice crying out his name is enough to drive him insane.

He loves torturing you, really. Loves the way you cry for him, the way you clench around him, the way your voice shakes.

Megumi sets a fast pace, rutting into you like you’re the outlet for all his pent-up feelings. You’re squealing, and when the tip of his cock hits the spot that sends you around the world and back, you feel tears blur your vision.

“Feels s-so good, Megumi,” You chatter dumbly, too lost in the feeling and the sounds he’s making.

“Yeah?” He strains, grip tightening on your hips. “Look so pretty like this, baby. So fucking- oh, god- pretty.”

He enunciates his statement with a particularly hard thrust that has your toes curling, your hands tight on his biceps before he moves to fold you in half, squeezing you into a mating press as best as he can. His eyes zero in on where the two of you meet as he tries to etch the sight into his memory.

“Megumi,” You cry weakly, “So much, so so good, so- ah!”

You can’t even form a single coherent sentence, and he thinks you’re so adorable. He watches as fresh tears cascade down the path of dried ones, and it only spurs him further. The two of you are so pathetically desperate to reach your orgasms, you don’t even mind when his thrusts become sloppy and off-kilter, when he starts groaning and even lets out the prettiest of sounds when you flutter around him.

You manage to collect yourself for just a second.

“Please fill me up,” You beg, nodding dumbly to egg him on. “Wanna- wanna feel you cum inside me, wanna- oh, fuck, fuck, baby, please-”

He knows it’s probably not the smartest idea, but he’s too caught up in chasing his pleasure, and your little begs and mewls make his movements stutter before he finally stills inside you, pressing your thighs to your chest to steady himself.

“Take it, baby. Fucking- god- take it.”

“Mhm,” You nod frantically, static invading your vision, “Make me yours, please, make me- I’m, oh, I’m yours,” You’re running your mouth nonsensically, and the feeling of his seed spilling inside of you is enough to push you past the edge until you’re crying and shaking beneath him.

He wants to hear you say it for forever, telling him that you’re his.

He leans in to kiss your forehead, “Say it again.”

You think you could pass out, chest still heaving up and down as you come back down from your high, but you would do anything to please him. “‘M yours.”

Megumi smiles to himself before he pulls out, the sensation pulling a hiss from you as he lets you relax your legs and tries to clean the both of you to the best of his ability, considering the circumstances.

He helps you slide your panties back on, maneuvers your legs for you so that you can tug on your pants, worried that you’ll get cold fast.

You let him take charge, too exhausted to even move. Megumi splays across the seat and pulls you into his chest, trying to pull his jacket over the two of you like a blanket.

“Megumi,” You say sleepily, cheek smushed against the spot where his heart beats. He hums, encouraging you to go on.

“My name,” You start, “My name is (Y/N).” And, before you let him speak, you turn your head to look up at him with a cheeky little smile. “Does this make us friends, now?”

He laughs. It’s your favorite sound.

“I hope we can be more than friends.”

You hum affirmatively and kiss his earlobe before nestling against him, falling asleep.

The days are filled with love and gestures of affection after that night. Megumi is more comfortable now, though sometimes he pinches your side gently whenever you slip up and accidentally call him Dog Boy. He tells you that he demands reparations for your wrongdoings- he specifies that he would like to be paid back in kisses.

Whenever you call him a sap, he pinches your side again.

Although the two of you seem to be in your own little world, lost in love, the outer world has not changed. You add another step to your nightly routine, right before you go to sleep; Check the radio.

Megumi leaves it propped on the dashboard at all times and frequently asks you to try and catch a signal so that the two of you can hear some news. Day after day, you find yourselves unlucky. You’re always greeted by the same crackle and fuzz.

He’s been thinking hard lately, and you can see it. He’s always a little distracted, late to respond to you, or sometimes not even listening altogether.

He’s thinking that at this rate, it may be smarter to settle down. To find somewhere to stay, to wait out the situation. Surely, with time, the zombies should die out. This cannot last forever.

And while you’re splitting the food or reading outdated magazines that he grabbed for you at the store, he’s facing his own little mental battles. He knows that you dream of a better future, with people coming together and starting anew. And he knows that you’re becoming even more hopeful now that you’ve reached North and the camp should be within your sights at any time, but the journey itself is not promising. It’s colder, storms more often, the truck shakes and does not shield you from the cold all that well when the two of you are asleep. Megumi is nearly positive that the best idea, for now, is to settle down somewhere and to at least let the season pass.

He’s promised himself that he’ll bring it up to you on this particular morning, as the snow kisses the windows and fights against the weak attempts of the windshield wipers. You’re rummaging through a magazine, reading it over for the nth time and trying to fill out one of the crossword puzzles you had previously left empty for times like this.

“(Y/N),” He starts, mouth dry as he glances at you before looking back at the road.

“Hm?”

“I’ve been thinking, recently…”

As he pauses to collect what he wants to say, you giggle to yourself. “I know. You always look kind of constipated, you know? You’re not very good at hiding it, Megs.”

His face flushes red, and the both of you know it’s not from the cold. He appreciates that you’re not upset that he’s been keeping things to himself as of late, but he thinks he could’ve gone without the playful comment.

“Anyway,” He stresses, though he doesn’t feel so panicky anymore. He strictly keeps his eyes trained in front of him, on the road, following the short, yellow lines that divide it down the middle.

“I think… think we should settle down. The winter is only going to get harsher, and this truck is so old, I’m not sure how long it’ll last. We can find some place to stay- there’s empty houses everywhere- and we can sit out until the season is over. It’ll be safer that way.”

His proposition hangs in the air. You’re awfully quiet, and for a second he wonders if you were even listening.

“Megumi- pull over.”

“Huh? What?”

“Just- just stop the truck.”

He thinks you’re angry, but you don’t sound it. He rushedly puts the truck into park and tries to catch a glimpse of your face, to see how you feel.

You look focused. You don’t even bother to look at him; you’re looking past him.

He confirms that you probably weren’t even listening to what he said when you ask, “Do you see that? Over there?”

“See what?”

“That… that big white thing, like… look.” You point your finger in the general direction of what you see.

“(Y/N), everything’s white- it’s snowing-”

You hush him, “No, no. It’s huge...it’s..”

You don’t finish. You’re tired of squinting to try and make out the shape of what you see, so you haul the truck door open and spill out of it clumsily, the snow catching you. Fear, hope, adrenaline, excitement; it swallows you whole and you think you could throw up. You trudge towards the front of the truck, snow pulling on your boots like it’s begging you to stay.

Megumi follows after you, worried as to why you’re frozen in place, pushing past the clingy snow. Your name catches in his throat before he gets to call out to you. He finally sees what you see, just a few yards away.

Children. Young, healthy looking children. They’re running around, squealing and throwing snow at each other, little hands covered in gloves and big, puffy jackets slowing down their movements. He sees people calling out to them, ushering them inside big tents- tents.

They’re caked with snow, but positively scattered all over the place. He sees people peeking out, zipping them up, running straight out of them to dive into inches of fresh snow.

You’re rushing back to the truck, feeling weightless as you snag your backpack from the passenger seat and haul it with you as you try to run past Megumi, towards the people. “Hurry, Megumi!” You call, a smile so evident in your voice.

