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aracaeli · 4 years ago

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The Sign of Three

NOTE: Merry Christmas @elfchensdcartblog from your DCMK secret santa!! I’m sorry for posting it at the last minute possible, I should probably have said Happy New Year instead. Here is my humble gift to you. Also, I’m sorry for not writing it with the accent. Regular english still gives me trouble and I’m not sure I’m capable of writing it right. Big thanks to @dcmksecretsanta for hosting he event.

I’m really rusty, but actually making this gift is more fun than I imagined. I forgot how soothing writing can be. Please forgive any mistake I made, happy reading! ^^

----The Sign of Three----

“You know, this is a very bad idea.” Heiji said to Kazuha for the sixth time that day. He’s practically sulking by now. On default, Heiji is not a big fan of malls. Much less going to a mall two days before Christmas. Suffice to say, the place was packed. People are everywhere. There’s people who are getting their christmas shopping late, young couples celebrating christmas together, or just some rando who had the bright idea to come to the mall near christmas. The mall even blasted out “We Wish You a Merry Christmas'' in every speaker on loop. Heiji swears if he finds the person responsible for that song that guy will have to answer to him.

Kazuha however is chipper as ever. She ignored his comment and instead was busy looking at toy displays in front of her while whistling along on the christmas song. Heiji wouldn’t even be here if Kazuha had not dragged him out. Heck, he wouldn’t even leave the house if it weren’t for her. His plan is to stay at home and do some reading, maybe go out for a bit to get food, but that’s it.

Kazuha apparently had other plans for him. She insisted on making him come with her to her class christmas event today and accompany her to do last minute shopping for the kids. Apparently the school wanted the students to celebrate Christmas by making a christmas event where the kids can play and exchange gifts. Only, the actual event is two days early from christmas because the kids will be celebrating with their own family on the actual christmas.

The idea is stupid. Heiji said as much.

He gets smacked in the head for that. Heiji had tried to lie his way out, but Kazuha immediately saw through him.

And that’s another weird thing about Kazuha lately. They had been married a while, but Heiji was sure that her changes only occurred recently.

Lately, she seems to become more observant. She often notices small things that she didn't notice before. Normally if someone moved her pen when she was away, she wouldn’t notice, but now she was able to tell the exact distance of the pen’s displacement.

Another weirdness is, she woke up by the slightest noise. Before when Heiji had to stay late because of work, he was able to get to their bed without waking her. Now Kazuha is awake when he cracks the door open. If Heiji made a noise, she was able to tell exactly what was causing the noise, even if she was two rooms away. Heiji didn’t know what was the cause, it’s not like it’s the first time he saw that kind of ability. He had good ears, so does his father. What’s weird is that Kazuha suddenly developed one, too.

Maybe it was contagious?

Heiji shakes his head, chasing the ridiculous thoughts away. Despite Kazuha being weirdly observant, Heiji managed to secure an awesome gift for her, in his humble opinion. The subject of his musings is still shopping happily, uncharacteristically unaware of his thoughts.

Kazuha is still looking at the display. But now she has already moved to the far end of the store. She picks up the toys one by one and assesses them carefully, as if it was important evidence on a crime scene. After a while, she held up a toy truck in front of him.

“Do you think Mikoto-kun would like this one?” Kazuha asked, holding a red toy car that resembles a fire truck.

Mikoto is one of Kazuha's students in elementary school, who Heiji really doesn’t like. Mikoto, like most the boys in her class, had a crush on Kazuha-sensei and wanted to marry her when they grow up. Nevermind that Heiji visited the class and told them that Kazuha was already married to him.

In response to that information, Mikoto--who had the smuggest face for someone barely older than a toddler-- just looked at him from top to bottom, face clearly displaying unimpressed. “Oh well, we’ll see about that.”

The audacity.

Not caring what the brat would get for Christmas, Heiji answered shortly, “He’s a kid, that’s a toy. The math suggests that he would be thrilled.”

He thought she would get annoyed with him, but his wife just shrugged and went back to shopping. In the end, she made a decision and took the toy to the counter to pay for it and told him to wait for her. Heiji watched her with a suspicious gaze, wondering if what meets the eye is really the truth.

Heiji thinks it’s weird that Kazuha invited him to the event. While it’s not the first time he has come to her class and participated, it was always such a disaster. Considering what happened when he was present, he should be banned.

In his defense, it was the brat’s fault. Everytime Heiji comes to pick Kazuha up, he will ‘accidentally’ step on his foot. Kazuha makes Mikoto apologize to him of course, but the boy apologizes with a sleazy grin not fit for a child. One time, when he visited Kazuha during class, the brat ‘accidentally’ poured paint all over his shirt. Heiji tried to get back at the kid, but as if sensing his petty intention, Mikoto immediately cried.

Worse, Kazuha never sided with him. She came and comforted the kid while Heiji had to watch the kid buried his face in Kazuha’s chest while giving him the smuggest smile known to humankind. He had to bite back a curse.

