#also brain also says scan and after edit too long which is wrong this took me maybe 15 minutes

[cassandrasdreamworlds]

Dick Grayson and his (a?) Pokémon team!

Altaria (his starter as a Swablu), Crobat, Houndoom, shiny Hisuian Zorua (how did he get it? possibly time travel shenanigans we'll not look into it), Popplio, Corvisquire, Mienfoo fun fact, bottom three are only the pre evolution because otherwise i couldnt fit them on the page but also didnt wanna put others in it at that moment lol

Jason and Pokemon Team - Tim and Scolipede (WIP) - Damian and Pokemon Team - Cass and Pokemon Team

[yehet-about-it]

Chase Me | Part 17 - Lock The Door Next Time

⇐ || ☆ Masterlist ☆ || ⇒

🎮👾 ~ The Boyz Social Media AU ~ 👾🎮

"Twitching" is a British term used to mean "the pursuit of a previously located rare bird." In North America it is more often called chasing...

Pairings: Changmin x Reader, Sunwoo x Reader

Warnings: 17+, language, some smut in later chapters, fuckboy!sunwoo 😉

Updates Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday @ 9pm GMT/1pm PST

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Word Count: 3.1k (I am SO sorry... although I'm kind of not bc I lowkey love this chapter) Warnings: Mature content, may involve maStUrBaTioN, a whole lot of embarrassment and Chanhee having the time of his goddamn life bc its not him in the awkward situation for once 🙃

You sighed, dropping your unreasonably heavy camera bag on the table as you walked into the living room, Chanhee in close pursuit looking equally as tired. You’d spent several long hours at a shoot for a new project you’d been hired to do and had come back to the boys’ apartment to do some editing before you called it quits for the day.

“Should we order food now?” You called out as Chanhee went to his room to unload his gear and fetch his macbook for editing. You knew you needed to work but you hadn’t eaten since the morning and you couldn’t stop the thoughts of takeout food swirling around in your head. “Mm, the Chinese?” Chanhee replied sitting down across the table. “Can you go and ask Changmin if he wants anything while I set this up? He’s probably in his room.”

You nodded happily, perking up at the prospect of food and left Chanhee to upload the photos from the day whilst you went off in search of Changmin. He wasn’t in their gaming room as you walked by so you continued down the corridor towards his room. As you neared his door you could hear a murmur, and coming to a stop outside the room you recognised your name being called by Changmin, only it was ever so quiet, barely audible through the wood of the door, so you figured maybe it was just him registering your presence. Assuming he’d realised you were there, you swung the door open not quite expecting the scene that was presented before you. Changmin was sat on his bed, propped up against the pillows with his lips parted, hair hanging low in front of his eyes, and scanning further down you saw that his sweatpants were bunched low on his hips as his hand gripped what appeared to be a very hard erection. You let out a shriek as you realised what you had stumbled upon, immediately slamming the door back shut and racing down the corridor before Changmin even had chance to react.

“Oh my god, oh my god.” You repeated it like a mantra, your heart pounding from the shock as you slid back into the living room and into your chair opposite New. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Chanhee asked in bewilderment looking at you as though you’d just committed the 7 deadly sins. “I should have knocked!” you squeaked burying your face in your palms in total, unfathomed embarrassment. You took a deep breath trying to calm yourself, but the image of Changmin’s hand wrapped snugly around his length, pleasuring himself as he uttered your name was well and truly burned into your brain.

“What? Why?” Chanhee asked, a puzzled expression forming from his features. “He- oh my word- he was- touchi- Ugh I can’t say it!” you whined. “He wasn’t…? Oh my god...” Eventually realising what had happened, a hysterical fit of laughter erupted from your best friends throat as you hid behind your hands, your cheeks most definitely flushed with the brightest pink. “Oh my god that idiot” Chanhee cackled, tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes from the sheer force of his laughter. You sank down in your chair a pained smile on your face as you couldn’t help but be affected by Chanhee’s reaction. “Chanhee what am I gonna do? I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again!” You wailed, the howling starting to dye down as Chanhee regained his composure. “Not my problem” Chanhee teased. “I’ll make it your problem” you replied stroppily, whacking him lightly on the arm in annoyance. “Ow!” Chanhee clutched his arm in feigned pain before proceeding to laugh at you once again. “It’s not funny Chanhee! This is so awkward!”

You had by now gotten over the initial shock of seeing one of your longest friends exposed like that, and now you were wondering how the hell you were gonna get over the awkwardness of the situation. But most of all, you were wondering why the hell he’d been moaning your name of all names and what that meant. Not that you were going to mention that to New. That would open a whole new can of worms and lead this conversation down a whole new road that you didn’t particularly want to explore, as well as give Chanhee even more ammunition for further teasing.

“That’s exactly why it IS funny.” Chanhee chided, whipping his phone out, presumably either to tease Changmin or get the Chinese menu up, or both. “Guess he won’t be joining us for the Chinese then?” You rolled your eyes at Chanhee’s teasing (though also legitimate) question. “Well it’s not like I stuck around to ask.” You crossed your arms as you gave Chanhee a warning glare. “Fine, I’ll ask him then.” He said, and your phone lit up on the table a moment later – of course he’d mentioned it in your group chat.

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Changmin had heard Chanhee’s cackling from his room at the other end of the apartment and had been mentally cursing for the duration, his face perhaps an even brighter shade of scarlet than yours. Of all of the awkward things to happen, the girl he liked and one of his best friends walking in while he was halfway to climax thinking about her had to be the most unfortunate. Firstly there was the problem of how he’d ever look you in the eye again, but secondly was the problem that remained below his waistline. You walking in hadn’t helped that of course. If it had been Chanhee or Kevin walking in, his stiffness would have gone in a split second, but despite the embarrassment of what had just happened, his length remained taut against his boxers which he’d quickly pulled back up in shock after your momentary appearance. He was no longer in the mood to continue, too worried about what you might be thinking, so he decided his only option was to go for a cold shower in the hope that that might fix it.

Before he had the chance to hop in however, his phone buzzed, showing a text from New. He groaned as he read the older boys words, knowing that he’d never live this down whining again when he realised the texts were sent not just to him but to your group chat. Thankfully Changmin had already eaten, although he wouldn’t mind a bit of Chinese, but given the current awkwardness he decided to pass up on the offer for food. He would probably be able to face you later but if he ordered food he’d have to sit with you to eat it, and the embarrassment was stilll far too fresh for that to be a comfortable affair, so he quickly typed out his reply and hopped in the shower to deal with the problem beneath his pants.

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An hour or so later you and Chanhee had just about finished your editing for the day and were tucking into your food, but you still hadn’t heard a peep out of Changmin. You sighed, finishing your bowl of jajangmyeon, feeling a little guilty that Changmin wasn’t sharing in the joys of your takeout food, all because you’d been dumb enough not to knock. “Hm maybe I should take him something” you sighed looking across all the cartons of food you’d ordered. Maybe he had actually eaten already, but there was so much, and you were sure he’d like some. “You’re not going to eat all that are you?” You asked Chanhee, nodding to the half full box of kkanpunggi in the middle. Chanhee just shrugged. “You sure you want to go back in there?” He sniggered as he asked the question, deliberately trying to provoke you. “No I am not, but I’m not going to avoid him forever just because I’ve seen his dick” you declared defiantly, making Chanhee almost spit out his boba as he doubled over in laughter. However awkward you were feeling, you’d have to face each other eventually. Normally you wouldn’t be so thrown off by something like this, for instance, you’d once accidentally walked in on Kevin going at it with someone one time when you’d stayed over at Sunwoo’s, but you’d just greeted it with an ew and laughed about it later. The only thing that had you feeling so utterly flustered was the sound of him uttering your name whilst he was clearly having some ‘time to himself’, but since you figured he wouldn’t necessarily be aware you’d heard that, you decided you’d be able to brush it off for now and pretend like everything was just peachy.

“Well just remember to knock this time” Chanhee quipped as you stood up, taking the box of spicy garlic fried chicken with you, picking up some of the spare chopsticks the restaurant had sent too. You grinned sarcastically at Chanhee, your eyes silently telling him he was an asshole, before disappearing off down the hall to Changmin’s room, praying that he’d be fully tucked into his pants this time. “Changmin? Can I come in?” you called as you knocked tentatively on his door. You heard some shuffling and low muttering before he answered with an uncertain “sure”.

Swinging the door open for the second time this evening you were relieved to see Changmin perched on his bed, fully clothed with an xbox controller in his lap and his headset to the side of him. You saw the overwatch character select screen flickering brightly on his tv screen too so you could only assume he was playing online with someone. “Oh you’re playing? Who’s on?” you asked quietly as you walked a couple of steps into the room, the carton of kkanpunggi still in hand. “Uh, just Eric.” Changmin replied, his eyes darting around the room as he struggled to make eye contact with you, for understandable reasons. “Hi Eric!” You sang loudly so he could hear you through the microphone. Though it was quiet, only coming from Changmin’s headset you heard a faint chuckle and Eric’s voice returning the greeting. “I brought you some kkanpunggi, I thought you might like some, it’s really good” you said, turning your attention back to the boy actually in the room.

Changmin’s expression softened watching as you stood there, proudly holding up the box of chicken and chopsticks. Even after what happened you were still thoughtful enough to bring him nice food so he wouldn’t miss out. What he wouldn’t give to be able to just pull you onto his lap and feed one other the delicious food, cleaning up any stray sauce with kisses. In his dreams he thought.

“Awh how come he gets chicken?” Eric whined through the headphones pulling Changmin out of his daydream. “KEVIN-HYUNG CAN WE GET CHICKEN?!” The sudden loudness of the younger boy through the headphones made you giggle, and you shared an amused look with Changmin. As bizarre as it was though, you were rather grateful for Eric’s random inputs which actually seemed to have the effect of relieving some of the tension in the room.

“Yah be quiet! I’m not even wearing my headphones and that hurt my ears!” Changmin called towards his headset shutting the younger boy up with an insincere sorry. “Oh it smells good, thank you y/n!” Changmin smiled sweetly at you as you placed the box down on the side table next to his bed. “That’s okay!” You replied, moving a few steps away again before looking nervously towards Changmin’s headset. You wanted to apologise for your earlier intrusion to get it out of the way, but you definitely didn’t want Eric to be witness to that, so you lowered your voice to a whisper. “Oh um, so I’ll be leaving in a bit, I just wanted to say sorry for earlier, I um- I should probably have knocked before I came in.”

Changmin could feel the heat rising in his cheeks being reminded of the earlier incident and although his hair mostly covered it, the tips of his ears were now definitely a blazing pink. “Oh-“ He was frankly a little stuck for words. He’d been sat in his room for the better part of an hour rehearsing what he might say to you in his head, but now you’d come in here to apologise, with chicken no less, he didn’t really have an answer for you. “Uh- it’s okay,” he mumbled. “Sorry you had to see that.”

Before it could get too awkward however, you snickered as you heard Eric and Kevin clearly having an argument about chicken faintly through the headphones still laying next to Changmin and you thanked your lucky stars that they evidently weren’t listening to you and Changmin’s awkward exchange. “Well I promise I’ll knock next time.” Changmin chuckled, running a hand sheepishly through his hair as you moved back toward the door. “I’ll let you get back to the game if those two ever stop arguing, I’ll see you later yeah?”

Changmin nodded and said goodbye as you slipped out to return to the dining table where New sat, a mischievous glint in his eye as he grinned at you. “On a scale of 1 to Eric talking to girls, just how awkward was he?” He asked, clearly trying to stifle his laughter. “Shut up New” you scoffed as you began picking up the empty food cartons to throw in the trash. This little shit was gonna milk this out for as long as possible and you weren’t here for it. “Well at least you didn’t scream and run out this time” he bantered, only to be met with a look of pure contempt from you as he passed you one of the empty food containers. “I am this close to pouring this black bean sauce all over that new balenciaga t-shirt Chanhee” you threatened holding out a carton that had the remains of some sauce wobbling about in the bottom. Chanhee jumped back covering his shirt with his hands, knowing that it wasn’t an empty threat from another time he’d pissed you off and you threw half a cup of peach tea all over him. It was a waste of the tea, but he’d had it coming. “That’s what I thought.” You proclaimed before disappearing into the kitchen to dispose of the containers.

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On your way home your head was filled with all kinds of thoughts about what you’d unintentionally just witnessed. All you really wanted to do was relax after a long day of work and carrying heavy equipment around, but all you could think about was your name on Changmin’s lips and what the hell it meant. Was it just an accident? Or if it wasn’t, did that confirm everything that Kevin had been telling you? Did Changmin really like you? There had been an undeniable vibe between you for the past few weeks, what with the increasing amount of time you spent together and the intimate moment on the roof last night, but until this weekend, you hadn’t thought about it much, your mind largely preoccuppied with your anger towards Sunwoo.

Your mind flipped through your memories with Changmin as you sat on the tube, trying to make sense of everything, and as you did so, it dawned on you. Kevin was right. Changmin liked you. Perhaps that was even what he had tried to tell you the previous night before Jeju had abruptly cut him off. You recalled all the times Changmin had sat with you and listened to you rant about Sunwoo, the way he’d been so angry the day after that one fateful party, and how he’d always been there waiting for you with a hug when you were down. It was a wonder you’d never realised it before. Perhaps Changmin’s warm presence in your life had just become so natural you never thought anything of it, but it was becoming increasingly clear that this wasn’t just two friends looking out for eachother. No, it was more than that.

You felt a heat in your chest as you processed this revelation, trying to make sense of your own feelings. You adored Changmin, but then who didn’t? The way his dimples made him look like the sweetest angel whenever he smiled, the way his eyes lit up whenever he discovered something really interesting, the way he couldn’t stop himself from giggling even at the most inappropriate moments. It was impossible not to like him. But then not everybody knew him like you. They didn’t have your relationship. Changmin had always been there for you, even though it was Chanhee you called your best friend and Sunwoo he called his. He always seemed to know exactly what you needed – when to give you space, when to give you hugs or when to make you laugh so hard you cried. Upon reflection, there was no one who came close to making you feel as happy and comfortable as Changmin did. You couldn’t think of a single occasion he hadn’t made you smile and you slowly began to realise… Was it possible… that you liked him too?

Then the thoughts of Sunwoo swarmed your mind. Did he know Changmin was into you? No of course not. They weren’t on the best of terms right now but you imagined it would be a hell of a lot worse if he did know his best friend was infatuated with his ex-girlfriend. If anything were to happen between you and Changmin, Sunwoo would be outraged for certain. But maybe that was what he deserved. He’d lost the right to an opinion on your life when he tried to get back with you by sleeping with you when you were drunk. Although perhaps falling for his best friend was a little far…

You leaned your head back against the glass of the subway train, sighing as your mind replayed the memory of Changmin’s breathless expression as his hand gripped his manhood. You kind of wished it would stop, not wanting the embarrassment of getting so worked up in public, but you just couldn’t tear your thoughts away from it. After your newfound revelation, you were getting dangerously close to imagining what had been happening before you walked in, and what sort of things he might have been thinking of doing – you nearly missed your stop in your dazed state but thankfully the announcement pulled you out of your thoughts and you rushed to the doors just in time to hop off before they closed and the train sped off into the distance, away from you and your insurmountable dilemma.

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Taglist: @lovelymultiwrites @shiberrysan @m4rshm4llow @softforqiankun @sktbzc0re @staysstrays @softyfor-sweaterpaws @glxwingstar @chiefturtlebonkghost @faiirybread @lolibaaae @younggwingss @sunqnew @winterbeartaehyungbestboy @mx23 @bbangsoonie @seokgyuu @ateez-babygirl

Please send me an ask to be added to the taglist! 🌸

[downondilaudid]

High as a Kite

After a stressful case reader unwinds in her own unique way, unfortunately, the BAU is called in on another case. Spencer doesn’t seem too fond of the reader’s stress reliever.

A/N: This is very poorly edited. I just got into a massive fight with a few friends. So now I’m very sad, and just wanna sleep. But fuck them. Like that one vine says, I don’t need friends, they disappoint me. Seriously, FUCK THEM. I still love them doe, i have too, they’re the only friends i have.

Oh also, I wrote this in first person, instead of my usual second person. Let me know if you like it or not! <3

Requested: Yes

Prompts: None

Word Count: 2.9K

Warnings: (Unprotected)Penetrative Sex, a DASH of angst, drug use, let me know if I missed anything.

“He rarely smoked, but once in a while, like now, when his world had been shaken, his woman nearly killed in front of his eyes, and he’d watched a house consume a man and spit him out, he figured a drag or two were appropriate.”

― Christine Feehan, Safe Harbor

Relaxing after a case was one of my favorite things on the planet. Especially when it ended well, I had been able to watch as the little girl who had been stolen from her family, ran to her parents, her little arms wrapping around their legs. Seeing the love and adoration in the parent's eyes as the wept and held her made me want to have a child of my own.

Spencer and I had been together for a little over a year, but I doubt either of us are ready for children. Our job alone is stressful enough, in fact, it’s how we met. I worked as a technical analyst under Penelope Garcia. I will say my job wasn’t as strenuous as Spencer’s, but it’s not exactly ideal to look at dead bodies all day.

We all have our own peculiar ways of unwinding, Spencer loves to sit and read a few books, Hotch heads home to spend time with Jack, and Emily is always down for a drink. I, on the other hand, would much rather smoke a bowl than read a book. It was my own way of unwinding and allowing my brain to cleanse itself of the horrors of the world.

My pink pipe was packed with weed, a matte black lighter in my hand. The weed burned in the small bowl, crisping to a dark black. My finger released the carb of the pipe a couple of times, allowing the smoke to fill my lungs.

The haunting voice of Lana Del Rey filled the room. Her voice alone is smooth as honey, but listening to her while high is an ethereal experience. I could only imagine what Spencer would do if he could see me now, probably ramble off the statistics of marijuana addiction. But I could definitely say I wasn’t addicted, it was just an easy way to relax.

I took another hit, watching as the smoke tumbled from my lips. My stomach rumbled, causing me to giggle lightly, here come the munchies. Usually, I didn’t have the biggest sweet tooth, but when I’m high I can’t get enough sugar.

My hands pulled open the pantry, hips swaying lightly to the music.

Suddenly the music was gone, replaced by an annoying buzzing, “Ugh, you’re fucking kidding.” I groaned. I let the pantry fall shut, making my way over to where my phone sat. I had an inkling who was calling me, but every ounce of my body was praying I was wrong. Unfortunately, I was not, as I had one text from Hotch and a missed call from Spencer.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed in my hand, Spencer’s name illuminating the phone. Quickly I answered the call, pulling the phone up to my ear. “Hiya Spence.” 

“You get the call?” Spencer questioned, his voice cracking slightly, it was obvious he hadn’t used it in a while. He had probably been reading ever since he got home.

I giggled lightly at the sound of Spencer’s voice, taking a moment to admire the perfect way it croaked. “Mhm, can you pick me up?” 

There was no immediate response, it was obvious there was something off, Spencer could tell. I never asked him to drive me anywhere, I was always the one driving. Especially due to Spencer’s hatred of automobiles. 

“But don’t you usually pick me up?” he questioned. 

“Spencer, that last case… I’m literally the definition of exhaustion, can you please, just this once?” I was hoping that with the use of his full first name, he would understand the seriousness of my question. There was no way I was driving to work, with Spencer in the car, while high. 

Speaking of, I still had zero idea how I was going to act sober in a room of profilers, granted, I had a lot of practice of acting sober in front of people, just not at work. Unfortunately for me, the best two words to describe myself while high were, giggly and horny. Oh, and hungry, who doesn’t get the munchies?

Spencer sighed on the other end of the line, “Of course, Y/N.” He paused for a moment, a slight hesitation in his voice with his next words. “Is-is everything okay?” 

“Oh, totally, the case just got to me, that's all!” My reply was all but convincing, it didn’t help the awkward silence made me giggle, which I quickly stifled with my hand. But to Spencer, I’m sure it sounded like a muffled sob. At least he’d buy it, right?

… 

I hopped into the car, looking too giddy to be dealing with another case, “hey.” 

Spencer turned his head to look at me, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, and his tongue peeking out between his pink lips. “Y/N are you sure you’re okay?”

I rolled my eyes before playfully glaring at Spencer, “yes, now drive, baby.” I reached out, grabbing the gear shift, and shifting the car into drive. 

The car rolled slightly before a startled Spencer slammed his foot on the brake, “Y/N what the- my foot wasn’t even on the brake! Do you know how many accidents are caused a year due to pedal error? Sixteen thousand, and that’s just in the U.S.”

I know it was inappropriate, but during the whole lecture he was giving me I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his hands. They were so perfect, long and thick, the number of times that I’ve come undone on those hands is immeasurable. I shifted in my seat before meeting his eyes. Honestly, I hadn’t comprehended a word he said, something about cars?

Spencer shifted the car back into park, turning in his seat to lean towards me. His eyes scanned me up and down, and not in a good way. “You’re acting strange. You’re overly bubbly, especially considering we have another case. You aren’t thinking rationally-”

A gasp left my body once I realized what he was doing, “Spencer Walter Reid, are you profiling me? We agreed not to do that!”

Despite my yelling he kept speaking “and you were too focused on the movement of my hands to retain a single word I told you.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. 

“Spencer, what the fuck are you-ow!” A blinding light clouded my vision, causing me to recoil further into my seat. 

A scoff left Spencer’s mouth as he turned off the flashlight. “You’re high,” he stated, “what did you take?”  

“I’m not-” I quickly stopped my sentence once I saw the glare Spencer was sending me. “Okay, I just smoked a little weed. Seriously, it wasn’t a lot.”

Spencer unlocked his phone, pressing a few buttons before opening the “W-what are you doing?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. 

“Calling Hotch” Spencer replied, his voice even yet stern. It was somehow scarier than his occasional outburst.

“What? No, Spencer!” I reached over the console, latching my hands onto his phone, before pulling back. Sadly, the phone stayed rooted in his large hands, and with a swift tug, he had the phone back in his grasp. 

Spencer glared harsh daggers at me, before looking back down, and continuing to type on the phone. “Y/N, you’ve already pushed me far enough. Sit down and keep your mouth shut.” 

I fell back into my seat, pouting and crossing my arms childishly. The faint sound of ringing broke the silence, stopped by the barely audible voice of Hotch over the phone. 

“Hotch, Y/N can’t come in, she’s sick. I think she has a fever.” The lie tumbled easily out of his lips. 

My head whipped towards him, my eyebrows raised in amusement. “Thanks, I will.” Spencer ended the conversation, this time setting his phone in the cupholder in the console. 

I giggled lightly, “what would I do without you to save my ass?” 

He didn’t respond, instead putting the car in drive, this time with his foot on the brake. Silence filled the car, Spencer opting to focus on the road, and me fidgeting with the hem of my skirt. 