“I have to show them my calendar!”

#megumi x reader #fushiguro megumi x reader #fushiguro x reader #jjk x reader #megumi fluff #megumi smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk smut

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feyhunter78 · 6 months ago

Text

Chapter Eight - Jon's true parentage comes to light and King's Landing comes under attack.

Ch 9

Jon reads the letter, again and again, looking up at you, who has your hands clasped in front of you, and Lord Tyrion who waits patiently.

“I am a Dayne?” He asks, unable to believe the words written in his father’s handwriting.

“Jon Dayne, the only living child of Arthur Dayne and Lyanna Stark, third in line to the seat of Starfell behind your cousin Edric, a boy of four and ten, and your father” Tyrion reiterates.

Jon shakes his head, he is a Stark, Ned Stark’s bastard, he cannot be a Dayne. “No, I cannot be, it is a mistake.”

You bite your lip and step forward reaching for him. “Jon…”

“It is true, we could send you to Dorne to ask your aunt herself. Tyrion says, jerking his head towards the door.

Jon folds the letter and shoves it in his pocket. “I cannot simply flee to Dorne, not while my father and sister are still in danger.”

You take another step towards him, but your father holds you back. “That is why you must act in accordance with our plan, a marriage must take place. A Tyrell women must be made queen.”

Jon looks at him, cold fear filling his chest. Remembering how you looked when you opened the door to your father’s solar and bid him to enter. Your eyes were red and puffy, tear tracks down your cheeks. He does not want to marry a Tyrell; he wants to marry you. “I will not marry a Tyrell, I will not marry for the throne, I have no claim to it.”

Finally, your father allows you to go to him and you take his hand. “You do not have to, Robb will marry the Tyrell, he will be king.”

There is a newfound confidence blooming in him, and he takes your hand, the one already holding his and presses it to his lips, letting it linger, his eyes meeting yours burning with a new heat. “Then I shall do as my lady commands.”

The flustered expression that flits across your face delights him, and he turns your hand over to press his lips to your palm, then your inner wrist, directly over your pulse point.

Tyrion coughs sharply. “No one else in the Keep besides us and Lord Varys knows of your true identity, and it must remain that way. You are still a bastard in the eyes of the court, your actions must reflect that.”

You reluctantly break away from Jon. “But away from the eyes of the court?”

Tyrion sighs heavily. “Dayne, do you wish to court my daughter?”

Gods yes. Jon thinks, all his dreams that he had squashed down and locked away coming to the forefront of his mind. “Yes, I do.”

“Fine, I will allow it, provided you two do not ruin everything that is in the works. The weight of this plan is indescribable, the secrecy needed indefinable. All those fanciful dreams I can all but see running through your head can be crushed with one small mistake.”

It is not as if it is torture to act as he once did, to stand so close and yet so far from you, unable to take your hand or call you by your name, but it is torture not being able to comfort you.

You sob as you watch Myrcella depart for Dorne, Tommen himself shedding tears, only Joffrey does not cry. He sneers at you and Tommen, and Jon has the strong desire to break the boy-king’s jaw.

Then come the riots, chaos breaks out, Joffrey is yelling, the smallfolk are starving, but Jon is prepared, he has lost sight of you in a crowd before, and he will not suffer that again. He scoops you from your horse and onto his own, riding hard for the Keep, leaving behind all else, his arm iron around your waist, keeping you close until his horse comes to a skidding stop within the Keep.

You hide your laughter in his cloak when your father kicks Joffrey, yelling at him for his foolishness, but your laughter dies when reports of Fleabottom in flames roll in. Water wagons are dispatched by your father’s order, and Jon dismounts, helping you down from his horse, escorting you inside.

Then comes the Battle of Blackwater, bloody, endless screams, armies from all other the central lands crashing, explosions of wildfire lighting up the bay, the green flash seen hrough the windows of the Keep. You keep pace with Jon as you run towards the Queen’s Ballroom with the others remaining in the Red Keep.

His heart is in his throat as he begins to recognize the scene. His steps no longer meld with the others but squelch. The banners bleed, and though the door to the Queen’s Ballroom is wide open, he can see it there, half cracked, the scent of flesh, of blood seeping into his skin. He halts, grabbing your wrist and guiding you the other way, ignoring your questions until the halls are empty, and he throws you over his shoulder as he did the day his father—Lord Stark had nearly lost his head.

You protest, banging on his back with your fists, demanding answers, but he cannot get his jaw to work, his tongue too heavy to lift, his lips unable to form words.

“Jon, put me down, we are going the wrong way, are you mad?” You yell, fear tinging your voice.

He must keep you safe, he must, he cannot shake the vision, you are wearing the same dress, the same cosmetics, your hair styled the same way as in his dream, he should have known, he should have known.

Jon rips a ribbon from your gown and throws it over a nearby sconce hoping Tyrion will notice it and not follow the others to their deaths in the Queen’s Ballroom. He counts the stones on the wall until he finds the twenty-ninth one, pushing it in he glances down the hall slipping in through the opening that appears.

You are quiet now, no longer fighting him as he carefully picks his way through the tunnels, listening for the sounds of battle. Finally, he comes to a fork in the path taking the left branch and setting you down once he had walked a good distance. If he were to look out though the cracks in the stone, he would be able to see the Godswood. Jon prays the soldiers who attempt to break in will ignore this sacred place and go straight for the holdfast.

“How did you know there was a tunnel there?” You ask glancing around the darkened tunnel.

“Theon found them, he told me about them, said if we ever needed to take Sansa and run, we should go this way.” He explains, leaning against the stone wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“There are secret tunnels that go to the Godswood. I knew about some of the others, but not these.” You say, running your fingers along the rough-hewn stone. “So, if we keep going, we will be outside the Keep?”

He nods. “But we are not leaving the Keep, it is too dangerous.”

“I am aware of that Jon, that is why we were supposed to barricade ourselves in the holdfast.”

“No.” Jon says, his voice stern, sterner than it has ever been towards you in his years of knowing you.

Shock flickers in your eyes, he has always been good at reading you, others could never read your true emotions but for him? You were an open book; one he would never tire of reading.

You place your hands on your hips, lifting your chin imperiously, your eyes like jade in the shadows of the tunnel. “No? Why not?”

“If Stannis’ men breech the walls, they will go there first.” He explains, frustration building in his body, why can you not just listen?

“The holdfast is practically impenetrable, especially when the drawbridge is pulled up, which it is.” You say, leaning closer at the end of your sentence as if to put emphasis on your words.

Jon breathes out a harsh sigh, your screams echoing in his mind, he has not had that nightmare in years, but now he cannot stop seeing it. “No one knows we are here y/n; it is safer.”

Another step, you are practically nose to nose with him. “What if someone else were to know about this tunnel, what then? There is barely enough room for the two of us, how will you swing your sword?”

Shouts cut off your words and Jon grabs you, pulling you to his chest, his hand over your mouth. He can hear your heartbeat, or perhaps it is his, your chest brushes against his as you breathe, and he can feel every inch of your body against his own.

The shouts pass, he relaxes and releases you, attempting to banish the impure thoughts from his mind. Yes, he is courting you, but that does not give him leave to act on his baser instincts.

“We would not have to fear being heard if we were in the ballroom.” You grumble.