Another incident that popped in his mind is when Heiji cursed in her class, in front of the children. It was actually quite comical, the children had simultaneously stopped what they were doing and looked at him in shellshock, Heiji stood awkwardly for a minute. He was about to make a run for it. When one of the kids decided that what he had done was unacceptable on so many levels and tattled on him to Kazuha.

Kazuha had put him on time-out as if he was five despite his protest to her.

“I can’t play favour, Heiji. It’s not a good example for the kids” Kazuha said sternly while putting her hands at her hips. Long story short, he lost the debate.

He had to sit in the hallway to think about what he did while the other children peeked at him curiously from the window.

One kid even booed at him.

Yeah, it was not his proudest moment.

While he was reminiscing, Kazuha came back from the cashier, carrying one more bag in her hand. She didn’t have any trouble carrying it, but he decided to perform his duty as a good husband and took the bag from her hand. Beside, this way her hand would be free for him to hold.

Chiding himself for being sappy, Heiji linked their fingers together in a loose grip, suppressing the blush that always comes despite already being married to her. But Kazuha was having none of it today as she tightened her hand.

Kazuha leaned closer on him. Their arms linked together and her nose almost brushed his shoulder.

“Let’s go upstairs.” Kazuha said, leading the way. As they walked side by side, she broke the silence.

“Did you finish your christmas shopping?” Kazuha asked. The mall was crowded and loud, so Heiji really had to pay attention to hear her.

“I did. Finished it weeks ago.”

“Including my gift?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a living thing?”

“No.”

“Is it a nonliving thing?”

“We’re not playing 20 questions!”

Kazuha pouted. She bit the inside of her cheeks and turned her face away from him. Giving Heiji her side-view. And suddenly he finds himself resisting the irrational urge to kiss that protruding lips in public. Fortunately, unlike with the case of Fairy’s lips, he still had common sense left.

“I think I know what you get me.” Kazuha said suddenly.

Heiji gave his wife a skeptical stare, surely she was just bluffing, afterall he went through a painstaking measure to make it a surprise. He even draws a murderboard, which he hides in Kudo’s house, much to the latter dismay.

“No you don’t.” Heiji sneered.

“Hmm let’s see now,” Kazuha put her hand to her chin, mimicking his favorite pose when solving a case, complete with a smile, which may appear innocent at first but completely devious.

“I know that you suck at handcraft. And I don’t see you working at anything, so it can’t be handmade. You said it was a non-living thing, so it can’t be a pet. Judging by how quick you are in answering my question earlier and the fact we have a joint account, it’s unlikely to be a trip or a dinner.”

Heiji started to sweat. Is this what the suspect always felt whenever he made a show of his deductions? Still, Kazuha is not done yet.

“The fact that you finished weeks ago means you had planned it for awhile. You’ve gone to Tokyo for a suspicious amount of time, it can be unrelated to gift-buying, but my instinct said it was very related. But it’s weird that you go so far just to shop, there’s plenty of places here where you can hide your gift. That suggests the involvement of an outside party. Probably a delivery. Which means…”

Kazuha added a dramatic pause.

“....it was custom-made.”

Damn. What’s gotten into her?

Still, Kazuha went for the kill, “The fact that you’re giving it to me, big chance it was a jewelry. Probably a necklace. Since you had no sense when it comes to women’s fashion, the one you custom it’s not probably the design. If my deduction is correct, that necklace would have my initial.”

Heiji completely avoided looking at her. Somehow his pride is trampled over her deductions. He had plans after all. The only solace he had was Kazuha doing all of that is kinda hot. So he let it pass.

“Am I right?”

Heiji shrugged. “I don’t know, you had to wait.”

Kazuha gives a little happy jump, almost knocking a lady that was passing by them.

“I can’t wait for a necklace with a ‘K’ pendant to come.”

Heiji nodded along with her statement. The pendant that he ordered is actually spelled ‘K.H’, since Kazuha had officially become a Hattori now. He decided to let her little mistake in detail be left uncorrected and changed the subject.

“Can we go now? I think this place is getting more packed.” Heiji said, and true to his word, someone bumped into him. Said person didn’t even apologize and just walked.

“Hold on, I still need to buy one more for Chika-chan.”

“Huh? I thought it was a secret santa.”

“It is, but I’m buying a present for all of my students in the class.”

Heiji frowned. “Why? Isn’t that a bit much even for you? You’ll see them again next year.”

He felt her getting tense. She was looking straight ahead but he can tell that she was carefully masking her face as casual indifference.

Shrugging her shoulder, Kazuha answered, “I just want to make this year memorable.”

Heiji observed her face carefully for any clue, but sensing his curiosity, Kazuha looked back at him and feigned a smile. Deciding to not pursue it further, he noted this exchange and kept it in Kazuha’s folder, a place in his mind palace where he keeps anything related to Kazuha that he finds odd or weird. That folder had recently become thicker and thicker.