“Spencie, are you mad at me?” I asked, resting an elbow on the console between us. 

It was obvious he was frustrated, I would be too, but how was I supposed to know we’d get called in on a case? “Yes, Y/N” he answered, his words punctuated and his jaw clenching, accentuating his razor-sharp jawline. 

There was something about angry Spencer that sent shockwaves to my core, leaving me squirming against the leather of the car. Eh, what the hell, might as well go for it, I can just blame it on the cannabis. 

My arm reached across the console, my hand landing on the top of Spencer’s thigh. I watched him visibly jump at my touch, he obviously wasn’t expecting it. “Are you sure it’s just anger?” 

He sighed loudly, one of his hands leaving the steering wheel to remove my own from his leg.

…  

“Please Spencer, just really quick? It’d help you relieve some stress!” I cried as I walked through the door. 

Another angry sigh left Spencer’s mouth, he seemed to be doing that a lot. “Y/N, you’re under the influence, I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

I almost laughed at his statement, it was perfectly logical of him to think that, and utterly sweet. But he was my boyfriend, my love, I would fuck him in whatever state I’m in. “Spence, I can promise you you’re not taking advantage of me. We’ve had sex countless times, I’d have sex with you even if I was sober, have you seen you?” I paused for a moment before adding onto my sentence, breaking the slight tension with humor, “yourself, not you, that doesn’t sound right.” 

Spencer chuckled to himself, rolling his eyes as he reached for his belt. “Hell yes!” I cried as I began to undo the buttons of my blouse, quickly shedding it. I could’ve just left the blouse on, but Spencer was a tits man through and through. 

As soon as I heard the clinking of his belt colliding with the floor, I ambushed him, immediately letting my lips find his. The kiss wasn’t rough, nor was it gentle, it was somewhere in between, a perfect balance. I pulled away, biting down lightly on Spencer’s bottom lip. 

My hand slipped into his unzipped pants, palming him lightly. It was the most heavenly sight on earth to watch his head fall back, and a low moan tumble from his lips. “Fuck, Y/N” 

Nodding my head I giggled, “yes, please fuck Y/N.”

Spencer tilted his head back up, laughing lightly at my comment.

I pulled away from him, grabbing the hem of my skirt and shimmying it up over my hips. Spencer’s eyebrows raised, a look of amusement on his face. “Please” I begged.

“Alright, turn around, over the table,” Spencer commanded, his voice low and demanding.

A giggle passed my lips as I turned around, making my way over to the table. My top half pressed against the table, my body resting against my forearms. I could hear Spencer’s footsteps as he crossed the room, stopping behind me. His large hands wrapped around my hips, pushing my skirt higher up my body. “Do you know how irresponsible it was of you to try and come into work while under the influence?” 

His hand left my hip coming back down onto my backside, the impact causing me to cry out. “Spencer!”

His hand raked up my side, grabbing a fist full of my hair. “I-I didn’t have a choice.” I stuttered out as one of his fingers hooked onto my underwear, pulling them to the side. 

“You did have a choice, you chose not to inform Hotch, leaving me to save your ass. Do you understand how detrimental the consequences could’ve been if something were to go wrong?” Spencer’s fingers ran through my folds, spreading around my arousal. 

“Fuck” I moaned out, using my forearms to push myself back against his hand. “Better hurry this up, Spence, we don’t have long.” Spencer shuffled behind me before I felt the head of his cock brush against my core. “Fine, if you’re so impatient.” He grunted, pulling back on my hair, and pushing his cock into my folds. 

He was quick to set a rough pace, pulling out and pushing back in, using the hand in my hair as leverage to pull me back in time with his thrusts. “Yes, Spencer, fuck,” I groaned out. 

“You know,” Spencer started, pausing to roughly thrust into me, sending my body forward against the table, the edge digging into my thighs. “If you wanted a stress reliever, you could’ve come to me. Sex releases endorphins and other hormones, the same way exercise does. Particularly, oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “love hormone.” 

I moaned against the table, my body beginning to falter as my orgasm approached. “Fuck, Spencer, mhmm, yes.” 

With every thrust, I could feel the strain of Spencer yanking my hair back, which would definitely leave a crick in my neck. But I was enjoying myself too much to tell him to stop. I could practically feel Spencer’s anger with every obscene smack of our sweaty skin. It was what I was hoping for, a good fuck, and for Spencer to be able to release his anger before heading back to the BAU. 

Surprisingly, Spencer released his vice grip on my hair, easing the tension on my neck, allowing my face to fall forward and my cheek to squish against the table. He planted his forearm beside my head, leaning over me so his chest was pressed against my back. “How good would you feel if I allowed you to come right now?” To add to the pleasure, Spencer’s hand resting on my hip wormed its way around my body, two of his long digits beginning to rub circles around my swollen bud. 

A sob racked my body at the added pleasure, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I could feel my legs starting to tremble as I held back my release, almost as if my body knew I couldn’t let go until he gave me permission. “Please, please?” I begged.

“Say it. Promise me you’ll come to me next time you need to relieve stress.” Spencer growled, his voice cracking, signaling he was close too. 

The desperate sounds of our moans and the musty smell of sex filled the room, drowning out my senses. I was too lost in the euphoria to reply, instead, I deliriously rutted my hips back as an attempt to feel him deeper. 

Spencer let out a groan before burying his head deep in the crook of my neck, moaning out “promise me, Y/N.” 

“I promise, fuck, please, Spencer?” The words tumbled almost incoherently out of my lips, barely comprehensible. 

Nodding his head against my skin, he placed an open-mouthed kiss to my neck before moaning out “come, come with me Y/N.” 

And just like that, I was sent headfirst into a trembling, teeth-clenching orgasm. My back arched, uncomfortably pressing my breasts even further against the table. My vision went white, and my legs threatened to collapse. Spencer had stilled, burying his cock deep in my cunt, lewdly moaning out my name, and a series of various curses. An unfamiliar warmth coursed through my body as he filled me up with his seed. Leaving me to grin like a Cheshire cat, caked in sweat. 

The two of us laid against the table, deep pants leaving both our mouths. Spencer pulled out, tucking himself back in his pants. “Thank you” I giggled, pushing myself up from the table, and shuffling my skirt back down my legs. 

When I turned around I was met with the sight of a sweaty Spencer, running his hands through his tousled hair. “You look fine, Spence.”

I could tell Spencer was trying his hardest to contain his smile, probably wanting to stay mad at me. But as soon as his eyes met mine, his face broke into a soft smile, my own following suit. I took a step forward, wrapping my arms around his torso, and letting my head rest against his chest. “I love you” I murmured against his shirt. 

His arms wrapped around my back, pulling me closer to him, “I love you too” he replied, placing a kiss to the top of my head.

“Okay, I have to go,” Spencer said, letting his arms fall back to his side.

I pulled back, unwrapping my arms from his body. “Don’t forget your belt,” I nodded towards his belt that was left discarded on the floor in the midst of our frenzy. 

“I have an eidetic memory, Y/N, remember?” Spencer joked, snatching his belt from the floor, and looping it back through his pants. 

Rolling my eyes with a laugh I replied, “that doesn’t mean things can’t slip your mind, Spence.” 

“Actually-” he started.

I cut him off by opening the front door, “bye, have fun, I love you!” 

Spencer laughed, pecking me on the lips before heading out the door, looking over his shoulder to call out, “we’ll talk more about this later, Y/N. Don’t think you’re off the hook just yet.”

“Shit.” I groaned, letting the door fall shut.

Taglist: @pinkdiamond1016 @gubler-squad @garcias-batcave

[moeyy-writes]

Second Chance

Zak Bagans x Fem!Reader

Warnings: angst, arguing (nothing violent), mention of break-ups, happy ending (with fluff!). Oh, and a super cheesy, silly title. Let me know if I’m missing anything.

Word Count: 3.3k

My Master List

Zak lifted his head as a purple glimmer caught his eye. The room around him was loud, and the lights were flashing in a nauseatingly rapid rhythm. Why the hell did Aaron drag him to a place like this, especially when they had a lockdown the next night? He should be resting and reserving his strength, not wasting his time in some random Vegas nightclub.

It’s a good distraction, Aaron had told him. Although the music wasn’t bad, it wasn’t exactly Zak’s scene. Not anymore, anyway. He preferred less people, and more intimate conversation.

But, right now, he was mentally thanking his best friend for dragging him to this god-awful place as his eyes lifted to a familiar face in not-so-familiar clothing.

“Y/N?” He greeted you, his eyes scanning up and down your glittery purple dress. The deep cut accented your curves better than anything he had seen, and the length was shorter than he ever imagined you wearing.

Not that he was complaining one bit. You looked beautiful.

“Uh, hiya Zak.” You glanced around. “What the hell are you doing here?”

There was no way in hell Zak was there on purpose. He hated places like that, you knew that. But, you remembered seeing Aaron a few minutes earlier, which meant the other paranormal investigator wasn’t far behind.

It had been two weeks since the two of you had talked, and a day less since you had resigned from the show. The last time you talked to the blue-eyed lead investigator, he had admitted to you that he had more than platonic feelings for you. So, you ran.

It wasn’t that you didn’t share those feelings. No, it was quite the opposite. You had been harboring feelings for the older man for at least the past year, probably longer. But, there was no way he truly felt the same way. You knew Zak wasn’t the kind of person to stick around in a relationship for long, and you didn’t want to be the latest victim.

Zak glanced around, as if he was desperately searching for his partner in crime. But, the older friend was nowhere to be found. So, he relaxed his shoulders and locked his gaze on yours.

“Aaron dragged me here as a ‘distraction’. I guess that failed miserably, thank god.” He smiled sweetly, then his expression turned serious. “I’ve been calling you for days. I left voicemails. We thought something bad happened to you.”

You rolled your eyes and sighed. You didn’t want to be there either. Honestly, you had no idea why you were there. Distraction was the best word you could come up with. You were hoping to pick up someone to keep your mind off the man you wanted, but knew you could never have.

“Well, I’m alive, and I’m probably not going to be in town for much longer. I took a job in California. My condo there is going to be about a third the size and the same price as the one I have here, but it looks like a nice area.” You peered away, unable to look him directly in the eye. But, even in your peripheral vision, you could see the pain on his face.

“You’re moving? Wow. I guess I never saw that coming.” His voice was softer, almost hard to hear against the pounding music. His shoulders sank more in defeat, making your stomach ache. You knew he felt something for you, but it wouldn’t last. He’d get over you just as fast as the others you had seen come and go.

“Yeah, it’s a good gig. It’s with a news station outside of Sacramento. I’ll be editing their videos before they air.” Zak’s eyes remained wide and painful. You had been friends for years and had been on the show for about half a decade. So, it was obviously a shock to him when you resigned. It was a shock for everyone.

Billy, Aaron, and Jay had also left you multiple voicemails asking where you were and if you were okay. Hell, even Dakota reached out to see what was going on. You knew they loved you and cared, but you weren’t one for goodbyes, and you definitely didn’t want to think about Zak anymore.

“Y/N, we miss you. The last investigation wasn’t the same without you.” He stared down at his feet. “You didn’t even give an explanation. We thought you were in some kind of trouble.”

You narrowed your gaze. “Zak, don’t be stupid. You know exactly why I left.” Your body tensed. Was he really that naïve? Or was he in denial?

“What?” You rolled your eyes.

“Zak, what was our last conversation about?” You crossed your arms over your chest. He wasn’t this dumb. He wasn’t dumb at all. Sure, he had a dorky sense of humor, but he was brilliant. He had to know what was really going on.

His eyes widened again, this time in realization. “Wait, you left because I told you that I love you?” Bingo.

“Zak, do you know how many women I’ve heard you say that to, just for you to toss them to the curb within a few months? You haven’t had the best track record over the years I’ve known you.” You sighed in frustration. “You love ‘em and leave ‘em pretty quickly. I didn’t want to be another statistic.”

Zak slammed his back into the cement wall behind him. His gaze left you, hazing over with an emotion you couldn’t quite recognize. His tight, black shirt hugged his chest as he crossed his arms.

“You think I picked you as a target or something? Y/N, I wouldn’t have told you I loved you after five years if I didn’t mean it! I wouldn’t risk our entire friendship over something like that!” Zak’s chest heaved as his voice got louder. “I know I’ve had several girlfriends since I’ve met you, and I know none of them ever turned out to be much of anything. But, I didn’t know them for more than a week before things progressed. I didn’t have the time to get to know them like I know you.”

You clenched your teeth as you listened to his words. Oh, so he loved you because he knew you long enough to realize you weren’t after his money and fame? Great.

“Zak, why the fucking hell didn’t you say anything before? You’ve had five years to realize your feelings for me, to say something. We’ve traveled all over the country together for years, and we live within four miles of each other. Why are you just saying something now?” You could feel the frustration, and heartbreak, washing over you.

“Because it didn’t seem like you were going to be the one to say it.” You blinked as you took a half-step back.

“Excuse me?”

Zak smirked, pissing you off even more. “You think I didn’t notice they way you looked at me when you thought I wasn’t looking? Or how your hand lingered on my shoulder a little too long while we looked over evidence at Nerve? Y/N, I’m not blind.”

Shit. Shit, fuck, damn. He wasn’t blind at all. And, you were sure that the others saw it too. You had flirted with him for as long as you could remember, to the point that it became second nature.

“I didn’t say anything for the same reason I left. I didn’t want to be another Zak Bagans statistic.”

Zak unfolded his arms and stared at you. His eyes were dark, but not with anger, but pain. He tilted his head ever so slightly as he took a step forward.

“Y/N, do you really think I’m that much of a monster? After all of these years, spending weeks at a time with each other, do you really think that I’m incapable of loving someone?” Your heart was about to pound out of your chest. No, you didn’t think he was a monster. Hell, you loved him for how caring and kind he was to everyone around him. He may have carried a cocky, bad-boy persona, but he was really a complete marshmallow under those muscles.

“I don’t think that. I just saw a pattern and didn’t want to be a part of it.” Zak just nodded at your words, leaning back against the wall. You could see his thoughts forming behind his eyes. His face was surprisingly soft, considering his obvious anger.

Zak nodded as he sighed. “Y/N, do you know what the problem was with those other girls?” He let out a sigh. “They weren’t you—”

“Oh, don’t give me that cliché crap, Zak.” You rolled your eyes, unable to contain a frustrated chuckle.

“I mean it. I know it sounds cheesy, but you know me. That’s my humor. And, that’s my entire point. You know me, my humor, and almost everything that swims around in my weirdo brain. And, for a while, I think that scared me. But, now I know that’s something special. You get me like those other girls didn’t. I mean, you know me in ways most other people in my life don’t.”

He wasn’t wrong. When he needed someone to talk to, and Aaron was busy, he called you. He knew you’d give him an ear at three in the morning and would help him with just about anything. And, until now, it was a two-way street. He was there for you whenever you needed someone.

And that was what set you apart from the others. You bothered to know him. You quickly realized that he reached out to you even when he was in a relationship. He didn’t go to whoever he was dating at the time because they didn’t listen like you did.

They didn’t care like you did.

“Fuck,” you muttered. “Zak, I—” Tears threatened in your eyes. It was you who was blind all this time. And now you had pushed away the man you loved when he said he loved you back.

You turned away from him, squeezing your eyes shut. Who cared if your mascara was waterproof or not? You didn’t care what you looked like, or where you were anymore. All you could think about was the pain in your chest.

“I’m sorry, Zak. I have to go—”

“No! I’m not letting you walk away again. Y/N, I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I get it. I know what you saw.” Zak reached out, gently taking you upper arm.

“It’s what I didn’t see that’s killing me now,” you muttered, nearly drowned out by the music.

Zak turned you back towards him, smiling sweetly at you. “I know. I get it. I think we both do.” He glanced around the packed room. “How about we take a step outside so we don’t lose our voices,” he suggested with his award-winning smile.

It was his softness that sent you over the edge. You let the tears fall as they nodded, allowing your best friend to lead you out of that bustling club and onto the quieter, cooler sidewalk outside.

It took you a few minutes to form another coherent thought; your mind was reeling. Zak wasn’t the monster, you were. Not that you actually thought he was a monster, but this whole situation made you feel like the biggest nightmare of a person one could ever think up. You had to just run from a scary situation instead of being a grown ass woman and expressing your fears. You had been able to openly talk about all sorts of emotions on the show when you were with the guys. But, when it came to actual adult emotions, you ran.

Very mature.

And now you probably skewed the way Zak thought of you for the worse, and there was probably no coming back.

Zak leaned down in attempt to meet your tear-filled gaze. “Y/N, tell me what you’re feeling right now.” You sucked in a whimper and squeezed your eyes shut, letting a new stream of tears free.

“I feel like a fucking idiot. I feel like I royally screwed up and I’ve ruined something I wanted for years, but never thought could happen. I-I don’t know. I don’t know what to think now.” Your voice trembled. You were tired of trying to look tough. It was too exhausting.

“You aren’t an idiot. You were scared, and you weren’t seeing the whole picture. I get that. And I forgive you, not that I really think that I need to forgive you for anything.” His hand cupped your cheek and lifted your head up. “This whole thing was a huge misunderstanding.”

“Definitely. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me most, Zak. I did what those other girls did when you needed someone. I’m so sorry—”

“No, don’t be. I told you, Y/N, I understand. Fear makes us do stupid thing. Out of everyone in the world, I know you know that.” He sucked in a long breath, then let out a shaky sigh. “I love you, Y/N. I do. I don’t just throw those words around. I love you so much, and I have for a long time. If you want to move to California, I get it.”

Shit. Fucking shitty fuck. You clenched your teeth. What the hell have you done?

“I—well—not really. Shit, Z, I really fucked up.” Your mind raced as your breathing quickened. Your head started to feel funny, but you tried to keep yourself grounded. “I mean, I haven’t sold my condo yet, and I can withdraw from my offer on the one in Sacramento. And I can decline the job. But, I left the show. I don’t have a job anymore.” Your words came out in panicked breaths as your hands clenched into fists.

Zak smirked. “Well, if you do want to stick around, I think I can pull a few strings and get you your old job back. I mean, we haven’t replaced you or anything. It’s not like we could if we tried.” You nodded slowly, taking everything in.

“Zak, I’m so sorry,” you muttered as you reached out, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. His arms quickly supported your waist, cradling you against his chest. He gently rubbed circles with one hand on your back.

“Hey, shhh, it’s okay. Y/N, it’s alright.” You nodded against his chest, repeating the mantra in your head. After a few minutes, you started to believe it. Everything was going to be okay. You were there, and you just happened to run into Zak that night. Not that you were much of a believer in fate, but that had to mean something.

After a while, you pulled away from him. You peered up at him, fully aware that you had proven your mascara was less that waterproof.

“I’m sorry Zak.” You nibbled nervously on your lower lip.

He just shook his head. “I know, Y/N. You don’t need to keep saying it. I told you, I forgive you, not that I blame you for anything.” He reached head hand out. “So, are you staying after all?”

You nodded. “Yeah, I’m staying.” Zak’s smile stretched across his lips.

“Good. And what about us?” Your heart raced like it did just a few weeks ago, when he admitted his feelings for you. But, you sure as fuck weren’t going to run this time.

“I love you too, Zak. You already know that. I know I’ve done a piss-poor job of showing that over the last few weeks. I have some catching up to do.” You finally smiled under the drying tears. Zak chuckled, shaking his head.

“Bullshit. You’ve done enough over the years. No catch up needed, just a little Dijon mustard.” You blinked for a moment, then busted into laughter. He could never pass up a pun, no matter the circumstance.

“Oh my god, Zak,” you chuckled. “Really? Now?” You couldn’t stop laughing, which only made him smile wider.

“Hey, I made you smile. I call that a win.” He wrapped his arms around you again, causing your heart to speed up yet again. This time, you welcomed the feeling, loving the way you felt at home in his arms.

You glanced up at Zak and sighed. “Well, I guess there is no point in either of us being here, huh? I mean, I look like a fucking mess, and well, I guess my original plan is no longer happening.” Zak raised in eyebrow and huffed a laugh.

“Wait, what was your original plan?” His face tensed as he came to a realization. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Either way, you look stunning.” You blushed under the streams of black mascara you were sure were plaguing your face.

“Thanks, Zak.”

You glanced around, eyeing the door as people came and went around you. You had totally forgotten about Aaron. Had Zak driven there with him? Or was Zak Aaron’s ride home?

“I hope Aaron is okay in there,” you mentioned casually, not wanting to sound too nosy. Zak’s eyes widened.

“Oh, man. He probably thinks I either went home with someone or got lost. Probably the latter.” Zak reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. His screen was littered with notifications, probably from Aaron. Zak rolled his eyes. “Yep, he thinks I’m lost.” You both laughed.

“Did he drive you here? Is he okay to drive home?” Zak shook his head.

“Nah, we got a cab. He’s probably loaded. We should fine him before he hurts himself.” Zak and you rolled your eyes in sync, then laughed. He was probably right, there was no way Aaron and alcohol were ever a good mix, especially when he was alone.

“Good idea.” You took Zak’s arm and made your way for the door.

Zak paused a few steps from the door. “Did you drive here?” You shook your head. “Do you want to ride with us? We can go back to my place for a while and just, I dunno, do something boring. If you want to talk more, we can do that. Or, we can just watch a movie or whatever. I just know that I don’t like being alone after emotional situations like this, and I know you’re the same way.” He placed his hand over yours, which rested softly on his arm. “No pressure.”

He knew you all too well.

“Yeah, that actually sounds great. I wouldn’t mind a movie in your fancy shmancy theater.” You grinned as Zak chuckled.

“Deal. I don’t know what my inventory situation is on popcorn, but we’ll survive.” You nodded in agreement, then went to take a step towards the door, but Zak gently stopped you. You turned to him, raising a brow.

“Zak?” He just smiled at you for a moment.

“One more thing.” You should have seen this coming. He reached out and took your jaw gently in his other hand, then leaned in, pressing his lips to yours.

You gasped as you made contact, but quickly eased into it. He lingered, letting out a low laugh, before pulling away. You followed him as he leaned back, not wanting to separate just yet.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” Zak whispered. You rolled your eyes and shoved his chest. He truly was the king of cliches.

“Oh my god, you cheeseball! One serious moment is all I ask of you!” you teased, before taking his arm again.

“You’ll get one of those at some point, hopefully.” You rolled your eyes for the millionth time.

“Way to keep me on my toes, handsome,” you retorted. Then, you followed him back into the club in search of your friend.

Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated! <3

[doctenwho]

Ten’s Proposal

Sure can do! I’m not the best at romantic stuff (I’m attempting to learn, and getting better I think), but hopefully it’s what you were looking for! Thanks for the request, and I’m glad you like the content!

Get ready for some Ten being a giant romantic and a bit of a nervous wreck! 