He often finds your stubbornness charming, the angry pout on your lips when you are denied what you want, he finds most endearing. You are spoiled, even more than Sansa, your father rarely says no to you, and it is only by the gods’ own hands that you are not a worse version of Joffrey.

Though Jon cannot deny, he enjoys your spoiled attitude, enjoys the way you turn to him the moment you are told no. Tommen does not want to ride horses with you? Jon does. Your father refuses to accompany you to Fleabottom so you can buy more embroidery thread? Jon will go, and he will carry all your purchases. A fool from House Royce refuses to dance with you once he learned who your father was? Jon is a wonderful dancer; and he will not relinquish your hand until it is demanded.

But now it is less charming and more…enticing. You look up at him with such stubbornness, your lips in that adorable pout, your hands on your hips inadvertently pushing your breasts out. He finds his restraint has gone.

“Gods will you shut up?” He hisses, grabbing your face and crashing his lips to yours.

You freeze for a moment, then melt into him, your arms looping around his neck, fingers tangling in his curls, as your lips meld with his.

“Is this all it took, My Lady? A kiss? Perhaps I should have kissed you ages ago.” He purrs, his lips a hairsbreadth from yours, brushing against them with every word.

“Oh…” You breathe out, your grip on his hair tightening.

“My lovely lady, my lioness, my stubborn girl.” He presses each term of endearment into your skin, saving his newest one, born from the freshly acquired knowledge of his parentage, for last. “My starlight.”

Your lips meet once more, and you part yours for him, whimpering when his tongue strokes yours, a movement he had heard Robb and Theon speak of.

Jon had not believed it to be true, the reaction they said it invoked, but your response sparks a desperation within him. He must hear that sound again. So, he repeats it, tip of his tongue dragging across yours, coaxing it into his mouth and sucking lightly.

“Oh gods, Jon, I—” Your words are muffled as you refuse to fully pull away from him, voice higher pitched and breathless.

Liquid heat boils just under his skin, one hand leaving your face to grab your hips and pull you impossibly closer. “Anything, y/n, ask it of me, I am sworn to you, I will do whatever it takes to grant your heart’s desire.”

You whimper once more at his words, and the sound strikes through him like lightning. The scent of jasmine, your soft lips, soft skin, the taste of honey from your morning meal, he could devour you, a beast he is for his thoughts, for how easy it would be to pick you up and have his way with you. You are already sworn to each other, good as betrothed, would it truly be such a crime…?

Bastard. The word is like an arrow to the chest, and he pushes you away, guilt replacing the heat beneath his skin.

“Jon? Are you alright?” You ask, going to cup his cheek.

He stops you. “I—I cannot, we cannot. We are not wed; I will not dishonor you.”

You look put out, blinking rapidly at him, and then slowly nodding. “I understand.”

Jon sags against the wall, rolling his head back, praying for strength when he hears you sniffling. His head shoots up, just in time to see you wipe away your tears. Truly you are spoiled. He reaches for you, brushing his lips across your forehead with a fond smile. “Y/N, do not cry, soon we will be wed, we must allow the pieces to fall into place, remember?”

“You will fall in love with Margaery.” You whisper, hiding your face in his leather breastplate.

He laughs, the sound echoing off the stone walls. “How? How when my heart is within those claws of yours? When I see no reason to remove it?”

“She is perfect, the tales of her beauty, her grace, her intelligence, her dutifulness, she would make an excellent wife.”

“Aye, an excellent wife for Robb, she will win his heart with a few words I am sure of it, but there is no heart of mine for her to win. It is as I said, my heart is yours, willingly given. I do not want it back, nor do I wish to give it to another.”

You turn your face up towards him, the living embodiment of perfection, your hair framing your face, your lips kiss swollen, your eyes the dark green of Winterfell’s forests. “Swear it.”

He clicks his tongue in faux disappointment. Here in the shadows he is bold, intoxicated by your raw and bleeding desire for him. If his heart is within your claws then surely your own heart sits within his maw, fragile and beating. “To think I have served you so faithfully and still you doubt me.”

“Swear it.” You half demand, half plead, your heart between his teeth beating faster, trembling in his toothy grasp.

He cups your face, resting his forehead against your own. “I swear it, and may the gods strike me down if I break my oath, if my heart strays from you.”

He feels your relieved exhale more than he hears it, and he lingers, thumbs caressing the soft skin of your cheeks.

“I swear it too.” You say softly, your hand coming to rest on his chest, heat burning through his breastplate, warming his chest. He hopes you leave a handprint, hopes you burn your mark into his skin, leave a remainder of your presence that cannot be taken from him.

TL: @mostclevermiss, @solacestyles, @2valentines, @sharknutz, @idohknow, @bdudette, @pluraldoggo

#meg's writing #that Stark rizz coming into play #finally I let them kiss #jon snow x reader #jon snow x y/n #jon snow x you #jon snow imagine #jon snow imagines #jon snow #lannister!reader

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fieldofdaisiies · 17 days ago

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Kinktober Drabble 7 - Azris

request: can you please do Azris and something with fire, fireplay … if you feel comfortable, I bet Eris would be so gentle and careful | masterlist | ao3

“I‘ll be careful,” Eris whispers against the corner of Azriel‘s lips before he straightens up. “I promise.”

The shadowsinger knows this, he knows he can fully trust his mate and yet an enormous amount of gratitude and love fills his chest. His body is tense, stiff, but relaxes with every second that passes. With every second he holds Eris‘ gaze and finds nothing but warmth and admiration in them.

Slowly, Azriel dips his chin to his chest, and smiles. He is ready for what they are going to try. They have been intimate a lot within the past months, the past year, have tried many things, but never something like this. Something including fire. Something that calls for more trust than anything else they have done before.

“I trust you,” the shadowsinger tells Eris, his voice a whisper and yet firm. “I always do. I love you and I want this.”

Eris bows slowly, all of his movements always elegant, High-Lord-like. A small flame, burning in a deep orange with flecks of yellow and red, lights up the tip of his fingers. To his own surprise, Azriel doesn’t flinch, he only watches. Watches how the flame doesn’t burn his mate, doesn’t hurt the person he loves most in this world.

Carefully, Eris lowers his hand to Azriel’s chest, always looking out if the shadowsinger may change his mind, their gazes locked almost the entire time. “I love you, Azriel,” the High Lord whispers and his palm finally touches the spymaster’s chest, hot and soft.

One small flame stays when Eris lifts his hand again, and almost like one of his own shadows, skims across his skin, warm, hot, but not too much. It heats his skin, his blood, but it doesn’t burn him. It doesn’t hurt him.

Just like Eris does. He keeps him warm and safe when he needs it, but would never use his powers to bring hurt upon him.

Azriel‘s abdominal muscles are as hard as rock as he watches the flame dance across it, wonder and a hint of surprise sparkling in his eyes. How is it possible that a flame can‘t hurt him?

As if he can read his mind, Eris says with a smile, “They are as much part of me as your shadows are of you. My flames would never harm what I love most in this world.”

…..harm what I love most in this world. Tears almost immediately spring to Azriel’s eyes and he rapidly wipes at them with his palm, hearing Eris‘ rich and warm laugh in his ears.