“Let’s go up one more floor, I think I see a store selling hair accessories.” Kazuha said quickly as she pulled him along by his hand to the elevator direction. Heiji followed along.

She accidentally stumbled on her steps. Delaying them for a few seconds. In consequence of that, they missed the elevator. As the door closed with a resounding ding sound. It was like a butterfly effect, the world just decide what he needs today is a murder.

If only they got on that elevator, they would have missed the shrill scream of a person discovering a dead body.

But unfortunately they did.

Knowing that scream everywhere, Heiji felt his detective sense alert in an instant. But before running off to the source of the commotion, he looked at Kazuha first, wordlessly asking for her permission.

Kazuha sighed, smiling softly, “Go”.

Heiji gave her a cheeky grin. He handed her the shopping bags to her. Since both his hands are free, he had the chance to strike a cool pose before running off by gripping the edge of his hat and pulling the cap to the front.

“I’ll be back.”

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In the span of time for one call to the police, five interrogations, and one person broke down crying later, Heiji managed to gather the suspects in the back of the store. The body is found in a clothing changing room. A man in his late thirties, wearing casual jeans and polo shirt. The corpse had been found laying on his back, half his body leaned on the mirror. Eyes wide and mouth wide open. Although there is no blood.

The store owner had been very helpful in aiding his investigations. She closed the crime perimeter and helped gather witnesses. Even though she initially insisted that the man just had a heart attack, until Heiji pointed out the signs that he clearly is poisoned.

Heiji was busy doing his usual detective work that he didn’t really notice that Kazuha hadn't shown up even after thirty minutes had passed since they heard the scream.

Heiji was about to search for her, already worried that something happened to his wife. But as he was about to walk away from the crime scene, Kazuha catches up with him, completely unaware of his worry. She even brought a drink in hand and casually sip the cold liquid from the straw while looking around the crime scene curiously.

“Solved it yet?” She asked. Slurping the boba tea.

Heiji was momentarily distracted by the movement of her lips. Shaking the unwanted thoughts away, he looked back at the corpse.

“Not yet. So far, here’s the situation. Someone is found dead in the changing room of this store.” Heiji gestured towards the corpse.

“No blood.” Kazuha remarked.

Heiji nodded. He feels weirdly proud that she participated in the case. He resisted the urge to pat her head, “Exactly. Death by poison.”

“Cyanide?”

“No, arsenic.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“Well, I figured out the trick, But I’m still not sure who did it.”

Kazuha nodded solemnly. Still slurping her drink. Her gaze turned towards the three people standing behind the store owner who were looking at them the whole time. The three men are the main suspects for the case. Heiji told them to stand far enough so they can’t overhear his conversation. Heiji was sure the culprit was between the man with glasses and the tall one. Although he had no evidence or any defining clue.

“The guy with the glasses seems suspicious.” Kazuha said. Leaning close to whisper in his ears. He instinctively take a step back. Typical of Kazuha to annoy him with her stupid breath and her slurping when he was in the middle of a case.

Heiji snatched the drink from her hand.

“How is he suspicious?” He asked, only half-interested in her answer.

“Look at the inside of his wrist.” Kazuha said confidently at first, but she suddenly turned hesitant and quickly shrugged “But, I don’t know though, you’re the Detective.”

Reluctantly, Heiji followed Kazuha's advice and focused on the man in glasses hands.

Wait….that mark…

“I know who the killer is.”

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An hour and half later, they finally manage to get out of the mall. Heiji was sure that they were already late to the event. Thankfully, there was no traffic on the way, so they made it to the school ground less than ten minute later. The event hasn't started yet. Most of the kids were still playing around, although Kazuha’s coworkers had pulled out various games and an assortment of christmas themed sweets out.

When Heiji and Kazuha enter the classroom. The children cheered. Immediately, she was surrounded by her students. They formed a circle around her and tried to get her attention. Looking at the spectacle before him, Heiji can’t help but note that Kazuha is really good with kids.

Heiji put their bag on the gifts table. He searched for an empty chair to sit on. Heiji found one in the back of the room. He sits down on one of the chairs beside the low round table. Heiji was so focused that he didn’t notice someone approaching him.

“So you came.”

Heiji turned to the source of the voice. But he didn’t see anyone.

“Down here”

He looked down and his stare met with Mikoto’s gaze.

“Hey”

Mikoto only grunted. The kid pulled the chair across him and sat down. He slouched on the chair while looking around the room with bored eyes. Heiji noticed that his eyes landed on a little girl with a pigtail who was excitedly chatting with Kazuha. He looked back at the kid and the girl.

Heiji was a very observant Detective. The best in Japan. Despite what neechan said. That’s why the blush on Mikoto’s face didn’t go unnoticed by Heiji. He gave a small sigh. Kids these days, so easy to move on from one crush to another.

“Do you like that girl?” Heiji asked. One eyebrow raised suggestively. He deliberately didn’t gesture on the little girl across the room.

