#Word Count: 5222

[magicalbats]

Oh, Captain (Luffy x reader)

Rating: R-18+

Word Count: 5222

Warnings: Afab!reader, gendered language, noncon, physical coercion, outdoor sex, inappropriate use of 5th Gear

A/N: My second ever commission and the lovely donor was kind enough to give me permission to post it for everyone else to read. Thank you for a great experience, @avidbroswer!! 🩷🩷🩷

⭐

Let’s help Luffy, they’d said.  

We’re a crew, they’d said. Family. 

You don’t feel very much like family when you’re running for your life from the very captain you’d sworn loyalty to. Or at least, you’re pretty sure that the strange figure with white nimbus cloud hair is your captain. You’d watched it happen from a (questionably) safe distance, when he suddenly transformed in a surge of sparking static electricity that made your skin crawl like it was trying to escape from your bones but it’s still hard to believe that it was really him. Even having seen the reality of it with your own two eyes doesn’t make it any easier to accept. 

Luffy was supposed to be a dark haired, dark eyed youth in the prime of his life. Not this uncanny version of him that giddily laughs with boisterous amusement while he ping pongs about so violently within the craggy mess of scorched earth in the wake of his battle with Kaido that you can feel the massive chunks of rock slamming into the ground as much as you can hear it. One after another, from the left and then the right, they just keep falling in an almost continuous rain of rubble and ruin. The resulting shockwaves very nearly take you off your feet more than once but you force yourself to keep running even when your sore legs scream in protest, aching from the exertion. It was the only choice you really had at this point. 

And it’s not lost on you that this is technically your own fault for getting so close to the fight but you’d wanted to help. All that talk of family and crew, and unwavering allegiance to the Straw Hats had clearly infected your brain because you’d rushed straight into the danger zone despite knowing good and well that you were the only one close enough to make it in time. Now you were the one who needed help and it wasn’t going to arrive soon enough to do you any good. 

What an idyllic fool you’d been. 

“Ah!” You suddenly get tripped up in all the rocky debris laying across the ground and fall to your knees with a seething hiss. Your palms come back scraped where they’d shot out to catch you but you’ve managed to avoid taking the brunt of it to the face. Thank the stars for life’s smallest miracles. 

Panting heavily, you just sit there amongst the broken wreckage and detritus for a harrowingly long beat, trying to catch your breath. You can still hear the chaotic destruction of Luffy — or the man who had once been Luffy — bouncing around like a rubber ball behind you, completely unimpeded by the laws of gravity or common sense. It sounded like he was having a blast. 

Maybe that was good. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed you yet, so lost within the mess of demolished land and too tiny a speck to even draw his attention. You had a chance to escape then, if that was the case. 

Any such hopes quickly fizzle out when his uproarious hooting and hollering abruptly rushes towards you, getting louder and louder until your eardrums start to vibrate. You suck in a sharp, nauseated gasp and slap your hands over your ears as you twist around to look behind you. Just in time to watch Luffy sail overhead like a shooting white comet. The kickback from his high velocity speed hits you seconds later, tearing a shriek from your mouth when the wind hits you full force and as solid as any wall. 

Too busy ducking down with your head between your knees to protect yourself from the sting of flying rocks, you don’t get to see how he manages to pivot his momentum mid air and land a couple hundred yards away. You hear it though. You feel the shock of impact too, when it races through the ground to make the rubble underneath you tremble. It goes quiet then, and unnaturally still. Suddenly all you can hear are your own labored gasps. 

You hesitate to do it but, realizing you have no other option, you slowly lift your face to peer out over all the fallen debris. Standing at a distance, Luffy just looks at you with a fiercely manic edge in his now golden-yellow eyes that makes your veins ice up. You’re more certain than ever that this cannot be your captain. He should have been giving you the usual bright faced, happy go lucky grin he always did when he inexplicably came out on top against all the odds that were stacked against him. Not this — viscous leer of victory. 

But if this wasn’t Luffy then who in the seven seas was it? 

“Have you come to celebrate with me?” 

His voice isn’t quite the same either. More raspy, like the weight of immense power flowing through him was putting strain even on his vocal cords. You don’t think you like that any more than you like the way he’s eyeing you up as if you were a stuffed pig on a roasting spit. Even for his bottomless pit of an appetite, you’d never seen him look at another person quite like that. 

Cautiously slow, you straighten up out of your defensive huddle. Work to get your feet under you without taking your attention off him for even a moment and then stand so you can prepare to … what, run again? A lot of good that had clearly done you. 

“I don’t think it’s time to celebrate just yet.” You tell him softly. “We need to find the other Straw Hats. Make sure they’re all okay. You still remember them … don’t you, Luffy?” 

Your emotional plea only succeeds in giving him a momentary pause. “But I have so much energy left. I just want to dance and shout, and jump into the air! You’ll join me, won’t you?” 

He takes a step towards you, a rather aggressive one at that, and you quickly back up. Something told you if you didn’t agree to go along with this he was going to try and force you into joining in on whatever constituted his idea of merrymaking. Unfortunately you weren’t sure if you’d survive that, given the state of all the crumbled boulders littering the ground on this now desolate stretch of land. 

“No, Luffy. Not right now. We have to - -“ 

With an abrupt jerk, he lurches forward as if to launch himself at you. His rubbery legs momentarily struggle for traction on the ground, as if they couldn’t quite decide what consistency they wanted to be, but you don’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out. Feeling like you’ve forgotten how to breathe, you spin around and make a mad dash for it, barreling straight into a dead sprint. 

It’s a resounding effort in futility. 

You don’t even make it three whole steps before he slams into your back hard enough to take you right off your feet. 

There’s a split second moment of shock at how fast he’d managed to close the distance, and then the ground is rushing up at your face again. 

That dizzying blur of vertigo inducing free fall coupled with the way your vision tilts on its axis very nearly has you spewing your guts right then and there. But if Luffy picks up on the dire, sickened tinge coloring your wounded grunt he certainly doesn’t act it. He just flings his arms around your middle, alarming in their fleshy elasticity and yet still familiar to you, then hauls you up against his front before you can slam into the rocks. 

Everything happens much too fast for you to keep up with any of it. Your brain is reeling, still trying to recover from the impact of his body colliding with yours and the subsequent head rush that followed. So stunned you can’t even find the wherewithal to protest his treatment of you let alone try to fight your way free. Unable to do anything else, you simply allow your limbs to bonelessly flail when he takes a handful of eager steps forward with you in his arms. 

In the next moment Luffy spins you out away from him, snagging your wrist to stop your momentum and make you jerk to another abrupt standstill. The yank on your shoulder causes it to pop, splintering pain racing up your arm as you cry out. He doesn’t care though. He either doesn’t care or he doesn’t notice, because he just pulls you right back into him again, hard enough to make you collapse with a teeth rattling jolt against his chest. 

“Come on!” He laughs, loud and frenzied, his hold on you much too tight where it’s shackled around your wrist. “Dance with me! Aren’t you having fun?” 

Teeth gnashing to fight back the nausea, you bring your uncaptured hand up and brace it against his shuddering frame. You’re more than just a little surprised to find his heartbeat hammering out a sharp, almost violent staccato against his ribcage, so powerful you can feel it thrumming through his skin. It reminds you of an endless procession of war drums. Too many to count and impossibly loud, their ferocity equally intimidating and awe inspiring. 

What in the world had happened to him? 

You don’t have the privilege of lingering on that question for very long. Couldn’t afford to, as you try to get your tired legs situated under you again so you can stand on your own. “You’re hurting me, Luffy. We don’t have time for this right now. Just let me go. Please.” 

But he doesn’t even seem to register what you’re saying as a plea at all. 

A snickering, raspy laugh rattles up out of him, and you vehemently push at his narrow chest with your uncaptured hand. Shove him as hard as you can. He still doesn't budge though, simply reaching up to snag that wrist too so he can forcefully spin you around in his arms. You feel sick with the rush of motion coupled with the fatigue and throbbing pain in your body but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. He’s too strong, too wild, too lost in whatever manic high he’s slipped into after his fight with Kaido. 

Tightening his grip to lock you against his front, Luffy moulds himself to the line of your back with such an unnatural, rubbery motion that you find yourself fighting not to wretch even as his mouth finds your neck. He nuzzles at you for a brief moment, just brushing his lips over your jackhammering pulse before angling his nose towards the spot just behind your ear. The breath he draws is slow and savory, and he seems to hold it in his lungs for an unnecessarily long time. 

When he at last sighs out, displacing some of the loose flyaways in your hair, an unmistakable rumble low in his chest accompanies it. “Mmm, you smell good. Like victory.” 

What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Luffy, just listen to me … don’t do this. I - I don’t really understand what's happened to you but we can figure it out together. We’ll fix it. I promise. But you need to let me go or - -“

“Let you go? But we’re having so much fun. I want to have even more fun with you but you’re not a fighter, not like he was. And you don’t want to dance with me either.”

He sounds dangerously close to pouting when he says that last bit and you give a halfhearted twist in his hold, testing for any slack. It’s no good though. For as little effort as he seemed to be putting into it, his arms were like iron shackles where they’re criss crossed over your body. Dammit. 

“Why?” You seethe in frustration and fast mounting panic. “Why won’t you just go back to normal, Luffy? This isn’t like you!” 

His frame shakes behind you with the giggles that rise within him, making his whole body vibrate like a mercilessly shaken soda bottle. It quickly grows, rapidly multiplying and expanding until he at last throws his head back with a cackling peel of laughter aimed up at the sky. It’s much too close to your ear and deafeningly loud, reigniting your desperation to get away from him, but your wild thrashing just causes him to laugh even harder. Like he found it hilarious that you were scared and trapped against him. 

“I can’t!” He howls, belly laughing so ferociously it makes you jerk in his hold. “I can’t go back until I’ve used up all of this energy! It feels like I’m going crazy but it feels good too! Amazing even! I’ve never experienced anything like it before! I want to keep going but you can’t fight and you won’t dance with me … but there’s something else we can do together, isn’t there?” 

“What are you ta - -“

He releases you so suddenly you don’t even realize you’re crumpling to the ground until your butt has already hit the rocks, surprising a yelp out of you. Fresh pain immediately races up from your backside in a blinding starburst and you outright hiss as you gingerly start to angle yourself onto your hip in hopes of taking some of the pressure off of where it hurts the most. You don’t quite make it that far though. 

Luffy’s hands are suddenly on your shoulders, shoving you forward to sprawl out rather inelegantly on your front. He follows you down, pinning you to the destroyed ground with his body weight, and you immediately start to panic in earnest. Your captain didn’t look like much more than a lanky beanpole at first glance but he was so densely packed with muscle that he felt like a sack of bricks on top of you. It makes it hard to breathe and the quickened, gasping lungfuls of air you suck in don’t exactly help. Your chest constricts painfully tight as you struggle against him, forgetting all logic and reason in your blind desperation to get away from him. 

He doesn’t even seem to notice though, still just as unbudging sprawled out over top of you as he’d been when the two of you were standing. No amount of kicking your legs or bucking up underneath him even gives him pause, and his greedy hands fumble down to your waist where they squeeze tight enough to rip a hurt shriek from your throat. This doesn’t cut through the manic haze spurring him on either. He doesn’t even waver. 

“What are you — stop that! Have you lost your mind!” 

“I’m sorry.” He snickers, not sounding very sorry at all as he shoves his face into the crook of your neck again. Another deep, savory inhale. Another rumbling exhale right against your pulse. The faintest growl that trails afterward is new though and you go painfully still under him, hardly even daring the blink despite all the grimy dust kicked up in your desperate fight for freedom. 