“You should have known so by now, my mate,” the High Lord adds in an amused tone and guides his flame to stroke across Azriel’s abdomen. “That I am hopelessly devoted to you, my love. I am yours, utterly and completely. Madly in love with you, your warm heart and witty brain. And your glorious body.” Eris is grinning, his eyes dropping Azriel’s cock and his gaze alone is enough to make him hard.

“You are perfect,” Eris growls and leans in, his hips pushing against Azriel’s hardness. “And fully mine. Mine to love, to pleasure and to devour.”

As Eris’ hand curls around Azriel’s shaft, tender and soft, flames still line the tips of his digits and a stunning, breathtaking grin graces his lips he begins to stroke his mate, and the flames burning like wildfires in his eyes resemble those on his hands.

tags: @azrielsbabyg@lady-riel@moonlightazriel@aayo-whatt (no smut) @brekkershadowsinger @ladyelain @banasheefan56 @a-frog-with-a-laptop @ofduskanddreams @acourtofladydeath @secret-third-thing @born-to-riot @chunkypossum @jules-writes-stories @unanswered-stars @christeareads @mistandmemories @bookishbroadwaybish @c-starstuff-man0 @the-darkestminds @talibunny30 @nestasgoodside @baileybird71

#azris #azriel x eris #acotar #acosf #azriel #eris vanserra #daisiieskinktober2024

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haggishlyhagging · 11 months ago

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The book list copied from feminist-reprise

Radical Lesbian Feminist Theory

A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection, Jan Raymond

Call Me Lesbian: Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory, Julia Penelope

The Lesbian Heresy, Sheila Jeffreys

The Lesbian Body, Monique Wittig

Politics of Reality, Marilyn Frye

Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism 1976-1992, Marilyn Frye

Lesbian Ethics, Sarah Hoagland

Sister/Outsider, Audre Lorde

Radical Feminist Theory – General/Collections

Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism, edited by Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler

Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, Renate Klein and Diane Bell

Love and Politics, Carol Anne Douglas

The Dialectic of Sex–The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone

Sisterhood is Powerful, Robin Morgan, ed.

Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, edited by Barbara A. Crow

Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf

Sexual Politics, Kate Millett

Radical Feminism, Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds.

On Lies, Secrets and Silence, Adrienne Rich

Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals, Marilyn French

Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, Catharine MacKinnon

Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Sandra Bartky

Life and Death, Andrea Dworkin

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, eds.

Wildfire: Igniting the She/Volution, Sonia Johnson

Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology, Barbara Smith ed.

Fugitive Information, Kay Leigh Hagan

Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, bell hooks

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks

Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage

Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes, Maria Lugones

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker

The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer

Right Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin

Feminist Theory – Specific Areas

Prostitution

Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution, Rachel Moran

Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self, Kajsa Ekis Ekman

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade, Sheila Jeffreys

Female Sexual Slavery, Kathleen Barry

Women, Lesbians, and Prostitution: A Workingclass Dyke Speaks Out Against Buying Women for Sex, by Toby Summer, in Lesbian Culture: An Anthology, Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe, eds.

Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution, Jan Raymond

The Legalisation of Prostitution : A failed social experiment, Sheila Jeffreys

Making the Harm Visible: Global Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls, Donna M. Hughes and Claire Roche, eds.

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress, Melissa Farley

Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant, eds.

Pornography

Pornland: How Pornography Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines

Pornified: How Porn is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families, Pamela Paul

Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Andrea Dworkin

Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, Gail Dines

Pornography: Evidence of the Harm, Diana Russell

Pornography and Sexual Violence: Evidence of the Links (transcript of Minneapolis hearings published by Everywoman in the UK)

Rape

Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller

Rape In Marriage, Diana Russell

Incest

Secret Trauma, Diana Russell

Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self, Janet Liebman Jacobs

Battering/Domestic Violence

Loving to Survive, Dee Graham

Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, Lundy Bancroft

Sadomasochism/”Sex Wars”

Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties, Irene Reti, ed.

The Sex Wars, Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, eds.

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice Raymond

Sex, Lies, and Feminism, Charlotte Croson, off our backs, June 2001

How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women’s Movement, Sheila Jeffreys

A Vision of Lesbian Sexuality, Janice Raymond, in All The Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism, Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller, eds.

Sex and Feminism: Who Is Being Silenced? Adriene Sere in SaidIt, 2001

Consuming Passions: Some Thoughts on History, Sex and Free Enterprise by De Clarke (From Unleashing Feminism).

Separatism/Women-Only Space

“No Dobermans Allowed,” Carolyn Gage, in Lesbian Culture: An Anthology, Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe, eds.

For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology, Julia Penelope & Sarah Hoagland, eds.

Exploring the Value of Women-Only Space, Kya Ogyn

Medicine

Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Treats Women as Patients and Professionals, Gena Corea

The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs, Gena Corea

Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler

Women, Health and the Politics of Fat, Amy Winter, in Rain And Thunder, Autumn Equinox 2003, No. 20

Changing Our Minds: Lesbian Feminism and Psychology, Celia Kitzinger and Rachel Perkins

Motherhood

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich

The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow

Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, Sara Ruddick

Marriage/Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich

The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930, Sheila Jeffreys

Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Sheila Jeffreys

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Michele Wallace

The Sexual Contract, Carol Pateman

A Radical Dyke Experiment for the Next Century: 5 Things to Work for Instead of Same-Sex Marriage, Betsy Brown in off our backs, January 2000 V.30; N.1 p. 24

Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

Transgender/Queer Politics

Gender Hurts, Sheila Jeffreys

Female Erasure, edited by Ruth Barrett

Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds, Cordelia Fine

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Cordelina Fine

Sexing the Body: Gender and the Construction of Sexuality, Anne Fausto-Sterling

Myths of Gender, Anne Fausto-Sterling

Unpacking Queer Politics, Sheila Jeffreys

The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, Janice Raymond

The Inconvenient Truth of Teena Brandon, Carolyn Gage

Language

Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues, Julia Penelope

Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary, Mary Daly

Man Made Language, Dale Spender

Feminist Theology/Spirituality/Religion

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, Mary Daly

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly

The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, Marija Gimbutas

Woman, Church and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage

The Women’s Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Pure Lust, Mary Daly

Backlash

The War Against Women, Marilyn French

Backlash, Susan Faludi

History/Memoir

Surpassing the Love of Men, Lillian Faderman

Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicles of a Feminist, Robin Morgan

Women of Ideas, and What Men Have Done to Them, Dale Spender

The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Gerda Lerner

Why History Matters, Gerda Lerner

A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, ed.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, Ellen Carol Dubois, ed., Gerda Lerner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Suffragette Movement, Sylvia Pankhurst

In Our Time: Memoirs of a Revolution, Susan Brownmiller

Women, Race and Class, Angela Y. Davis

Economy

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth, Marilyn Waring

For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Genevieve Vaughn

Fat/Body Image/Appearance

Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression, Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Wieser

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West, Sheila Jeffreys

Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, Jean Kilbourne

The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Susan Bordo

The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice in America, Charisse Goodman

Women En Large: Photographs of Fat Nudes, Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin

Disability

With the Power of Each Breath: A Disabled Women’s Anthology, Susan E. Browne, Debra Connors, and Nanci Stern