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3,557

Summary: Read the prompt above!

(Gif doesn’t belong to me, credit to creator!)

“Right then!”  

Your body jerked roughly as the TARDIS landed, feet slipping a bit as your hand shot out to grab one of the rails behind you to ground yourself. Not only had you not been expecting to land right then (the Doctor had given no warning), but you’d also been a bit lost in your own head.  

“We’re here,” the Doctor continued on with a grin, pushing a few buttons and pulling a lever on the TARDIS’s control panel, “c’mon then, a whole new planet for us to explore!”

You righted your footing, pulling yourself upright in order to glare at the Doctor halfheartedly. He turned towards you with an excited grin, but blinked when he caught sight of your glare.  

“Whot?” His eyebrow rose in confusion and his eyes tracked your movements of steadying yourself.

“A bit of a warning would’ve been nice,” you huffed as you moved to join the Doctor at the console, he gave you an apologetic smile before averting his attention back down to the screen on the TARDIS’s console. “Where are we exactly?”

“A small planet just beyond the milky-way. We’re about thirty-four thousand light-years, give or take, away from your earth.” The Doctor explained, turning the screen he’d been studying towards you so you could get an image of what he was talking about. A lot of what was written on the screen you didn’t understand, number higher than you could count and planets listed that you’d never even dreamed could exist.

“Thirty-four thousand light-years away from earth?” You gaped, trying to make sense of what was being shown, “how far is that?”

“Hn,” the Doctor paused, taking a second to do some quick mental math, “a light-year is nearly six trillion miles, and the milky way is roughly twenty-seven thousand light-years away from your earth, so, this planet would be... eh one point nine million nine hundred eighty-seven thousand three hundred twenty-six multiplied by ten to the power of seventeen miles? Give or take, once more.”

You watched as the Doctor ran a hand through his hair, almost as if he were trying to clear away the numbers from his brain, then grinned at you.  

“...what?” you couldn’t help but ask. Everything he’d just said had really gone in one ear and out the other. It was like he’d just started speaking Gallifreyan to you, when you knew he was still speaking English, just... really, really smart English.

“Alot,” he simplified for you with a fond smile, “a very, very large amount of earth miles.”

“We’re very far away,” you mumbled, eyes still locked on the screen, trying (and failing) to make sense of the large line of numbers.

“Incredibly far away,” the Doctor agreed with a laugh. “Now, we’re not here to talk maths, we’re here to have a look around, right?”  

You didn’t really say anything else as you watched the man stride towards the TARDIS doors and throw them open, he turned back to grin at you, then gestured you over before stepping out of the TARDIS, “it’s just as beautiful as I remember,” the Doctor sighed happily, before glancing back at you and holding a hand out as an invitation, “well, c’mon, (Y/N).”  

You barely even hesitated before moving to follow him out, peeking out the doorway before gaping at the scene before you and taking the Doctor’s proffered hand.  

He pulled you out, into his side so he could throw an arm over your shoulder, “welcome to Noelani, (Y/N).”

“It’s beautiful,” you whispered, stunned.

It was an ocean, a sandy beach, with a beautiful ocean.  

But it wasn’t anything like you’d ever seen before. The water was a rich purple, and the sand a stunning white that could put the Bahamas or Hawaii back on earth to shame. The sky was clouded, but two bright orange suns could be seen shining high above the waves.  

“It’s... it’s beautiful,” you stammered, because it truly was. It was like an edited photo from one of the beaches on your planet. Familiar, but completely out of your world too.

“Indeed,” the Doctor nodded, stepping down and dragging you along with him. “I’ve always loved coming here. It’s one of my favorite places in this universe, since no matter when I come the suns are always shining.”

The man paused, thoughtful before he added a slow, “I haven’t come around for a while, but it’s still exactly like I remember.”

“You stopped coming?” You asked as you fell into step with him, barely able to draw your eyes from the world around you. It didn’t look real, but then again, when did anything the Doctor showed you look real?

You couldn’t imagine knowing a place like this and not coming back—as of now, you’d surely want the Doctor to bring you back and you hadn’t even left yet.

“It’s been... fifty-seven years? Fifty-eight?”

“Wow,” you turned to look at the Doctor. The two of you were down by the water now, close enough to touch if you wanted, but you stayed back with the Doctor. He wasn’t looking at you, just staring out to sea thoughtfully.  

You stood beside him for a moment, letting him think, or whatever it was he was doing, before you cleared your throat, drawing in his eyes, “is it... okay to touch?”

The Doctor’s eyes followed your gesture downwards towards the water that was slowly climbing towards your shoes. If the water did prove to be safe, you’d probably take your shoes off and walk along the sand—or maybe in the water if it was warm enough to do so.

“Oh,” he looked from the water back to you, “oh, of course! It’s perfectly safe,” then, the Doctor was crouching down and dunking his hand into the water, whether to prove its safety to you, or to test it before you could in case he was wrong, you couldn't tell, “yes, it’s perfectly alright. No different from the ocean on earth.”

“Really?” you asked seriously, leaning forwards to dip your fingers into the purple water. It was perfectly warm—cool enough to be refreshing, but heated enough from the suns that you could jump right in like a regular swimming pool on earth.

“Of course,” the Doctor nodded, standing to his full height and wiping the wetness on his hand off onto his trousers, “well, a bit different.”

“Because it’s purple?”

“No-- well, yes,” the Doctor laughed lightly, “it is purple, but that wasn’t what I was going to say. This planet is really like nothing else in the galaxy.”

“What does that mean?” you asked curiously as you took your hand from the water and shook off the drops clinging to your fingers. The water came off just like regular water would, you’d kinda expected the rich purple colour to stain your hands.

“Everything is clean,” the Doctor explains, “it’s untouched by anything, clean of humans and creatures, and even Gallifreyians. There’re no lifeforms of any sort. No aquatic animals, no fish, or trees, no underwater plant life. It’s created its own ecosystem without really having the necessary components to create one. Technically speaking, nothing that breaths oxygen should be able to survive here.”

“How can it be untouched if we’re here?” you ask before jumping onto the next, more important question, “wait, how are we breathing?!”

“That,” the Doctor turns to you with a grin, “is the fun bit. It cleans its self. Algae unlike any other, on any other planet I’ve seen. It cleans and filters the water and air, turns any carbon dioxide that happens to be here back into oxygen like any other photosynthesizing plant. Even the sand gets cleaned, which I’m still not sure how that happens when this planet is inhabited.”  

The Doctor blinked in mild confusion before continuing on, “in two weeks, it’ll be like we never even stepped foot on this planet. It always reverts back to its pristine initial state.”

“That’s amazing,” you grinned, “it’s so beautiful here, why do more people not know it exists?”

“It’s hidden a bit,” the Doctor grinned in return, “a gem hidden behind the universe’s tourist attraction, like the milky way. I only found it because I was looking for it- well, I was looking for nothing, seeing where the TARDIS took me, but found it anyways.”

“The TARDIS made a good find then,” you gave the man a smile, taking his hand again after wiping any of the water that had still clung to you had even after the shake onto your shirt.

“She did,” the man laughed, “as far as I know, no one else knows of this planet, but that’s just going off of that I’ve never seen anyone else here before.”

“More ocean planet for us then,” you laughed as the Doctor started walking, pulling you along carefully.

“Yes,” the man smiled adoringly, “but we can’t stay here too long. We’ll run out of oxygen, since there’s only the algae here to filter the carbon dioxide back into oxygen. That process is a bit slower than us breathing though. We have... I’d say three days between the two of us of fresh air, before we’ll need to head off and let it revert back once more.”

“Three days seems like a good vacation,” you joked. The Doctor laughed, dragging his thumb along your knuckles where he was still holding your hand before he interlaced your fingers together.

“Shall we walk along the shore?” the Doctor offered softly, looking down at you fondly. He had a soft smile on his lips, and his eyes kept scanning your face, “there’s a peninsula a bit away but it has a beautiful view.”

“Sounds good to me,” you gave a supportive one shoulder shrug before smiling at him, “I’m going to take my shoes off though. I’d rather not have my shoes filled with sand.”

The Doctor nodded, releasing your hand so you could kick off your shoes and gather them up so they didn’t get lost or forgotten on this planet.  

“I’ll carry them,” the Doctor volunteered, taking them from your hands and holding them by their collars in one hand. He slipped his other hand back into yours, grinning at you before leading you along down the shore.  

You’d never seen anything as beautiful as this planet. Not on earth, not on any other planet the Doctor had taken you to in the years you’d known him. It was unique, and lovely and it made you feel special that the Doctor would bring you here. He’d spoken highly of the place since he’d brought you here, and it made your heart stutter in your chest that he thought you were worthy enough to show it to you.

The Doctor looked lost in thought as he led you along. Occasionally he’d glance in your direction, almost as if he were checking to make sure you were still with him, even though he was holding your hand. When you’d catch him staring at you, you’d raise an eyebrow in question, but he’d just smile widely and turn away without a word.  

The two of you walked for a while, but you couldn’t complain. The sand was soft and almost fluffy under your feet. It wasn’t as rocky and granulated as it was on earth, but fine and almost like a dense grainy dust. And even with the two suns shining down on you, you weren’t hot or sweating after all the walking.  

You were walking closer to the ocean, and every few minutes the water would crawl up and brush against your toes and the sides of your feet, but it was really nice. The Doctor was on your other side, staying on the dry sand since he hadn’t taken his shoes off.  

It wasn’t long until the peninsula came into view, just as the Doctor had described it. The purple water crashed softly against the sand; waves small but visible. You hurried your pace, dragging the Doctor behind you this time. You wanted to stand in the middle of the sand and see nothing but water in front of you and to your sides.  

You really wished you had a camera of some sort because it really was breathtaking. You knew people on earth who would’ve killed to see something like this. And you really weren’t sure anyone would really believe you if you told them.

“Do you like it?” the Doctor asked by your side when the two of you stopped moving. You turned your attention from the waves, looking towards him and nodding with a wide smile.  

“I really do,” you told him.

“Good,” the Doctor smiled, almost like he was pleased with himself. The two of you just stood for a moment, looking out at the sea.  

“You know,” the Doctor spoke, “there is a reason I brought you here...”

“Oh?” you looked back over at the Doctor. He’d set your shoes on the ground beside him, and his hand that wasn’t holding your hand was tucked in his suit jacket pocket. “And what would that reason be?”  

“There was something I wanted to ask you, I’m just not sure how to do so. I feel like it differentiates between planets, and I... well, I don’t want to do it wrong.” The Doctor turned towards you, tilting his head as he let your hand go. Before you could frown at him doing so, you were distracted by him stuffing the hand you’d just been holding in his remaining pocket.  

It looked like he was looking for something. Searching through his pockets—it wasn’t unusual for him to lose something in his bigger on the inside pockets.

“You can ask me anything,” you promised, watching the man closely.  

“I know,” the Doctor paused in his searching through his pockets to grin at you, “now, uh, as you know I’ve had a few companions through my life who choose to stay with me and travel through space and time. And as much as I love having companions with me, keeping me company, I’ve learned not to... get attached to humans. For obvious regenerating Time-Lord reasons.”

You weren’t really sure where this was going.  

“But I, well, the thing is, I’ve gotten a bit attached to you. Well, more than a bit attached. You’ve been with me for, well, for years now. You’ve been a constant in my life for so long now. I... well, I can’t really imagine my life without you. There have been very few people that... that I love, and you’re one of them.”

You didn’t say anything, letting the man sort through whatever he was trying to do. You were sure anything you said would’ve distracted him. So it was best to just let him do whatever he needed to do before you replied, or touched him or anything along those lines.

The Doctor looked down for a moment before looking back up at you. He pulled one of his hands from his pocket and took your hand into his once more, holding it tight and secure, but soft as well.

“You make me happy, and you’re always by my side, and, well, the TARDIS loves you too. You’re... well, you’re just perfect. You’re perfect and I’ve not thought about you as just my companion for quite some time now. I... I love you; I love you differently than I love my past companions.”

“I love you too,” you whispered, squeezing his hand softly.

“I know,” the man gave you a goofy grin, “I’ve known that all along, but you never knew I loved you in return. I have for... for a long time now.”

It made you smile that the man was saying he loved you. You’d told him you loved him when the two of you first started kind of dating—which was after about a year and a half earth time of space travelling together.  

The Doctor would never call it dating, but that’s what it was, whether he liked it or not. Maybe it was more courting to him, but whatever it was, it was as close to human dating as you could get. And you loved every minute of it.  

He’d never once muttered the words back to you though, not even the times you were sure he was going to say it back, or when he looked like he was biting his tongue to keep from repeating them back to you. He’d always had a sort of reluctance to saying anything overly fond-- like I love you, which you could understand. He’d probably said it too loved ones he lost along the way.  

You knew he loved you—but it was something else to actually hear him say it.  

“I should probably get on with it,” the Doctor mumbled. You eyed the Doctor hesitantly, curious but a little afraid of what could be coming next all the same.

He shook his head, as he cleared his throat, “it’s been a very long time since I’ve even thought about asking anyone this but,” the man suddenly dropped down onto one knee, managing to keep his hold on your hand, pull his second hand which had been tucked in his pocket the whole time out, and all without tumbling down, “(Y/N), my brilliantly amazing human companion, will you possibly do me the honors of marrying me?”

And it was then that your brain short circuited.  

In his hands was a ring. Small, but perfect. It had tiny little gems that you couldn’t really make out with the suns light casting through them and making them sparkle beautifully. The band was gold, but you were almost certain it wasn’t earth gold.

He’d just asked... he wanted to marry you. In that moment you didn’t know how to speak—how to express your enthusiastic agreeance to the proposal. You weren’t even sure you could form words beyond the unintelligible slur of letters falling from your mouth.

Marriage. The Doctor wanted to marry you.  

“I’m sorry if this was wrong for human ideations,” the Doctor mumbled, forcing you to blink yourself out of your excited daze, “I’ve only ever seen one romantic film from your earth, and I really tried to mimic it with the romantic setting and the ring and the monologue but if-”

“Yes.”

The Doctor froze, fingers tightening around yours for a split second before they relaxed. “Yes?” he repeated like he’d heard you wrong. He looked ready for rejection, even if you’d literally already said yes. He was still on one knee, staring up at you.

“Yes!” You gave a sharp, excited nod, which was followed by an almost frantic laugh. You reached your hand up to cover over your mouth, as if you could stop the unvoluntary sounds you were making, “yes. Yes, I’ll marry you, Doctor!”

It took less than a second for the Doctor to be up, pushing up into your space and grinning widely in excitement.  

“That was a yes!” The Doctor beamed, eyes lighting up in sheer excitement as he bounced on the balls of his feet where he was stood beside you, “you said yes! Oh, (Y/N), my love, you said yes!”

The Doctor slipped the ring he’d held out to you onto your engagement finger (on the wrong hand, but you’d fix it later), then he was cupping your cheeks and pulling you into a kiss you couldn’t be happier to accept.  

He pulled back in the same excitement he’d pulled you in with, eyes wide and adorning, and smile as bright as you’d ever seen it. You were sure your smile matched his almost identically. “You said yes,” he repeated, like he almost couldn’t believe it.

“I said yes,” you laughed, eyes watering as you looked up at the Doctor. His eyes were a bit wet too, but he looked more concerned over your damp eyes than his own.  

“You’re crying,” he whispered, cradling your jaw in his hands and swiping his thumbs under your eye lids to wipe away the tears.

“So are you,” you giggled, lightly slapping your hands on either of his cheeks so you could dry his tears as he’d done to you. “Happy tears,” you added as an explanation for the both of you.  

“Incredibly happy tears,” the Doctor gave a light laugh, “you’ve made me so incredibly happy, my love.”

“We’re getting married,” you dreamily whispered in reply. You still couldn’t believe it. You’d never really though the Doctor ever would’ve wanted something like this. Like marriage. And to a human no less.

“You’ll be my wife,” the Doctor agreed, eyes fondly settling on your face, “my beautiful wife.”

The Doctor pulled you into a hug, and you happily returned it, pressing the side of your face against his chest. He held you tightly, settling his cheek atop of you head, but you could almost feel him smiling above you. His hearts were sped up, excited and happy, and it made your whole being light up with warmth.

“I really do love you,” he whispered lovingly above you, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the top of your head, “I’m so happy you said yes.”

“I love you too,” you reminded for the second time, grinning into the fabric of his suit jacket. “I always have, and I always will.”

<><><><>

Hope you enjoyed Ten’s overly excessive saying of the word ‘well’ while he’s nervous! As always, let me know if it wasn’t what you were looking for! I do hope I did the proposal justice, but I just don’t know with romance.

Oh, and Noelani means heavenly mist in Hawaiian as far as I know (from Google) and I thought it was an adorable name for the ocean planet. Now, as always, thanks for reading and new promps always appreciated!

[puccbunni]

“Friends” Pt.2

| Auston Matthews | Maple Leafs |

{ Senorita - Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello }

Hey guys I am so sorry for the gap in between parts 1 and 2 I’ve just been crazy busy moving, but here is part 2 for everyone!! This has been edited with the precision of a kindergartener.

Also to anyone living in the US Happy Thanksgiving Yall ❤️

WARNINGS:

Swearing

Drinking

Smut (sorry!! Not sorry 🙄)

A light knocking wakes you from your sleep, you grab your phone to look at the time and see that it’s almost two in the afternoon. After leaving Austons condo at four that same morning you booked an Uber back to your apartment and was able to thankful sneak back in without waking Steph or Mitch.

“Yeah” you call out to who you presume is Steph.

The door opens and Steph walks in with a bottle of water and painkillers and sets them on your nightstand.

“Hey hun how you feeling?” She asks handing you two painkillers.

“Just tired,you?” You take the two painkillers from Steph and pray they quickly mend your throbbing head.

“A little hungover but nothing too bad.” She says as you reach back over for your phone to check through your notifications.

Steph continues talking to you but you are barely listening as you see a message from Auston.

Auston:

Didn’t want to say goodbye?

Your cheeks start to darken as memories from the night before come flooding back.

“Who are you talking to?” Steph asks trying to peer over the top of your phone.

“Ahh no one, just a friend.” You say locking your phone and tossing it to the other side of your bed.

“The same friend you disappeared with last night?”

“What?” You stare at Steph, not knowing how you were going to explain your way out of this one.

“I left because I felt sick.”

Maybe she saw you and Auston leave the bar together, or maybe she just put two and two together after you and Auston both disappeared at the same time.

“Oh Please, Mitch heard you sneak back in this morning!” She laughs. “So was this ‘friend’ good?”

“Maybe.” You mumble, bring the covers up to hide your face.

“Do I get to know his name at least?” She asked pulling the covers away from your face.

His name... there was one problem with that, did Auston want people to know you had hooked up? That was a question you didn’t know the answer to because you were too chicken shit to wait until the boy woke up to leave.

“Umm just a guy from my history class, you wouldn’t know him.” You lie hoping she won’t push the topic any further.

“Mmhmm, well who ever he is at least you are finally getting some, I thought you’d turned into a nun there for a second.” She laughs leaving you alone with your thoughts.

Steph did have a point besides your little escapade from the night before, you hadn’t slept with anyone since your ex boyfriend, Elliot, had broken up with you 6 months ago via text after 3 years of being together, claiming ‘it was too hard for him to do it in person’. He too had started out as a friend but after spending every day together it quickly turned into more, although you hadn’t slept with Elliot before you had started dating. After the breakup it took you a few months for you to get your life back to normal and not feel like you would burst into tears whenever you were alone. It was for this reason you had decided against the whole dating thing to protect your still slightly broken heart.

But now you had really gone and put your foot in it by sleeping with Auston, it wasn’t like you regretted it, hell it had been the best sex you’d had in a long while, but you knew that sex complicated things, it always complicated things. That’s part of the reason you had left before he woke up, so you could just avoid the awkward conversation and pretend like nothing ever happened and that’s exactly what you plan to do.

It had been almost a month since the night you had slept with Auston and you would be lying if the events of that night hadn’t crept their way into your mind especially while you were laying in bed, trying to lull yourself to sleep. But no amount of cold showers helped stop the images flashing through your brain, this had you pent up and frustrated beyond belief which is why when a few friends from your classes in college mentioned going to a bar you jumped at the chance to find some male attention to help give you some relief between your aching thighs.

You had been sat at the bar with three of your friends for a few hours now just sipping on your beer and talking about one of your recent classes and your mutual dislike for the professor. It was a slow night with no one particularly catching your eye. Just as you were about to give up on your search you heard your name shouted from across the bar.

“Y/N!” You turn your head in the direction it had come from to see a familiar mop of blonde hair.

“Willy, hey.” You slip from your stool as he pulls you in for a hug.

“What are you doing here?” You ask.

“We just got back from a road trip and thought we’d celebrate with a few drinks.” He replies.

“We?” You raise your brow looking at Willy and seeing no one around him.

“Yeah, Auston’s here.” He motions towards the door and that’s when you notice his brunette curls above the rest of the crowd.

As Auston gets closer he’s scanning the room looking for Willy and your eyes meet, the side of his mouth pulls up into a slight smirk and you can already tell the rest of your night is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

“You’re alive.” Auston says stopping about a foot in front of you eyeing you up and down.

“Last time I checked.” You shrugged trying to play cool as you calmed your raging nerves.

“Huh just hadn’t heard from you, thought you had to have been dead.” He crosses his large arms across his broad chest.

“Nope, just busy I guess.”

Will starts up a conversation with you and you introduce them both to your friends who invite the pair to join your group much to your frustration they agree to join. Auston had chosen to sit next to you and with the close proximity you could smell his cologne and feel the heat radiating from his arm that would lightly brush against yours every so often. You spent most of the next hour trying not to make eye contact with Auston or trying to put a tiny bit more space between the two of you without anyone noticing the thick tension between you both. No matter how hard you tried or how many more drinks you downed you couldn’t stop the wetness pooling in your lower half, so you excused yourself and went outside the bar just to get some much needed fresh air. You closed your eyes and inhaled deeply taking in the cool Toronto air, you really needed to get a grip, it was one time, one brief lapse in judgement, one night, you really shouldn’t be giving it this much thought and it didn’t have to be this awkward, you were friends, that’s all just friends. So you just needed to treat him like a friend right??

“Y/N.” A voice pulls you out of your thoughts and you don’t need to open your eyes to know who it was.

“Auston.” You reply.

“You okay?” He asks as he stands just in front of you forcing you to meet his eye for the first time in the last hour.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” You ask back, dropping your eyes to the ground.

“Hey, look at me.” Auston gently places a hand under your chin encouraging you to look at him. There’s a look in his eye it looks like he’s almost worried, nervous even.

“If you regret what happened...”

“I don’t regret it.” The words fly out of your mouth before you can stop them.

“Sleeping with you, I mean, I don’t... uh... I don’t regret it.”