Mikoto looked scandalized, suddenly sitting straight with face flushed red. “What! No! Who likes Chika!?”

Heiji grinned. “I didn’t say anything about Chika-chan.”

Mikoto was about to defend himself. But no words come out. All of his face was flaming red to the tip of his ear. The blush even went up to his ears. In the end, he settled to look away instead. Sulking.

“So…” Heiji began, finding the opportunity to tease the kid highly amusing. “Do you think Chika-chan cute? What’s her deal?’

Mikoto crossed his hand in front of his chest, “She’s not cute! She’s stupid!” he stated, too loud and too defensive to be true. Some of the kids and one teacher had looked their way due to commotion.

“Hey, stupid is a bad word.” Heiji chided.

Mikoto was about to protest. But somehow decided against it and mumbled a low “Sorry.”

Seeing the kid actually reminded him a lot of someone. Although Heiji can’t quite recall who. “Here’s an advice, if you like her, don’t pull her pigtails.”

Mikoto, once again, flushed red. As if he was just caugh red-handed. “I don’t need your advice, I bet you also pulled Kazuha-sensei’s ponytail.”

Heiji laughed. It’s actually happened. The scene of their younger years flashed before his eyes. Kazuha used to have pigtails too when she was young and the sight of her hair swinging around as she walked always seems cute and endearing to him. Although back then he had no idea what the feeling blossomed in his chest was.

Young Heiji never made the connection between the flutter of his heart and Kazuha’s presence. Once Heiji even thought he had heart problems. His mother laughed when he brought his concerns to her. Shizuka had said that he was healthy as a clamp and had nothing to worry about. To his embarrassment, it took him ten more years to finally understand he was in love with Kazuha.

“What are you boys talking about?”

Both of them turned around simultaneously, only to find Kazuha standing behind.

“Nothing,” Mikoto said. Kazuha looked at the two of them suspiciously. “Mikoto-kun, you should join the others. The game is about to start.”

Mikoto sends Heiji a distress signal to help him get away. But Heiji feels no remorse as he shrugged his shoulders in total betrayal.

“Mikoto-kun.” Kazuha said again, voice more stern. In the end, Mikoto sighed and walked away from the couple. Joining the merry and fun of his friends in the center of the room.

Kazuha sat on the empty chair that Mikoto left, staring at the crowd in a somewhat somber gaze, “He reminds me a lot of you.”

Heiji immediately defended himself, “What! I am nothing like that brat.”

“You two seemed to get along, though” Kazuha said.

“No, we’re not. He hates my gut. Apparently he used to have a crush on you.” Heiji added, “And just so you know, those little accidents that he did, are not an ‘accident’.”

Kazuha laughed. “I know. I just wanna show how ridiculous you are, getting jealous of kids.” Heiji opened his mouth, but she cut him off, “Don’t even try to deny it.”

Heiji blew a harsh breath. Looking around at the happy kids around him, the christmas decoration is exquisite, and the cookies smelled delicious, even from when he was sitting.

“Why do you insist I come anyway?” Heiji asked. Although he probably knows the answer. With how observant Kazuha is lately, maybe she noticed that he’s not having such a great time at work.

But his wife is always able to surprise him. “I’m pregnant.”

Heiji gaped at her as the world turned into a standstill. Voices become mute and he swears the earth stop spinning.

Kazuha...is pregnant…

Kazuha is pregnant.

He heard the words clearly. But the meaning didn’t actually register in his head. Kazuha is pregnant? With his child….

There’s another human being that he will be responsible to. Someone who looks like him. Or maybe Kazuha. Maybe a well-behaved kid like Chika-chan or a brat like Mikoto.

What would he do if his kid makes bad choices? Or become too reckless like him?

He could feel his panic rapidly growing by the second. The thought of bringing a human life in this world is downright overwhelming. Kazuha might be good with kids, but he is not. What would he do with one? That’s easy, he should feed it. Oh God, what did you feed a kid? What does a kid even eat??

As if sensing his rapidly growing panic, Kazuha called his name. “Heiji,”

When there was no response, Kazuha grabbed his hand that was laying on the table. The contact startled him. His eyes turned to her.

“We’re gonna be fine, Heiji.” Kazuha added, “Beside, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I want to focus on raising our family.”

Suddenly, it made sense. Why she wants to make this year christmas with her class so memorable. The way she is acting so weird recently. There’s only one thing he can’t figure out, thought….

“I don’t get why you suddenly become so observant, is that another side effect of pregnancy?”

Kazuha stared at him in bewilderment, “What are you talking about?”

“You! You were suddenly very observant. Like a detect--” Heiji stopped mid-sentence, he abruptly stood up from the chair, knocking it backwards. As if he just received the meaning of the universe, he exclaimed:

“Oh God, our child is gonna be a detective!!”

A/N: And thus, Heisuke is doomed since he was a literal fetus to be a detective by his father.