You’d never, ever heard such a sound come out of him before. It scares you perhaps most of all, and you’d seen many a frightening and unsettling thing since stepping foot into Onigashima. Somehow this just really took the cake though. 

“I’m sorry,” He says it again. Contradicting this, his callous worn fingers dip into the hem of your pants and start to tug at them, jostling you with each insistent pull. “I’m sorry, heheee. I just can’t help myself. If I can’t have you I don’t know what I’ll do. You’ll help me calm down, won’t you?” 

Your mind struggles to process that. He was asking you to help him? Not with words or medicine, or even the endless supply of food he would have otherwise asked for had he been in his right mind. He wanted your body. 

So that’s what it was then. What it all boiled down to. 

If he couldn’t fight you and you refused to dance with him then that left only one other option. He was going to fuck it out of his system. Anything to get rid of all the excess energy running through his body, making him vibrate like a lit fuse on top of you. It made a certain amount of sense, you supposed, but that didn’t mean you had to like it. 

Curling your hands into tight fists against the rocks, numb to the abrasive sting, you draw a rattling breath to center yourself. It doesn’t do much in the way of good. “Please don’t do this.” 

It’s like he doesn’t even hear you, a grunt of victory puffing out of him when he finally manages to get your pants tugged down over the curve of your ass. 

“Please.” You gasp, the sound wet and faltering. 

Completely ignoring you now, Luffy reaches further down to fumble with something lower while his opposite hand possessively curls around your hip to keep you in place. You hiccup rather sadly at the distant sound of rustling clothes, almost completely lost under the violent pounding of blood in your ears, but there’s no missing the fleshy nudge against the back of your thigh that soon follows. It leaves a sticky smear where it touches you, inspiring an eruption of horrified goosebumps in its wake. 

You don’t have to look to know what’s touching you. The innate knowledge of what’s happening and who is responsible for this paralyzing fear that grips your aching heart in a chokehold is horrible and suffocating all at once. Stinging tears spring up and well in the backs of your eyes but you clench your teeth to try and stifle the terrified wail threatening to claw its way up your throat, knowing it would only sound hysterical. 

On one hand you almost couldn’t believe this was really happening, even though the reality of the situation was staring you right in the face. It just seemed almost too implausibly awful to be real. 

But on the other, Luffy wasn’t exactly known for his self control or restraint. You knew this. Had even found it charming at one point or another, so you brace yourself for the worst. It just might be the only thing that ends up saving you. 

“Captain - -“

“I’m sorry.” 

He’s suddenly between your legs, pressing up into you from behind. You go ramrod stiff against him, your whole body clenching in genuine distress, but it does very little to stop him. Like he’s done it a million times before, or perhaps thanks to the instinctive muscle memory bestowed upon every man with a working cock, he pushes right in on your entrance until cunt slips start to part under the pressure. A thin, tremulous groan escapes him at the first kiss of your hot guts against the tip and then he just keeps pushing. Even when your muscles tense up and try to keep him out. Even when he meets a great deal of resistance as your body tries its best to reject him. If anything he almost seems to take it as a challenge the same way he would another combatant or a roadblock standing between him and his goals. 

In this case his goal is clearly to sink himself in you right down to the hilt, and he just puts more effort into his cause the more you try to fight it. Leans his weight into you until it feels like your poor cunt is taking the full brunt of his mass. The resulting stretch of your inner sleeve is painful and drawn out, taking much longer than it otherwise would have had you been even slightly prepped for this. 

Your mouth hinges open but nothing comes out for a prolonged moment as the tears break loose to streak down your face. It feels like he’s tearing you in half! Either he was much bigger than you’d assumed he’d be or by virtue of how tightly your interior walls were squeezing him — or even some terrible combination of the two —  it was like you were being split down the middle. You couldn’t even breathe through the choking discomfort of it and a threadbare, sobbing little mewl dislodges from your throat when he at last manages to shove himself past that first barrier. 

Full penetration is much easier for him to achieve after that but it’s no less painful, and you cry out when he snaps his hips forward once, twice, and finally lodges his length the rest of the way in on the third. A pleased huff slips out of him as he settles on top of you, a fresh wave of giggles quickly following suit. It was like he’d gone mad. So wrapped up in the raving power that had turned his hair white that he can only laugh about it even while he’s buried balls deep in your body. 

That short lived pause is all the respite you get though and Luffy is soon moving, rutting into you with quick, sharp little jabs up into your guts. You shriek at the top of your lungs, clawing at the ground while you kick out behind you, but he ignores this the same as everything else. Lying prone and trapped under him, all you can do is take it. 

“Waah — why are you doing this, Luffy? It hurts! If … if the others find out about this - -“ 

“I know, hahaaa. I know. I’m sorry, but I can’t stop. You feel … this feels amazing! Almost as good as fighting Kaido did!” 

You seethe at that, trying your damndest not to get caught up on it right now but that proves to be more than a little difficult. He really didn’t see any difference between fucking and fighting? Somehow that seemed so typically him, and you think you would have probably joined him in laughing about it under better circumstances. 

But better circumstances wouldn’t have found you being roughly jostled back and forth on the ground by his eager, jack rabbit thrusts. The motion of his hips lacks any and all refinement with no technique to speak of, and yet that doesn’t stop you from seeing stars every time his cock blindly rams into your upper wall. It punches the air from your lungs and materializes out of your mouth in the form of heaving, strained bleats of distress that quickly climb to a higher and higher pitch with each second that goes by. Not for the first time today, you feel like you really might throw up. 

“Ooh, that’s …” He suddenly gasps, lets out a half strangled groan, and drives himself into you even harder. Faster. The force of his pelvis slapping against your upturned ass rapidly grows to a steady, almost constant blur of stinging swats — plap, plap, plap, plap — and you shriek at the rapidly swelling pressure on your gut. “Ooh, that’s good. That’s good! It feels so good! I - I can’t - -“ 

Without warning, your pussy abruptly floods with wet, sticky warmth. He hadn’t even given you a chance to beg for him to pull out. 

Your eyes widen to the approximate size of dinner plates but he just keeps pistoning his hips even as the rest of his shuddering frame gives a series of little jerks to thoroughly empty his balls into you. He shows no signs of slowing down or tiring any time soon though, his limitless energy evidently far outpacing his obvious lack of experience. 

It’s a hard thing to wrap your reeling head around just how quickly everything has happened and yet there’s no mistaking it for what it is. The sensation is completely foreign to you but you innately understood it for what it represented, what it could potentially mean for your future. You’re not half as relieved to have it done and over with as you are terrified of what it meant. 

Even more confounding, however, is that it doesn’t so much as make Luffy slow down let alone stop now that he’s painted your inner sleeve a thick, creamy white. Not the orgasm itself which, considering how much he fills you up, should have thoroughly drained him for the time being, nor the possible repercussions of allowing himself to shoot off inside of you like that. He just keeps going without a care in the world, like it wasn’t his problem and he still had more than enough stamina to keep up the harried pace he’d settled into for the foreseeable future. The only sign of it burning up any of his energy at all is the slightly labored quality his breathing takes on, but that’s it. 

Realizing that this ordeal is still far from over, you give your body a twist and try to angle your cunt away from the constant attack of his cock. “H - hold on a minute, what … aagghhh, what are you doing, Luffy? You - - you can’t just cum inside like that, you idiot!” 

“Can’t stop! Heheehe, I can’t, I can’t, not when you keep squeezing me like that!” 

All but wheezing at the intense pleasure of thrusting into the sticky mess he’s made of you, Luffy presses himself flush against your sweaty back and circles his arms around your middle. You brace to shove him off, or at least try to, but you don’t quite make it that far. 

Catching you completely off guard, he yanks you up against him and practically throws himself back onto the ground. The sudden lurch lodges your stomach in your throat, and you let out a frazzled scream as you land on top of him. That he cushions the impact with his rubbery body only comes as a slight relief when you were struggling just to get your bearings straight, disoriented and stunned in the aftermath of his impulsive decision when you unexpectedly find yourself blinking up at the sky. 

You start to pull yourself upright, wincing, only to quickly realize he’s still got one arm looped around your waist to keep you held in place on top of him. The other is — you gasp when you glance down to see him already fisting his cock in hand, guiding it back to your entrance where it had slipped out in that rush of movement. It’s still achingly stiff and unrelenting, like he hadn’t already spilled his seed in you only moments ago, and your heart painfully wrenches with the fresh wave of dread that comes over you. 

“W - wait, please don’t - -“

The head of him finds your cunt, pressing back up into you again, and you outright sob when he mercilessly snaps his hips to impale you on that stiff length once more. You sway unsteadily at the fresh stretch, trying to decide if it’s better or worse in this position, but gravity soon proves itself your enemy when the weight of you on top of him firmly sinks his cock even further into you than before. It feels like he’s tickling at your ribcage like this, but all you can do is give a wounded little mewl and try to steady yourself. Undaunted, he reaches up to tug your pants the rest of the way off. 

“Luffy,” Sniffling sadly, you fight him as much as you can in your physically exhausted state but it’s no use. Your bottoms come off to leave you bare and exposed from the waist down, sitting upon his cock like a whore on her rightful throne. 

The tears quickly start up again, streaking hot tracks down your flushed, sweaty face while he gets himself situated underneath you. His hips lift, nudging you just a pinch higher so he can brace his feet underneath him while his hands come around to anchor around your love handles. Then, he’s moving again. 

Completely unconcerned by your crying, Luffy flexes his legs to thrust up into you and the same fleshy slap as before quickly rises loud in the air again. Plap, plap, plap, plap. The wet squelch of your seeded cunt sucking him in deep on every upward plunge joins in, adding to the obscene cacophony of noises even as you toss your head back to sob at the sky. You can hear him grunting underneath you, clearly enjoying himself quite a bit, but you couldn’t say the same. Your body was already a sore, achy mess of bruises and scrapes, and this certainly wasn’t helping. You were just getting more and more tired by the minute. 

“Nnghhnnn, please, captain. Please don’t cum inside again, I … I’m begging you!” 

The only response he gives is a low, rumbling groan that seems to bleed into you and reverberate endlessly inside your belly, making you squeeze your thighs together as if to block him out. But of course it doesn’t work. Given the way he stutters over a raspy hiss of your name he actually seems to like the way it makes your walls tighten around him, unintentionally though it may have been. There was really nothing you could have done to dissuade or stop him once he’d set his mind to something, and it seemed he very adamantly had his sights set on using your cunt until his energy reserves finally wore out. 

Distantly, you wonder how long that will actually take. 

“You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine,” He chants underneath you, again and again, even when his hands tighten around your hips to guide you into bouncing right along with him. Having no other choice, you snifflingly spread your legs wide and brace your feet on the ground, moving with him despite the throbbing ache in your muscles. “Mine, mine, mine. My prize. My treasure. My woman!” 

He viciously slams his pelvis up at the end, further punctuating his claim on you, and the sharp stab of his cock rips a wild shriek from your mouth. “N - no, captain, please! I can’t — I don’t want it! Not like this! You’re not … aaghnn, you’re not Luffy! You’re not!” 

The only response he gives is a deranged little laugh that makes his cock jump where it’s wedged inside you. That push on your upper wall makes the tension running through you double and then triple, your heaving gasps coming a little quicker now even as his hands travel up your body. You can’t stop him like this when your own were propped behind you along his flexing stomach to help you maintain your balance in this precarious position. It’s not hard to figure out what his intentions are though, and you screw your eyes shut so you don’t have to watch him grab hold of your top. 

A deafening riiiip tears through the air when he shreds it, the poor cotton helpless before his far greater strength. He leaves it hanging from your shoulders in tattered pieces as your tits bounce free, the stiffened tips already aching and strained long before he greedily palms at them like a starved man clutching at a lifeline. The blinding friction of his calloused palms and fingers on your teats makes your cunt spasm around him and you wail, screaming for someone, anyone to save you from your captain. 