You see the worry quickly leave his eyes.

“Then why are you avoiding me huh?”

“I am not avoiding you.” You lie.

He cocks his eyebrow.

“Pfft, you left before I woke up.”

“And?” You shrug.

“And then you didn’t reply to my text.” He continues.

“That’s not me avoiding you, like I said that’s me being busy Auston.” You say as convincingly as you could.

“Okay and what about tonight, you haven’t said more than a handful of words to me and you cant even look at me.”

“What do you want me to say?” You ask.

“What ever the hell is going on in that head of yours, we’re friends Y/N...” but before he can finish what he’s saying you cut him off.

“We were friends Auston, but we fucked that up.” You take a step back from him.

“How did we fuck up anything?” He asks looking genuinely confused.

“Sex. It always complicates things, it fucks up everything.” You say bluntly.

“I disagree.” He states.

“Of course you do.” You roll your eyes.

“No seriously, we had fun, well I think we had fun...” he pauses look at you for an answer.

“It was fun I guess.” You say quietly avoiding eye contact. You hear him laugh slightly at your response before he continues.

“Then what’s the problem? What’s wrong with two friends having a little fun together?” He asks.

You look at him for a second and a thought enters your mind for the first time, friends could have fun together right, and it could just be friends, no emotions no feelings, just fun. So with the courage granted to you from the copious amount of alcohol flowing through your bloodstream you look Auston in the eye and ask

“Is that what you want?”

“What?” He cocks an eyebrow, confused by the question.

“Friends, that have fun. Is that what you want?” You ask taking a step closer towards him.

“Do you mean friends with benefits?”

You simply nod.

“Are you offering to be friends with benefits with me Y/N?”

“I like being friends with you Auston, and I don’t wanna loose that friendship and this.” You motion between the two of you.

“This is awkward and I hate it, and that’s partly my fault I shouldn’t have left before we spoke that morning I am sorry. But I am not ready for something serious and I didn’t want to have that conversation hungover. And I am sorry I didn’t reply to you I just didn’t know what to say. But you’re right that night was fun and if you want we can keep having fun, no emotions, no expectations just fun.” You say trying to gauge his reaction.

“You’re being serious?” He asks. His eyes dancing with mischief and excitement in a way that was turning you on.

“You want this Y/N?”

You simply nod again.

“I need to hear you say it baby.” He says closing the gap between you.

You bite your bottom lip hearing his nickname for you as the wetness in between your legs becomes more and more intense.

“I want this.” You say as his lips crash down onto yours.

You wrap your hands around his neck feeling the back of his brunette curls brush against your fingertips as his large hands slid down to your waist, slowly running up and down your curves until they landed on the curve of your ass. You bit down on his bottom lip needing more, more for from the kiss, more from Auston, a low moan came from the back of his throat as he took your cue and deepened the kiss and as his tongue entered his mouth you tugged tighter on his hair.

“Umm Y/N?” Your friend Sarah said as she opened the door to the bar.

You quickly jumped apart from Auston and brought your hand up to you lips as if to hide any evidence of what you and Auston were just doing.

“Yeah Sarah what’s up?” You ask trying to act as normal as possible.

“We were just heading off but didn’t want to leave Will by himself.” She explains looking between you and Auston.

“Oh okay uhh... we will come in.” You say as you walk past her and back into the bar.

As you pass her she gives a quick smirk and whispers

“You have some explaining to do on Monday.” You cheeks go a deep red shade as you drop your head and walk back to where the rest of the group was sat.

After your friends had left you sat with Willy and Auston sipping on your drink, looking at Auston over the top of your bottle trying desperately to pay attention to whatever it was Willy was saying, and not climb across the table and crawl into Austons lap in front of the entire bar. But Auston was making this far to hard, the way his hand was twirling his drink in his hand made you think of how his hands ran up and down your waist, how they gripped your ass tightly as he deepened the kiss you two had shared no long ago. The way his leg brushed against yours under the table. Or how you knew his eyes were mentally undressing you right in that very moment. You tried to squeeze your thighs together to bring some relief to your aching core, but it was no use because you knew the only thing that was going to bring you relief was the man sat right in front of you only a few feet away.

“Y/N?” Will asks snapping you out of your trance.

“Huh, sorry Will what did you say.” You ask shaking your head.

“I asked if you wanted another drink, are you okay?” He asks looking concerned.

“You look a little flushed.”

“I uhh I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink maybe I should go.” You say purposely stumbling as you stood from your seat.

You locked eyes with Auston, hoping he would get your drift and play along and thankfully he did.

“Yeah maybe I should get you an Uber.” He says standing and coming over to your side putting an arm around you waist to steady you.

“Maybe Matts should go with you, you really don’t look so good Y/N.” Willy suggests.

“I am so sorry Willy.” You apologise leaning closer into Auston.

“Don’t be as long as you’re all good.”

“Thank you.” You mumble

“You got her Matts?” Will asks Auston.

“Yeah of course, the Uber’s on its way, I’ll see you tomorrow man.” He says as he helps guide you towards the door.

As soon as the Uber pulls up you open the door and slide in practically dragging Auston in behind you and as soon he shuts the door behind him you attach your lips to his. Auston pulls back slightly and you give him a quizzical look

“What’s wrong?” You ask worrying that he had changed his mind about your new little arrangement.

“I thought you were drunk.” He says looking at you.

“I mean yeah that’s what typically happens at a Bar Auston.” You state as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Wait so you’re good, I just don’t want to take advantage of you if you’re too far gone.” He says tucking a stray piece of your hair behind your ear.

“Aust, I am good, I swear. But thank you for checking.” You say pecking his lips.

“I just needed to get out of there because I was about 30 seconds away from crawling over the table and fucking you in that bar.” You whisper into his ear as you lightly bite on his earlobe.

Auston groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, as he opened them you saw that his pupils had blown and had darken. He lightly grabbed you by the throat and brought your lips to his. His tongue quickly entered your mouth as he moved his hand from your throat to your hair tangling his fingers into your long strands. You ran your hands over his hard chest as you moaned into the kiss tugging on he’s black button up shirt wanting it off.

“Patience, baby.” He mumbled

His lips detaching from yours and he kissed along your jaw and down your neck sucking and nipping softly until he reached your sweet spot just above your collar bone, a soft whined echoed through the small space of the car, you could feel Auston smile against your skin as he began sucking harder you had to bite down on your bottom lip to stop the moans from falling out of your mouth. You felt his other calloused hand run up your the inside of your thighs and begin to stroke your clothed core. You tried to grip his wrist to stop his advances as you became painfully aware of the driver sat less then a foot away from you. But this didn’t stop him as he slipped a finger past your laced panties and into you dripping folds.

“Jesus.” He moaned against your skin as he felt the wetness that had pooled in your core. He spread you wetness running is fingers from your clit back down to you entrance teasing it slightly every time he brushed over the opening. Your hips bucked trying to find just a tiny bit more pleasure from his fingertips as you began rubbing yourself against his hand not caring how needy you being. Auston bought his finger back to your entrance and slipped his middle finger in slowly pumping it in and out, your nails raked down the front of his chest as he added a second finger bringing his thumb up to your clit and started rubbing firm circles on your sensitive bud. Maybe it was the fact it had been almost a month since anyone had touched you or the fact a stranger was sat right in front of you but you could feel your orgasim building quickly, like a steam train with no breaks. You run your hands up to cup Austons cheeks as you guide his lips back to yours in hopes you can drown out your moans in the kiss. Feeling your walls contract around his fingers, Auston increased his speed pumping in and out faster and deeper than before, whilst applying more pressures your clit.

“Let go baby.” He groaned softly in your ear. And at those words your orgasim crashed over you like waves on a shoreline. You dropped you head onto Austons shoulder and bit your lip so hard you were truly shocked you didn’t draw blood. Austons fingers didn’t stop moving until you had ridden out every last drop of pleasure he could give to you in the back seat of the Uber. After you had finished you looked up at Auston and giggled slightly your cheeks flushing from embarrassment, Auston removed his fingers from your sensitive core and you whined quietly at the sudden loss. He bought his fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, never breaking eye contact with you. You adjust your underwear and dress so that they sat back where they were supposed to.

“We might have to give him a tip.” You mumble into Austons neck as he swings his arm around you. You sit in silence for the rest of the painfully long car ride back to Austons.

[chocojjk]

Heaven Knows

summary: im not even gonna try, yall know im bad at summaries 

words: 2.7k

a/n: this forreal took me 6 hours i think im burning out ,, also guess what?? its not edited 

you were chilling in your best friends dorm room without him being there, which is honestly just a normal thing

jisung was out with his friends which means he wouldn't be back for a while

apparently they needed to talk to him about something important

“an intervention, they said,” jisung says chuckling

“What would you need an intervention for??”

“I honestly have no clue”

which left you here, all alone, completely bored out of your mind

laying there in his bed scanning his room for something to do when something shiny on top of his desk caught your eye

with the amount of times you've been here before, you have never seen this object

and so your curiosity got the best of you

you walked over and saw that it was a CD, written on it were the words “for you” and a badly drawn heart, the messy handwriting clearly belonging to your best friend

you chuckle at this

you never knew jisung could be this cheesy

turning on his computer, his screensaver, which was a picture of the two of you, lit up the room

you see, you and jisung have been childhood best friends

your parents were best friends which just means that you guys saw each other all the time

but dont get me wrong, they never forced your guys’ friendhsip

the two of you just got along

growing up, you would always be by his side and him yours

you didnt trust anyone as much as you trusted jisung

inputting in the CD, his honey-like voice started filling the air

“hey, its jisung, haha, of course you know that since ive already given this to you”

you let out small chuckle, clearly enjoying how worked up your best friend sounded

you cant help but feel guilty for invading his personal space

but c’mon, it was you and jisung

personal space is a myth when it comes to the both of you

and so you continued to listen

“umm, ive been meaning to tell you this for a while but could never find the words to do so , so uh,, i-i made you a CD with all the songs that makes me think of you”

‘how cute’ you thought to yourself, ignoring the rising jealousy that you were feeling in the pit of your stomach

wait what??

pshh, youre not jealous

why would you be jealous??? he’s just your best friend

‘im just disappointed that he didnt trust me with this,’ you told yourself

yup, thats all, just clear and utter disappointment

jealousy? we dont know her

plus, you had a very loving boyfriend

“ok so this first song is just how i feel whenever we’re together, this is better together by jack johnson”

and as the song filled your ears, you can't help but imagine that this CD was for you

keyword: imagine

jisung has made it very clear that he only saw you as his best friend, heck, maybe even as his sister

you think back to the day where you joked around of a possibility of the two of you

“ji, what if one day you become my boyfriend”

“hahaha y/n, that’s a weird joke”

“why is that so weird??”

“uhm because were just best friends” he replies, stating the obvious

and ever since then you have pushed the thought of you guys as a couple in the back of your head

never allowing your feelings to surface for the boy

your thoughts were interrupted when you heard your best friends sweet voice again

“ok remember when your first boyfriend broke your heart? well this song pretty much sums up how i felt the whole time, and every other time you get in a relationship.”

“I could treat you so much better than them, you know?”

“why can't you see that??? haha,, anyways this is Better by Gabe Bondoc”

damn, whoever this girl was got jisung whipped as fuck

you started wondering who she was and how come jisung never told you about her before

was she part of your friend group? did you know her?

whoever she was, you hoped that she’d wake up soon and realize what a catch your best friend is and that she would have to be the dumbest person alive to not love him back

“okay uhm, were halfway in this playlist now. sometimes i feel like you feel this way too, but i don't know, maybe i'm just being delusional. this is Friends by Ed Sheeran”

okay so clue number 1, this girl is definitely good friends with jisung

what the fuck han jisung

who is she

“if they find out would it all go wrong and heaven knows no one wants it to,”

you dont know why or what happened, but when you heard that line of the song, you cant help but release all the bottled up feelings that youve been hiding

yes, you were in love with your best friend

yes, you got into relationships as a way to get over him

no, it never works

because every time you were left with a broken heart, he was there to piece it all back together

he was there wiping your tears, holding you, singing you cheesy love songs

he was there with his bad jokes that always brings a smile on your face, making you happy, making you whole again

jisung was always there, and you cant escape him

and now as you listen to a playlist not made for you, your heart begins to break

surely if this was for you, he would have given it to you a long time ago

just the mere thought of jisung caring for another girl besides you hurt your heart

you decided that it was time to stop

you scolded yourself for even listening to it in the first place

and so you took the CD out, and put it back where it belong

a couple minutes later, jisung enters his room, seeing your figure seated in front of his computer, your head rested on your hands as your shoulders shook slightly, a sign that you were crying

“hey, are you okay?” he says grabbing your hands, making you look straight into his eyes

“shh it’s okay, im here,” he continues, pulling you into a warm hug

and you can't help but be mad

why the fuck was he being so sweet to you when he’s in love with someone else

han jisung, this is not fair, not fair at all

and then you realized that you were doing the same exact thing

you pushed him away from you, which caused him to stumble back, hitting the desk behind him

“I-i have to go”

“y/n??”

running out of the room, jisung tried to chase after you however,,

“Woah woah woah why are you in such a hurry?”

chan and minho

“I-uh y/n just ran out and i-”

“y/n again?, jisung didnt we just talk about how you should see her less,” minho exclaims

“Yeah, this really isnt healthy for you jisung, you really should stop pining over this girl,” chan continued

“guys, shes my best friend!”

“Ok and she obviously doesnt wanna talk to you if she ran away, dont force yourself in places where you dont belong or youll just get hurt in the end,” the older guys continued

“I-”

“were just looking out for you jisung,” chan finishes

and so with his head drooped down, he made his way back into his room

and then he noticed it,,

the CD

‘fuck fuck fuck’

A million thoughts were racing through jisungs head

he was sure that you've heard it, why else would you react that way when you saw him

god, he should've never made that CD in the first place

was he that much of a coward that he couldnt just tell you he was in love with you in person

and now you know and obviously dont feel the same

‘Great going jisung, you just ruined your relationship with your best friend’

---

its been 3 days and there hasnt been any contact within the both of you

you ended up breaking up with your 4 month long boyfriend

“Its because of jisung huh?”

“i…,”

you racked your brain for a different excuse but then decided to come clean, this boy has always been so sweet to you, the least you could do is be honest with him

“how’d you know?”

“I see the way you look at him y/n, its like youre looking at millions of stars, i always hope you’d learn to look at me that way”

“are you mad?”

he gives you a sad smile, “no.. not at you, i always knew this would happen”

“im really sorry hyunjin”

“Its okay, i wish you and jisung all the happiness in the world”

“thank you,” you reply even though you knew that it wasnt going to happen since he liked someone else 

meanwhile, jisung has locked himself up in his room

he was ashamed of himself for making that playlist

his friends have been asking him to hang out yet all he can do is mope around listening to the stupid songs that he has added and cringing at how dumb his voice recordings sounded

he missed you so much but he was so scared to reach out to you

3 days might not seem like a long time, but with you and jisung, 3 days felt like a whole year

Im not saying that you guys are always glued together, no, thats not the case

But you guys would always text each other

Sending each other memes throughout the day

But now the both of you was just left with silence

It really allowed you both to think

he figured you hated him and never wanted to see him again

So he never expected you to knock on his door

“chan, go away, just leave me here to cry”

“errmm, its not chan”

,,,

,,,

jisungs eyes nearly popped out of his sockets as soon as he heard your voice

and in one quick second he was scrambling to open his door

“you were crying???”

“no”

“whats wrong?”

“nothing, im glad youre here”

“umm, why wouldn't i be?”

“I-i just thought that after the other day, you wouldnt-”

“about that” you say, quickly cutting him off

*gulps*

“can we talk?”

“arent we doing that right now?” jisung jokes but as soon as he saw the nervous expression on your face, he shut his mouth and let you in , closing the door behind him

‘oh god, shes gonna tell me that she never wants to see me ever again’

“im sorry-”

“I didnt mean it-”

“what?”

“what?”

the both of you having confused expressions written on your faces

“You first,” you say

Jisung nervously scratches the back of his head, refusing to meet your gaze

“the - the cd, i,, i didnt mean it” he says but the way he slightly bit his lip afterwards was a clear indication that he was lying

did he forget that he was your best friend? there was really no point in lying to you

however, you just chose to ride along with his little lie

“oh, well then i guess that makes what im about to say easier”

accepting the fact that you were about to break his heart, he nods at you, urging you to go on

“Jisung, im in love with you”

“its okay that you don't like me back, we can still be best friends -- wait...what?” jisung replies quickly, ending his prepared speech

You looked at him, stunned at his sudden confession

“You're in love with me?”

“You like me ??”

damn both of you guys are so dumb i sWEAr

“Well,,,, yeah,,,, didnt you listen to the CD? I literally say your name in it”

(⊙ˍ⊙)

(⊙＿⊙)

(@[]@!!)

“WHEN???”

“After the last song,” he says, like it was the most obvious thing on earth

“I-” you make yourself over to his desk, looking for the CD

as soon as you found it, you plopped it into his computer

“really y/n???? Youre gonna listen to it right in front of me as if i havent been embarrassed enough” he says with a pout

“jisung shuT UP”

you fast forward to the part where you left off of  

“this next song is called Wait for You,, im sure you know this song as we always sing to it toegether, but yeahh ill always be here waiting for the day to come when you finally notice me”

The song begins to play yet you fast forward even more in rapid search of your name

“and, well this brings us to the last song,, god, i really hope you dont hate me right now, if you haven’t guessed by now, im in love with you. I dont know when it started or how it happened, maybe ive been in love with you ever since we were three, i don't know okay. But yeah,,, i fell in love with my best friend, god this is so cliche, but y/n l/n i love you”

you were shocked,,,

but at the same time, you felt like you can finally breathe

he loves you back

Han Jisung fucking loves you back

god reader, if you just stayed and listened until the very end, maybe this au wont be so long my brain cells are disappearing writing this

jisung wasn't making an effort to say something, not even to joke around

he was just sitting on his bed behind you, waiting for you to do something,, anything

we all know by now that he aint going to be the one to make the first move

the last song playing was the only thing that could be heard in the room

until,, you finally turned to face him, wearing the biggest smile on your face

you tackled him unto the bed

“oof”

“you're so annoying,,” you say, hitting him

at this point he has his arms around you as you were sprawled out across his body

“I love you too,” you confess, looking straight in his eyes

jisung doesn't know where he got his newly found courage

But he wasnt complaining as he reached out to your face, finally connecting his lips upon yours

“Ive been wanting to do that for so long”

“Why didnt you?”

“Well, you had a- dklfjasfkasjf,,,,, wait,,,,,, you have a boyfriend???”

And now were back to frantic jisung

“dont worry ji, i broke up with him,” you say a small smile on your lips

“wait, you broke up with him???

are you dumb????

He has like the prettiest face???

And like the nicest lips??

And hes so tall and he can dance so well!!”

“Jisung, if i didnt know any better, i would think you have a crush on him”

“shut up, im just saying,, that man is pReTTY”

“yeah youre right, he has everything i want in a man, maybe i should call him again, tell him i was just kidding about the break up” jisung pouts at this

“uhm, im sorry but you have a boyfriend now so you cant do that”

“oh really?”

“yep”

“who is he ??”

“y/nnn,,” jisung whines

“what?”

“will you be my girlfriend???”

“as long as you make me more CD’s” you say teasingly

“oh shut up”

1 year later

you and jisung are still going as strong as ever, and it was great

it was like you guys were always meant to be together, your relationship being the perfect balance of best friends and lovers 

as you were cleaning out your bedroom, you spotted the CD, still looking as shiny as ever, in between a couple of your books, and you cant help but smile at the memory

you were so lost in your thoughts that you didnt notice your boyfriend enter your room

“babe whats that?”

“oh nothing, just a certain CD that this overly romantic boy made me,”

“oh god, youre never gonna let that go huh”

“I just didnt know you could be THIS cheesy, like you really were symping over me” you say

the CD became an inside joke between the two of you,,,

you would always tease jisung about how cliche it was

“I still cant believe you didnt listen until the end, like what kind of dumbass just starts a playlist and doesnt even listen to the whole thing”

“hey!, youre the one in love with me, so guess whos the bigger dumbass”

a/n: oops another one but the last song is called Best Friend by Jason Chen hehe

[zacharybosch]

Playing God - chapter 8 (final)

thank you all who read along with this fic, i hope you enjoy this final installment! don’t forget you can find me over on twitter and pillowfort as i’ve largely abandoned this tumblr due to the whole banning-certain-content-that-i’m-afraid-to-directly-specify-in-case-this-post-gets-flagged thing

chapter 1: tumblr / ao3

chapter 2: tumblr / ao3

chapter 3: tumblr / ao3

chapter 4: tumblr / ao3

chapter 5: tumblr / ao3

chapter 6: tumblr / ao3

chapter 7: tumblr / ao3

read chapter 8 of Playing God below or on ao3!

Bleary-eyed, Jack snatched up the phone from its place on his nightstand. It had been a long time since the taunting Miriam phone calls, but when his phone started blaring at three in the morning, it was difficult not to let the dread creep in.

“Hello?”

“Jack, it’s uh… It’s me.”

“Will. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong. In fact, I think everything is right now. I got you what you wanted. But it, heh, it came at a price. I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

“Where are you? Are you with Lecter? Talk to me.”

“Am I with him? Oh, it’s a bit soon to say, I should think. Give it about twenty-four to thirty-six hours and you can see what he has to say about it.”

“Will,” Jack ground out. “What. Is going. On.”

“Nothing, not now. It all kicked off earlier, Jack, and you missed the party. Well, it wasn’t really a party. You can’t use the word ‘party’ in a house like this. It was a… soirée? Is that a word he’d use? A gathering? An intimate dinner for two? Someone certainly got ate. And I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t me.”

Jack felt the pit of his stomach drop as sickening realisation dawned. “What have you done?”

“A few things you wanted me to do. A few things you didn’t.” Will sighed expansively. “I suppose I made a few bad choices. Don’t come looking, Jack. You’re not gonna find what you wanted.”

The line went dead, and Jack bolted from his bed.

It took him an hour to get to Hannibal’s house. Jack knew in his bones that he was too late, that he had been too late the moment Will had disconnected the call.

The front door to Hannibal’s house stood slightly ajar, a thin shaft of light spilling out onto the stone steps. Inside, there was a spray of blood across the marble floor of the foyer, more on the walls, and a dragging trail of it leading through to the dining room.

“Will!” Jack called, though he knew it was as useless as the gun in his hand. A chill breeze followed him as he made his way across the foyer and into the dining room, footsteps echoing with a startling loudness in the cavern of the house. The dining room looked remarkably the same as it always had, save for the dark trail of blood that swept the length of the room and continued into the kitchen.