#tbr list

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9-1-1-polls · 3 months ago

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#911abc #9-1-1 #911 poll #911

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apas-95 · 1 year ago

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if it were up to me I'd shut off the internet connection of every single person who sees a post talking about the absolutely inordinate effect on the climate that, say, car-dependency and widespread air conditioning use cause, and responds 'um actually you just hate poor people because if you took away my car and AC I'd get hot and wouldn't be able to get to work...' because of how mind-numbily bad faith of an approach it is

nobody is advocating for - and even if they were, it could never practically be carried out - the simple removal of AC units, cars, whatever. the proposals are universally for their *replacement*. it is US housing design that makes its residents so entirely dependent on air-conditioning - other parts of the world with much harsher climates get by perfectly well by not building their houses out of unventilated plasterboard, and making dwellings that remain cool without massive power usage. it is car-centric municipal planning that makes people so dependent on cars - better public transport, better zoning, better housing are what is required to make cars *unnecessary*, not simply outlawed

ultimately, the issue is this - yes, you would, in the impossible fantasy scenario where the evil climate-obsessed leftists come steal your AC (yet do nothing else), die of heat exposure. however, in the very real scenario that the ruling class gets its way and nothing is done about the *massively* outsized emissions the imperial core has its residents produce, you will certainly also die of heat exposure. the only (real-world!) scenario where you *don't* eventually die of heat exposure is one that involves, yes, not having fucking Air Conditioning on 24/7

you've stumbled into a correct position - that personal action is ineffective to combat these things - but done so only out of an incorrect understanding: that combatting these things need not mean any change to the lives of individuals. there is no world in which you both keep on eating beef for every meal, driving everywhere, and running the AC all day, *and* where you don't die from a wildfire in your 60s because the fire department was busy spraying down rioting climate refugees at the county concentration camp

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pascalispretty · 3 months ago

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history stopped in 1936

Javi G x F!Reader

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Angst, Spanish Civil War AU, war and its horrors, brief and vague descriptions of sex, it's implied that Javi and reader are speaking Spanish the entire time, references to drinking and smoking, unbeta'd so please be gentle!

Summary: The Spanish Civil War threatens the slice of paradise you and Javi have found together. (AO3)

A/N: Hoo boy. This was written for @studioghibelli's writing challenge, and the moment I saw the moodboard, I knew I wanted to do something Atonement-inspired. You don't need to know who the opposing sides were in the war, but if you'd like to learn more, I'd recommend George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". The title comes from an essay of his. As always my love to @misscharlielulu for her support.

Mallorca, August 1936

Spain burns and, across the Balearic Sea, rumours are carried like ash on the wind.

You and Javier had fled Barcelona in the middle of the night, just after St Jordi’s Day. The streets had still been littered with rose petals as you had made your way to the docks, and the waiting ship. The atmosphere in Barcelona had grown tense, shimmering with electricity like the air just before a thunderstorm.

In July, your fears had been vindicated when news trickled across the sea, whispers of a violent uprising. Nobody could say for certain who had seized power – the anarchists, the communists, the Carlists, or some as-yet-unknown political spectre.

By contrast to the news reports that trickled over from the mainland, Mallorca felt safe. The ocean separating the island from the peninsula made the war feel further away, something that was happening in another world. Even when Barcelona fell or when, days later, Franco invaded with his African army in Seville - it all felt so far away, separated by miles of sparkling blue water.

On your island sanctuary, you and Javi managed to find a measure of happiness. Reminders of the war were never far away, and you were all probably smoking and drinking too much, but it didn’t matter. You could still watch movies on the projection reel he’d bought before he met you. Tucked up against Javi’s side, watching Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, you could forget the war on the mainland entirely.

It was only when the war came to Mallorca that you realised how deluded you had been.

With censored newspapers and downed radio communications, rumours run like wildfire across the island. Days after Seville falls, the stableboys hear that the Republicans have landed on the east coast – the housekeeper tells Marta that it’s Russians sent by Stalin, and the man who delivers the mail insists its Italians. There’s fighting in the streets of Palma and to the ports in the east, but nobody can agree on who exactly is fighting who.

You clean up after breakfast, a hastily made pa amb tomàquet that masks the staleness of the bread. Even for a family as rich as the Gutierrez’s, you cannot waste food anymore.

They say the fighting is in Palma, and Porto Cristo. Drawn onto a map, the Gutierrez villa would form the apex of the triangle; it’s about as far away from the fighting as you can get while still being on dry land. You try to breathe. It’s just another Tuesday morning. You’re breaking leftover breadcrusts into a bowl for the dogs when Javi appears.

“Leave that, my love. Come out into the garden with me?” He asks, wrapping a large hand around your wrist. You don’t need much convincing; you wipe your hands down on a towel and twine your fingers with your husband’s as you walk out across the patio to the greenery beyond.

The gardens are a riot of colour. In the hazy, golden light of summer, the colours seem almost over-saturated. It’s a world away from the dark, medieval splendour of Barcelona. Foxgloves and red poppies and bright marigolds fill the carefully planned beds around the pond, a riot of Technicolour hues that somehow work beautifully in concert.

In the sunlight, Javi’s curls look gilded; he glows, in spite of the anxiety furrowing his brow. A stone bench sits beneath a gazebo, and he leads you over there. The wooden structure is heavy with jasmine; the smell perfumes the air, blending with the salt of the nearby sea.

“Is something wrong, Javi? Is it Marta?” You ask, worry colouring your voice. Javi’s mother, Marta, was a complicated woman. She had loathed Lucas, her nephew by marriage, but had been unable to get out of bed for days when news had reached her that he had been taken into Montjuïc Castle as a prisoner. Even across the ocean, you had come to know that nobody came out of Montjuïc alive.

Javi shakes his head, his hand cupping your elbow as he guides you to sit down on the bench beside him. Even now, it’s unlike him to look so morose.

“I’ve been talking to my father.” This much you already knew. One of the stableboys had come to fetch Javi in the middle of breakfast: his father had requested his son ride out with him. Whatever they discussed, it’s knocked your husband’s relentless optimism, and that worries you more than anything.

You hold Javi’s hands and wait patiently for him to tell you what’s bothering him, but he seems unable to find the words. Your mind careers from calamity to disaster in his silence. Someone somewhere has issued a warrant for Javi’s arrest. The army is on the move and will reach the cliffs by nightfall. His father, Jordi, has had another heart attack.

“My father- that is, my father and I-” Javier starts. You squeeze his fingers, your heart beating a rapid tattoo in your rising panic.

“Please, Javi, just tell me,” you plead. He looks out over the cliffs and his shoulders slump resignedly.

“My father thinks you should leave.” A punch to the gut could not have winded you more. You sit there, blinking at him like an idiot, unable to understand what he just said.

“My father thinks you need to leave, and I do too.” He turns away from the ocean, cupping your face in his hand and forcing you to look into your eyes. “You need to leave Mallorca, leave Spain. Tonight if possible.”

“You want to send me away?” You manage, sounding rather more pathetic than you’d hoped. Javi shakes his head, his lovely brown eyes full of sorrow.

“I want you to be safe. And it’s not safe here, not for you.”