Unfortunately for you, help was still a long ways off and Luffy wasn’t even close to running out of steam.

⭐

Crossposted: here

[milk-luvr-dot-com]

“A New Assistant” - The Thick of It - Chapter 2

Summary: While DoSAC fucks around trying to keep the data wipe a secret, Malcolm and Ivy begin to become more comfortable with one another.

Word Count (this chapter): 5222

Rating: Mature (for adult situations, language)

Warnings: No Ao3 Warnings, Explicit Language, homophobic language, fatphobic language, sexist language, ablest language

Categories: F/M, Gen

Tags: Falling in love, crushes, comedy, slow burn, explicit language, original female characters, AU - canon divergence, mutual pining, additional tags to be added

Chapter 1, Chapter 3

Ao3 link and full work under the cut.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510592/chapters/59267578

Malcolm walked into the office, expecting to turn on the light. It caught him off guard when the light was already on, and Ivy was sitting across the room at her desk, quietly talking to people on the phone about menial garbage that Malcolm had put her on last night.

"Oh, shit." He said, dropping his briefcase beside his desk and settled into his office chair.

She looked up after finishing her call, "Morning, sir."

"Were you here all night?" Malcolm made a concerned face.

Ivy capped her pen. "No, got here early to sort out Anthony's mental breakdown about his stupid bloody department of education thing." She rubbed her eyes, which didn't smear what little makeup she had on. She looked tired. She could have been lying.

"Well, good morning anyway. Can I fetch you some tea?"

She thought it was a sweet gesture. He always tried to be kind to her, no matter how frustrated or pissed he was at anybody else. He was always patient. Even if he made a smarmy comment, it was all in jest. She had only been there a week, but she knew that Malcolm didn't treat anyone else like this.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one doing the tea fetching?" Ivy smiled meekly.

Malcolm didn't look at her, instead preoccupied with signing into his computer. "Right you are. Can you fetch us some tea?"

She sighed, getting up, "what kind?"

"Earl grey would be fine, thank you, Ivy."

"Mhm." She fetched it, then came back fairly quickly.

As she leaned down to set his cup on his desk, he began, "You ever see that movie with Rory Calhoun, where there's these siblings who sell meat but it's actually made out of human flesh? What's it called again?"

"Motel Hell?"

He snapped his fingers, pointing at her. "Motel Hell. Wow, you must really know your '80s horror films."

She chuckled, "I remember seeing that one at the cinema with my mates."

Malcolm raised an eyebrow, "in cinema?"

"Yeah."

He didn't continue, trying to calculate her age in her head.

"Sir, you're only about 4 years my senior." Ivy slumped into her chair.

Malcolm looked at her in disbelief. "No..." he turned his head to give her a side eye. "No, you can't be."

She pressed her lips together, and nodded. "Yeah. 46, as of July."

"I thought you were  approaching  your 40s. Christ, you look lovely."

"Oh, stop." She swiped her hand at him, grinning and blushing. "You're not that bad, either, Malcolm."

He sighed, "Anyway, uh, my point was that you and I are like the people from Motel Hell. Tag team of..."

"Shit?"

"Yeah, shit. So, I want to see you in action. How about you go up there and see what's.. shaking." Malcolm smiled, using his hands as he talked.

"Alright then. I'll take notes for you." She stood up, making her way up to the DoSAC workspace.

The sound of Ivy's heels echoed through the office space and send the same vibe as the Other Mother from Coraline. Once she rounded the corner, she didn't make a fairer presence.

"Morning, morning, morning everyone." The DoSAC employees looked relieved to see her instead of Malcolm. They really shouldn't have been. "Where's Nicola?" Ivy turned to Olly, who was punching in a phone number.

"Er, she's on a call." He said, which was a total lie, as she had just stood up and looked directly at her before ducking back down again, with a relieved look on her face. Again, she really shouldn't have been.

A blonde haired woman, who's name Ivy recalled to be Robyn, asked weakly, "Does he know...?"

She wheeled around, staring at her. They were the same height. "Hm? Sorry? Does he know what?"

"Er..." Robyn scrambled for something to say, clearly, "the best way to clear a paper jam?"

"I'm not sure, but in my expert opinion, you put a hamster in a tube sock and beat the printer over and over again with it until it works." She bluntly responded, then turned at Nicola's voice.

"Morning, Ivy. Uh, if you could sort out the sack race situation for me, that'd be terrific." She said to Terri, who agreed and asked what she could do. "Ideally, build a time machine so that we could go back and not invite photographers to the sports day."

Ivy rolled her eyes. Terri and Nicola continued for a few more moments, then Nicola turned her attention to Ivy, finally. "So, Ivy-"

"Oh, sorry, uh, Malcolm's calling, hang on just one moment." She made her way to the elevator nook.

"Malcolm, what can I do you for? ....Oh, yeah, it's going okay. Yeah they're being fucking weird, like those boys on that one show, Ghost Adventures. Walking around and shouting every five minutes, 'what was that?' .... no, not literally, sir. But maybe you should come up here, they look like they're about to admit something. They've got it in their little beady eyes. ....Yeah, okay. See you." Ivy slinked back to the main area.

She gave a warm smile on her way back. "Right, my apologies. What's going on, hm?"

"Uh-" Nicola began, but then was cut off when Ivy answered a voice call. "Hello, Rory, what can I do-... WHAT?" She shouted, and continuing, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? JESUS!"

Ivy ran off, towards the bridge point of the office. She continued to talk to Rory about something regarding what's on the press, something menial, but Rory always decided he was most important. That's why Malcolm gave Ivy the number, for her to handle it. Robyn and Glenn had a very clandestine conversation full of false laughter on the other end of the hall. She took mental note of it. Once Malcolm exited the lift, she ended the call.

They held conversation on their way back to Nicola's office.

"They're being fucking weird."

"They're always fucking weird, why do you need me up here?" Malcolm asked.

She exhaled through her nose. "I'm just worried it might be something big, and I don't know if I can handle it, okay?"

"You can handle it, trust me, you were fine, but since I'm up here anyway, I might as well stay up here." They stopped directly outside of the Secretary of State's office. "We'll talk about this later, okay?" He pointed at her, and they both entered the room.

"Little pigs, little pigs," he teased in a gruff voice, "Let me come in. Don’t worry about the hair on your chinny-chin-chin."

"Malcolm, Ivy, what was your call?" Nicola asked, smugly.

They both furrowed their brows. Ivy spoke first, "is it any of your business?"

"What was our call?"

Glenn tried to get a word in, but Malcolm continued. "You want to know what our call was? Sorry, I didn’t realize I had to run all the calls made through your bed-wetters switchboard, here."

"Usually he’ll just dial 1-1-hate." Ivy jumped in.

Nicola asked, "Malcolm, do you know?"

"Of course he knows."

"No, he doesn’t know."

Ivy gently elbowed him, whispering, "Fucking clandestine."

"There has been a massive irretrievable data loss. The last seven months’ worth of new immigrant details have gone, apparently lost in the computer." She finally laid out.

Ivy’s eyes widened out of shock, and then her brows lowered, angry. Malcolm paused for a minute, beginning to crack a smile and then a maniacal laugh.

"You’re fucking kidding. Nicola, tell me you’re fucking kidding." Ivy began, slowly raising her voice halfway through the sentence.

"Do you know what? Do you know what’s really fucking sad here, is that I don’t even have the energy to pretend I already knew. Which is for the best, because I’m gonna need all of my fucking energy to fucking rip all of your bodies to bits with my bare hand and sell off your flayed fucking skin as a sleeping bag to a normal person!" He turned to Ivy, "Ivy, go and get my bowie knife from my office, because I’d like to start now."

"Can I just say that getting angry actually isn’t going to help anything. I’ve done anger, I’m currently at grief, I’m working my way towards bargaining… whatever, you know, it’s behind me."

"Oh, that’s great. That’s fan-fucking-tastic, minister! You know what, why don’t you just explain your little plan to us here so we can pick out all the problems with it like crows looking for bits of flesh on a fresh piece of roadkill." The short woman spat, crossing her arms.

She sighed, asking Terri to explain the plan. "Well, blaming the department minister might be a high-risk strategy."

"Ooh, high risk. Power serve." He added immaturely.

Ivy smiled, then bit her lip, adding "Saucy."

"My pitch would be that this department is fatally flawed. It’s out of condition, it’s obese, it’s asthmatic."

"That a-girl, back over the net."

“You're really sure about that, Nicola, because-” Glenn began.

"Yes, wise words from the distinguished, elderly, gay fucking tennis coach here."

Olly interjected, "Seriously, I think we should talk about my strategy further because I really think that there's a way-"

"Oh, good, the tiny-dicked ball boy's having a go now, with his tiny little clean white shorts and a pink polo, here we go." Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning against the black filing cabinets.

"What about Sue Barker's little sister? What's she got to say?"

Robyn made some comment about lemon zinger, before Ivy checked her notes. "Does The Guardian know about this? The Mail?"

"Oh God- you two, can't even handle you, you fucking statue, on your own," Nicola started, motioning to Malcolm, "but now it's fucking Bonnie and Clyde. The Guardian, God I don't fucking know..."

"Shall I find out? Get some feelers?" The woman in the pink power suit asked.

"Yeah, go on, get your feelers out for the lads."

"What do you think, Malcolm, will shitting on the department work?" Nicola suggested, crossing her arms and rubbing one of her temples.

"Oh, sure. Let's cause a bit of friction, here, huh? Let's fire someone, let's fire Glenn!"

"You can't just fire Glenn, no."

"We could fire Glenn."

"Shall I get his file?"

"No! I've got a list!" The sickly fucking Mister Rogers (God rest his soul) shouted.

Ivy folded her hands together, bending down as if she was talking to a child. "Oh, you've got a list? Of what, your favorite fucking toys, you fucking immaculate toddler?"

Malcolm left the room, and so did Nicola and Glenn. "Ivy, come on. You're the new broom, you're sweeping up trouble with one end, broom-handling incompetent staff up the tunnel with the other."

"So how do we play it with the Guardian, then?" She chased after him.

"Smile. By gay. Smile, smile, smile!" Malcolm psychotically smiled. Ivy mirrored him.

"Malcolm, sir?"

"Huh?" He was at his desk again, stuffing his notes for the meeting at The Guardian in a pile.

"Am I coming with... you... to the thing?"

He stopped, looking at her, lost in thought. "Er... yes, but I'm going to need you stay out of the lunch room. Stay in the lobby. Have a lovely beans on toast or whatever it is you cockney bastards do."

She rolled her eyes, shrugging, "Ah, thanks mate."

"I'll call you or come get you if some shitty shit thing happens, like Nicola chokes on a piece of banana or some other disaster."

"I'd expect Nicola to choke on Jeffery's banana, trying to sputter out..." She continued for a moment, mumbling on about calling Nicola a wanker.

"You really don't like her, do you?"

Ivy looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. "No. I really don't. She's a fucking disaster with the press. She's a smug little stinging lit piece of coal thrown in your shoe directly from hell."

"Well, what can you expect from someone so low down on the list?"

She snickered, "Not much apparently."

"Fine. Yeah." Ivy looked up at Malcolm's voice. She was seated on an uncomfortable red seat directly across from the meeting room. She stood and met up with him again.

"Ah, there's your other half, Malcolm." Olly commented.

"Piss off." She answered.

Most of them piled into the lift, and Olly continued. "I didn't think you'd have come today, but I suppose she follows you everywhere, like a little puppy."

"Yeah, what is it with you two, Malcolm?" Terri chimed in. "Are you two dating?"