The trail ended at the wooden butcher’s block, which was so saturated with blood as to look almost black. A square of cloth that was very likely one of Hannibal’s pocket squares was on the floor, slowly becoming drenched.

The lights were all burning brightly, and in the oven a joint of meat was slowly turning tough and black.

And in the kitchen sink, an ear.

***

In the bowels of the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit, Jack stood in his office, agitated and impatient, waving a hand in Bev’s general direction. “I know what it says, I’ve read the damn thing ten times already. Just tell me, in your professional opinion: could they have survived?”

Bev screwed up her mouth and scanned the papers before her. She knew the answer already. “Will? Maybe. There was plenty of his blood at the scene. A human probably couldn’t survive it, but if what you’re telling me about him is true…”

“It is.”

“Then I guess it’s possible? I don’t know how,” Bev chewed on the next word before spitting it distastefully out of her mouth, “vampire physiology works.”

“And what about Lecter?”

“No way. There was almost too much of his blood. No-one could survive that. Coupled with the ear, well. Who knows where the rest of his parts are, but I wouldn’t count on them all being joined together.” Bev dropped the report onto the desk with a too-hard thud and began to pace about the room. “I don’t get it though. If Will is a-- you know. If it’s all true, then shouldn’t he have drunk it all? Why leave so much good blood to go to waste?”

Jack grimaced. “It’s recently been brought to my attention that I know considerably less than I thought I did about what Will Graham should or shouldn’t have been doing.”

“You thought you could cover him. It’s not your fault that you believed in the best of him.”

“I chose to believe he was just like you or me, and that choice cost us our only chance at putting the Chesapeake Ripper behind bars. He got the easy way out. Death is too good for someone like that.” Jack sat down heavily in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “Go home, Beverly. Hannibal Lecter is dead and you’re free to leave.”

***

The underground parking garage at Quantico was a sea of concrete as far as the eye could see, stained and cracked and always entirely mundane, until now. Walking from the elevator to Miriam’s car, Bev couldn’t help but think of all the times she’d come down here with Will, just two normal colleagues heading to their cars after a long day at the office. Had he been staring at her neck the whole time, waiting for the opportune moment to take her and bite her and leave her dead behind a pillar? And why did he even have a car in the first place? Couldn’t he turn into a bat and just… fly home?

Miriam was saying something and it was echoing off the walls and feeding back into Bev’s ears two, three, four times over. The secure unit she’d been living in for the past few months had always been so deathly quiet. Now every footstep sounded like a gunshot.

The first thing Bev did when she got into Miriam’s car was turn off the radio.

“You read my report, right?” Miriam asked, as she fired up the car and began the long drive home. Bev twisted her mouth around and said nothing. “I know you’re not officially allowed to, but I also know that Jack would’ve shown you anyway. What did you think?”

Bev sighed. She loved Miriam, she really did, but Miriam could never just let things lie for a while. Bev just wanted to go home and make her own food and sleep in her own bed and not think about anything for a few days. Or months. “I think it’s… unbelievable. I’m not sure if I mean that in a good way or not. How was this-- how was he working with me all this time and I never knew what he was?”

“You know I would’ve told you if I could.”

“I know, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at-- I don’t know what I’m mad at. I liked Will. He was a bit weird, but it didn’t bother me. It was bad enough discovering that Hannibal just wanted to eat me. Now it turns out Will probably just wanted to eat me too? What am I meant to do with this?”

“I don’t think Will ever wanted to eat you. We did feed him regularly.”

“Please spare me the details. I hate the thought of him being free to roam and I hate the thought of him being held captive by you.” Bev sank down further into her seat and put a hand over her eyes. “I hate thinking at all right now.”

Miriam let the conversation drop, and focused silently on the pinprick tail lights blurring in the rain on the road ahead. Bev seemed to be dozing off in the passenger seat, but some minutes later she asked, “How much of Jack’s plan were you aware of? Were you in on it from the start?”

Miriam hesitated for a second before she answered. “I helped him develop it. And I was involved throughout.”

“Jesus.”

“I was going to make it work for us, you know. I had another plan, a better one. I was going to get us all a happy ending. Will was going to kill Hannibal, and then he was going to wipe him from our memories so we could get on with our fucking lives and not have to think about him anymore.”

Bev stared across the car in horror. “He can do that?! Were you even going to ask me before you sent him to scramble my brains? No, of course you weren’t. This whole goddamn mess… You and Jack never could just leave well enough alone, could you? No wonder he took such a shine to you all those years ago. Two peas in a fucking pod.”

“Bev, please, I just want what’s best--”

“Well maybe I want my fucking trauma, Miriam! Shit, you’re as bad as they are. Can’t resist playing God.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry. I just wanted a clean break for us, you know? I’ve felt Hannibal’s shadow at my back for too long. I didn’t want you feeling it too. We deserve more than that.”

“Well I’m pretty sure he’s dead now. So. I guess you got half of what you wanted,” Bev said, and when Miriam didn’t respond she looked at over at her, at Miriam’s grim profile and the heavy silence that was spilling every secret that she was trying to keep. “Oh just spit it out already. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t think Hannibal is dead.”

---------

is that the end???????? but how can i leave it there???? SURPRISE i’m NOT, there is gonna be a sequel! it’s all written, posting will start in a few weeks after i finish up the edits! stay tuned!!

[yellowfang89]

It’s wild how much has happened and changed since 2010, and now going into 2020. I was going to put in a "read more" out of courtesy but for some fuck ass reason, when I came in to edit it, Tumblr isn't giving me that option and the code ain't working and now I'm slightly buzzed so what the fuck ever you can just keep scrolling if you don't care lol.

January 2010- Obsessed with Legend of the Seeker. Wrapped up finishing playing Pokemon Diamond- my first pokemon game on recommendation of my best friend at the time. My last semester of community college started.

March/April 2010- got acceptance letter to the local state college I planned on transferring to. Best friend didn’t get any notice on whether she got accepted or not, but got an acceptance letter from another college about an hour away, and decided to go there instead. After making this decision, she finally got the acceptance letter from the local state college. But she still ended up going to the hour away one. Also, I turned 21 and had my first margarita.

May 2010- Graduated community college with an AA in art. God, I remember when I used to love art.

At some point I ended up officially leaving Myspace for Facebook, kicking and screaming, because everyone had ditched Myspace for it. I hated Facebook but got used to it.

August 2010- went on a two week cruise to Alaska. Came back and started new college afterwards. Had no friends and was lonely, though kept in close touch with best friend over Facebook. Got new Macbook.

September 2010- Finally found myself in a new friend group. Saw a beautiful boy on lightrail I wanted to talk to, but had no courage to. Realized that this kind of shit was probably why I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I wanted a boyfriend for the sole reason of not feeling like a loser for never having one.

October 2010- Saw same beauty, gathered up the nerve and talked to him. Turned out he also went to my school. We started seeing each other regularly on there and things started taking off. 

November 2010- Started hanging out with him regularly, got my first kiss from him. Became an official couple.

2011- Can’t remember what months and for what, because things start blending in together. But

- Beloved cat of five years died.

- Lost my virginity

- Didn’t have much money in bank account and stressed out over it. Couldn’t get a job to rectify the situation cuz no experience.

- Started feeling guilty over the smallest things like asking to borrow a piece of paper from someone. Mentally acknowledging this was weird but also shrugging it off. 

- Lost my appetite and had food problems overall- despite always having “food problems.” Never wanted to eat.

- Distinctly remember my stomach rumbling in class and thinking, “good maybe i’ll starve to death!”

2012- Shit blended in together again this year, and for every year here on out.

- Came to the realization one day when walking to the bus that I literally would not care if someone came at me with a gun because I just… didn’t want to exist anymore. Saw nothing wrong with this.

- The thought “things would be better if I was dead” came to my brain out of nowhere. I briefly wondered if this counted as a “suicidal thought.”

-Decided to Google shit like suicidal thoughts, went down a rabbit hole that made me suspect I had depression. It explained things that I thought were off but didn’t care enough to do anything about.

- Eventually saw a counselor at school about this.

- Got a hamster. Hamster died this same year.

- Got a volunteer position at a library scanning old yearbooks onto a computer so I could have some sort of “work experience” to get a job.

- Boyfriend had got me Pokemon Heartgold earlier. I started trying to “collect them all” because why not.

- I switched from using an ethernet chord to WiFi and it changed my life. Especially since I was able to go on the GTS in Pokemon and trade, though it was fucky cuz you could only trade Pokemon you’ve already seen back then.

- Ended up getting Pokemon Black, and it introduced GTS Negotiations which allowed me to match with other trainers and trade Pokemon live. Due to this, I managed to obtain every Pokemon I couldn’t get in my other games. Except event legendaries, unfortunately. I consider this one of my greatest accomplishments and keep up with this to this day.

- Considered switching my major from Graphic Design to Digital Media because I liked my Digital Media class a lot more than my Design classes. And made that switch.

- I decided to minor in psychology because I had already taken a few psych classes for GE credits so why tf not.

- Towards the end, got a “student” job at that same library doing the same thing except with artwork instead of yearbooks. Finally had money. Depression starting to lift? But job was only a 4-8 hour a week deal so not that much money in the long run.

2013-

- Discovered demisexuality via a comment on Reddit. It described me pretty damn well. Weight lifted off shoulders I didn’t even realize was there. Things made sense omg.

- Joined Tumblr.

- Best friend came over for what turned out being the last time. She was moving to Arizona.

- Got a second job working at the tech company my Dad worked at, helping out the customer service rep.

- Slowly found myself drifting apart from friend. Depression still present. Made things hard but tbh she never contacted me either. I got the impression she was mad at me given she unfollowed me on Tumblr without explanation.

- Since not a lot of work to be done helping the csr, I ended up helping our our shipping guy and became his backup. Eventually the purchaser left on maternity leave and I took her place, eventually becoming the main purchaser because they moved her to accounts receivable.

- Decided that my depression was making me a piece of shit friend so I decided to contact best friend to see how things were, only to get a cryptic, passive aggressive, two-word response back. Ended up just dropping it and figured she’d eventually come around and tell me what was wrong. She never did…

2014

- Depression on and off due to the stress of going to work and going to school. At this point I hated all art and wanted nothing to do with any of it and only went to school for the piece of paper saying I graduated college.

- I think this was when I started calling myself gray ace instead of demi because why the hell not and I’ve only been sexually attracted to one person anyway. Possibly still demiromantic though- to this day I’m still unsure tbh.

- Boyfriend taught me to drive. I got my license. I got my first car.

December 2014- I graduated college. It cured my depression. Unfortunately, it was replaced with carpal tunnel. 

2015

- Carpal tunnel still full force. All I could do was read.

- I caught up on all the books I’ve wanted to read. Eventually came across Warrior Cats. Thought it was stupid for the first 50 pages, but then became addicted. Lost interest when I had to wait several months for the next arc to come out.

- The year I got into wrestling. I shipped Rolleigns so fuckin’ hard.

- Undertale came out and became one of my favorite games of all time.

- Find out brother is addicted to painkillers which is why he had been acting like such an ass.

- Dumped Facebook.

- Driver at the company I worked at quit. Company wants me to be “temporary” driver on top of purchasing, shipping, and assisting the customer service rep.

- Got into writing and wrote a book and continued writing off and on from then to now.

2016/2017/2018? I can’t even keep track anymore.

- Pokemon Go came out and I finally got a smart phone because of it.

- Brother gets girlfriend and then gets married after only being together a year. Brother seems to have gotten better.

- They started having marital problems almost immediately. My brother turned out being an alcoholic and fuck knows if he’s still doing drugs or not he says he’s not but he’s also a chronic liar. A lot of drama happens that I don’t want to get into. They are now divorced- after two years of marriage. 

- Got new laptop cuz Macbook got too old, although it still works.

- The company I had been working at, which had always been a shit company with no money, starts going down the shitter more than it already was.

September 2017- customer service rep quits and I have to do her job on top of purchasing, shipping, and driving. Mental breakdowns become common. Depression worse than it had ever been in my life. 

January 2018- get a 45 cent raise because minimum wage went up meaning I was now making minimum wage doing all the bullshit I was doing.

May 2018- Get new job doing ONLY shipping for a few extra bucks more an hour. Depression cured.

2019

- Got in a car accident (not my fault). Car totaled. Replaced it with a 2018 car so it’s all good.

- Experienced my first flat tire half a year later.

- Still get random bouts of depression.

- Still with same boy from 2010. Would love to move in together but fuck if I know when that’ll happen. 

- Still wondering wtf happened with my (ex) best friend and am still trying to get over it. Am considering the possibility that it was probably my depressed ass not talking to her at all for like 4 months. Unfortunately I have no way of contacting her to try and make peace because we both dumped Facebook.

- Got back into Warrior Cats.

- Dad got new girlfriend. Parents finally working on getting the divorce they wanted to get 20+ years ago but never did cuz neither one wanted to spend money on it.

- Briefly considered taking up drawing again but my skills have tanked significantly because I haven’t drawn since graduating college. Plus I’m lazy. 

- Obsessed with The Witcher.

So much has changed throughout this decade and fuck if I know how next decade is gonna turn out for me but I sure hope it's a better one.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!

[coeurdastronaute]

Either/Or: Rosie 5

As much as she knew her mothers would go with her, Rosie couldn’t do it with them. She just couldn’t, and so she got off the bus in an unfamiliar neighborhood after hacking into the police database and doing a little bit more of her own research.

She shouldered her bag and she took a deep breath as she walked down the street, occasionally looking at her phone for directions to the restaurant.

Her movie was almost done, and for some reason, Rosie felt happier than ever with her family. She just couldn’t shake this final thing she had to do, and she was raised to be brave and kind and so she couldn’t do it to her parents. They wanted to be there and hold her hand, and she couldn’t let them be that selfless.

The bell rang as she entered the little coffee shop. It was warm and smelled like bread and coffee and everything sweet. There was a few people throughout, relaxing and meeting, they didn’t do anything to notice her at all.

Rosie scanned the shop, looking for a face she didn’t mean to memorize. She slid into a seat before deciding on an order, and she tried to blend in while also searching.

Just like that, she suddenly existed in a room with the woman who left her on a subway train. Just like that, she suddenly spotted a woman, and waited for the connection to zap into her being, though nothing came at all. Instead, Rosie just sat her bag down on the ground and stared and waited for something to happen.

Eventually, she set up her laptop and camera to work on editing footage. She slid an earbud into one ear and listened with the other to the happening of the tiny world. About an hour into her watching, and still afraid to say anything, her phone buzzed, and she texted her mother that she was at the library.

“Hey, sweetheart,” a voice interrupted her texting back about dinner.

Slowly, Rosie lifted her eyes and followed the apron up to the collar, to a familiar face, to eyes that were very similar to her own. Her mouth went completely dry and her heart turned into that of a hummingbird’s.

“Can I get you anything? You look like you’re working hard. We have coffee and really good cinnamon buns.”

Still, she stared back and cleared her throat.

“No? I also have some donuts and apple twists. Tea, cakes, you name it, we try to make it well.”

Only silence existed as Rosie desperately tried to talk, her brain screaming at her tongue to do something, and it all getting jumbled in her cerebral cortex.

“You look… do I know you from somewhere?” the waitress furrowed and searched the weird, quiet patron’s face.

“Tea is fine. Green tea, if you have it.”

“I’m sure we do,” she smiled sweetly. “Back in a flash.”

As soon as she was back behind the counter, Rosie let out an entire lungs worth of air and felt her hands begin to shake. She hadn’t fully anticipated the telling part. Somehow she had to say things, and she couldn’t even order coffee properly.

Halfway through her belittling of herself, the door dinged again, and a pair of kids ran in with a gentleman following, lugging their colorful school bags and chiding them about being quiet. They were young, in no more than kindergarten and second grade, but they were cute enough, and obviously familiar with the place enough to feel comfortable to climb up on the stools and lean over the railing.

“Hi, babies,” the waitress greeted. “How was school?”

Kids. They were her kids.

Rosie shook her head and felt the blaring signals in her head telling her to bolt, and unlike just a minute ago, she decided to listen to them. Quickly, she shoved her camera in her bag and resigned herself to running scared.

“Sorry about that. The noise will die down. My kids are on the way out,” the waitress explained. “Sorry if they disturbed you.”

The mug of tea slid across the small table, joined by a delicious looking donut on a separate plate.

“Kids?”

“Those are mine,” she nudged over her shoulder. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?”

“No, thank you.” With that, she tossed a few bills on the table, gathered up what was left on the table, and bolted out of the café without looking back.

Rosie couldn’t leave. She left, but she couldn’t leave. So she sat at the bus stop and tried to clear her head, while at the same time, her brain did nothing but cloud it even more.

She had siblings. She had two siblings. She had a brother and a sister. She hadn’t thought of that part, of her… of Amy moving on and having a life. That was blindsiding.

Rosie sat and thought for a good, long while. She wondered if it was smart, she wondered if she could even meet this person. She wondered what to say, until she knew the words. She knew them but couldn’t articulate them. And she gathered a bit of spine and she nodded to herself as the sun went down, and she knew it was for herself. It was better to know. Her moms said as much, and her mother missed her chance, not finding out until it was too late that her birth mother was dead. Rosie didn’t want to risk any freak accidents when she came this close.

The bell dinged once more as she pushed through the door of the café.

Her mother was once the best superhero in the entire world, who lifted trains and stared at dangerous creatures and wasn’t afraid. Her mom took over entire companies and survived terrible things people said about her, and still she was hopeful and alive. Rosie could do this.

“Everything okay?” the same waitress greeted her as she approached the counter.

“Amy Carvallo?”

“I haven’t been called that in about ten years,” she smiled and searched the stranger’s face. “How can I help you?”

“Sixteen years, almost seventeen years, you left a baby on a train.”

Rosie said it very straight and very honest because like her mom said, there was no reason to stray from the facts. The facts were like a lion, able to defend themselves. She watched the stranger’s face go ghostly white.

“You’re…,” she gulped.

“I had a project to do. I was wondering if you would let me ask--”

“You have to go,” she shook her head. “You were… you were a different life. You have to… I can’t.”

It was hard enough to think of saying words to this woman who gave her away, so much so that Rosie never considered what she might say back. It stung more than she would have liked.

“I wanted to ask you--”

“Please. I’m sorry.”

The door rang again and the kids from earlier approached, racing to hug their mother. And all Rosie could do was disappear.

There was a sense, a cosmic understanding, a special way of figuring things out, that Lena just always knew what her daughter was feeling, no matter how hard she tried to find it. Kara attributed it to the fact that Lena was constantly in awe of, and therefore, constantly watching Rosie as a child. But she also believed it was just because their family was meant to be.

“Something’s up with the kid,” Lena muttered as they laid in bed reading.

But it never surprised Kara to hear Lena say such things. Her wife had premonitions often, which she described as an ability to read subtle clues on people she knew well. Kara rolled her eyes and put her book down on her lap.

“She seemed fine today.”

“She was off,” Lena corrected. “Something happened.”

“You’re worrying too much. It’s the video and how it’s coming to an end. There’s only one interview left.”

“Kara, I’m serious. Something is off with Rosie.”

With a heavy sigh, Kara tossed her book on the nightstand and rolled over toward her wife. Lena was the worrier, and she took the job seriously. There wasn’t a day that she wasn’t going out of her mind about something. Often, it was their daughter. Most of the time, it was global warming.

“What do you think is wrong with her?” Kara asked, knowing how to deal with this mood already. She learned how to weather her wife’s moods constantly.

“Obviously it has something to do with finishing her project. Do you think I pushed her too hard? Should we have talked to her about this sooner?”

“I think we wanted to forget. I know I did. I kind of just… I made myself not think about it because it was easier and because I knew that it would hurt her. In some way, it would.”

“She’s quiet,” Lena nodded, staring at the door at the other side of their room. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Just love her, and be there when she needs it. Believe it or not, you raised a pretty independent and resourceful young lady, Ms. Luthor.”

“Don’t call me that,” she smiled despite herself.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Danvers. I just think it’s important to remember that the next Luthor to take over the company will be another Danvers. I’m pretty impressed.”

“She doesn’t want to run LCorp,” Lena disagreed, settling into her wife’s arms despite her distracted brain.

“No kid wants to hang out at their mom’s job. That girl is obsessed with you,” Kara promised, kissing her wife’s cheek and temple, wrapping her arms around her tighter. “And she’s okay. She’s tough.”

“I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m telling you-- something is up.”

“I know, I know,” she soothed. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Sometimes.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Do you think she’s on drugs?”

Kara couldn’t help the laugh that came from her chest. It was so sudden, and emerged so completely, that she was almost startled by it. Lena pushed herself up on her elbow and looked at her wife, already disappointed in the reaction.

“I’m sorry, but that’s… no. There’s no way.”

“Do you think it’s a boy?”

“She tells you everything,” Kara shook her head, tugging Lena close again to soothe her worried mind. “There’s no way she has a secret boyfriend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Oh honey, that girl is straighter than straight.”

“What is it then?”

“She’s sixteen years old,” Kara shrugged. “That’s a debilitating disease enough. That’s why I kind of just let her exist and don’t read too much into every frown or furrow.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“I know, I know,” she lied, cooing against the grump in her arms.

“If you wouldn’t have brought a stupid baby home, none of this would have happened.”

“I know.”

Kara closed her eyes and smiled. In her arms was the girl that changed her entire world, and there wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to be, even if she was slightly crazy and very unreasonable. But gradually, she felt the CEO relax and give into the warmth and the arms and the lips that murmured and kissed what they could reach.

“Rosie is fine. I’m fine. We’re all okay,” Kara promised.

“I love you,” Lena whispered, tugging Kara’s arm tighter around her own body.

“For someone who didn’t want a kid, you’re kind of a great mom.”

“I learned from you.”

Under the blankets, their legs shifted together. Kara smiled and hid it in her wife’s shoulder, content to have her back to normal for the night, amazed that she was still able to bring her back down from inside her head.

“So… do you want to fool around?” Kara murmured as they stilled.

At first she earned an elbow in the ribs. Just after that was a kiss that took her breath away, and she had her answer. Gratefully, she didn’t have any follow up questions.

“Hey, I’m thinking we try that new Moroccan place tonight,” Kara said as she did something on the other end of the phone. “Rosie is going over to Alex’s to work on the movie, and I haven’t romanced my wife in two weeks.”

“I cooked for you and wore that new Agent Provocateur corset three days ago,” Lena rolled her eyes and signed her name on a few documents as she sat at the small table in the corner of a café and worked the day away. “That wasn’t romantic enough for you, darling?”

“Oh, yeah, no, that was… yeah, plenty romantic,” she recalled, swallowing a lot of other adjectives to describe it, getting awfully sidetracked in her memory of the weekend when their daughter was at a friend’s house and they were alone.

“I hope I’m not so forgettable.”