There’s a local belief in my area that when a mother is pregnant, how she behaves is influenced by the child’s personality. So if a woman often gets angry during pregnancy, that means the child is temperamental, so on. Halfway writing this, I realized that it might be too weird and specific, so I ended up rewriting it into a more general trope. Although dumbass me misread the fact that Kazuha is elementary teacher-to-be, not elementary teacher. Still, I hope you accept this as a humble sort-of-headcanon to your Heisuke AU.

I actually really like the concept of the AU, I had to refrain myself from liking and reblogging all the posts because then you would have easily figured out that I’m your Secret Santa (lol). Can’t wait to see your next works. Good luck and Merry Christmas! ^^

#dcmksecretsanta #my fic #I think the last time I write anything is BNHA secret santa three years ago #this is surprisingly fun #imagining Heiji in ridiculuous situation is my jam #I will never live down the fairy's lips case #that was exhausting

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dontmindthefangirling · 5 years ago

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The Heartbreak Prince {p.p.}

chapter 7

Summary: The heart is fragile. Easily broken, difficult to build back up, and Peter Parker knows that. Maybe his own heart is fractured and that’s why he goes around breaking others. Will you let him break yours?

Warnings: angst, angst, angst, enemies to lovers, suggestive conversations, language, underage drinking, violence, both reader and Peter are 18+ (seniors in high school)

chapter 6 | series masterlist

The first thing you heard when you walked into school the next morning was yelling. You instantly became alert as you spotted Peter pinning one of his football friends up against the lockers and screaming in his face.

A large crowd had begun to form around the growing scene and you cursed under your breath. You knew if Peter got in trouble again he would certainly get suspended, or even expelled who knows.

Ned caught your eye and began approaching you, but you were already jogging towards the fight. You pushed your way through the crowd, and grabbed Peter’s arm, yanking him away from the boy (you were pretty sure his name was Shane or something). Peter was still screaming profanities at him as you dragged him away, using all of your strength to do so.

“Parker!” you spat. “Stop!”

Peter turned around and ripped his arm out of your grip, glaring at you with daggers for eyes.

“Don’t touch me,” he growled, stalking past you. You groaned, rolling your eyes and knowing a fight was about to ensue, but you’d be damned if you let him push you away again.

So against your better judgement, you turned around and ran after him.

“What has gotten into you?” you demanded.

“Stop talking to me,” he spat.

“You know, I finally thought we were becoming friends,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest. “Now, what? You’re going to shut me out?”

“Yeah (Y/N), you know what? I am!” Peter shouted, raising his hands in exasperation. He looked at you with a fiery anger in his eyes and you audibly gasped. You hadn’t seen him this angry since Jed insulted MJ at Flash’s party.

Peter’s gaze didn’t falter as he looked at you, expecting you to say something back, but you couldn’t find the words.

“Was it because I hugged you yesterday?” you asked softly, barely above a whisper.

For a split second, you thought you saw a flicker of softness in his eyes, but as soon as it came it was gone. He scoffed shaking his head.

“Just leave me alone,” he grumbled. He stopped with his back to you before turning around.

“Oh, and by the way, we were never friends.”

With that, he turned his back on you and disappeared out the nearest school doors, probably skipping for the day. You stood in place, biting back the tears that stung your eyes. You didn’t expect his words to hurt so much, but they did. You didn’t even know why you cared so much.

Somehow you began to care for Peter Parker, and you thought you had finally been able to break through that touch exterior.

How wrong you were.

As soon as Peter was outside of the school, he punched the nearest wall causing the bricks to buckle in on each other. His fist stung a little from the hard impact, but he didn’t care. He needed the release.

Saying those things to you hurt him more than he cared to admit. But he was scared because after you hugged him yesterday, the feelings that he had been trying to suppress had finally bubbled over and he found himself thinking of you all night.

He shook his head as he began to walk home. He wasn’t in the mood for school and he didn’t think he could face you after seeing how hurt you looked. But he knew he had to do this. People who got close to him only got hurt.

A week had passed since you last spoke to Peter. You avoided him at all costs, because you hated the way your heart would twist in pain every time you saw him sulking around the halls. You even left for school fifteen minutes early every morning just to avoid him.

In that time you got closer to Ned, Betty, and Flash, hanging out with them more and more after school. Those times you usually spent walking home with Peter were now replaced with Starbucks coffee dates with your friends. One in which Flash informed you that he was having another party in the upcoming weekend.

“Another one?” you asked. His first one felt like just yesterday, but looking back on it it was almost a month ago.

“I’d have them every week if I could!” Flash exclaimed taking a sip of his latte.

You chuckled, shaking your head. “I don’t know if I’m up for a party.”

“What?” Betty almost cried. “No (Y/N), you have to come! It won’t be fun if you don’t.”

You sighed, staring down at your barely touched tea. Truth be told, you felt a deep pit in the core of your stomach. You found yourself looking up at Peter’s fire escape every time you went home, because although you were trying to avoid him, a part of you still wanted to see him.