"Are we dating?" Ivy mocked. "No, we're not. I'm his assistant. He's my boss."

"Hot, isn't it?" The curly haired lanky bitch continued.

She sighed. "Olly, if you don't shut the fuck up, I'm going to tear off your arm and beat your thick skull to death with it." She pointed at him threateningly.

"Ooh, I'm so scared of the oompa loompa in the navy blue skirt."

"Don't fuck with me!" She shouted.

Malcolm shot Olly a stern look, to let him know he meant business. That classic Malcolm look that put fear into DoSAC's veins. He shut up immediately. They exited the lift and out of the lobby, then back inside into the van.

"Hey French Lieutenant's woman, we're over here, come on! What're you doing, marking out your territory?"

Nicola had a look on her face like she'd just seen a ghost. She'd fucked up somewhere along the line, Ivy thought.

"I need some air, Olly, come with me, now." She hurried out the car.

"She's not a post-match puker, right?"

"Fuck's sake."

"I know."

Terri began talking about wine. She stopped, in favor of asking more prodding questions. "How was your first week, Ivy?"

"Fine." She was pretending to write things down, instead drawing a caricature of Nicola in a straight jacket with a text bubble coming off of it saying 'wooden toys!'. She had it turned to Malcolm, who looked at it and smirked.

"He wasn't too hard on you, was he?"

"Nope."

"Are you listening to me?"

Ivy finally looked up. "Nope!" She smiled. Malcolm covered his mouth, checking his Blackberry, and pretending he wasn't grinning. "And I don't work for you, so it doesn't matter."

Nicola returned to the car, apologizing profusely and explaining herself to Malcolm. She ended it with a, "Sorry, Malcolm, I'm really sorry."

"Fucks sake!" He smacked his lap with his clipboard, "JESUS! CHRIST! Well now we've got another adjective to add to smug and glum, FUCKING RETARDED! Jesus! Do you not think it would be germane to check who you're talking to? It's a fucking newspaper office! It's not a fucking, sanatorium for the fucking deaf, is it?! Are you so dense?! Am I going to have to run around slapping badges on people wit a big tick on some, a big cross on others, so you know when to shut your gob and when to open it? Jesus Christ! Oh, but that'd probably confuse you as well, won't it?! That'll be TOO confusing! You'll see a cross and go, 'oh, fuck, X marks the spot! Better tell this little person all about the Prime Minister's fucking catastrophic erectile dysfunction!' Oh, but, not to worry! Not to worry, you've sent Olly over there to deal with it! Fucking Olly! He's a fucking knitted scarf, that twat! He's a fucking balaclava!"

Once Malcolm had finished his tear, he held his face, turning to look out the window. Nicola quietly left the car, leaning against the side of it and rubbing her face. She looked like she was about to cry.

"Sorry, Ivy." He quietly said, apologetically. "Sorry you had to be caught in the middle of that."

She had been silent the whole time, stuck in between those two. "Oh. It's okay."

"Don't I get an apology, too?" Terri piped up.

"No, actually, you don't, you fucking wad of bubblegum. Come on." Malcolm and Ivy exited the van, Nicola saw and followed from the other side. They approached the red head, and Olly was desperately explaining himself to her.

"The department's not really fit for purpose, I mean, Terri's quite bad."

"Not just Terri, I mean I'm not going to name names but Robyn, Robyn's shit. Total shit."

Olly nodded, "Robyn, she's total shit."

"O-kay. Olly, please fuck off." Ivy said, crossing her arms.

"What?"

"Go on. Go and have your fucking lukewarm tea. Mummy and daddy are talking." Malcolm added, shooing him with his hand. "I'm sure that we can settle this matter of you eavesdropping on a private conversation."

The journalist paused for a moment. "It was a public conversation."

"No. You are- you think you're so clever and you are so totally wanking with the wrong crowd here because this woman-" Nicola grabbed Ivy by the sleeve, dragging her in front of Malcolm and into center stage. "This woman, here, is the press."

"Nicola!" She hurriedly whispered. Nicola ran off, whining "Fuck, what have I done?" All the way back to the van.

"Do you think this is going to advance your career? Is this you moving forward?"

"I mean, at least my career has got a trajectory, whereas yours is about to crash head-on into a change of government."

"Don't you worry, girl, because I can still fucking steer some fucking flaming wreckage in your fucking direction."

"Yeah, I'll tell you what, once it's printed I promise I'll come back to you for a reaction quote. How's that?"

"Darling, I wouldn't fucking piss on you, if you were fucking allergic to piss, right?"

"Malcolm-" Ivy attempted to begin to deescalate the situation.

"No, I will fucking-"

The reporter began to walk away, "I'll come back to your wife, here, for a reaction quote, too. That's quite enough for one day. Jesus."

"We're not married!" He shouted after her. "Fuck right off, then!"

As they turned, Malcolm began muttering swear words to himself. "Are you alright, sir?" Ivy asked.

"No! I'm not fucking alright! Shit!" He spat, throwing his hands up. He huffed, "Sorry, it's just-"

"I know." She tentatively put a hand on his forearm that was attached to the hand stuffed inside his pocket. "Sorry, dumb question."

"No, you're fine."

Meanwhile, inside the van, the gang were gossiping like a bunch of schoolchildren about Malcolm and Ivy. Terri pointed, "Look, they're holding hands! They have to be dating!"

"What?" Olly looked out. "No they're not!"

"Okay, shh, shh, they're coming back."

Malcolm and Ivy walked back to their office in silence on their way back. Once they got back and settled back in, Malcolm broke the silence.

"Well that was a fucking whale-sized shit stain on this department."

Ivy clacked in her password into her laptop. Without looking up, she answered "This department is a whale-sized shit stain. To be completely honest, sir, it's exactly what I'd expect to happen."

He chuckled for a bit, then the room went back to silence. Once again, Malcolm broke it. "Ivy?"

"Hm?"

"What did you mean, this morning, when you said you thought you couldn't handle it?"

"Huh? Oh. Er... well, I meant exactly that. I didn't feel that I could handle a big reveal like that. And I had a feeling that was what they were going to do."

"Do you know what? I think you could've handled it."

"Sir-"

"I've seen you in meetings. I know how you've done at your last job. You're quick enough, you're... certainly smart enough, and you've got enough power in your voice to yell if need be. That's a big part of the job, too."

She smiled, warmly, and genuinely. She was blushing, just a bit, too.

"Don't doubt yourself. Okay?"

She sniffled, on the verge of tears. "Okay." As she nodded, a tear dropped down onto the paper she was reading. "Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you."

"Hey, hey, woah." He stood up, "Don't cry, I was just-"

"I know." She wiped a tear away. "It just means a lot to me, that's all." She grabbed a tissue, wiping away drips.

"Okay..." Just then, his cell phone chimed, a notification from the Daily Mail. They'd gotten their grubby little hands on the story already. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"Mail's found out. Right, gotta get Nicola's spidery arse down here. Pick yourself up, and look alive, love." He punched in the number, and sternly talked into the phone, "Get over here. Now. Might be advisable to wear brown trousers, and a shirt the colour of blood."

Ivy didn't listen to that last bit. She was too focused on him calling her ‘love’. Yeah, it was colloquial around England to refer to women as ‘love’, but it was mostly in a demeaning or sarcastic method of use. It meant more that Malcolm had used it as a term of endearment.

Malcolm began once Nicola - and for whatever reason, Terri - had settled down. Ivy was stationed next to him, arms crossed, like a bodyguard of a mob boss, leaning against the back wall. “I just want to say to you, by way of introductory remarks that I’m extremely miffed about today’s events. And in my quest to try and make you understand the level of my unhappiness, I’m likely to use an awful lot of what we would call violent sexual imagery. And I just wanted to check that neither of you would be terribly offended by that.”

"Did you write that for him, Ivy?" Terri asked, as if they were friends.

"To be honest, I’d rather him not apologize for it, it’s funnier that way." She said starkly and with a bit of sass. "I’d rather him go in unlubed, if you will."

"I think I could do without the theatrics, Malcolm."

"Enough! E-fucking-nough. You need to learn to shut your fucking cave, right? Today you have laid your first big fat egg of solid fuck. You took the data loss media strategy and you ate it with a lump of E. coli. And then you sprayed it out of your arse at 300 miles per hour."

"I simply made a mistake."

"Pretty big fucking mistake." Ivy added.

Nicola furrowed her brow. "God, can you just shut up!"

"Hey, I don’t work for you. I don’t give a flying shit what you tell me to do."

"You got on the record and off the record fucking mixed up! What would have happened if like, George Martin had done that? We’d have no fucking Beatles, that’s what. Now, I don’t give a fuck about that. I’ve had to sit next to Paul McCartney at fucking Chequers."

"The data loss wasn’t my fault."

"Fine, yeah, but I tell you what. It came out pretty fucking fast once you were in there, didn’t it? Which makes me wonder, should I just go and talk to the boss? Should I go and tell him, 'I don’t think she’s up to the job.'"

"You said yourself that if he sacks me after a week, it looks like he’s fucked up."

"Yeah, but that was before, when your only problem was a fucking shit pun in a newspaper and a face like Dot Collen licking piss off a nettle."

"Okay, I messed up, right? I messed up. But I will, from now on listen to every bit of advice you give me. I’ll go on Question Time wearing a push-up bra and a fez. I’ll do the hustings on stilts if that is what you tell me the strategy is because you know about that stuff, Malcolm. I know that. It’s just that I’ve got things that I want to do, all right?"

"Of course you do, like Montessouri fucking rocking horses, I suppose."

“No, no.”

Ivy checked her notes, "Uh, the Mail has the motherload on this, yeah? But you know, you’re going to have to just swallow your pride."

"Uh-huh. Thank you, Ivy."

"Right, what’s the strategy?" Terri clicked her pen.

"Ooh, the Kraken awakes." He sarcastically said.

"No, no no. This is just the first part of the meeting that hasn't been about expletives or fezzes or stilts or teabagging. This is the bit that relates to media management."

"Teabagging?" The assistant inquired.

"I didn’t say anything about teabagging. Do you know what teabagging is?"

"Er… not really, no. I’m told it’s uh… unpleasant."

Ivy and Malcolm made eye contact, both thinking the same thing.

"Who do you want me to call? The Mail?"

"Yes. Go on, get the mail in. The Cheeky Girls back on tour." He escorted them out of his office, closing the door behind them.

"What a day, eh, sir?" Ivy said, returning to her desk.

"Er… Ivy, I’d rather you not call me ‘sir’ anymore. At least not when we’re alone."

"Oh. Okay. Uh, any particular reason?" She began fiddling with some papers, stacking them and clacking the edges against the desk to straighten them.

"No, no. It just feels a bit formal, you know? Like, oh, what’d I do to deserve respect?"

"Mhm."

The room returned to silence. Even though they were a week in, Ivy still wasn’t christened in Malcolm’s eyes. This was her first experience with a scandal that was actually proper. There were no long nights, where they were flip-flopping back and forth with options and the media while the cleaning lady worked around them, not yet. There were no miserable holidays where they spent the time sucking up to another MP. If Malcolm had any friends or social skills, he would have expected to have had a night or two sitting together at the bar after a long night, slowly getting hammered on cheap beer and the occasional hard malt. There was none of that yet. But he still felt like she was here the whole time. Like she’d been through thick and thin with him. He didn’t know if that was just her vibe, or if it was on account of the fact that he was slowly falling in love with her.

Wow, Malcolm thought. He’s admitting it to himself now. That was unheard of. He hadn’t been like this since high school. He hadn’t felt anything towards anyone, especially not since he took this job all those years ago. Shit.