“It’s no more dangerous for me than-”

“It is more dangerous for you. The worst thing they do to men is shoot them.” The unspoken implication hangs unpleasantly in the air. Javi sighs and glances back towards the house. “My father thinks he can persuade my mother to leave.” You want to scream. You want to ask who made Jordi such an authority, who made him king of his own tiny dominion and gave him the power to dismiss you.

In your gut, you know Javier’s father is right. He’s been weathering the storms of Spanish politics since before you were born, a wily fox of a man who had declared months ago that the political powderkeg was about to explode.

“I won’t leave you,” you insist, your voice firmer now. Jordi might be right; an army will come here someday. But you’d rather face them than abandon your family. “Until death do us part, Javi.”

“Please, sweetheart. It would only be for a little while. The war can’t last forever.” He manages a smile; a soft, crooked grin that wants to make you give in. You’d do so much to make him smile again.

“Your father will never get Marta to leave. She won’t leave him, and you won’t leave them.” The half-smile falls from Javi’s face.

“They’re old, sweetheart. I need to take care of them. But you – you’re strong. I know you can do this. You’ll go somewhere safe, and as soon as we’ve weathered this storm, you’ll come back.” Both of his hands are cupping your face now. Somewhere overhead, seagulls are screaming. His optimism makes you want to scream too.

“No, Javi, no, I can’t-” you start again, clutching his wrists in your hands.

“You can, you must,” he talks over you. In frustration you pull away, marching over the grass towards the house. One of Marta’s cats yowls at you as you pass it, pleading for attention, but you’re too upset to pay it any mind. Javi is hot on your heels, by turns pleading and stern. The door to your bedroom bangs against the wall as you fling it open.

You want space, but Javi won’t give it to you. He’s in your face, his hands roaming over you, clutching at your shoulders, your arms, your wrists. His rosy view of the world had been charming when you’d first met – now it makes you angry beyond words.

“I’m not leaving you,” you insist sharply, bringing your hands up to push your husband away from you. His hands circle your wrists instead, refusing to let you escape. “I’m not leaving you!” You repeat it in English, in your broken Catalan, in French. You tell him over and over in as many languages as you know, all the while struggling to break free of his hold.

The kiss takes you by surprise. He keeps one hand at your wrists; the other cups the back of your head. There’s no elegance to the kiss. He presses his mouth to yours, full lips meeting your own, your breath mingling with his. You’d almost think he’d done it deliberately to throw you off balance, if not for the surprised little intake of breath he makes.

“You are leaving tonight,” he says, once he’s broken the kiss. His fingertips grip the nape of your neck, your foreheads press together. You try to shake your head against his, but his hand at your neck grips tighter. “If I have to throw you into the boat myself, you’re leaving tonight.”

“I’ll hate you forever if you do.” It’s a childish assertion. His soft brown eyes fill with quiet devastation, and you immediately want to take it back.

“I’d rather have you hate me and survive than love me and die.” The two of you grapple again; him trying to keep his hold on you as you try to escape his grip. You have no real notion of why you want to break free – you could hardly hide in a cabinet until he gave up and allowed you to stay.

When the two of you tumble back onto the bed, it is an accident. You had tried to kick out with your legs, but had only succeeded in knocking you both off balance. His arms wrap around you as you lie on top of him, doing your best to squirm free and failing miserably.

You and Javi rarely argue. Any petty squabbles you do have are usually easily and quickly resolved. And when you do fight, you’ve gotten used to burning out that tension with sex.

So it feels like the most natural thing in the world to start pulling his shirtfront open. He takes your cue, his hands falling from your wrists and setting to work on the buttons of your dress. There’s a frantic energy to you both; for all you had been fighting him before, you can’t pull him close enough now. Your hands itch with the need to touch him, to memorise every inch and curve of him before he sends you away.

You sink your fingers into his curls and drag him down closer. It’s not making love, not the soft, slow sex that you and Javi usually have. This is something harsher, more demanding. The bedframe rattles with the force of your movements, and you know you should be embarrassed. The servants or Javi’s parents could hear, your actions unmistakable when the noise of the bed combines with the moans escaping from you both.

When you’ve both come, and are lying satiated in each other’s arms, the fire has gone out of your conversation. Javi rests his head on your breasts, humming contentedly as you play with his curls. You admire the Monet painting that faces the bed, the hazy floral landscape that you wish for all the world you and your husband could escape into. The canvas lilies almost seem to sway in the breeze with the haze of heat rising through the room.

“What if you forget me?” You say softly. As much as you know Javi loves you, you can’t deny that the thought scares you. That you will leave, but after long years of war, Javi will have moved on. He’ll find some pretty Mallorquin girl that never went into exile and never come to rescue you from your banishment.

“I could never forget you,” Javi says, tilting his head back to look at you. Those beautiful eyes of his are so full of sorrow that you want to cry yourself.

“You say that. What if this war lasts as long as the Great War? Longer?”

“It doesn’t matter. ‘If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever’,” he says in English.

“Byron?” You ask, and he shakes his head. Of course he would quote poetry at a time like this.

“Tennyson. It’s true. I could fill the whole island with flowers, all the thinking of you I shall do while we’re parted.” Javi’s hands rest on your thighs, his thumbs stroking lazy circles onto your skin.

“Wouldn’t that be something to behold. A whole island, full of flowers. You could live four lifetimes and never run out of scenery to paint.”

“I would write to you every day, you know,” Javier manages eventually. You know he would. Javi has always had an excellent turn of phrase – there were half-drafted screenplay ideas all over your apartment in Barcelona.

“And one letter in twenty might reach me,” you retort. The postal service hasn’t exactly been running efficiently of late, never mind the inevitable censorship everything seems to be going through.

“I would keep you here with me if there was any way I could be sure you’d be safe.” He says gently, and you sigh. “And I would like you to go willingly. But you’re going either way, I’m afraid.” Even issuing orders, there’s undeniable tenderness to it.

“Between the both of us, we might fill all of Europe with flowers.” You try to imagine it; two paths of flowers creeping across the continent, growing every time you and Javi think of one another.

“The whole world, even.” Javier clutches a little tighter at your thighs, and you can hear tears thickening his voice. You hold each other tighter, and you know now that neither of you will loosen your grip until the very last moment.

****

Later, there will be a forget-me-not pressed into your hand as you and Javi say your final goodbyes at the dock. Your clothes are weighted down by the money and jewellery sewn into the hems, but it’s the flower you treasure the most. You refuse to cry as you sail away; you stare insistently at the dock, long after Javier has faded from your sight. You know he’ll be doing the same, standing on the pier and keeping a watchful eye on the horizon until the sky starts to lighten with the dawn.

Later, in spite of your denials, there will be letters. Javi writes to you often, mostly of trivial, household matters that won’t be censored. In every one he tells you how the gardens are growing. In every one, there is a flower drawn into the margin. You hoard them like a dragon hoards gold; when your homesickness makes you feel physically ill, you surround yourself with his letters and tracing the lines of his pen.

Later, there will be a screenplay. It’s smuggled off the island and brought directly to you by a man who only speaks brusque Catalan, and you nearly weep just to hear the language spoken again. The screenplay bears a pseudonym – Javier Peña – but every line is clearly your Javi’s work. It tells of a great love story flourishing in the face of a brutal war, of love conquering all. You cry over the last twenty pages, a handkerchief clasped to your face so you don’t smudge the ink.