“I invited the whole school, it’s gonna be sick,” Flash said. “Please? You don’t have to stay long, but I consider you one of my closest friends now.”

Your heart swelled at his words and you glanced at Ned who was also grinning at you.

“Okay fine,” you groaned, earning cheers from the collective group. You laughed as you packed your bag, standing from the table.

“Alright, alright, enough,” you chuckled. “I gotta go. I have a paper due tomorrow, but I’ll see you guys in class.”

Ned, Betty, and Flash said their collective goodbyes as you left the coffee shop and began your walk home, which you noticed was painfully alone.

Once you got back to your apartment building, you pushed the door open into the lobby and felt your breath catch in your throat when you saw Peter standing by the elevators. He turned almost immediately when you entered the room.

You didn’t linger. You made a beeline right for the stairs and Peter was realizing how painfully obvious it was that you were avoiding him. As you disappeared up the stairs, he wondered if he was being stupid. Was he pushing away his only chance at happiness or protecting you?

He didn’t know.

You spun around in Betty’s bedroom. “How do I look?”

Betty gasped. “You look hot.”

You laughed as you glanced at yourself in the mirror. You were wearing your favorite pair of black jeans, black booties, and light pink crop top. You had applied a little more makeup than you were used to, but still kept it fairly natural.

“Let me just put in my earrings, and I’ll be ready to go,” Betty said, standing from her bed. You took a deep breath, pulling out your phone to see a few texts from Ned and Flash telling you and Betty to get your butts to the party. You were already a little bit late, but fashionably late, right?

Betty drove the two of you to Flash’s house, as she said she wasn’t drinking that night and wouldn’t mind being the designated driver. As soon as you pulled up to Flash’s house you realized that this party was a lot bigger than the one he had a month ago. It was like the entire school of Midtown high along with every high school in the tristate area showed up.

“Oh boy,” you whispered under your breath, earning a laugh from Betty as you both walked up to the door.

As soon as you stepped inside you were greeted by the reek of alcohol and loud blaring music. You spotted Flash on the DJ station with a red solo cup in his hand. Ned was nearby talking to a few people you recognized from class, and you and Betty walked over there first.

“Hey! You finally made it,” Ned teased, giving you a hug and Betty a kiss on the cheek.

“It’s called being fashionably late,” Betty retorted causing Ned to roll his eyes.

“Drinks are over there if you’re looking for one, (Y/N),” Ned said, pointing to the large Gatorade container with red solo cups next to it.

“Thanks, I’ll be right back,” you said, leaving the couple to get yourself some alcohol. You had no idea what would be in the jungle juice, but with this many people here, you figured you needed at least a little something to loosen up. On your way over to the table, you spotted a few people from class that said friendly hellos to you.

Then your eyes fell on Peter.

There he was, pressing some girl who you definitely didn’t recognize, up against the wall, hungrily attacking her lips. You found yourself not able to pull your eyes away, feeling the hurt deep in your chest. You rolled your eyes when you saw them moving towards the stairs.

You quickly grabbed a cup and filled it to the brim.

“Whoa, planning for a rough night?” a familiar voice asked. You turned to see Brad Davis standing behind you with a grin on his face. You knew Brad. He was in a few of your classes and he was nice, always helping if you had a question on the chemistry homework.

You chuckled breathlessly as you took your first sip of the drink. The vodka mixed with whatever berries burned your throat as it went down, but after seeing Peter here, you needed it.

“Yeah, you could say that,” you shrugged.

“Well c’mon, come dance with us,” Brad said, urging you to follow him with a nod of his head. You smiled, following him over to where Ned and Betty stood with a few others from your chemistry class. One other way to forget about Peter was dancing with your friends who actually made you smile.

Ten minutes later, Peter came sauntering down the stairs, adjusting his shirt. He didn’t even know the name of the girl he just fucked, she was from another school, but he didn’t stay around to figure it out. Some of his football friends that he didn’t even really like, called him over. He grabbed a drink, joining their circle as they pestered him about how his quickie was, but he was barely listening.

Mostly because he spotted you.

You looked perfect, even from afar, and between the alcohol swimming in his veins and the way those jeans hugged your legs perfectly made his head spin. He knew you were avoiding him, and he knew that he hurt you with his words, but he kept telling himself that he was doing it for the best.

He couldn’t let you get close to him, but a part of him figured you already did.

He chugged the rest of his drink and walked over to you.

“Care for a dance, darlin’?” the familiar voice of Peter Parker murmured near your ear. You froze, feeling his presence from behind, immediately stopping your dancing.

“Not with you,” you retorted back, barely looking over your shoulder to look at him. Your friends were trying their best not to eavesdrop, but they weren’t doing a very good job, watching Peter with wide eyes.