"Hey, Malcolm?" Ivy finally broke the silence. Hearing her voice was such unrequited bliss.

"Yeah?"

"Do you… want to go for a drink sometime? Or something besides work?"

"Why?"

"Can I be honest?"

"No."

"I’m going to anyway. You seem like you need a friend."

He stared at the wood grain on his desk to preoccupy his senses while he thought for a moment. He finally answered, "Okay."

"Huh? Sorry?"

"Let's go, then."

"It's only 3:30, Malcolm."

"Yeah, but it's 5:30 in Finland. Come on, grab your stuff, there's a pub 'round the corner."

"We have work!"

"No, no no, it's okay, we'll just sneak out."

Ivy was taken aback by Malcolm suddenly rebellious manner. I mean, he sort of was rebellious regardless, in a different way. Swearing and hurling abuse at coworkers was his drink of choice when it came to rebellion, but he always stuck around and did his work. It's not like he was straight-lace, either though. He was just never the type to ditch out early.

"Christ, what if the press sees us?"

They sat up at the bar stools. Malcolm ordered them each a beer. "The press won't come near the pubs. They haven't yet, anyway."

"Haven't yet? Do you...?"

"No, not all the time. I usually have a stash in my office." He smiled, joking. She laughed, taking a swig.

"I wanted to be a bar maid when I was younger." She mentioned, offhandedly. "Went to school for it for a few months. Became preoccupied with other things." She continued to explain.

"Really?"

"Yeah. But, enough about me." She shook her head, gesturing to him. "Did you ever think you'd get into politics?"

He sighed, "Not really, no. I uh, went to school for journalism. Started at my local newspaper, which got absorbed by The Independent. Continued there. Slithered my way up the chain." Ivy raised an eyebrow. "I dipped my hands into politics while working there. I left the Indy and worked for what is now called the department of work and pensions, then, again, worked my way up from there."

"Mm."

"What about you?"

"Oh, uh... Well I-I didn't really have a career until my mid 30's. I've bounced at lower level secretary or receptionist positions for a while. In both politics and journalism."

"Yeah, 'cause didn't you work for good old Harry Pickle, the dickle for a while?"

She snorted, almost spitting out her beer. "Is that what they're calling him?"

"What, you didn't know?"

"No! The bloke always kept that sort of thing under wraps, I guess. For his own sake."

"Jesus Christ the man's a fucking control freak."

"I know, oh trust me, I know. I had to wake up early every morning to print out things he could check off to make him feel like he had more control, while I poured sawdust over his idiocy vomit pile and swept it up. Fucking disaster. And when I said I wanted to leave, I think they put me on you because you were the worst to deal with."

He paused, furrowing his brow.

"In their opinion. I genuinely enjoy working for you Malcolm, don't worry." She placed her hand on his forearm that was resting on the countertop. He looked at it, biting his lip and trying not to draw too much attention to it.

Oh God, is she interested in me, is she being nice, or is she just tipsy? He thought. No, we're only one beer in, she can't be. Stop staring, you look like a creepy old man. She's just... so beautiful.

He clenched his fist under the counter, scrambling to find other things to talk about. "Uh, what about before your 30's?" She hadn't moved her gentle hand.

"Oh. Uh..." She looked apprehensive, almost embarrassed. "Well, you know I went to bartender school. But before that I mostly just... stayed at home. I don't have any younger siblings. Actually, no siblings period."

Malcolm smiled. "You're lucky."

She chuckled falsely, "I'm really not. I er... had to take care of my mother after secondary school. She was ill."

"Oh, bless."

"Yeah," she looked down, smiling sorrowfully. "But, she didn't have long to suffer. She died when I was 19." He nodded along, sympathetically. "After that, bartender school. I worked as a barmaid. Got bored with it after a year or two. Then I went to undertaker school, while still bar tending in the nights."

Malcolm raised his eyebrows, shocked. "Really?"

"Yeah. I'm not kidding. If you ever need to mix a black velvet or embalm a body, you know who to call." She giggled. Malcolm laughed a long, admiring her as well. "So, then I worked as an undertaker until aged 33. I was offered to become funeral director, you know, the seedy arsehole who'll tell you shit like 'it's what dad would have wanted' when showing you a 10,000 quid casket. Had no interest there. So I started my assistant job in government, after going to a job fair. And the rest is history."

"Jesus, your life is so much more interesting than mine."

She chuckled. "I don't think it's all that cool. I mean, I've never been outside of Europe."

[janellelucy]

too good at goodbyes

TAGGING: Janelle Puckerman & Cameron Weston

LOCATION: Their  house & the Hospital 

TIME FRAME: Thursday, May 7th; around 2:30pm-ish

WORD COUNT: 5222

NOTES: TRIGGER WARNING: do not read if you are sensitive to any talk about losing a child/miscarrying 

Janelle had drooped her phone into the cup holder of her car driving back home, but as she did she could feel cramps even more. The fact something really felt wrong she really tried to push it away, thinking that it was just because she got so mad at his mom that this would just pass. It wasn't long till she was pulling into their driveway, the cramps weren't as bad but they where still there, and she actually was getting worried about them now. Grabbing her bag from the back seat and then her phone from the cup holder and headed inside. She was greeted by Delilah who was happy to see her "hi sweetie, where's daddy?"

cameron had an off day today, and wanted to finish doing some work around the house. he started in the backyard, cutting the grass, trimming the bushes, the typical backyard upkeep. it didn't take him long to do that, an hour or two tops, and then he moved into the house, cleaning up some things, and finishing up hanging some pictures janelle wanted up on the walls. by the time janelle got home, cameron was starting on dinner, being nearly done as the quiet sound of their alarm system went off, signaling that the front door was open. "i'm in the kitchen, baby!" he called out, continuing to stir the pasta.

When she heard Cam's voice she let out a happy sigh, drooping her bag down on the table they had by the front door and kicked off her converse off, walking into the kitchen. "Hi." She said softly, going over kissing his cheek quickly "How was your day?"

cameron smiled at the bit of attention she gave him, turning his head so he could plant a kiss on her lips, "hey," he let the wooden spoon sit on top of the pot, turning fulling so he was facing her, "it was fine, i got almost everything done. the backyard is looking better, got those pictures hung, cleaned everything up." cam reached forward, wrapping his arms around her body, pulling her into his chest, "how was yours?"

Janelle wrapped her arm around him as he kissed her, letting her lips linger on his for a moment. "wow, and i didn't even leave you a honey-do list" She let out a happy sigh, feeling the cramps hit again, having her flinch a little before she could even answer cam

"i know, i'm really doing good, eh?" he laughed, leaning his head down, letting his forehead rest on hers. cameron could sense her tensing up and he pulled his head away, his brows furrowing, "what's wrong, baby? you okay?"

Janelle pulled away, wanting to say she was fine, but she knew she wasn't "no." She said softly. Janelle's voice was never lower than a whisper, and it was getting there as she felt another pain "i think there is something wrong.."

cameron placed both his hands on her upper arms, worried for what was to happen. she didn't look right - he could tell something was off, "what do you - mean wrong, janelle?" he asked, keeping his voice quiet, though there was a hint of urgency.

Janelle didn't know how to say it, her brain only going one way, and it wasn't the way she wanted it to be going. "It hurts.." She looked up at him as she tried to keep her breath steady but it was pretty shaky as she spoke.. "I'll be right back.." She pulled away from him, going to the bathroom down stairs, closing the door behind her. She pulled down her jeans, and underwear in one movement, looking down. it wasn't covered yet, but there was a heavy spotting, as she let out a sob.

cameron was quick to follow her as she pulled away, not understanding how she couldn't just let him in on something so serious. he knocked on the door, "janell -" he started, though he was cut off hearing her sob. without hesitation, he opened the door, not caring if she would have been angry about it or not. it took him a moment to register the scene in front of him, but once he did, he was kneeling down in front of her, "come here," he whispered, opening his arms.

Janelle had her elbows on top of her legs and her head in her hands, the silent tears flowing. Nothing felt off until today, and this was her worst fear. When Cam came in she barely moved, but did her arms going around him tightly crying into his chest. There was no way it wasn't what she thought it was, but she didn't want to be the one to say the word.

as soon as janelle fell into his arms, he held her tightly, and as close to his body as he possibly could. "it's okay, baby, you're okay," he whispered, moving his hand up to rub along the back of her head. cameron knew exactly what was happening, he knew what the bleeding meant, and he knew it was too late for them to fix anything. his heart was shattered, but he was doing his best to remain strong for his girlfriend, knowing that was what she needed.

Janelle just stayed there in his arms, for a good solid five minutes crying, "i..we should probably go to this hospital." She finally said barely above a whisper as she sniffled. She probably really didn't need to, but if she heard herself say the word, or cam say it, she needed to hear it from a doctor, she needed to know there was no baby.

cameron was prepared to stay there for as long as she needed to, holding her as tightly as he could, trying his best to provide her some form of comfort, "alright, yeah, do you want to go now?" he asked quietly, his hand still moving along her hair. "it's going to be okay, sweetheart, you know that, right? it's okay." he tried again, his voice hopeful, though there was a hint of pain, of sadness.

Janelle nodded her head up and down. "i know." She said, her voice kind of monotone. "I'm.. I'm just gonna go up stairs and change really quick, okay?" She dropped her arms from where they had been tightly gripping his sides. As he let her go, she got up and made her way up stairs. She changed out of her black jeans  and put on a different pair of underwear along with a pad - not wanting to ruin another pair, and then pulled on a pair of sweat pants before going back down stairs.

cameron nodded his head slowly at her response, not really knowing what else he could say to help her in this situation. he let her leave his embrace, sitting back on the bathroom tile as she walked away. his head fell, a hand immediately moving up to run through his hair, tugging slightly on the ends. cam could feel himself starting to get emotional, he could feel himself starting to break, but he quickly snapped out of it and stood up and off the ground. he put their puppy in her little pen, giving her a quick pet on the top of her head before he stood up, looking to janelle, "you ready?" he asked quietly.

Janelle shook her head "no. but guess i have to be." She forced out a laugh, before going back over to him, her arms wrapped back around him. "I'm sorry." She mumbled into his chest. Though she couldn't control what her body did, she felt like it was her fault she lost the baby still.

"it'll be okay," he spoke quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around her small body. he could practically feel his heart breaking as the words came from her mouth. cameron pulled away from her, cupping her face in both of his hands, "you need to listen to me, right now." he spoke, his words firm, yet still quiet, "i don't ever want to hear you say that again. you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. this is not your fault, this is not my fault, this is not anyone's fault. okay? things just - happen. maybe it - wasn't the right time for us. but - you're not to blame for this." with every word cameron spoke, he could feel his eyes welling up, and though he blinked quickly to keep them from falling, they were still visible.

Janelle let out a sigh as his hands went to her face. She knew he was right, everything he said was true. it wasn't either of their fault. shit just happens. "ok." she reached up though pushing away cam's tears before they spilled over his eyes.

cameron rubbing his thumbs along her cheeks slowly, letting out a soft sigh as he stared at her, "i'm serious, janelle. it's not your fault." he whispered, closing his eyes quickly as she began to wipe at them. he didn't want her to see him like this, so upset and broken, he needed to be strong, now more than ever.

"Okay cam." Janelle repeated herself letting her thumb fall from his face letting out a sigh. "lets just go..okay?" She put her hand on his wrist to slowly pulled them down before she pulled away to grab her bag, and the two of them started outside.

cameron let out a sigh, wishing janelle could just believe his words, but he stopped repeating himself, and let his hands fall to his sides. "yeah - okay," he mumbled, the tone of his voice defeated. he soon walked towards the front door, grabbing his keys and his wallet, sliding both into his pockets and began to make his way outside towards the car.