“I haven’t thought of much else since, if we’re being honest,” Kara snorted. “But I know you’ve been stressed with the merger and your daughter, and I wanted to help you relax. A proper date. I’m courting you, Lena Danvers.”

“We’re married.”

“Courting!”

“I have an errand to run after work, but maybe a late dinner?” Lena compromised, checking her watch quickly. “Say around eight?”

“Eight. I’ll meet you there. I’ll be the one in the hot little red number.”

“Oh?” her interest was piqued. “Red you say?”

“I have a fancy black card too,” Kara reminded her. “And I had a minute to do some shopping. If you’re a good date, you might find out what else I bought.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, Kara Danvers?” Lena smiled, blushing still at the idea of her wife. Something about Kara always just earned the same reaction of disbelief and awe.

“Me? Never. I’m simply extending a cordial invitation to dine together.”

“I know what I’m hungry for already.”

“Lena!”

“You’re allowed to make innuendos and I’m not?” she chuckled, stacking her work in a new, neat pile and smiling to herself victoriously. She absently scrolled through some email on her tablet and sipped coffee, knowing full well she got a perfect little blush from her wife.

“I’ll see you at eight.”

“I can’t wait.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. Lena was over the moon excited, still feeling the remnants of ancient butterflies floating about because her wife asked her on a date. For a moment, she didn’t dread the rest of her day.

But today was the day. She wouldn’t tell her wife this part, or that she’d left the office almost two hours early, just so she could sit in the small café and watch the woman who gave birth to her daughter.

Frantically, Lena kept looking up from her work at the woman she’d come to memorize. There was a slight tilt to her nose that was almost Rosie’s, though Lena was almost sure it must have been her father. She had those eyes though, and the chin. The curls though, that wasn’t to be seen. It might have been frustration or jealousy, but Lena nitpicked everything until she was just a stranger with no tie to her daughter.

It was stupid, and Lena should have been excited or getting ready for her date. Instead, she was having a hell of a time coming to terms with her life at the moment.

“Hey, can I fill you up?” a voice interrupted her thoughts as she stared at a few more emails.

“Hm? Yes. What? Okay. Sure. Yes,” she managed as she met the eyes of her daughter.

“You look like you’re hard at work,” she smiled. “You visiting town on business?”

“I live here, actually.”

“We don’t get many Mason Street types down here,” the waitress smiled, laughing it away.

Nervously, she smiled awkwardly as Lena stared back with nothing but rapt attention. The gaze was intense, and it took her fidgeting slightly for Lena to blink and clear her throat.

“Thank you.”

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do,” the waitress furrowed and cocked her head, breaking Lena’s heart. “I recognize you now. You’re Lena Luthor.”

“Danvers,” the CEO corrected. “Been married about twenty years now.”

“Right, sorry,” she smiled, happy with herself. “I just never thought I’d have the most powerful woman in the country or world in my little coffee shop.”

“I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, just like normal people.”

“I didn’t mean… I just… It’s kind of amazing.”

“It is,” Lena nodded, staring back at her expectantly, waiting for her to know, to just understand. But it wasn’t coming, and her stomach burned.

“Well if you need anything else, just let me know--”

“You left a baby on a train sixteen, almost seventeen years ago,” the CEO blurted, unable to stop herself.

The look of horror evident on the waitresses face was the most grotesque thing she’d ever seen, but still, Lena couldn’t back away.

“There’s no-- You-- she--”

Without asking, Amy took a seat and stared, dizzy and dazed at the table, her eyes wide and her mouth kind of sputtering to find something.

“She wants to meet you. I don’t know how to do this, but as her mother, I think--”

“I can’t. I told her I can’t. I’m sorry. That was a different life. I’m a different person. I have a family now, a business. I just--” she looked helplessly at Lena before steadying herself. “She’s not my daughter. I have a life, and kids, and I gave up all of my vices. She is from another person who doesn’t exist anymore.”

“She’s your daughter.”

“She did fine without me. She’s Lena fucking Luthor’s daughter. I’m sorry. I just can’t. I don’t have anything for her, and she doesn’t need anything from me.”

“You don’t even want to--”

“Please. Tell her to stay away from me. You have to understand that it’s for her own good.”

“How?”

“I was an addict. Her father was a good-for-nothing dealer who died in an alley on the low end of the streets where she’s probably never imagined going. I had her and I got clean. I found a life, and I always hoped she had a better one than I could offer. She doesn’t need anything from me.”

“You don’t want to know her?” Lena balked at the idea. Her daughter was the greatest human on the planet. Everyone should want to know her.

“I’m sure she’s spectacular. Hell, I’m sure she’s probably the greatest kid on the planet, which is a miracle considering me and her father, but no. I can’t. I’ve moved on.”

“Have dinner with us, at least.”

“I’m sorry. It’s better if she forgets. Trust me.”

“You’re protecting yourself, not Rosie,” Lena stood, agitated and angry, wishing her own birth mother was alive to hear a rant. “You’re a coward, and I am glad she’s nothing like you.”

“Me too,” Amy whispered, shaking her head, her eyes glassy as she flexed her jaw. She couldn't look at the CEO as she gathered her items and put them in her bag.

Disgusted and angry at mothers in general, Lena dug in her bag and tossed a large wad of bills on the table.

“You get one chance here. If this is what you decide, then you can’t go back on it.”

“I’ve already decided,” she said, not looking up.

With a shake of her head, Lena blinked back tears herself and walked out.

The bench at the bus stop was becoming a home. Nearly every day for the past two weeks, Rosie spent the afternoon watching the woman who gave birth to her move around the café. She watched those kids run in and love her, and for the life of her, Rosie just couldn’t understand any of it.

She also couldn’t understand what her mother was doing leaving the café. And most assuredly, she could not begin to comprehend the flood of emotions on the CEO’s face as their eyes locked across the street.

Both simple stared at each other, unsure of what to do or what could even matter. They knew they couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen, and yet they both desperately hoped for that with their entire beings. Lena immediately tried to compose herself, wiping her cheek and setting her jaw before walking across the street, barely giving a glance in either direction.

“Going with Aunt Alex to the DEO to work on the movie,” Lena repeated as she sat down beside her daughter on the bench. “That was what you said this morning.”

“I was there for a minute, so I didn’t technically lie,” Rosie offered before earning an exasperated look from her mother. “I’m sorry.”

Fiddling with her fingers, Rosie sighed heavily, afraid to look up at the coffee shop again, afraid to look at her mom, afraid to really move, if she was being honest. Instead, she just sat there and knit her hands together.

“I told Kara that something was going on with you. I’m guessing this isn’t your first visit?”

Guilty, Rosie shook her head. She flexed her jaw, and the wavy kind of curls fell in her face before she gathered them in an antsy hand and pushed them around atop her head, creating a bigger mess. It was Kara’s quirk that she’d picked up somewhere along the past sixteen years. It broke Lena’s heart slightly.

“I don’t think I’ve handled it very well,” Lena finally sighed, fiddling with the ring on her finger as she did when she was anxious. “I’m sorry for that. You’re hiding things to protect me, and that should never be something you feel you have to do.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t know how.”

“As hard as it is, just you… yous ay the words, honey. I won’t ever hate you or be hurt.”

“I thought this would be easier,” Rosie ran her hands over her face and leaned forward, huddling into herself slightly.

Lena put her hand on her daughter’s back and rubbed there until she leaned back and rested against her shoulder.

“It’s not fair. It feels like everything is different now, and I can’t get it back to how it was.”

“Nothing has changed,” Lena promised, kissing her forehead and resting her cheek against her daughter’s messy hair. “We’re still a family. You’re a Danvers, just like me. You’ve always been your own person, and not one thing that has happened changed your character, and it certainly hasn’t changed our family.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t want to even talk to me. I didn’t know what to ask. I have… she has… a son and a daughter.”

“As hard as it is, you have to respect her wishes. I can’t understand not wanting to know you,” the mother smiled. “But I can certainly understand leaving the past there. I was a different person when I met Kara. I was different when my father was around and going crazy. We grow and change, and sometimes people only survive by completely shutting it out.”

“Yeah.”

“No more lying, okay?”

“Did you tell Mom you were here?” Rosie challenged, peaking her eyebrow like her mother, which was annoying and endearing all at once to Lena.

“Tomorrow. No more lying tomorrow.” Her daughter shook her head and settled back on her mother’s shoulder. “I love you, darling.”

“I love you too.”

“Did you eat?”

“Not yet. I really do have to go see Aunt Alex.”

“I’ll drop you off on the way. Let me call Cal to get us.”

“Could we stop for Thai?”

“We can grab you and Alex and J’onn some, but I have a date tonight.”

“Do I know her?” Rosie joked, earning a laugh and roll of her mother’s eyes. “It’s a school night. I need you home by ten.”

“This afternoon might not be the time to press your luck.”

“But I’m so cute and charming.”

“God you’re just like your mother.”

From the café, Amy watched the most powerful woman on the planet kiss her daughter’s temple and laugh at something she must have said, each taking a kind of comfort in the embrace, and for the briefest of moments, she reconsidered before shaking her head and deciding to leave it be in the past, as much as it hurt all over again.

“Are you nervous?” Kara asked, lulling her head to the side as she looked at her wife.

“Actually, I’m not,” Lena smiled, and it was the truth. She squeezed her wife’s hand and lifted it to kiss the back of it. “She worked hard on it, and I think my nerves were just me being afraid and wanting to protect her. But man, our kid is so smart and strong and good.”

“She really is. But I did overhear her talking to Maddie about a boy at school.”

“I trust her, but perhaps another sex talk.”

“It’s your turn this time.”

“But you do so well, honey,” Lena promised, watching her wife wane. “I’d just muck it up.”

“It’s your turn,” Kara disagreed.

“Fine.”

The car wove along the busy streets back toward their home that they’d been dismissed from by their daughter to set up for the first screening of her only movie. An impromptu date was always welcomed though.

“Do you want to fog up the windows a bit?” Kara asked, a small grin dripping from her lips. She wiggled her eyebrows to add to it, earning a laugh.

“Hmm,” Lena debated, looking out the windows to estimate how long until home. “You’ve got about seven minutes, Supergirl. Make it worth my while?”

Kara didn’t even respond, just kissed her wife quickly.

“Are you nervous?” Connor asked as his cousin paced around the kitchen, looking for nothing in particular. Rosie’s cousin snagged a carrot from the platter and crunched it. “You look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You look nervous.”

“I’m not,” she snapped before leaning against the counter. “I lied to them again.”

“How am I the one who gets grounded more than you? I wish I had two moms instead of Superman and the best reporter of all time.”

“Second best,” the younger cousin retorted with a smirk.

“We’re not having this debate again.”

Rosie crossed her arms and debated what to say, but there wasn’t much point in sugarcoating anything with Connor. He understood what it felt like to live up to unfathomable love and self-imposed expectations. Both of their parents, both sets of world-saving philanthropists, they never expected anything other than joy and happiness from their kids, and yet both Connor and Rosie held themselves to high, invisible standards.

“How do you feel, after it all?” he asked, eyeing his cousin.

There was a familial soft spot for her, even though she was younger. He remembered when they got in trouble together for the first time, when he took her flying, and her their mothers about lost their collective minds. She was the only person he could commiserate with to some degree, and one of the few people who he could be Superboy around.

But the past few months, he saw her change slightly, grow nervous, grow upset about the entire situation. Everyone around him had different parents or were adopted, and he remembered how lucky he was to have his.

“I always knew it was an option that she might not want to know me, but I never expected it. I think I understand though. I feel bad for hurting my moms though.”

“I don’t think you could hurt them,” he promised, crunching on more snacks.

“I did,” she sighed. “Not because of asking questions. I think I just-- I got really confused.”

“Happens to the best of us. Shall we go watch?”

“If we must.”

The living room was completely converted to a theater, and it was spectacular. Naturally, the daughter of Lena Luthor had a knack for the dramatic. But still, Lena smiled and took her seat beside her wife while he daughter and some friends camped on the floor.

Aunts, uncles, friends and family all crowded together, ready for the documentary.

“I’m so excited,” Kara buzzed, putting her arm around her wife’s shoulders as she leaned against her.

“Please tell me you made my interview look better than it was,” Lena ribbed her daughter.

“Okay, okay, everyone get ready,” Rosie ignored her mother and pressed play. “Here we go.”

The first images were pictures from their life together, flipping through the photo album that Kara so diligently kept. Rosie explained the story, showed the newspaper clipping about the Subway Baby and how she got her name, earning a chuckle from the audience.

The interviews started, and Lena smiled as her wife talked about their first meeting, and then about their life together. She grinned as there was them going through the shoebox of their memories. She sighed contentedly when she saw footage she didn’t know her daughter had of her wife and her, still very much in love. Sometimes she forgot just how much they were in love, and then she was confronted with it.

When her interview started to show, she hid in her wife’s shoulder, who just squeezed her and chuckled at the image and mumbled words. Despite the attitude that Lena Luthor always carried, there was so much Danvers appearing on screen that it was endearing.

Kara blushed at the things her wife remembered and said. It was impossible not to enjoy it too much. Lena was always kind and doting, but hearing her talk, one might realize just how romantic she was.

The movie was an ode to family, formed and tested and loyal.

“This is spectacular,” Lena whispered, wrapping her arm around her daughter’s neck as she leaned forward and found her on the floor, kissing her cheek. “I am so proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

It was only about a half hour long, but as the end grew nearer, Rosie grew a little more uncomfortable. She heard her mother shift slightly behind her, the hero realizing the café appearing meant something. It took Lena a second to realize what was happening.

But she couldn’t stop watching, and as Amy’s face appeared, she steadied herself.

Everyone shifted forward slightly, eager to watch the interview that no one knew happened. Rosie refused to turn around as the woman who bore her shared a single picture of her father, and told her about her life. Instead, she just stared and felt relieved to be done with it all.

The movie concluded with the fact that she didn’t have a relationship with the woman who gave her away. It concluded with home videos of their family and plans for the future. It concluded with everyone answering the final questions Rosie asked in every interview: What do you hope for in the future?

To their credit, most people actually thought about it, considering some answers. Some answered quickly, easily, putting forth the first idea in their head.

“That your Mom will let us get another dog,” Kara said in her interview.

“To go to the same college my dad went to,” Connor smiled.

“To finish healing,” Amy decided, after thinking about it for a moment.

“That things stay kind of the same,” Lena whispered before looking at the camera. “I have everything I could ever want in this exact moment. I don’t need anything else.”

The End

[pandamilo]

Merry Christmas from your Secret Santa <3

@oek I hope you have a brilliant Christmas and enjoy this silly Ritsu x Takano ficlet, it’s teeth-rottingly fluffy so be warned :P

Secret Santa Ritsu

It was Christmas… the worst time of the year.

Not because Ritsu hated it or anything of that nature. He liked the atmosphere, the excitement of children, family and friends… all those normal sweet things that came with Christmas he liked.

It was the presents that he hated.

He hated receiving them, never really knowing what to say or how to show he liked what he was being given, even if he didn’t – he really wasn’t great at pretending.

But even worse than getting gifts, was giving them. No matter how well he knew a person, he always doubted he was getting them the right thing, thought they were feigning their interest in it even when they seemed happy with it.

Don’t even get him started on things such as secret Santa and gifts that came from strangers or ones he had to give to strangers. Is it a generic gift if you don’t even know the person? It isn’t like you can ask them what they wanted.

Do you get them chocolates, soaps, gift cards, hobby ideas… all those presents you get from your grandmother that you pretend you really love but you never really need?

This year when the editors at his publishing company decided it would be an excellent idea for everyone to pick a name out of a hat and get a gift for them.

So, of course, Ritsu picked the one person he really didn’t want…

Takano Masamune.

What in the world was he meant to get a man who either had everything, didn’t want anything and to top it all off, was quite open about the fact that he loved him.

You could just give him yourself for a present.

Ritsu had been making himself a coffee and nearly dropped the entire contents of the scolding hot coffee onto himself in shock. He seriously hadn’t had enough sleep over the last little while (or basically since he began working here) if that was the answer his brain came up with.

Maybe an obscure book? He reads like I do… Or a scarf, it has been extra cold lately… Eh, maybe I’ll just get him chocolates or something…

Ritsu had been dealing with this predicament for three weeks now and after all this time thinking and worrying about what to get, it was just two days before he needed to give him his gift and he still didn’t have anything.

That and he still hadn’t come up with anything that could be good for the out-there man he used to love.

What else did he used to enjoy?

Imagines of Takano and himself together in high school, always fuzzy and faded from time and distance, memories, but the feeling of warmth, the smell of books and the heat of Takano’s fingers on him always made Ritsu feel a little dizzy.

He hated that more than presents.

As soon as he turned in his last edits for his author, Ritsu was streaming down the snow-covered side walk, frantically seeking anything that grabbed his attention. Nothing seemed to fit, it was too dull, too weird, too un-Takano, that he was almost ripping his hair out in frustration when he turned a corner only to bump into the devil himself.

“T-takano.” Ritsu bowed slightly as way of apology and greeting.

“Onodera, what are you doing? It’s freezing.” Takano looked mildly annoyed, studying Ritsu’s flushed face as Ritsu averted his gaze.

Takano sighed, something he always did when Ritsu wouldn’t look at him, unwound the scarf from his own neck and draped it around Ritsu’s with a tug to wrap it a little tighter.

The sudden action had caused Ritsu to look at the man in front of him, their eyes locking and he knew he was doomed, he couldn’t look away once he was trapped in those pools that seemed to prod through to his very soul.

“You need to be more prepared for weather like this.” Takano stated by way of explanation at the sudden closeness. “I’m headed home, return it to me tonight.” Takano pushed his fingers through Ritsu’s hair as he was walked past, pushing the slightly too long hair out of Ritsu’s reddened face.

When he knew Takano was gone he buried his face into the scarf out of embarrassment, only feel utterly worse when the strong smell that was distinctly Takano assaulted his noise and sent an involuntary shiver up his spine.

He smelled of ink, almond soup and coffee – something that Ritsu would think to be an odd combination on anyone else but he resisted the thought that to him, it was actually horribly comforting.

With the scarf wrapped around his neck, Ritsu pressed forward, the smell of Takano making the expedition both worse and better, all at the same time.

When he was walking passed an old second hand store that sat away from the normal shopping district, with assorted art pieces sitting in the front window, Ritsu couldn’t have told you what made him go in.

The shop was cluttered, overflowing with junk… or another man’s treasure and somehow, he found himself scanning the shelves upon shelves of books, he could feel himself searching but for the life of him, he didn’t really know what for.

That is, until he found it.

Tucked away in a back corner was a leather bound, faded, worn (or as Ritsu saw them, well loved) copy of a book he had seen Takano borrow more than once when he was in high school.

High school…

Of course, his brain pulled out a memory, one Ritsu didn’t even realise he had until it all came tumbling back to him. Takano in his usual spot in the library, reading a book for the second time, something Ritsu couldn’t remember ever seeing him do before.

It was a good book, full of adventure, well written and bounded beautiful, well this copy was when it was originally published, now it was more tattered and worn.

Just like you and Takano.

Ritsu almost throw the book away but found himself leaving with it clutched tightly to his chest a minute later. It was such a silly memory, a dumb idea but it fit so perfectly to Takano that Ritsu couldn’t bear to leave it behind.

***

When he arrived at home he was surprised when he went into his bathroom awhile later and saw the stolen scarf, still wound tightly around his neck. He needed to return it but that would also mean having to see Takano and give him the book.

The issue with this of course being Ritsu was, in fact, terrified… what if he remembers it and then thinks it means more then it does… worse, what if he doesn’t remember and…

I feel like a fool.

Ritsu took a shuddering breath, pulling himself together and tugging the scarf from his neck. Standing outside of Takano’s door, eyes flicking back to his own next to it a few times with his hand raised to knock, he spent more time then he should have hesitating.

After a few seconds the door was opened, Takano looked slightly dishevelled, hair out of place, his shirt looked too big for him, hanging off his shoulder.

“Oh, Onodera, sorry. I was getting ready to sleep, come in.” Takano looked genuinely surprised to see him, which was unusual considering how many times he convinced Ritsu he needed to be at his house with him.

“Did you just come to bring my scarf? It’s quite late, you could have waited till tomorrow… you seem unhappy, what’s wrong?” Takano was scrutinising his face, reaching out and pulling his chin so they would be looking at one another.

“Here.” Ritsu thrust the scarf at Takano, the book firmly wrapped up in it in paper wrapping and went to leave. His entire face felt like it was on fire, red hot and making him want to crumple to the floor of embarrassment.

Before he could take two steps back towards the door he felt Takano’s large hand envelop his wrist, holding him in place, he could feel his warm breath on the back of his neck.

“Ritsu, what’s this?”

“Merry Christmas from your secret Santa.” Ritsu mumbled out, attempting to yank his hand free but knowing full well the effort was in vain.

He heard the rustle of paper being ripped and a soft gasp that could have been his hearing, at this point the rushing of blood in his own ears would drown out most sounds if he let it.

Suddenly Ritsu was enveloped in long arms that wound around his stomach and pulled him flush against Takano’s chest, Takano’s face burying roughly into the side of his neck as Ritsu stiffened in shock.

“Onodera, how… how did you find it?” Takano’s voice was small and soft but hot in his ear as he spoke, sending a shiver up his spine.

“I-I knew you liked older books, I just f-found it at-at a second-hand store.”

“Not the book, Onodera, this one in particular… did you remember?” Takano’s voice was warm with affection as his lips brushed Onodera’s ear and he swore his knees were going to give out from under him.

“Merry Christmas, Takano.” Ritsu replied simply, unsure of what else he could say at this point – apparently Takano had other ideas when Ritsu went to pull away.

“Onodera, I love you. Thank you.”

Ritsu felt his lips press harder to his neck before he was spun around and pushed against the wall, the look on Takano’s face was more worrying to Ritsu then being pressed flush against the wall.

There was a slight glint in Takano’s eyes, moisture there that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

“Takano?”

“I love you Onodera, I know you won’t say it back but at least you show it sometimes.” Before Ritsu could respond his lips were enveloped in the heat of Takano’s, kissing him softly but with passion that forced a shudder to course through him.

Ritsu tried to resist, pull away to leave but Takano knew as well as he did that Ritsu wasn’t leaving tonight, probably not in the morning either… apparently, he wasn’t wrong when Ritsu had thought he would give Takano himself for Christmas.

I love you, Masamune Takano…

[nightingveilxo]

The Film “Stay” and How it Brings Things in Sherlock Together

Right after TFP aired, I did this short meta about how the deaths and accidents in Sherrinford looked staged, and by that I mean they had too little blood, angles were wrong, etc. I was annoyed, because I started off the episode aware that Eurus’s eyes were the wrong color; not the contact lens issue, I mean the little actress playing Eurus had brown eyes while adult Eurus was revealed to have blue, which didn’t make sense. Unless something else was wrong, like little Eurus suddenly appearing in 221B, and the trio suddenly appearing on the beach (as mentioned in TLD), outside the old Holmes residence.