“Please,” he whispered, right next to your ear, causing shivers to run up your spine. You didn’t think Peter used that word often. You didn’t know if it was a mix of the alcohol or the fact that you wanted to dance with Peter Parker, but you looked at him over your shoulder and nodded silently.

You could feel the eyes of your friends on you as Peter led you further into the crowd and away from the circle they had created. You took another large swig of your drink before tossing the cup in a nearby trash can. You knew you’d need the courage of alcohol to get you through this.

Peter turned around, grabbing your waist gently as he leaned down to your ear.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, his breath fanning your neck. You found your hands on his chest, as you looked at him with a certain drunken haze. You always knew that he was attractive, but standing there with his hands resting on your hips and yours on his chest made you feel some type of way.

“What are you doing?” you managed to ask, not even dancing at this point. You didn’t trust your voice at first, especially when he brought one hand up to brush a strand of your hair out of your face, his fingers fluttering against your skin.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, staring down at you. “I’m drunk.”

You looked up at him, a smile tugging at your lips. “Me too.”

Peter hummed, gently walking you backwards until your back was softly pressing against the wall. Your heart was hammering against your chest, wanting him to get closer, but not wanting to act on it.

“I don’t know what it is about you,” he whispered, one of his hands coming up to rest by your ear, pinning you beneath him. “You do things to me.”

Your head was spinning, and not just because of the alcohol.

“Like what, Parker?” you edged him on. A dark smirk danced on his lips that you couldn’t stop staring at. The way one of his arms was circled around your waist, pulling your body flush against his made you dizzy.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he murmured in your ear, his lips brushing the skin just below it before he planted a small kiss there that made you breathless.

“Didn’t seem that way when you told me to fuck off,” you murmured, trying to keep your voice from quivering as he peppered kisses along your neck.

“Didn’t mean any of that,” he mumbled against your skin, making goosebumps break out across your entire body. “Just being an idiot, pushing you away.”

He stopped what he was doing to lean back and look at you. You searched his dark eyes for any trace of that dark Peter that told you to leave him alone and you couldn’t find it. Was it the alcohol? Maybe.

“Why do you push me away, Peter?” you whispered, his face a mere millimeters away from yours. He stared down at you, a pool of emotions swirling in his eyes that you couldn’t make out.

“Cause you’re different,” he sighed. “Make me feel things I haven’t felt in a while.”

“Bet you said the same thing to the girl you banged right before this,” you grumbled, feeling bitterness bubbling in your chest. Peter’s fingers gently grabbed a hold of your chin so you had to look up at him.

“They don’t mean anything,” he whispered. “Not like you do.”

You stared at him before scoffing and shaking your head, and shoving his chest so you had enough room to slip away from him.

“You’re drunk, Parker,” you scolded. “And I know that in the morning you’re going to go right back to how you treated me before.”

Peter stared at you, mouth slightly agape. You weren’t going to let yourself fall into his trap just so he could yell at you when you tried to get close to him tomorrow. You rolled your eyes, turning on your heel and walking to the nearest bathroom to get away from, leaving him dumbfounded as he watched you disappear into the room.

You shut the door behind you, breathing heavily as you leaned against the sink and stared at yourself in the mirror.

Could he have really meant everything he said? They do say drunk words are sober thoughts. But this was Peter Parker, and you didn’t think you could believe he would ever show that much emotion towards you, no matter how plastered he was.

There was a soft knock at the door. You groaned, opening it to see Peter standing before you, his hands in his jeans pockets.

“What?” you demanded, crossing your arms over your chest. The music was thumping in your ears in the background.

“I know I’m wasted,” he said. “But I meant what I said. You are different.”

You rolled your eyes, going to push past him, but he stopped you with his arm, forcing you to look up at him.

“I’m not going to let you break my heart,” you whispered, your confidence wavering when he looked at you with those big puppy eyes that you didn’t even know he had.

“I don’t want to,” he whispered back, his eyes searching yours. Slowly, he placed his arm around your waist again, gently backing you up into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him with his foot.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmured. “If you don’t want this, tell me to stop, and I will.”

Your lip trembled as you locked eyes with him. You didn’t realize how badly you wanted this until he told you he would stop. His nose bumped yours, and you closed your eyes as every fiber in your body told you this was a bad idea, but he was so close and you so badly wanted to close that gap.

“Peter,” you whispered, his lips now barely, just barely brushing your own.

If it weren’t for the loud music right outside the door, you were sure that he would’ve been able to hear your heartbeat. You squeezed your eyes shut as his hurtful words flooded your ears and you remembered how he made you feel, standing in that hallway after trying to help him.

“Stop,” you said, having to force it out. Peter pulled away, staring at you with a hurt expression painted across his face, but you didn’t look at him as you walked past him, opening the bathroom door and scurrying away.

You wouldn’t, you couldn’t let him play with your heart like he was. That was asking for disaster and you refused to let him do that to you.

You found your friends again, and as soon as you approached them, they began swarming you with questions.

“What happened with you and Peter?” Betty asked, concern written in her eyes.