Later, the war will end. Spain will survive, though she will not be saved. You will never walk through a garden of flowers without thinking of Javi.

****

“But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.” – Ian McEwan, Atonement

TAGLIST:

@avengersfan25 @misscharlielulu @apenny4thots @its-nebuleuse @totallynotastanacc

#studioghibelliswritingchallenge #javi g x reader #javi gutierrez x reader #javi g #javi gutierrez #the unbearable weight of massive talent

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago

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Eric Hananoki at MMFA:

The California Republican Party has been backing the state Assembly campaign of Denise Aguilar Mendez, a commentator who has a history of pushing far-right conspiracy theories. Aguilar shared a bizarre and antisemitic conspiracy theory essentially claiming that the power grid was turned off in parts of California in 2019 not to prevent fires but to stop the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family, from trafficking children. After referencing the Rothschilds, Aguilar claimed that “there's certain families in the United States all over the world who are in charge of us. It's the central banking system. They're in charge of our money.” “That's the reasons why we go to war and all that stuff,” she later added. Aguilar is running for California State Assembly in District 13. The California Republican Party is supporting her campaign and California Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher has been backing her. Aguilar also wrote that she attended an event this summer for California Republican U.S. Senate nominee Steve Garvey, with whom she took a picture for social media.

Aguilar helped found two organizations: the anti-vaccine Freedom Angels and the “Mom Militia.” She is an election conspiracy theorist: USA Today’s Will Carless reported on her activities on January 6 in a March article headlined, “Calif. statehouse candidate says she didn't join Capitol riot. Video shows otherwise.” She is a right-wing commentator who has appeared on outlets like One America News. She also frequently posted online commentaries prior to her run for office. In a 2019 video, Aguilar shared a conspiracy theory that was apparently so odd that she herself said, “My tinfoil hat is going to show today.”

At the time, California was facing severe wildfires, which prompted PG&E to turn off some of the power grid. Aguilar had a different theory, stating that the shut off was “not to prevent fires” but was actually because “white hats” — a term often used by conspiracy theorists to describe people working within major institutions who they believe are fighting perceived corruption — “had to turn off the power grid in California in order to find the underground tunnels” housing missing trafficked children. (“Underground tunnels” have been part of several prominent conspiracy theories over the years.) Aguilar then expanded that the people the white hats were fighting against were “the Rothschilds,” who she claimed run PG&E. She said: “So Rothschild, there's a family, there's certain families in the United States all over the world who are in charge of us. It's the central banking system. They're in charge of our money. The Federal Reserve is not a government entity. It's actually a private company owned by these families that control our money. So that's another rabbit hole to go into. That's the reasons why we go to war and all that stuff.”

California Assembly candidate Denise Aguilar Mendez, backed by California Republicans, has a long history of pushing inane far-right conspiracies such as Pizzagate, adrenochrome, and Rothschilds.

#Conspiracy Theories #Pizzagate #Adrenochrome #QAnon #California #Antisemitism #Denise Aguilar Mendez #2024 Elections #Freedom Angels #Anti Vaxxers #Mamalitia #Rothschilds

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gingersnapwolves · 2 months ago

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hey so ... it's been a while since I've done this lol ... but I'm looking for a few beta readers for my original novel ... sadly unpaid but at least you get a book for free if that's your jam!

to put it in AO3 speak:

The Left Behind City by Kouri Arashi

Rated M

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Roughly 250K words

M/M relationship, M/F relationship

Tags: post apocalypse, dystopian setting, late-stage capitalism and climate change killed the world, found family, angst, romance, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, multiple attempts to eat the rich (not literally), past child abuse, some very fucked up people, but they're doing their best

rather than a summary, I've put the prologue under a cut:

Tay thought that the worst thing about the end of the world was how damn long it was taking.

As a kid, he had been obsessed with dinosaurs, like many little boys were. He had read all the different theories about their extinction and about the generally agreed-upon logic to them having been wiped out by an asteroid. As an adult, he sometimes thought back to that asteroid, and thought that the dinosaurs had had it easy. Most of them had died upon impact, and those that hadn’t had only endured weeks or months of suffering before the end.

Tay was now entering the tenth year of the apocalypse, and an asteroid definitely would have been easier. Not better, perhaps, but easier.

There wasn’t even a single date that people would agree upon as the apocalypse. It had been a long, slow slide with a steep, sudden dive. He remembered that one of his friends had been joking, “The world’s ending and my boss still wants to know if I’ll be in on time.” It truly had been like that for a while. Despite the raging storms and heat waves and wildfires, most people tried to go on about business as usual.

If asked to pick a date that the world had ended, most people would choose the date of the first terrible electrical storm. That was the one that had crashed financial systems all over the world. A quarter of the world’s wealth had disappeared in twenty-four hours, vanishing between circuits and synapses as if it had never existed in the first place. It had been followed by riots that had lasted weeks. Governments had been overthrown and militaries had taken control.

Tay always thought of a different date. He thought of the day the rich elite of the world had abandoned the rest of them to their fate.

Most people didn’t even know that had happened. He only knew because of Ash. Years after finding out about it, he had talked to a man who had worked on those bunkers and biodomes, up in the far north of Canada, almost in the Arctic Circle. He had traded five years of his labor for slave wages and the knowledge that his daughter would receive one of the coveted slots. But in the end, the people who owned the bunkers had reneged on that deal. There hadn’t been enough time to make them as big as necessary, to stockpile enough supplies, for as many people as they wanted. The doors had been closed and he and his daughter had been left outside.

The spaces were so limited that they had torn families apart. Parents had pushed their children into the arms of strangers. The rich and elite had left their own brothers and sisters, their own aunts and uncles and parents, behind to die.

Tay didn’t know why Ash’s parents had left him behind. Although Ash had told him that they had gone to the compounds, the only reason Tay knew those compounds existed, he had never said anything about why he hadn’t gone. Tay hadn’t asked. For starters, it wasn’t his business, and secondly, Ash had been all but feral when Tay had met him, nearly a year later. But there was another reason why he didn’t ask, and that was because he didn’t want to validate it. He didn’t want Ash thinking that there was any reason on earth to leave him behind that would have been good enough.

Tay wouldn’t have considered himself a doomsday prepper. If he had been, he thought, he would’ve been a lot better prepared than he had been when the system had started to fail. Real doomsday preppers had been doing this for years or even decades. Whereas he only had about a year’s headstart on most of the people he knew. The first of the shortages had worried him. At that point, the system recovered, and for the most part, stores were fully stocked again.

Most people assumed it had been a one-time thing. Tay couldn’t say why he hadn’t. Why there had been a certainty in his gut that it would happen again and again and again, and he didn’t want to be one of the people feeding the problem by panic-buying. So he started laying in stores. He went to bulk grocery stores and bought flats of canned food, boxes of first aid supplies, packs of water filters. Rather than a generator that would need gasoline, he bought an old-fashioned wood stove.

He was one of the lucky ones, he knew. He had been relatively healthy all of his life. When things got bad, he didn’t have to worry about where he would get his insulin or his asthma medication. He knew that a lot of those people died in the first year, some from their illnesses, others committing suicide before they could suffer a slow and debilitating death. He’d had a good friend die that way, someone he had known since middle school with Addison’s disease.