In March, I was working on meta about repeating events, and how to work through things or stage them to look a certain way. It narrowed down to the editing, lighting, and directing choices--throwing in many film, tv, and lit references, in order to create possibly two seasons of content. I say possibly, because I watched S4, hoping it would explain things that still made no sense in S3 (wrong dates, Sherlock taking over the blog, and repeating things off the blog). It just got stranger in S4, and I still don’t know if we’re going to end up back in the aftermath of TRF or HLV. I will say though, that if you follow the plot, flickering lights, disappearing people and objects, staging, camera, and directing choices in Stay, S4 of Sherlock will make a lot more sense. I didn’t know that many people when I did my original meta, and wasn’t aware people hadn’t seen Stay. I was glad it seemed to help a few people.

The image at the top if from the film Stay. It says Forgive Me over and over again, because Henry (Sherlock) not THoB Henry Knight, but that works too, because he also lost his parents in a traumatic event, writes it about his guilt over those deaths. Henry Knight was also a Sherlock mirror, and it’s possible that it was his parents that died in a traumatic way (based on evidence in TEH that I’ve already covered), causing the rift between Sherlock and Mycroft (or possibly their father having an affair). Henry���s been suicidal for quite some time, and the whole of Stay revolves around his traumatized brain trying to make sense of things in his last minutes alive. Compare that with the note John receives, because some of us contemplated that it was actually meant to represent the note Sherlock didn’t leave in TRF. “Ordinary” is also what John says about Sherlock’s parents in TEH, and it’s the word Mary uses about having a life with John.

Note the line from Stay about suicide. Naomi Watts’ character is speaking to Sam (John), a plaid-and jumper wearing, bicycle-riding therapist who was standing in for Henry’s regular therapist or so it appears. She’s tried suicide before, and she’s quoting Henry’s favorite artist, who also took his own life. It’s important to note that Lila tells Sam (John) he can’t understand being in the kind of pain that she knew, and that Henry seems to be experiencing. It’s the same sort of idea that many of us have had about how John treats Sherlock in S3 and 4, without having been in his shoes. Lila does mention how there is too much beauty in the world to end things, though...

Compare this with Sherlock in TLD, speaking from his own experience with taking his life in TRF.

(Part of this is a direct quote from ACD canon The Veiled Lodger--)

Sherlock: Your life is not your own.  Keep your hands off it, do you hear me?

Sherlock: “Taking your own life.”  Interesting expression.  Taking it from who?  Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. (Resting one hand on the railing, he looks westwards along the river towards the London Aquarium.  In a brief cut-away, a pistol fires towards the camera, then there’s a brief shot of the exterior of the Aquarium as the gunshot echoes and then smoke rises from the end of the pistol.   Sherlock now has both hands on the railing as he continues to gaze along the river.) Sherlock: Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. (Faith has looked in the direction he’s looking but now turns to face him again.  He lowers his head, his back to her.) Sherlock: Your life is not your own.  (His voice becomes strained.)  Keep your hands off it. (As he looks down, it’s as if he and the railing are suspended in mid-air with no ground or river below them.  His feet are not touching anything.) ( x )

This is important, because all the events that actually happened in Stay, take place on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Henry is in hell. Sherlock: I’m burning up. (See more below). Mary: Sherlock, go to hell. Mycroft: I can give you a map reference for hell. ER number 999 becomes 666.

We also have The Burning Child (a story told by Freud, who was brought up in TAB and all of S4), which is told by Henry’s father. It’s repeated, just like The Merchant story is in S4 of Sherlock. In Henry’s case, the father is manifesting as blind, because he possibly never took notice of his son or his art. Remember the idea that was going around for awhile that John had been shot in the eye, and was blind? It’s also why I sometimes refer to people (esp Mary in S4) as manifestations, thoughtforms or compilations of various people.

It goes with this, where characters Athena and Lila are morphing, because Henry’s mind is becoming more and more unstable.

This is what Athena actually looks like, and she’s practicing Hamlet (Henry Letham anagram--we know Mycroft loves those), a play about contemplating death.

Here’s our Athena/Anthea, who is associated with marriage.

This is in Magnussen’s MP (which also looks like Mycroft’s theatre).

The number 21 comes up four times in this film, because that’s how old Henry was going to be when he committed suicide, but he fell in love with Athena. In one instance, it looks like 2121. 221B anyone?

The original meta I did associated with Stay. The rest of these images will make more sense if you view it, but I didn’t want to make this meta too long.

Henry in Sam’s office. Yes, the couch and bookshelf look like Sherlock’s chair.

The glass sphere theme, like the one Arwel bought for S4.

Twins and triplets everywhere.

Leon, Henry’s dad, and Sam playing chess. Sam also has giant chess pieces on his office desk.

Henry’s mother and Mary in T6T. Henry’s mom and Henry both have this bleeding head issue, because Henry hit his head during the car wreck. The injury is very much like the one when Sherlock goes off the roof in TRF, which is another reason why I can’t definitively say that things started getting weird in HLV.

The aquarium (although that is also from The Lady of Shanghai, as are the multiple mirror reflections in HLV)

Stairs like in Magnussen’s place.

Olive, Henry’s dog who was put down years ago, just like Redbeard was.

Empty fridge, like Mycroft’s.

MRI scans in a not-quite medical facility, similar to in Sherrinford.

When Henry visits a strip club, these scenes begin to show up on the screen behind the dancer, although the burning effect that happens when Mycroft watches his film is also referencing the film “Sinister”.

I’m going to end this here, because you really should watch Stay for yourselves. This link will bring you to it on YouTube. I’m working on two other meta for Naomi Watts films that factor into Sherlock, but you should also read

@may-shepard The Ring meta, because it’s amazing, and a second one by

@swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool that filled in some more information. I’ll be interested to see if we end up with a seven days scenario, since weeks = years.

More links and tags under the cut...

Lit, Film, and TV References Master Post: ( x )

*EMP/Unreliable Narrator/Alibi/Editing All Give Sherlock His Audience ( x ) (Part II of Justifying John Watson)

Justifying John Watson/Johnlock as a Player in the Drama ( x )

Time Is a Leveller & We Get Six Napoleons ( x )

*Magnussen’s MP is Mycroft’s Home Theatre ( x )

A Happy Ending or Mycroft Has Been An Idiot ( x )

Lestrade Has Been Helping All Along (Whether He Knows It or Not) ( x )

Sherlock and John Become a Unit/Couple in TLD (Or it’s their memory of doing so—TD12?) (x)

*Stories Making TEH Unreliable ( x )

More Internal Editing in S4 ( x )

In T6T, Sherlock Becomes Left-Handed and John Becomes Right-Handed, But Only When Lestrade is Present ( x )

Ajay in a Memory of Nuclear Codes ( x )

Sherlock and John Became a Couple in TLD ( x ) Part I

Sherlock Became Captain Watson’s Soldier in S4 ( x ) Part II

Stag Night Results in Culverton’s Hospital and the Morgue Scene ( x )

Eurus in Mycroft’s Home Movie Transition ( x )

@monikakrasnorada @mrskolesouniverse @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @devoursjohnlock @sarahthecoat @loveismyrevolution @kateis-cakeis @holmesianscholar @sherlockshadow @tendergingergirl @sherlockians-get-bored @posh-boy-clever-boy @princesse-des-lucioles @fellshish @iris-wallpaper @antisocial-otaku @love-in-mind-palace @darlingtonsubstitution

[annieanhworld]

Lamentation D’amour

Many many many thanks to both @captnandycalavera​ and @fireloom​ for the editing, you girls were amazing​ and incredibly inspiring to me <3 This is my first fic so there were still many faults, I’d like to hear all of your opinion regarding this fic. I know it was a bit late, but I hope you still take it with open hearts :D

Long fic is long.

Prompt #9: “Yes, but I’ll never admit it.”

It was half past seven in the evening, Sherlock stepped into the restaurant with abnormal phlegm. Just one minute observing from the vestibule and he already noticed five married couples holding hands, four proposal rings in either the men’s vest pockets or the champagne glasses, and eight meticulously wrapped presents. What’s more, most people in the tables kept staring at their opposite eyes as if that person is going to evaporate. A crowded yet somehow still incredibly dull night of this restaurant, people went on talking about how much they love each other or how special the other was to them. Such originality, he thought sarcastically. Had he come here by himself, he would have returned to Baker Street this instance.

Still, he had a date. At least that was John Watson’s mind-set. To him it was more like an act of compensation. He stood there waiting for a woman, The Woman, Irene Adler. He was in a black formal wear. He wanted to wear his normal suit but his flatmate had a different idea, telling it would make him more “charming” and “dashing”. And here he was, feeling the increasing heat from his collar. He should have maintained his initial thoughts.

“Dress for the occasion, Mister Holmes?” A familiar and expecting voice came behind his back. Sherlock turned his body to find The Woman stood there and gave him her signature smirk.

“Every battle needs an appropriate armour, every occasion needs a suitable suit.” Sherlock sardonically replied.

“Well I must say this outfit looks astonishingly alluring.” Sherlock is puffed up with conceit as The Woman’s hands reached for his necktie and fixed it. “Doctor Watson has such a splendid taste, doesn’t he?” Sherlock’s smirk quickly faded after her remark. How could she know it was John’s choice? He tried to make a comeback but lost for words. Every dinner night they shared with so far has been an underlying battle, minus the battle dress of her. He could sense his upcoming defeat after their little conversation.

All of the sudden, The Woman let out a cough. To be fair, mid-December in London was frigid and everyone was susceptible to flu virus. Still, she should have taken a better care of herself.

“Now, now, dear. Don’t give me that look, it’s not like I’m going to pass out any time soon.” She assured him, though her expression wasn’t what he would call “assuring”.

“If you say so.” He gave out his arm to The Woman, “Shall we?”

Despite the congested number of people and their frankly cheesy behaviours, it was a tolerable night for him. The dishes were that night most redeeming quality, even his opposite couldn’t help but gave a compliment to the chef. The Woman started asking him about his latest case, which wasn’t much of a surprise. She did say she liked detective stories. She also inquired about John, baby Rosie and even Eurus, all of which Sherlock gave fundamental answers.

“I wonder what will happen if I’m gone tomorrow.” She asks. Out of context, the question confused him.

“The world isn’t ending if you suddenly want to go out of town, you know.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You can never be sure about the world, Mr Holmes, which keeps it amusing.” She remarked. “But that’s not what I intended to ask. I mean gone as in dead, or deceased, if you prefer.”

Unlike normal people, The Woman had played with death for quite a few times. From the moment she decided to go up against his brother, she had already set up a fatal plan for herself, with a little help from his arch nemesis, Jim Moriarty. When he received her Christmas gift on his mantelpiece, he had anticipated what would be inside it. Still, he had wanted his assumption to be wrong for the first time in his life. Then she came back and with his ‘help’ she had almost succeeded in bringing his brother and therefore, England to their knees. Only after an eleventh hour deduction had he realised her feelings for him and her camera-phone code, which was a clever pun of his name.

And then the Karachi... She was sitting there, ready to die… only to find him as her executioner. As much as he wanted to ignore her, to act like he didn’t care, he couldn’t live with the idea of him being the cause of her death. Through his connections, Sherlock tracked down her location and infiltrated an entire terrorist cell to save her. Afterwards, she had lived under many aliases. Every time she stopped using a name, there would be a text in his phone and they would go out to have dinner to celebrate that identity’s ‘last night’. From time to time, the idea of her death became more abstract to him.

But why did she choose that question to ask? By the time events at Sherrinford occurred, thanks to John’s inability to keep secrets, his dear brother had known about her survival and she had stopped using aliases. Unless…

He decided to make an observation of her, she had lost at least seven pounds since his last saw her, but other than that he couldn’t make out any noteworthy particulars. It was rather irritating how ineffective his scan was on her, but he could feel that she was hinting at something behind that question. If there was anything he learnt about The Woman, apart from being one of his most formidable ex-opponent to date, was that there would always be more than meets her eyes. Nothing she had done so far is random or coincidental. He decided to take a gambit, which would go either thankfully wrong or horribly right. He gently put his left hand over her right and looked directly into her eyes.

“Before I answer your question, I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me you’re not going to die tomorrow. No avoiding, no paraphrasing, just a straightforward sentence.”

“I’m not going to die tomorrow.” Her words came out with a sharp sounding tone. He let out a sigh of relief. Her pulse was stable, her pupils were still. The Woman hadn't lied to him. But before he could lift his hand off hers, another train of thought arose. What if it wasn’t ‘tomorrow’? What if she had used that word deliberately to mess up his mind? He then continued with his move:

“Then tell me your question isn’t about the fact that you’re dying.”

He waited for a reply, one simple, clear reply to know that his hypothesis was fallacious, that he would not lose Irene Adler again. But she just gave him a doleful smile. No words coming out of her throat had proven the validation in his suspicion.

So many questions came to his mind the second he realised how true he had been, yet none of them could escape his mouth. He couldn’t process this new-fangled information. He felt impotence, benumbed and as if he had been tricked into an immeasurable void.

It was The Woman’s voice that brought him to his senses:

“I hope you could let go of my hand now.”

He lifted his hand with burden. He had to come up with a question, otherwise his brain would suffer from deterioration.

“How long did you know about your…condition?”

“A while now.”

“Would help if you were being a bit more specific.”

“This day three months ago.”

Sherlock scoured through his collapsing mind palace. Three months before he had received a text from her telling him she needed to see him immediately. Of course he would have come if it hadn’t been for Lestrade’s information of his current case, which was too fascinating to be missed. He then decided to ignore her text. He could tell she was not too excited to meet him afterwards. But he genuinely didn’t know she was going to tell him about this. And now all he could feel was guilt and regret.

“Then what are you dying from?”

She gave him another smile as she confirms what he does not want to hear the most at the moment: “Asbestos lung cancer, first stage.” He could notice the witheld tear in her eyes.

With all the strength he still had in his body, he confronted her: “Asbestos lung cancer can only be caused by serious exposure to said substance. To the best of my knowledge, you are not a blue collar worker. So how could you be diagnosed with such disease?”

“There are many things you and other people don’t know about me, Mr Holmes. My mother had me when she was only sixteen. She and I were kicked out of her parents’ house when I was two years of age. We then lived in a shack near a weave factory.” She paused for the slicker of a moment.  “My mother began working at that factory to raise me, I was too young back then.”She swallowed “ We lived like that for almost a decade until my mother died of a seizure. Afterwards, I made my way in the world, moved to London and became who I am now.” She stopped for a moment and then continued, “I’ve let go most of my childhood memories, Mr Holmes. I couldn’t even remember my mother’s face when she passed away. But the odour of that factory was the one thing that still haunts me…. I guess it was the onset of my illness.” She stopped and took a breath.” But please don’t feel sympathized or piteous for me. I despise being pitied by anyone, especially by you.”

“How long do you still have?” He asked with a sour tone.

“About 13 months. I’m still on the early stage. The doctor said I still had a chance of survival, but I tend not to let myself be that optimistic.”

“You did say we can never know about the world. Maybe you can pull this off.” He tried to say in the calmest tone as possible.

“I know, which is why I’m travelling to America for further treatment tomorrow.”

“What? Why can’t you do that in London?”

“Because the last thing I want is you seeing me in a hideous form or I seeing you pitying me.”

“Oh now you’re being absurd, miss Adler.”  He bitterly remarked.

“There’s nothing you can do or nothing I will do to change the decision, Mr Holmes. I’ve filed the paper, the ink has dried. I’m leaving tomorrow. Deal with it,” she affirmed with the most determined tone he had ever heard of her. He couldn’t make out any convincing argument against her. Instead, he sat back and laughed at how ironic life turned out to be. It was Christmas day when he first lost her, the day where family, friends, the ones you cared about, were supposed to be found. Not that she was of his concern back then, but to see her lying there in the morgue still affected him. In a way he had never been affected before. Back to the day where everyone was joined with those they love and he was about to lose her again, only this time it might as well be permanently.

“So? What is your answer then?” The Woman asked with a curious tone.

“To what?” 

“My early question.”

He realised he had forgotten the utmost question. What would happen once The Woman was… gone? He recalled the day where he was shot by Mary, as his dying breath his mind drove him to her again. Mummy and Daddy will cry, The Woman will cry… He wondered if he will cry for her this time. Back then he didn’t, as he felt apprehensive about his feelings. But now…

The orchestra was playing Salut d'amour. The musician who wrote this gave it to his fiancé as an engagement present to express his undying love for her. He also wrote a score for The Woman once, in the days she was dead. People could say it was a Lamentation d’amour, but it was more than that. The score spoke in his behalf, a reflection and representation of him, much like The Woman herself. She was his opponent, but also his feminine embodiment. They were the two sides of the same coin, never headed towards the same direction, but made for each other definitively.

He couldn’t give any justifiable answer to her question. No words would be enough to describe the hollowness he would feel once she went to her resting place. After a moment of contemplation, he stood up, went straight towards the orchestra and asked the violist to let him play one score. This was his first and probably last time playing this composition for her. He didn’t care how she would interpret this piece of music or whether she loved it. This was him making an exception for her, letting her in and never letting her go.

Sherlock returned to his table to find The Woman was smiling gratifyingly at him.

“Your answer is quite melodious, Mr Holmes. Thank you so much.”

“What am I being thanked for again?” Another out of context sentence from her.

“You did a magnificent job playing this role, sweetie.” The Woman went on without answering his question. “I must admit I was waiting for a different reaction, but it got even better.”

“What do you mean I was playing a role?” He said confused.

“You don’t understand that, do you? No wonder Eurus told me you were the slow one. I have to say the backstory was a bit ostentatious. But then, who could ever resist a touch of drama? Still, it was hilarious how you fell for that story. You should have seen your face while listening to it, Mr Holmes. It was priceless” She laughed “I’ll send you a picture of that later on. Oh, before you can ask, I just want to say I took the picture through this restaurant camera footage.” She said pointing to a camera behind her ”I know this restaurant’s owner. Well, I know what she likes. I got it all captured, from the journey of emotion and enlightenment, to the conflict in the expressions, to that heartfelt violin arrangement. God, it almost brought me to tears. I’ve never expected to see such … sentimental sides of you, Mr Holmes. Had I known I would get these gems, I would have done it way sooner.” The Woman explained while not trying to hide her amusement.

“I’m sorry but did you say you met my sister? Was she involved in your... shenanigans?” Immensely embarrased, he tried to deflect the subject of the conversation. 

“Yes and also yes.” The Woman said without hesitation. “Didn’t Mycroft inform you about this? You see, I was her Christmas present last year. Three minutes of unsupervised conversation and I couldn’t help but admire that woman. Such a transcendent person she was. Gave me a lot of advice of how to make my narrative more convincing. I think she wanted the footage for “emotional context”, her own words. I’m sending the footage to her via Doctor Watson, but you can send it if you want.”

“Why don’t you do it by yourself?”

“Three months ago I did have something important to tell you. When I said I was travelling to America tomorrow, that wasn’t a lie, but it was for theatrical business. I got a semi-leading role through an acquaintance. I knew what he liked. The play will be released in Broadway theatre, so I’m going there to follow my dream. I think I will have a marvellous acting career, don’t you think? Considering I’ve just deceived the great Sherlock Holmes. Nevertheless, it was really rude of you to ignore my texts that many times. So I came up with this plan to return the favour, with a little help from your sister, obviously.”

“So you went through all this trouble just because I ignored your texts…”

“… and didn’t apologize afterwards.” The Woman finished his sentence “Sherlock, I like you and I like the way we are right now. But if you’re insisting on that sort of behaviours I will get annoyed. And once you’ve surpassed my endurance, well,” The woman leaned towards his face and whispered in his ear “I’m going to be really naughty.” She then gave him her most innocent smile, yet he still felt shivers all over his body.

Throughout this entire evening night he had been tormented, dumbfounded and threatened, yet deep down he still felt incredibly aroused with her mischief. Sure, their night out might not be that typical, even by their standard, and that he was humiliated and defeated, again. He couldn’t help but smile at how unbelievable the night turned out to be. He couldn’t wait till her departure from America and their anticipating dinner.

What a woman, what a night.

Later on the day, Sherlock received a text message, her text. She sent him a picture with his face being frankly ridiculous:

You looked so cute when you’re agonising, Mr Holmes. – IA.

I always try to extend my bank of facial expression. – SH.

Sure you are. Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr Holmes. - IA.

“It was just an excuse for chocolates and greeting cards sales.”. He had the words written, but then decided to make it a bit different.

Happy Valentine’s Day as well, miss Adler. Have a great flight. - SH.

Well what do we have here, the great detective is being sentimental. Thanks for your regards, dear. - IA.

I’m simply being courteous. - SH.

You know you love me, Mr Holmes. - IA.

Do I? - SH. Yes, but I’ll never admit it.

[dorothydelgadillo]

7 Essential Content Marketing Apps & Tools I Can't Live Without for 2019

Who has two thumbs, speaks limited French, and struggled to get out of bed for this first post-holiday morning back at work?

Don't get me wrong -- it's only been in recent years that I wake up each day feeling hashtag blessed about the fact that I get to do what I'm passionate about for a living alongside some of the smartest people I have ever known.

Still, I'm dragging this morning.

And my to do list is a mile long. 

Because, fun fact, pillar pages don't write themselves. Nor do whitepapers, blog articles, or case studies.

This surprises me, given how every other article I read recently has to do with the rise of Skynet as a reality; you'd think they'd have figured out how to do all of that by now, right?

Just kidding, I love robots -- from a distance. 

Plus, hyperbolic posturing about the robot apocalypse aside, there are a lot of ways technology and automation have already transformed the way I map out, write, and produce the content for a lot of our strategies. 

(And I'm not even counting HubSpot Marketing Hub.) 

Since neither content (or pimpin') is easy, I'm going to share the apps and tools I use every single day -- and consider indispensable -- to produce a good portion content you interact with on this website. 

App #1: GatherContent

If you've ever worked with me on a project, you know I live and die by GatherContent, a centralized content creation, production, and collaboration platform I can only assume was created by Zeus from on-high -- it is that magical.

I was first introduced to GatherContent years ago by Jessie-Lee Nichols (now IMPACT's Design Supervisor) when we were working on a website project together. 

I'm resistant to change -- especially when it comes to someone trying to "evolve" or "improve" my processes, but Jessie-Lee was persistent. 

"You'll spend less time chasing down approvals, trying to find drafts in Google Docs, and digging through your emails," she said, zeroing in on my biggest challenges. "Everything is one place, with real-time visibility into the status of every single piece of content in a project."