Janelle let out a soft sigh. she just wanted it confirmed that it was in fact what it was that happened and try and move on. she was already heart broken over it. and she knew cam was too. its not your fault kept ringing in her ears as they sat in the car on the drive to the hospital. She didn't get it, how wasn't it her fault how wasn't it her fault that her own body wanted to reject the baby. She let her head lean on the window watching the outside not saying much on the drive.

cameron made sure janelle got into the car okay before he did the same. a majority of the drive, he kept to himself, and ignored the pressing need to fill up the silence of the car. but after a few minutes, he reached his hand over and grabbed a tight hold of janelle's. cameron needed her to know that he was right here, though all of it. he wasn't going anywhere. the drive wasn't long, but it felt like forever. he pulled into the parking lot, glancing over to her now, "should we go into the er?" he asked, not really knowing how to handle a situation like this.

When Cam had reached over to take her hand, she adjusted them, so her fingers were laced into his, smiling just a tiny bit. "um..i'd assume er? I don't think we'd really be able to go any place else?"

cameron nodded his head, but kept his words to himself, not really knowing what else to say in the moment. he found a parking space, and pulled into it, taking the keys out of the ignition. before she could get out of the car, cameron turned his body, cupping her cheek in his hand, pulling her into him. he placed a kiss to her lips, staying there for a moment before he pulled just an inch away, "i love you. more than anything in this whole world. you know that, right? you're my everything, janelle. despite all the things we've been through, or are going through. nothing will ever make me love you any less than i love you right now."

Janelle shifted a little bit as he stopped the car, ready to get out before he pulled to to him, having her kiss back, almost relaxing a little, as if she actually needed that more than anything right now, though tears filled her eyes again, nodding. "I know. I love you too Cam" She said softly pushing her tears away, shaking her head. "you're my soulmate, there is nothing that the two of us can't do together." She whispered leaning back into him to kiss him softly. cameron let his thumb rub against her cheek softly, hoping that his actions would bring her some form of comfort, "you and me against the world, huh?" he whispered, kissing her back as she leaned in. after a rather long moment, he pulled back, "you ready to go?" cam asked, still keeping his voice rather quiet.

"Always." She smiled her hand reaching for his face as they kissed, but the second he pulled away she dropped it. "As ready as I'll ever be." She nodded, reaching for the car door to get out. Walking inside, the waiting room didn't have many people and that could be a good or bad thing.  She kept her hand tightly in Cam's as she went up to the counter. The nurse greeted her and asked her what was the reason for coming in. Janelle explained it, they took her information, as she gave her id, and her insurance car. Getting things handed back and a wrist band on, they told them to have a seat someone would be out shortly to take her vitals before anything else could happen.

cameron wasn't planning on leaving her side even for a moment, even as she went up to the counter, he kept his hand in hers, holding onto her tightly. he waited as the nurse talked to janelle, rubbing his thumb along the back of her hand throughout the whole interaction. as the nurse told them to take a seat, cameron nodded his head, and lead janelle over to a group of chairs. he waited for her to sit down before he took the seat next to her, his arm immediately wrapping around her body.

Janelle sat down with him, moving as close to him as she could, as she put her things away back into her wallet, trying to keep busy. there was only so much you could do in a waiting room, so with putting those cards back into her wallet she found it a good time to try and clean it out, staying quiet, as she looked at receipts she had crumpled up in there, and her little bit of cash she did keep in there in four different spots trying to put it all back into one pile.

cameron watched as she dug apart her wallet, chuckling softly as she began to organize everything. he leaned his head in, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek before he let his head rest on her shoulder. after a moment, he began humming softly, the tune to her favorite song, trying again to provide some kind of distraction.

Janelle let out a sigh as he leaned into her as she moved stuff around. "Do you want this?" She asked softly holding out one of those punch cards for a local sub shop that if you got them all punched you got a free thing. she didn't even know how she had it because she couldn't remember the last time she had gone to that sub shop.

cameron couldn't help but chuckle softly, shaking his head at her offer, "i'm good, baby, thank you. do you want me to take it for you so i can throw it out later, though?" he asked, picking his head up just enough for him to be able to look at her.

Janelle looked between him, and the pile of trash that was sitting on top of her bag, shaking her head as she dropped it down into the pile she had for the trash. "No it's fine." She finished up her wallet, putting it in his lap, not wanting to put it on the seat next to her as she started to dig through her bag. She found not one, not two, but three pairs of headphones, two charging cabled, a wall plug, a portable charger, the bag she normally had all her lipsticks in  - empty, a half bottle of water, an unopened starbucks frapachino drink, more receipts, all of her lipsticks - putting them right back into her makeup bag, fifteen hair ties, two half packs of gum, gum wrappers, a bunch of pens, a mini notebook, her broken popsocket, her planner, keys, and last but not least, an ulta gift card at the bottom. "I think i need to clean this out more often" she mumbled, grabbing her wallet back from cam to slip the gift card into one of the pockets, before trying to find spots and homes for most of the stuff, as the trash pile kept growing bigger.

cameron sat back in his own seat, watching her pick apart her bag with wide eyes, not understanding how that many things could fit in a bag of that size, "jesus, janelle, it's like the fuckin' marry poppins bag, isn't it?" he asked, his eyebrows raised, letting out a laugh.

Janelle couldn't help but let out a laugh. "I'm sorry there is no hat stand in my bag." She teased playfully elbowing him.  she got all the trash together getting up and throwing it away before coming back and sat down with him leaving her head on his shoulder. "Please tell me that took me longer than i think it did?"

"what a damn shame," he chuckled, looking over at her, "i was really hoping for like - a pet elephant or something. 'lilah could use a buddy." it was making cameron happy to see a genuine smile on janelle's face, something that had been foreign for the last few hours, "took you like - ten fifteen minutes, i think?"

"We do not have room for a pet elephant." She shook her head letting out a sigh. "I was hoping you were about to say a half hour." she mumbled, the smile fading quickly knowing where she was again. it was only about five minutes later her name was called. She got up, taking Cam's hand  with hers and walked into the little room where they took her temperature, blood pressure, height, weight and everything. When it came to asking more about the pain and the bleeding. "It slides? like right this second it a zero, but back at home it was like a five or a six? and as far as the blood goes it seemed like a very heavy flow." her hand went to her belly and the nurse asked a few more questions before leaving, leaving the pair in that small office. only a minute or two later she was back taking them into the er to a room. "A doctor will be in with you guys in a few minutes."

"dammit, i think we could make room," he teased, offering up another small smile. cameron shook his head at her words, moving to wrap his arm back around her much smaller body. he kept her close until her name was called, and even then, he made sure he kept his hand held tightly in her own. he remained by her side even in the small office, balancing on his toes right next to the chair she was sat in, his hand placed gently on her knee. cam made sure he could stay near her even as the nurse was doing what she needed to do, and as soon as she was out of the room, cameron was leaning in to press a kiss to janelle's forehead, "you doing okay?" he asked in a whisper.

Janelle sat on the bed, her feet dangling off the floor. It was more waiting that she didn't want  to do. "I'm fine." She said looking up to him. "are you okay?" She asked. It couldn't be easy on him knowing that they lost the baby, knowing how excited he was for it too.

cameron stood up slowly, letting his arm move to rest behind her, his hand rubbing up and down her back gently, "i'm okay, baby, don't worry about me," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her hair, "is your stomach hurting you? do you want me to rub it?" cameron was nearly scrambling to find ways to bring her some comfort, it being the only thing he could do in this moment, even if it didn't work as well as he would want it to.

"Cameron." She said simply looking back at him. "Don't make me pull what you did to me earlier." She moved to look at him. "And no. not right now." She told him, pushing her hair behind her ear. "Just don't leave." She said softly.

"oh come on, i'm telling you i'm fine, so i'm fine. i promise," he smiled, leaning in to kiss her forehead yet again. cam kept his hand moving along her back, nodding his head when she said that her stomach felt okay, "leave? never, baby. i'm not leaving." he reassured, shaking his head, his words firm, yet still quiet.

"Uh huh sure." She mumbled leaning into him "So just cause im saying I'm fine, you think I'm actually fine too then?" she questioned shaking her head "no even if they ask you to leave, can you just not.. like i don't want you to go anywhere."

cameron let out a sigh, moving so he could sit on the edge of the bed, keeping his hand moving on her back, “can we not focus on me right now, please?” truthfully, he was still getting used to being open about his feelings with people, and right now, he didn’t want to have to think about himself. he wanted to be focused on her, “i told you, baby, i’m not going anywhere. i don’t care if they want me to leave or not, i’m staying right here.”

She dropped it. she didn't want the fight right now, or try and force him to talk about it. Janelle nodded "alright okay thank you." she moved a little bit so she could wrap her arm around him. "I love you." she whispered softly.

cameron nodded his head slowly, letting his forehead rest softly on her shoulder, "i love you too, baby," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her upper arm, "wanna thumb wrestle?" cam spoke up after a moment of silence, holding his hand up in the air.

Janelle let out a laugh, not knowing how to respond to him "Thumb wrestle?" She giggled leaning up and kissed him "I guess so." She put her hand out with her thumb out

"yeah - thumb wrestle. what else are we gonna do?" he shrugged, sitting up slightly. cameron couldn't help but smile as she giggled, despite the situation they were in, her laugh was his favorite sound, and he missed it more than anything. he curled his fingers around her own, moving his thumb back and forth, "alright - ready? one - two - three - four, i declare a thumb - war!" as he finished his last word, he used his thumb to pretend to 'punch' her own, making sound effects to go along with it.

Janelle shook her head pulling her legs up and crossing them. "Ready." she moved her thumb back and forth as he started it. She was never good at this and knew either she was going to lose or he was going to let her win. Moving her thumb around trying to get his to go down

cameron laughed quietly, trying to move his thumb away from hers. he could easily put her thumb down right now, and win the whole game, but where was the fun in any of that? he continued to move around, avoiding her finger, laughing as he did.

There was no use, his thumb was able to move around quicker than hers. "Just go and win, you're going to anyways." She always hated this game it was more likely for her to win rock paper scissors then this.

cameron shrugged at her words, looking away for just a moment when he heard some people shuffling outside their door. it gave her an opportunity, one that he didn't mean for, but still an opportunity to pin his thumb down.

Janelle watched him look away, and she quickly pinned his thumb down "One two three" she said in less than two second "I win!" she giggled just as the door opened and the doctor walked in. "Ms. Puckerman?" The doctor asked, leading Janelle to nod her head up and down. "I'm Doctor Andrews." She looked down at the paper work "So you came in because of some cramping and bleeding. Had you know if you were -" Janelle quickly cut her off. "I was pregnant. I know I was. and  I know with pcos that its harder for me to get pregnant, and have the higher chances of a.." She stopped herself she still didn't want to say the word. Dr. Andrews nodded. "We can go get an ultrasound and check then if that is what you want." She nodded "please."

cameron stood up quickly when the doctor came in, yet he kept his hand held tightly in janelle's, wanting to make sure she knew that he was always going to be right there next to her. he listened intently to the doctor, moving his free hand along her back yet again, trying to soothe her, as he knew she would more than likely be anxious. cam stayed quiet, not wanting to interrupt either of of the women as they spoke.

As the doctor left Janelle let out a small sigh blinking back tears. "She was gonna tell me without even checking wasn't she." She said somewhat monotone. She let go of his hand  running both of her hands over her face, just wishing this wasn't happening.

without hesitation, cameron wrapped both his arms around her small body, bringing her close to his chest, "she would have checked you out, baby, she has to before she can say anything," he whispered, pressing his lips to the top of her head, "it's okay, sweetheart, it'll all be okay."