When the supply chains collapsed completely and the panic hit, Tay went into his basement and assessed what he had. He internally debated whether it would be better to live on thin rations or not. Three years with a full stomach or five years always hungry? Was it worth living like that? Or was that life, at least, better than the alternative?

He decided to try to make it stretch as much as possible. And then, a year later, he had met Ash, and his careful plans and charts had been thrown into disarray.

Ash was twelve, and had been on his own for a year. Tay met him when he was out on a trip to the scrapyard to work up some extra defenses around the garage where he had lived and worked and now just lived. Ash came tearing out of the abandoned train station, saw Tay on his motorcycle, and jumped on behind him. “Drive, drive, drive!”

Tay drove, because it didn’t seem like the time to ask questions. He was glad he had kept his motorcycle, even though he struggled to keep it fueled. It was the best way to get around in the ruins of the city. When they got back to the garage, he saw the bruises on Ash’s face and said, “Come in, I’ll get you some water.”

Ash hesitated, and Tay supposed there were good reasons for that. Although at the time he hadn’t known how long Ash had been on his own, there were a lot of bad people who exploited the current circumstances. Tay was used to people finding him intimidating; he stood six foot four and was built like a linebacker. White people were especially nervous around him, but Ash was so dirty that Tay wasn’t actually sure of his race. He was worried about those bruises, and about a red mark underneath the dirt that looked like an open wound.

“Here,” he said, and handed Ash a pocket knife. “If I do anything shady, now you can defend yourself.”

After a moment, Ash nodded, and followed him into the garage. The windows were boarded up and the doors of the garage bays themselves had mountains of scrap in front of them to deter people who might want to get in. Tay had left only one door, the side door, to go in and out of. He closed it behind him and said, “I’m Tayquan. You can call me Tay. What’s your name?”

“None of your business,” the boy said.

“Well, that’s a little long for day-to-day conversation,” Tay said, and was rewarded by the tiniest twitch of Ash’s lips. He looked at the soot streaked all over the boy’s face and said, “How about I call you Ash?”

“I guess.” Ash accepted some water and a washcloth to clean himself up with. Tay was relieved to see that the red mark wasn’t a wound; it was a birthmark, a port-wine stain that started just underneath his left eye and covered most of his cheek. He tried to give Ash something to eat and offered to let him stay the night, but Ash had refused and left with barely a word and with Tay’s knife still in his pocket.

Two weeks later, he had showed up on Tay’s doorstep again. He had been fighting, he said, had fallen and scraped his knees. They were dirty and he was concerned. He thought Tay might have something to help him clean them up.

Tay gave him some disinfectant, some antibiotic ointment, and some bandages. He tried again to get Ash to stay and eat, and again Ash refused and left. Tay was reminded forcefully of the stray cats who had lived behind his house when he was a child. He had left water out for them, and sometimes fed them, and although most remained wary their entire lives, there was one that he had coaxed inside. The cat had been his friend for years, and he still missed her sometimes.

A few days later, Ash showed up again, but not for help this time. He brought a bag full of scraps that he had gathered. “I saw you were building things,” he said, nodding towards Tay’s efforts to build a solar-powered generator. “I thought maybe you could use this stuff.”

Tay was again reminded of stray cats and how they sometimes left mice or birds on his doorstep. “Sure,” he said, smiling, as he went through the bag. Nuts and bolts, scrap metal, wires, pieces of old electronics. Most of it would probably be useless, but there were a few gems inside. “You hungry?”

Ash said he wasn’t and left. But a few hours later, he was back. There was a storm rolling in and he didn’t have time to get back to ‘his own place’, wherever that was. He asked if he could stay until the storm had passed. Tay agreed, because he could smell the electricity in the air and he knew it was going to be a bad one.

He was already cooking, although it was just rice and beans in an old pot on his wood stove. “Since you’re here, you should eat,” he said firmly, and shoved a plate into Ash’s hands. Ash was canny enough to keep Tay at arm’s length but not enough to understand how to eat without looking as hungry as he was. He shoveled the food into his mouth and licked the plate clean. He fell asleep in a corner, and Tay covered him with a blanket. The storm was still raging when Tay went to sleep, but when he woke in the morning, it had passed, and Ash was gone.

For almost six months, he came and went, sometimes with items to give to Tay, oftentimes with new injuries that needed tending. Tay always told him about whatever he was building and how he had used what Ash had brought him on his most recent visit. Sometimes he would accept food from Tay; sometimes he wouldn’t. If the weather was bad, he would stay for a few hours. He told Tay that he normally slept in a closet at the old train station.

“Why the train station?” Tay asked, and Ash wouldn’t tell him. It wasn’t until years later that Tay realized Ash had been waiting there, waiting desperately for his family to come back even though he knew that would never happen.

When winter hit, Tay said, “Listen, I know you can take care of yourself. But last winter was brutal and this one is probably going to be worse. You won’t be able to come see me and I’m going to worry about you. I won’t tell you what to do, but I’ll worry a lot less if you stay here with me.”

Ash seemed to weigh this in his mind for a minute before he said, “Well, I guess if it’ll make you happy.”

Tay had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. “It will.”

Ash stayed with him for the winter. Four months where the days were oppressively dark. Four months where the temperature would be twenty below for five days straight and then seventy for two days after that. Four months of blizzards sweeping through, snow piling up around the garage only to melt and flood the basement a week later.

That was another way Tay knew he had been lucky. There was no good place to live during the apocalypse. But there were places that were worse than others. He wasn’t on the coast, worrying about massive hurricanes and rogue waves. He wasn’t in the west, worrying about enormous wildfires or mudslides that swallowed entire neighborhoods. He was just far north enough not to be in tornado alley, although that didn’t mean there were no tornadoes - only fewer of them. In the summer, they had terrible electrical storms, scorching heat waves and flash flooding, but that was no worse than anywhere else in the country, and a fair amount better. Their winters were worse, especially the blizzards that swept off the lakes, but they were survivable.

He had worried that four months closed up would drive Ash stir-crazy, but he handled it better than Tay did. He moved a lot, running up and down the stairs, climbing the garage equipment, keeping himself active. He learned mechanics from Tay and helped him keep the place tidy. Tay taught him the basics of cooking and Ash read every single book that Tay owned.

When the weather turned to spring - two weeks of mud before the temperatures began to spike - Ash began to wander again. Tay didn’t protest. But things had changed after four months with Ash living at the garage. Ash came back for dinner a few nights each week, and slept there more nights than he didn’t.

It completely destroyed Tay’s careful rationing. But he didn’t have any regrets. Nobody should be alone at the end of the world.

That had been almost ten years ago. He and Ash had saved each others’ lives countless times, had made new friends, had created systems to get what they needed. Tay rarely wished for an asteroid anymore. The world was ending and every day was a struggle, but to have missed out on knowing this boy he would have called a son would have been a tragedy. They would survive for as long as they could.

~ ~ ~ ~

please let me know if you're interested in reading and vetting for plot holes, typoes, logistical errors, et cetera! you can leave a comment here or send me an ask. I have no idea how many people will be interested, especially with something this long, but if I get a lot of takers I probably won't send it to everyone who asks, just be warned about that. thanks all in advance!

#writing

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