Lo and behold, she was right. Flash forward to now, there is no project I work on that doesn't leverage GatherContent.  

From within GatherContent, I can work with multiple collaborators, give access to my higher-ups so they can see the status of a project or single piece of content at any time -- whether it's 3 a.m. or 3 p.m., they don't need to email, call, or smoke signal me to find out the status or deadline of a piece of content.

For writers, I can leave comments and assign out changes. Additionally, either the writer or I can overwrite whatever content is there. There is a rollback feature that allows someone to see what changes have been made without whoever made the changes having to highlight them or call them out.

Finally, GatherContent keeps me sane. It isn't free -- although the pricing is very reasonable, especially if your a small business. (If you're an agency dealing with lots of clients or content production, you'll need to be smart about how many projects you set up.) 

But what it saves me in time, content project administration, and sanity makes it worth it to me. I'm infinitely more productive with it, and I would consider it the most important tool I use. 

I also can't even imagine managing all of the different projects I oversee without it. It's life-changing. 

Of course, if you're one of those folks who loves searching through endless Google Docs and emails, and spending more time calling and emailing about content projects instead of actually doing the work, you probably won't need it.

As I mentioned, GatherContent isn't free. It starts at $83 per month, with lots of options for organizations.

  App #2: Bear

I have a confession to make: I absolutely hated writing when I was younger.

In fact, one time when I was eighth grade, I turned in an essay where the last paragraph was the same sentence copied and pasted over and over again, just so I could meet the minimum word count requirement without having to put more effort into it. (My teacher didn’t appreciate my sense of humor.)

Obviously, I've come around since then.

But my change of heart only came about because eventually I realized that (a) I was good at writing, and (b) it wasn’t the act of writing I despised so much, but rather I hated the cluttered and distracting writing experience of Microsoft Word.

Enter stage left, Bear. 

Bear (available only for iPhone, iPad, and Mac) is an app that's all about empowering users to "write beautifully." And it does that so very well.

It's gotten to the point where everything I write -- IMPACT blogs, content projects for clients, freelance projects, etc. -- always passes through an initial rough drafting stage within Bear.  

In addition to comprehensive and lengthy content creation, Bear can also be used as an Evernote-esque notes application, making it quite versatile. 

Bear is free, but if you splurge on the paid version ($1.49 per month or $14.99 per year), you can enjoy custom themes, syncing across multiple devices, and exporting capabilities. 

App #2: Hemingway

Whether you’re a seasoned content creator or you’re a new kid on the inbound block, you undoubtedly know how hard it is to write and edit your own work -- and not just because you are too close to your writing to gauge its quality.

Thankfully, someone created Hemingway.

In addition to being one of my favorite authors -- as well as one of the best characters in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris -- Hemingway forces you to evaluate the readability of your work.

It tells you what grade level your work reads at, and it scans your work for sentence complexity, passive voice, and overuse of adverbs. 

While you have the option to write directly in the Hemingway app itself, I find these kinds of mark-ups to be very distracting while I am trying to form my ideas for the first time.

Instead, I usually type of my first draft in Bear and then copy it over to Hemingway, when I'm ready to switch my brain over to editing mode. (But how you choose to use this app is entirely up to you!)

You can use Hemingway for free through your web browser at www.hemingwayapp.com, or you can download the desktop version for $9.99.

App #3: Grammarly for Google Docs

OK, Grammarly isn't new, but you know what is? Grammarly for Google Docs. 

It's not a separate tool from standard Grammarly. It's just a new feature that is so freaking valuable, I have to call it out separately, on the off chance that those of you who are familiar with the product haven't heard about this.

For those unfamiliar with Grammarly, however, it is a standalone desktop and web app that also has a Google Chrome extension that scans your writing in various places across the web -- or as input by you -- and provides editorial suggestions.

It's not perfect, but it has saved my patootie more times than I care to admit; especially when I'm rushing through emails early in the morning. 

Unfortunately, as with any technology, there were a few blind spots for the tool -- places online where Grammarly could not go. The most annoying of which was Google Docs, one of the most widely-used content collaboration word processing apps out there.

Even though I spent the early part of this article swearing off Google Docs for GatherContent or Bear, I still use it a lot. 

For example, sometimes I want a word processing application where I can also fiddle around with images and more visual formatting that GatherContent and Bear purposefully avoid in their feature set. 

Finally, Grammarly made the announcement we've all been waiting for -- Grammarly for Google Docs was now in beta for those using the Google Chrome extension.

Please remember that no automated editorial assistant is infallible. Review every suggested edit; never blindly accept them all.

Grammarly is free, although I highly recommend the premium version, as it scans for more nuanced grammar issues that can substantively elevate the quality of your writing.

App #4: WordCountTools.com

One of the most game-changing editing lessons I have ever learned is not to edit for everything all at once. Rather, you should edit for style, grammar, and narrative progression separately, in individual editing phases.

That’s why after I put my work through the readability test of Hemingway, I drop my work into the text box on www.wordcounttools.com. 

Not only does this website tell you how many words your composition has overall, it also targets one of my biggest writing “quirks” -- redundancy.

(Seriously, I don’t know what my problem is, but I am incapable of going a single column, essay, or blog post without repeating certain words or phrases.)

Below the area where you paste copy, you’ll see a keyword density box, which counts how many times non-“grammar words” appear in your work.

I know, it seems almost stupidly simple.

But as someone who spends a good portion of my day editing the work of others, trust me when I say it’s likely that more than a few of you reading this post should also be using this tool.

App #5: Noisli

I used to spend so much time at work trying to find the perfect work playlist on Spotify to keep me on track. Music is supposed to help spark productivity and creativity, right?

Wrong. Well, for me, anyway.

I don’t know whether I’m defective or something, but most of the time I find myself distracted by music.

Either I get wrapped up in the song itself -- even if it’s only instrumental -- or, when one song ends, I don’t like what comes up next, so I break from my work to spend 20 minutes trying to curate a new ideal soundtrack.

Noisli is a stunning, minimalist (and free!) background noise generator. Or, as they like to say, Noisli is “your productivity companion.”

Even though there are multiple studies showing the positive effects of ambient noise on productivity, Noisli confused me when I took it for a test drive a couple years ago, during a particularly challenging copywriting project.

At first, listening to noise while working seemed… strange. Not to mention completely boring. Now? I’m a total convert, and it’s pretty much all I listen to when I’m trying to get sh*t done. 

With my free Noisli account, I’ve created and saved custom blends of sounds -- which you control using the soundboard shown on the left -- that can set the tone for my entire working day.

Sound options include rain, thunderstorm, wind, forest, leaves, water stream, seaside, water, bonfire, summer night, fan, train, coffee shop, white noise, pink noise, and brown noise.

As my Creator's Block co-host (and long-time work pal) Jessie-Lee knows, my favorite Noisli blend is one I call "rainy trainy." It’s a personalized symphony of thunder, rain, train, and fan sounds. There's also a splash of coffee shop, for good measure.

I created this soothing blend because I love traveling by train and have been doing so for years -- in my 20s, when I would travel home to Washington, D.C., while living in Boston, and now, when I travel to and from my home in Annapolis, Maryland, to IMPACT's home office in Connecticut. 

Fun fact: You can also share blends of sounds with other people.  

Noisli is available for free through the website. There is also a free Chrome extension and iOS app available for $1.99.

App #6: SEMrush Content Template

I learned about this gem when I was working with Franco Valentino of Narrative SEO on a comprehensive SEO analysis we published last year. Now, I don't leave home without it, so to speak -- especially when I'm crafting individual pillar strategies.

If you have SEMRush, simply click on “SEO Content Template” in the menu on the left near the bottom and enter the keyword you want to base a piece of content around. It will spit out recommendations on everything -- target length of your content, links and semantic keywords you should include, and much, much more.

It also has a rich-text editor, where you can test the content you're creating that targets a particular keyword string against the recommendations it provided:

SEMrush costs money, but it's worth the money. They also have a lot of different pricing plans, depending on the needs of your organization.

App #7: Evernote

Given how ubiquitous Evernote is, it almost feels like a copout to include this in my list. That said, I spent years not understanding how or why millions of people and scores of businesses trust the elephant-branded app, before it finally clicked for me last fall. 

Now, I'm an Evernote freak, too.

For the three of you who haven't heard of Evernote, it's a note-taking application you can download or use through the web. You can clip things from the web, create templates, scan and attach documents, and sync your notes across multiple devices (if you pay for the premium version).

I also love how I can easily share notes in my Evernote -- for example, a table of contents developed during a pillar strategy brainstorm. By clicking one or two buttons, I can share an accessible URL that stays updated if I make any changes to the document, instead of having to copy and paste the information into an email or a Google Doc.

But for me, it's application is simple.

I've created notebooks for my podcast, my pillar strategies, and general notes for content I'm working on. It's where I store all of the preparation notes for pillar strategy sessions, the questions I'm going to ask a Content Lab guest, and where I outline longform pieces. 

There isn't much to say about Evernote that hasn't already been said by somebody else. But what I will say is that so much of what I have gotten out of it only came about once I understood it was all about how I organized and setup my Evernote. 

If you're looking for a virtual notebook to help you make sense of all of the back and forth that shouldn't live in disparate emails or Google Docs, but also has no business living in something like GatherContent, I can't recommend Evernote more.

Evernote is free with premium and business options available.

The Best Writing Hack Is Honesty

Even though all four of these apps have revolutionized the way I think about and approach my work, the best piece of advice I can give you about how to boost your content creation capabilities is this:

Have an open and brutally honest discussion with yourself about what specifically you don’t like about the writing process.

No app or program can tell you what your problem is or fix a writing roadblock you can't identify; they can only help you once you have some idea of what pain point you’re trying to address.

The answers will vary drastically from person to person, as they should. For instance, while my struggles were rooted in distraction and focus, yours may be founded in writer’s block, which is an entirely different beast.

So, while I think each of you will like at least one of these apps, I hope you’ll also do yourselves a favor and figure out what part of your own personal writing process really needs improving.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/content-marketing-apps-tools

[lesliepump]

How Lawyers Work: Kyle E. Mitchell, Journeyman Deal Mechanic & Overfed Bookworm

In this week’s edition of How Lawyers Work, we hear from Kyle E. Mitchell. Kyle grew up in the Piney Woods of Texas, beating on drums and fiddling with computers. He studied at UT Austin for way too long, then went west to California to practice law. These days, he advises companies big and small on all manner of intellectual property, commercial, privacy, and security projects related to software, especially open source.

You can follow Kyle on Twitter.

What apps or tools are essential to your daily workflow?

I’m a technology person—and a programmer—and I have been since I was a little boy. Zero apps are essential to my daily workflow, and God forbid—I avoid specialized, glitzy apps in favor of robust, versatile tools whenever I can. I use tools like plain text files, backup and file sharing services, tiny macro-esque computer programs, e-mail mailboxes, that kind of thing. Essentially, I use the sticky notes, index cards, and filing cabinets of the computer world. Plus a few tools of my own design.

There’s a great old cooking show, Serious Eats, with Alton Brown, back before he turned heel. Alton called single-purpose kitchen gadgets “unitaskers”. He railed against them. They cost a lot of money, pile up in the kitchen, eat up space, and usually don’t work very well. They don’t play nice with other tools or techniques. You don’t grow as a cook by relying on them.

There are so many unitaskers in legal technology. Apps for tracking time. Apps for tracking contacts. Apps for project management. Note taking apps. Billing apps. Tenths-of-an-hour watches. Bates stampers. Legal-size paper. That legal keyboard that just came out. Unitaskers glommed together in unwieldy combinations, as “platforms”, like those 30-plus-item, three-quarter-pound Swiss Army knives you sometimes see in novelty stores, and never see in pockets.

I try a few, now and then. None are ever a perfect fit for how I want to work, or how clients want to work with me. None is ever flexible enough to stay with me as I get wiser and change my mind, setting me up for a jarring transition. Rarely do more than two work together reliably, or at all, for any length of time. Rarely are they even worthwhile, on their own merits, after the new-gizmo shine rubs off. Something general and standardized usually nets out better. Letter paper is better than legal paper, even for law.

They can be worth it, if you do one thing, exactly the same way, all the time. My kitchen has a rice cooker, my motorcycle garage a battery charger. In the office, it’s a Fujitsu iX500 sheet-fed scanner. I take a lot of handwritten notes, and I scan all my mail, too. Sometimes hundreds of pages at a time. The scanner does it fast. Someday, I’m sure it will stop playing nice with my router, my phone, my computer, something. But it’s worth the high price for time saved until then.

I do time entries, contacts, task tracking, billing, accounting, record keeping, notes, and as much writing as possible in plain text files. The kind of thing you’d make in Notepad on Windows, or with WordPad on a Mac. They’re easy to put in folders, share, back up, cross-reference, encrypt, and search. It’s easy to copy and paste their text to and from every other program, on any computer, phone, or tablet. They take almost no hard drive space.

My background comes through in the little programs I write to work with those files. To pull out all billing entires for a particular client. To spit out today’s to-do list. To pull down all the files I need for a client project. And so on. The kinds of programs students write in Programming 101.

Those “beginner” projects seem like toys or make-work, until you realize text files are the best organizing principle we’ve ever come up with for doing office work with computers. The most famous computer demo of all time, the “Mother of All Demos”, showed it all off way back in 1968. Then it was a key idea behind UNIX, an operating system started a year later, that lives on in Linux today. Your computer and phone may not run Linux, but nearly all the online services you use—from Google to Dropbox, Facebook to EDGAR—almost certainly do.

Both plain text and simple, versatile tools were part of the UNIX philosophy. I understand we used to have software along those lines in office technology, before my time. Some very famous writers, and more than a few prestigious courts, still hold on to “ancient” word processing software from that crude era, before they took on oodles of pointless features, like ships gaining barnacles. I wasn’t around, but in a way, I’ve gone back to it. I don’t roll my eyes so much about WordPerfect at supreme courts any more. It doesn’t surprise me to see dozens of popular, “distraction-free” writing apps for sale, essentially reprising Notepad or WordStar for each new gadget.

Of course, I can’t ever entirely escape Microsoft Word, since others use and expect it. But it’s the classic example of an app gone wrong. So many features. Frankly, I’ve written software for Word, and I’m still never entirely sure what automatic numbering will do next. It’s like a touch-screen washing machines with WiFi. Educated consumers get lost in all their options. Skilled technicians can’t reliably diagnose or fix them. Teenage ne’er-do-wells from far-flung jurisdictions indiscriminately hijack them, to mine Bitcoin and launch denial-of-service attacks.

My goal for tools like Word, and to a lesser extent Adobe Acrobat, is minimization. My strategy is quarantine. I rent a Windows computer in a data center outside LA. That machine has Word, Acrobat, Google Drive, and Dropbox. I can dial into it from any other computer when I need to be sure I’m using exactly the same unreliable program that opposing has. But that’s less than 10% of my time, even in multi-turn negotiations. Client communication, research, preparation—I can do all the rest my way. When I’m driving the process, say for an entity formation or a sales playbook, I can do it all my way.

That mostly means looking at a web browser and a terminal emulator, the black screen with fixed-width text and a blinking cursor where you may remember typing WIN in the 1990s. The web has all the raw material. There’s literally decades worth of free tools for terminal emulators, dedicated exclusively to working with text. Programs to search. Programs to sort. Programs to edit, print, e-mail, translate, and spell check. Programs to share, copy, back up, and so on. They all take text in, and spit text out, so they’re easy to use together. Today’s to-dos for client X? That’s a search for X in my to-do files, followed by a sort, then some formatting. I type todos Acme and I see it.

I’m always swapping tools and services in and out, to try new things. But to give a sense, a few standouts at the moment:

FastMail for e-mail and calendars. Very reasonably priced, reliable, and compatible. The web interface is far and away better than GMail, and the service works well with phones and other mail programs, too.

rclone for sending files to and from various file sharing services, like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Amazon S3. I have clients that use each one, sometimes more than one.

vim for editing text files. A popular old-school option among programmers.

Feedbin for reading RSS feeds from blogs and news sites.

Pinboard for saving and organizing bookmarks across computers.

Reeder and Pushpin on iPhone let me riffle through my RSS feeds with my thumb, like an email inbox, crossing off or bookmarking posts to Pinboard for reading later.

git, a tool for tracking changes to folders of plain-text files over time, and sharing changes across computers. Standard in software development. Many of my tech-sector clients prefer to use Git for legal documents, too.

unoconv converts files between various Office file formats, such as from .docx to PDF. I can also use this to extract the text of an Word file to plain text.

PDF Expert on iPad for PDF reading and annotation. Studio Neat’s Cosmonaut stylus works great for highlighting.

phaxio.com sends and receives faxes, which is often the best way to get things in to secretaries of state. I have a little program just for sending a PDF to Sacramento.

lob.com sends postcards, letters, and checks by mail.

cron runs other programs on a schedule. I use it to do everything from backing up files to sending e-mail at specific times and pulling down weather forecasts. The foreman for my own private office-robot army.

Vimium, an extension for Chrome and Firefox, lets you navigate webpages and click links with the keyboard.

Junior legal notepads, stuck with binder clips to a clipboard sawn down to exact size. I buy in bulk. Don’t be like me, kids. Stay away from fancy pens.

I’ve also built a few tools of my own for composing, assembling, sharing, and analyzing contracts, under an open source project called Common Form. The Common Form tool kit lets me write out contracts and other structured documents, and pieces of them, as plain text, in a way that lets the computer be more help. Imagine a giant index card catalog, with a card for every provision of every contract you’ve ever written, plus an automated word processing department that keeps everything filed, and does all the technical grunt work of checking combinations of those pieces, and spitting out formatted documents for you.

It’s been a boon to my practice. Especially when I get to take a first draft, I don’t worry about numbering, keeping references correct, checking my defined terms, signature pages, or spitting out multiple documents based on a template. I can focus almost 100% on the substance of what I’m trying to cover, the terms I’m trying to express, and using clear, plain language. It’s a much more tiring, concentrated experience—technical edits used to work as built-in brain-breaks for me—but that’s made me a better drafter.

Thanks to some help from Ansel Halliburton, another coder-lawyer here in the Bay Area, we also have a nice suite of automated annotation programs, which work a bit like opinionated spellcheckers. They point out archaisms, wordy phrases, and usage comments from Ken Adams’ A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting as we type. Behind all that, we’ve done a lot of work pulling together long lists of words or phrases that pose problems of various kinds, stylistically and substantively.

There’s no substitute for fresh-eyes reads in contract drafting. But Ansel and I have learned there’s no substitute for automatic checks, either. The mind just isn’t good at certain kinds of rote work, and shouldn’t be. Smart is spending the limited focus you have were it gets the most done for your clients.

On the hardware side, I can’t overemphasize the need for a quality ergonomic setup. I learned the easy way that RSI, carpal tunnel, and back problems are no joke, by watching other people learn the hard way. I was lucky.

I use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard, accompanying numeric keypad, a Logitech Expert Mouse, and a Herman Miller Embody chair. The combo cost about a thousand dollars, with a used chair from an office liquidator. That’s what I could afford at the time, and it was easily worth it. If you have less to play with, try a Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard. I’ve owned five or six. I recommend it constantly.

I listen to music while working, and splurged on good closed-ear headphones and a USB digital-to-analog converter. When I’m really bearing down on something, I’ll wear a $10 pair of slim-profile pistol shooting earmuffs. Same isolation, or better. And just as comfortable to wear for long periods. Great on airplanes, too.

For software, I primarily use Google Chrome and a Linux terminal emulator. There are too many small tools to count: Common Form via commonform.org, LibreOffice and unoconv for conversion, and a backup Windows machine with the usuals. For tools, I use an ergonomic keyboard, a document scanner, my smartphone, closed headphones, and a good work chair.

What does your workspace look like?

Click to view slideshow.

I rent a fairly typical professional office in Dunn’s Block, a historic building just south of the perennially “revitalized” part of Old Oakland. Old Oakland was the center of downtown until freeways replaced rail and telegraph as the arteries of the city, and still a hop, skip, and jump from most transit and city hall.

The building’s one of those classic, ground-floor-retail combos with a long, skinny staircase from street level to the second floor, lots of short wooden banisters, and comically high ceilings. (I get the feeling professionals of yore were shorter in statute, and somewhat loftier in ambition.) The main attraction is the sunlight. I’ve an interior office, but a tall window at the front. Sunlight shines down from the roof through the third floor. I’m not totally cut off from the sun cycle.

The office is almost entirely for me. I grabbed a couple guest chairs from a next-door neighbor moving in, along with used furniture from the local used shop and a salvage yard. But I almost always meet clients at their offices, rather than mine. So it’s more of a designated focus place. A tool for better making believe that practice and life respect any kind of boundaries.

I’m definitely of the messy-desk, clean hard drive school of lawyering. I scan almost every bit of paper that I receive and write, but there are still so many print resources available only on dead-tree. At this point, the books rule pretty much every flat surface, and a good chunk of the floor. Their only real competitor is the computer setup and the scanner.

Basically, it’s a disaster. But lots of order from that chaos.

How do you keep track of your calendars and deadlines?

I keep calendars online, with FastMail. CalDAV for sync, especially to the iPhone. Meetings. Phone calls. Conferences. House calls. Continuing legal education. That kind of thing.

All my task management is in a folder full of plain text files, one per client or category. Each item on one line. If there’s a date code, YYYY-MM-DD, that’s a deadline.

I track changes to the whole thing with Git, which means I can travel back in time to any point, and see what I’d marked done, to do, or made changes, and when. The same tool makes it easy to change my lists from any computer.

What is your coffee service setup?

Oakland.

I’ve lost count of how many importers, roasters, distributors, and coffee shops at different degrees of swank I have within walking distance. Blue Bottle’s HQ, Four Barrel’s roasting operation, SLOJOY roasting, Bicycle Coffee’s HQ, Peerless, Caffe 817, Modern. Eat your heart out.

My office has a Russian-style samovar for tea service. I know I’ve got it bad when I hit two pots of concentrated zavarka per day. Usually in winter.

What is one thing that you listen to, read, or watch that everyone should?

Dangerous question. Read people who disagree with you.

What is your favorite local place to network or work solo?

I try never to go anywhere with the express goal of “networking”. Oakland is a vibrant place. Be here and be open, you’ll find people. The Town’s surprises are often way better than anything you might have had in mind.

I work solo, so whenever I work, I work solo. That’s what the office is for, to keep me from holing in too long at home.

What are three things you do without fail every day?

Read. Write. Curse.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Luis Villa

How Lawyers Work: Kyle E. Mitchell, Journeyman Deal Mechanic & Overfed Bookworm was originally published on Lawyerist.com.

from Law and Politics https://lawyerist.com/how-lawyers-work-kyle-e-mitchell/ via http://www.rssmix.com/