"But.." she sighed turning into his body just so she could hold herself closer to him. "It just seemed that way. that she already knew. I know it is what it is but.. be at least fucking positive yknow?"  she mumbled into his chest.

he kept her as close as he possibly could, moving one of his hands to rub along the back of her head, "i don't think she was doing that, elle. she's probably just really busy, and was moving really quickly. it's okay," he whispered, pressing his lips to her head yet again. Janelle just let out a sigh closing her eyes as he rubbed the back of her head. 

Maybe..yeah." She mumbled staying there for a moment not wanting to move.

cameron kept placing multiple kisses to the top of her head, beginning to hum the same song he began earlier in the waiting room. he let his hand continue moving along the back of her head, trying yet again to provide her some kind of comfort. he hated more than anything that he couldn't make her feel good, that he couldn't help her at all.

Janelle pulled away after a few minutes hearing something outside the door. When a nurse walked in with Dr. Andrews and an ultrasound machine. They set it up. As they did Janelle took of the hoodie she had on keeping on the tanktop she had on, as she laid down, moving the top up, and letting the doctor do her thing. She didn't even want to look at them, just looking over at cam the whole time waiting for some type of reaction from him.

cameron moved away just slightly, though his hand stayed tightly in hers, only removing it when she needed to take her sweatshirt off, but even then, he put it right back where it was before. as the nurse and doctor did what they needed to do, cameron let his fingertips brush up and down her arm, hoping the action would distract her in some way.

As Dr Andrews moved it along Janelle's belly where there should have been a baby. There was nothing there, no baby, no heart beat. "I'm so sorry Janelle." She started, but everything after that was a a blur, the only other words she heard was the one she had been trying to avoid saying. "..Miscarriages are more common then people realize.." She closed her eyes tightly holding back tears, her hand still in Cams as she sighed. "I'm going to have some blood drawn before you two leave. Once we get that we can discharge you and we can call you and let you know about the blood work. I also want you to go make an appointment with your obgyn for them to do another round of blood work plus see how you're doing and feeling." Janelle nodded, not saying anything. Dr. Andrews and the nurse left, only for the nurse to come back to take her blood a few minutes later. Janelle rubbed at the spot on her arm where the needed had been, always hating getting poked.

cameron could literally feel his heart shattering in his chest, his whole world was crashing down, everything was on fire, and there was not a single thing for him to do about it. he just had to sit back and watch everything fall. he gripped janelle's hand tightly, looking at her with the most hopeful and happy look he could muster up, something he had gotten relatively good at, though it was clear that a part of him was missing. that something had just been ripped out of him. "you did good, baby, i'm proud of you," he whispered, letting his lips curl up into a smile, speaking only after the nurse came back in to draw her blood.

Janelle grabbed the hoodie putting it into her lap. "Thanks?" She tried to laugh but it was so forced out that it was the fakest laugh she had ever heard from herself. "I just wanna go home." she mumbled.

"baby," he mumbled, letting out a sigh, "i - yeah, alright," he nodded his head, not bothering to say much else other than that. cameron had no choice but to let her hurt the way she needed to, and he needed to realize that he couldn't do anything to help her this time. he stood up fully, holding his hand out for her to take if she wanted it.

Janelle got up off of the bed putting the hoodies back on, grabbing her bag and the discharge papers the nurse gave her. She took his hand walking out, she stopped at the front desk and they said she was all good to go. all janelle wanted now was to wake up from this horrible nightmare.

[ao3feed-stucky]

Captain America Is Out and Proud

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

by PR Zed (przed)

The truly terrible thing about waking up in the future, thinks Steve, is that everyone who looks at him sees Captain America, national icon. An icon 70 years in the making, never mind that he's really only lived 25 years. (Years don't count if you spend them in the ice, do they?)

Or what happens when Steve runs into an old friend from the USO.

Words: 5222, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of Captain America Has a Fella

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Original Characters

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

[ao3feed-buckybarnes]

Captain America Is Out and Proud

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

by PR Zed (przed)

The truly terrible thing about waking up in the future, thinks Steve, is that everyone who looks at him sees Captain America, national icon. An icon 70 years in the making, never mind that he's really only lived 25 years. (Years don't count if you spend them in the ice, do they?)

Or what happens when Steve runs into an old friend from the USO.

Words: 5222, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of Captain America Has a Fella

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Original Characters

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

[ao3feed-steverogers]

Captain America Is Out and Proud

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

by PR Zed (przed)

The truly terrible thing about waking up in the future, thinks Steve, is that everyone who looks at him sees Captain America, national icon. An icon 70 years in the making, never mind that he's really only lived 25 years. (Years don't count if you spend them in the ice, do they?)

Or what happens when Steve runs into an old friend from the USO.

Words: 5222, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of Captain America Has a Fella

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Original Characters

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

[oditile]

A Tidytext Analysis of the Weinstein Effect

From: https://www.gokhanciflikli.com/post/weinstein-effect/

Dec 3, 2017 · 3099 words · 15 minutes readPLOT R TIDYTEXT

Quantifying He-Said, She-Said: Newspaper Reporting

I have been meaning to get into quantitative text analysis for a while. I initially planned this post to feature a different package (that I wanted to showcase), however I ran into some problems with their .json parsing methods and currently waiting for the issue to be solved on their end. The great thing about doing data science with R is that there are multiple avenues leading you to the same destination, so let’s take advantage of that.

My initial inspiration came from David Robinson’s post on gendered verbs. I remember sending it around and thinking it was quite cool. Turns out he was building on Julia Silge’s earlier post on gender pronouns. I see that post and I go, ‘what a gorgeous looking ggplot theme!’. So. Neat. Praise be the open source gods, the code is on GitHub. Let’s take advantage of that too.

I still needed a topic, and even though both the Wikipedia plots and the Jane Austen datasets sound interesting to look at, I felt that there is another, obvious choice.1 It has a Wikipedia page and its own subreddit. Also, the title might have given it away. Let’s get to work.

Getting Full Text News Articles

My first instinct was to check out the NYT APIs—it made sense, given that they broke the news (along with the New Yorker). Everything seemed to be working out just fine, until I realised you cannot get the full text—only the lead. Staying true to my strict data scientist training, I googled ‘full text newspaper api r’ and there it was: GuardianR. Sorry NYC mates, we reckon we will have to cross the pond for this one.

Note that any one source will always be biased. If you are not familiar with the Guardian, it’s British and has a left-centre bias. It might be prudent to pair it with a right-centre newspaper, however not all newspapers provide APIs (which in itself is another selection bias). Alas, we will move on just with the Guardian—insert idiom regarding salt. Finally, you will need to get a free API key from their open source platform. You still have to register, but you are only in danger if you vote Tory and stand on the left side of the escalator. Once you got it, install/load the package via CRAN:

library(GuardianR) ls(pos = "package:GuardianR")

## [1] "get_guardian"     "get_json"         "parse_json_to_df"

As you can see, the GuardianR package is a simple one: it contains only three (but powerful) functions. We only need the first one to get a hold of the full text articles, and the syntax is super simple:

#not evaluated articles <- get_guardian(keywords = "sexual+harassment",                         section = "world",                         from.date = "2012-11-30",                         to.date = "2017-11-30",                         api.key = "your-key-here")

Running the above chunk with your own key will get you all articles published in the Guardian in the last five years tagged under the news section ‘world’2 and containing the keywords ‘sexual harassment’ in the Guardian API. The keywords can be as simple or complicated as you want; just add more terms using the plus sign.

You might think the time frame is a bit skewed towards the ‘pre’ era—the news broke out on October 5, 2017. Going all the way back five full years, we are comparing 58 months worth of ‘pre’ to only 2 months of ‘post’ Weinstein. However, luckily for you blog posts are not written in real-time, meaning you get to see a (somewhat working) final result so just bear with me. And no, this is not at all like scientists running 514 regressions and failing to mention this tidbit in their publication. Relevant xkcd.

No, the reason is pure pragmatism. It’s not that running the code ‘live’ and getting the articles ‘real-time’ would not slow down this page—it’s not how it works.3 However, it is good practice to extract a tad bigger chunk than you think you will need, as you can always slice it up later to suit your needs better.

In any case, I am working with downloaded data so I will just load it up. Feel free to subset the data to see whether the results change if you use a different cut-off point. Also, if you go back the same amount of time (i.e. two months before October 5), that would lead to 183 articles for pre and 121 articles for the post time period—it is a reckoning, alright. Going back five years gets us 1224 articles in total; so we actually have 1103-pre and 121-post articles (89% to 11%). That’s more or less cross-validation ratio (well, a bit on the less side maybe), and we will roll with that for now.

articles <- read.csv("articles.csv", stringsAsFactors = FALSE) dim(articles)

## [1] 1224   27

sum(articles$wordcount)

## [1] 1352717

colnames(articles)

##  [1] "id"                   "sectionId"            "sectionName"         ##  [4] "webPublicationDate"   "webTitle"             "webUrl"               ##  [7] "apiUrl"               "newspaperPageNumber"  "trailText"           ## [10] "headline"             "showInRelatedContent" "lastModified"         ## [13] "hasStoryPackage"      "score"                "standfirst"           ## [16] "shortUrl"             "wordcount"            "commentable"         ## [19] "allowUgc"             "isPremoderated"       "byline"               ## [22] "publication"          "newspaperEditionDate" "shouldHideAdverts"   ## [25] "liveBloggingNow"      "commentCloseDate"     "body"

We get a bunch of variables (27) with that call, but we won’t be needing most of them for our analysis:

#laziest subset for only two variables want.var <- c("webPublicationDate", "body") want <- which(colnames(articles) %in% want.var) articles <- articles[, want] articles$webPublicationDate <- as.Date.factor(articles$webPublicationDate)

The body contains the full-text, however it’s in HTML:

dplyr::glimpse(articles$body[1])

##  chr "<p>Numerous women have accused Don Burke of indecent assault, sexual harassment and bullying during the 1980s a"| __truncated__

At this point, I must admit I resorted to hacking a bit. I’m sure there is a more elegant solution here. I’ll go with this SO answer to extract text from HTML. Basically, the cleaning function removes the HTML using regex. Unfortunately, this does not clear up various apostrophes found in the text. For that, we switch the encoding from ASCII to byte:

articles$body <- iconv(articles$body, "", "ASCII", "byte")

cleanFun <- function(htmlString) {  return(gsub("<.*?>", "", htmlString)) } articles$body <- cleanFun(articles$body) dplyr::glimpse(articles$body[1])

##  chr "Numerous women have accused Don Burke of indecent assault, sexual harassment and bullying during the 1980s and "| __truncated__

This will end up cutting some legitimate apostrophes (e.g. “hasn’t”, “didn’t” to “hasn”, “didn”) in some cases, but we will fix that later on.

Let’s split the data on date October 5, 2017 and get rid of the date column afterwards:

#You can also use negative index for subsetting articles.before <- articles[articles$webPublicationDate < "2017-10-05", ] articles.after <- articles[articles$webPublicationDate >= "2017-10-05", ] full.text.before <- articles.before[, 2] full.text.before <- as.data.frame(full.text.before) full.text.after <- articles.after[, 2] full.text.after <- as.data.frame(full.text.after)

N-Grams and Combinatorics

To me, n-grams are what prisoner’s dilemma to college freshman—that ‘wow, so simple but so cool’ moment. As in, simple after the fact when someone has already figured it out and explained it to you. N-grams are essentially combinations of n words. For example, a bigram (2-gram).4 Using the tidytext package developed by David and Julia, we can create them in a flash with unnest_tokens. After that, we will separate the bigrams into two distinct words. Next, we will subset the bigrams so that the first word is either he or she. Finally, we will transform the words into frequency counts. I’m heavily recycling their code—no need to reinvent the wheel:

library(tidytext) library(tidyverse) #or just dplyr and tidyr if you are allergic #Create bigrams bigrams.before <- full.text.before %>%  unnest_tokens(bigram,                full.text.before,                token = "ngrams",                n = 2) nrow(bigrams.before)

## [1] 1311051

head(bigrams.before)

##        bigram ## 1    the walk ## 1.1 walk from ## 1.2  from the ## 1.3  the gare ## 1.4   gare du ## 1.5   du nord

#Separate bigrams into two words bigrams.separated.before <- bigrams.before %>%  separate(bigram, c("word1", "word2"), sep = " ") head(bigrams.separated.before)

##     word1 word2 ## 1     the  walk ## 1.1  walk  from ## 1.2  from   the ## 1.3   the  gare ## 1.4  gare    du ## 1.5    du  nord

#Subset he and she in word1 he.she.words.before <- bigrams.separated.before %>%  filter(word1 %in% c("he", "she")) #Fix the missing t's after apostrophe fix.apos <- c("hasn", "hadn", "doesn", "didn", "isn", "wasn", "couldn", "wouldn") he.she.words.before <- he.she.words.before %>%  mutate(word2 = ifelse(word2 %in% fix.apos, paste0(word2, "t"), word2))   #10 random samples; the numbers are row numbers not counts set.seed(1895) dplyr::sample_n(he.she.words.before, 10)

##       word1  word2 ## 4403    she doesnt ## 3732     he    was ## 5222    she  wasnt ## 11862   she   said ## 3972    she  wrote ## 3189     he   says ## 3952    she   sees ## 4878     he    was ## 9314     he   went ## 9408    she  noted

#Transform words into counts, add +1 for log transformation he.she.counts.before <- he.she.words.before %>%  count(word1, word2) %>%  spread(word1, n, fill = 0) %>%  mutate(total = he + she,         he = (he + 1) / sum(he + 1),         she = (she + 1) / sum(she + 1),         log.ratio = log2(she / he),         abs.ratio = abs(log.ratio)) %>%  arrange(desc(log.ratio)) #Top 5 words after she head(he.she.counts.before)

## # A tibble: 6 x 6 ##       word2           he          she total log.ratio abs.ratio ##       <chr>        <dbl>        <dbl> <dbl>     <dbl>     <dbl> ## 1 testified 0.0002194908 0.0027206771    18  3.631734  3.631734 ## 2     awoke 0.0001097454 0.0010580411     6  3.269163  3.269163 ## 3     filed 0.0002194908 0.0021160822    14  3.269163  3.269163 ## 4      woke 0.0002194908 0.0019649335    13  3.162248  3.162248 ## 5    misses 0.0001097454 0.0007557437     4  2.783737  2.783737 ## 6   quickly 0.0001097454 0.0007557437     4  2.783737  2.783737

A couple of observations. First, n-grams overlap, resulting in 1.6M observations (and this is only the pre-period). However, we will only use the gendered subset,5 which is much more smaller in size. Second, as we define the log ratio as (she / he), the sign of the log ratio determines the direction (positive for she, negative for he), while the absolute value of the log ratio is just the effect size (without direction).

Good stuff, no? Wait until you see the visualisations.

Let There Be GGraphs

Both David and Julia utilise neat data visualisations to drive home their point. I especially like the roboto theme/font, so I will just go ahead and use it. You need to install the fonts separately, so if you are missing them you will get an error message.

devtools::install_github("juliasilge/silgelib") #Required Fonts #https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto+Condensed #https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto library(ggplot2) library(ggrepel) library(scales) library(silgelib) theme_set(theme_roboto())

We are also loading several other libraries.6 In addition to the usual suspects, ggrepel will make sure we can plot overlapping labels in a bit nicer way. Let’s start by looking at the most gendered verbs in articles on sexual harassment. In other words, we are identifying which verbs are most skewed towards one gender. I maintain the original logarithmic scale, so the effect sizes are in magnitudes and easy to interpret. If you read the blog posts, you will notice that Julia reports a unidirectional magnitude (relative to she/he), so her scales go from

.25x .5x x 2x 4x

whereas David uses directions, i.e.

'more he' 4x 2x x 2x 4x 'more she'

In both cases, x denotes the same frequency (equally likely) of usage. I don’t think one approach is necessarily better than the other, but I went with David’s approach. Finally, I filter out non-verbs plus ‘have’ and only plot verbs that occur at least five times. If you are serious about filtering out (or the opposite, filtering on) classes of words—say a certain sentiment or a set of adjectives—you should locate a dictionary from an NLP package and extract the relevant words from there. Here, I am doing it quite ad-hoc (and manually):

he.she.counts.before %>%  filter(!word2 %in% c("himself", "herself", "ever", "quickly",                       "actually", "sexually", "allegedly", "have"),         total >= 5) %>%  group_by(direction = ifelse(log.ratio > 0, 'More "she"', "More 'he'")) %>%  top_n(15, abs.ratio) %>%  ungroup() %>%  mutate(word2 = reorder(word2, log.ratio)) %>%  ggplot(aes(word2, log.ratio, fill = direction)) +  geom_col() +  coord_flip() +  labs(x = "",       y = 'Relative appearance after "she" compared to "he"',       fill = "",       title = "Pre Weinstein: 2012-17 The Guardian Articles on Sexual Harassment",       subtitle = "Top 15 Most Gendered (Skewed) Verbs after he/she; at least 5 occurrences.") +  scale_y_continuous(labels = c("8X", "6X", "4X", "2X", "Same", "2X", "4X", "6X", "8X"),                     breaks = seq(-4, 4)) +  guides(fill = guide_legend(reverse = TRUE)) +  expand_limits(y = c(-4, 4))

Several immediate and depressing trends emerge from the data. The top active verbs for women cluster on bringing charges: ‘testified’, ‘filed’; whereas male verbs seem to react to those with ‘argued’, ‘faces’, ‘acknowledges’, and ‘apologized’. Women ‘awoke’ and ‘woke’, matching the more violent male verbs such as ‘drugged’, ‘assaulted’, ‘punched’, and ‘raped’. ‘Alleged’ occurs four times more after she relative to he, and there is no mention of denial (e.g. ‘denied’, ‘denies’) after he. A note on word variations: in some cases, it might be better to combine conjugations into a single category using a wildcard (such as expect* in the graph above). However, I thought the tense can also contribute to a quantitative story, so I left them as they are.

Another way of visualising the gendered differences is to plot their magnitude in addition to their frequency. This time, we are not limited to just verbs; however we still filter out some uninteresting words. There are additional ggplot and ggrepel arguments in this plot. First, I added two reference lines: a red y-intercept with geom_hline to act as a baseline and an invisible x-intercept using geom_vline to give the labels more space on the left-hand side. Do you not love tidy grammar? Last but not least, I insert geom_text_repel to give us more readability: segment.alpha controls the line transparency, while the force argument governs the aggressiveness of the jittering algorithm. We could supply it with a fill argument that corresponds to a factor variable to highlight a certain characteristic (say, total occurrence), however there is not much meaningful variation there in our case.

he.she.counts.before %>%  filter(!word2 %in% c("himself", "herself", "she", "too", "later", "apos", "just", "says"),         total >= 10) %>%  top_n(100, abs.ratio) %>%  ggplot(aes(total, log.ratio)) +  geom_point() +  geom_vline(xintercept = 5, color = "NA") +  geom_hline(yintercept = 0, color = "red") +  scale_x_log10(breaks = c(10, 100, 1000)) +  geom_text_repel(aes(label = word2), segment.alpha = .1, force = 2) +  scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(-4, 4),                     labels = c('8X "he"', '6X "he"', '4X "he"', '2X "he"', "Same",                                '2X "she"', '4X "she"', '6X "she"', '8X "she"')) +  labs(x = 'Total uses after "he" or "she" (Logarithmic scale)',       y = 'Relative uses after "she" to after "he"',       title = "Gendered Reporting: Pre Weinstein, The Guardian",       subtitle = "Words occurring at least 10 times after he/she:                  160 unique words (100 displayed) | 11,013 occurrences in total") +  expand_limits(y = c(4, -4))

Plotting frequencies complement the first plot quite nicely. We can infer reported characteristics more easily when there is a tangible baseline. Words around the red line occur after she or he more or less equally: the y-axis determines the relational effect size (with regards to gender), and the x-axis displays the total amount of occurrences. Some additional insights: we see that ‘sexually’ and ‘allegedly’ popping up after he quite frequently. There is also the verb ‘admitted’, as well as ‘denies’ (even though visually it is located above the red line, if you follow the grey segment, it’s located around 1X ‘he’). For women, more morbid words like ‘suffered’, ‘died’ are added to the mix. There are also nuances regarding the tense; ‘claims’ follows she twice more than he, while ‘claimed’ is twice likely to come after he.7

Moving on to the post-Weinstein period (‘the effect’), I quietly run the same code, and plot the equivalent graphics below. Some caveats: with the smaller sample size, I lowered the inclusion threshold from 5 to 2. Additionally, although it is top 15 most skewed verbs per gender, because of frequent ties, it ends up having more than that at the end.

After the scandal broke, we see that women are reported to have ‘complained’, ‘hoped’, and ‘became’. On the other hand, men are vehemently denying the accusations, with ‘denies’ and ‘denied’ being the most skewed verbs following he. Random point: in the pre-period, it’s ‘apologized’, in the post-period, it’s ‘apologised’. Maybe Brexit can manifest in mysterious ways.

Again we turn to the frequency plot to infer more. In addition to denial, men are also reported to use words such as ‘categorically’ and ‘utterly’. Both ‘claims’ and ‘claimed’ occur more after she, not repeating the earlier dynamic regarding the tense. In addition, we don’t see ‘alleged’ or ‘allegedly’ featured in the plot at all. How much of this change can we attribute to the effect? At a glance, we definitely see a difference. For example, verbs display a good variation for both genders. The post-frequency plot features less violent words than the pre-frequency plot. There is a lot more ‘denying’ and not much ‘alleging’ in the post-Weinstein period.

Some are definitely data artefacts. The post-frequency plot is ‘cleaner’—in addition to (and directly caused by) the smaller n—because the cut-off point is set to ‘more than once’: if we remove the filter, all the violence and harassment terms are back in. Some are probably reporter/reporting biases plus the prevalent gendered thinking (that occurs both on a conscious level and below). And perhaps some are genuine effects—true signal. It is still too early to pass judgement on whether the Weinstein effect will result in tangible, positive change. Currently, all we can get is a short, limited glimpse at the available data.

Hopefully you managed to enjoy this rather depressing data undertaking using the tidytextpackage. As usual, the underlying code is available on GitHub. N-grams are powerful. Imagine the possibilities: assume you have access to a rich dataset (say, minimum 100K very long articles/essays). You can construct n-grams sequentially; i.e. 2-grams; 3-grams, 4-grams etc., separate the words, and subset for gendered pronouns. This would give you access to structures like “he” + “word” + “her” (direct action) and “she” + “word” + “word” + “him” (allowing for adjective + verb). Then it would be possible to look for all kinds of interactions, revealing their underlying structure. I will be reporting more on this front, until I move onto image processing (looking at you, keras).

[ao3feed-stevebucky]

Captain America Is Out and Proud

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq

by PR Zed (przed)

The truly terrible thing about waking up in the future, thinks Steve, is that everyone who looks at him sees Captain America, national icon. An icon 70 years in the making, never mind that he's really only lived 25 years. (Years don't count if you spend them in the ice, do they?)

Or what happens when Steve runs into an old friend from the USO.

Words: 5222, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of Captain America Has a Fella

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Original Characters

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2l6JKMq