“Nothing,” you said grabbing another drink. “Absolutely nothing.”

oof

chapter 8

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goodnightkisseu · 5 years ago

Text

Time To Heal - Chapter 1

→ pairing: sehun x reader

→ genre: fluff, angst, struggling musician sehun x rich reader

→ word count: 2,427

→ warnings: none

→ summary: you had your life planned out for you ever since you were a little girl. However, when your friend, Baekhyun, takes you with him to his old hangout, you meet someone, someone you were willing to risk your parents’ criticism to be with. His name was Oh Sehun. But, in the end, what you really should have asked yourself, was if Sehun was ready to face your parents…

→ masterlist // exo masterlist // time to heal masterlist

→ [prologue] [ch.1] [ch.2] [ch.3] [ch.4] [ch.5] [ch.6] [ch.7]

→ updates taglist~: @chanyeolol @meryljill-111192 @sehunscutiepie

note: it took me a little longer than expected to finish up the editing for this first chapter, but it is now complete! I hope that you all enjoy this. The drama is about to start, is anyone ready for it? I’m not even ready for it >_>

Also, please let me know if you would like to be tagged in this story~

- ash <3

Traditions were essential for a family. A tradition didn't have to be grand. One of the ones that you and your parents still kept alive was your weekly dinners. Typically, it would occur on a Sunday, the day that marked the end of the previous week and the beginning of the next. The three of you would meet up, have a nice meal together, usually home-cooked, and talk about your weeks as well as what was to come. It was your way of checking in with each other, to make sure that everything was okay. Your lives didn't cross paths like it used to, and this was an excellent way of staying in touch.

This week, the dinner took place much earlier, on a Thursday evening. Your parents were expected at a prearranged dinner that Sunday. They were to be surrounded by the wealthy handful that made up their inner circle. So, tonight, you arrived at your parents' home, at six like you usually did on dinner nights. You parked your car outside of the large gate that guarded their home, and entered your pin, letting you through. You continued your journey up the many steps that led to the front door, which weaved through the beautiful garden they had completed last year, landing you in front of your old home. You let yourself in as you always did, taking the familiar route back towards the dining room. Your parents were seated, and with a smile, you took your usual seat across from them, ready for the feast before you.

As per usual, the dinner started off with your parents giving you an update on their company. They raved about the line that was slated for the spring and summer season. Apparently, the new designer that they had managed to lure over from one of the other fashion houses was doing a fantastic job at incorporating their own personal style with the core ideas of your family's brand. They always spoke fondly of their business, and honestly, it made sense to you.

Your parents' business was one that your father had built from the ground up. Back in the day, it started at a tiny studio far from the heart of the city, with very little equipment and very few employees. Back then, he was young and extremely inexperienced, but he had drive. He wanted to make a name for himself in the fashion industry, and he did just that. With his charisma and eye for talent, he was able to hire some talented designers, one of which was your mother. The start was rough, but with time, the brand grew rapidly, gaining notoriety for its trendy designs that referenced traditional patterns and practices. They soon outgrew their little studio, and that was the birth of your parents' fashion house. Time made them one of the top brands in the country and ultimately allowed them to mingle with the upper class.

When compared to your parents, your news was not nearly as exciting. It was still something you were proud of, however. Whereas they were busy running a big brand, you worked for a much smaller fashion house. You started there about a year ago, your work focused on style research and marketing studies and tactics. It wasn't a glamorous job by any means. It was not nearly as exciting as a designer's job, making the new line, or even a job making the final outfits. If anything, most would have hated it, and even your parents seemed to find it rather drab. However, this was the path that you had chosen for yourself, the path you decided to walk, and you were going to make the most of it. You were going to reach your goals on your own.

Three years ago, after graduating from college, your parents decided that they wanted to bring you into the company immediately. With your background in marketing and design, they had already made plans for you to be the apprentice for one of the company's designers. Working with them was their way of ensuring that you would learn the necessary skills. In doing so, by learning from experience, they hoped it would set you up to run the company in the future. They had all of this planned out, but not once did they mention this plan to you.

Once they did, you had to find it in yourself to decline their gracious offer. You had never been good at speaking up against your parents. They had raised you to be agreeable, and you were also naturally like that by nature. You never made a fuss, but even you knew that this was the right time to stand up for yourself. Much like your father who earned his merit by doing something many had thought was impossible, you also wanted to work your way up. You were a hard worker, and you were no stranger to putting in extra time to do well. You wanted to do this for your career so that you wouldn't take anything that your parents built for granted.

Unsurprisingly, your parents didn't understand your initial hesitance. To them, they were providing an opportunity of a lifetime. Still, you refused to earn your position through nepotism. And though it scared you to finally take a stand for yourself, you did. You explained to them what you wanted, what you had planned. Though they weren't particularly thrilled as this set them back on some of their plans, your father understood why you wanted to do it. They couldn't fault you for wanting to work hard... even if it meant they had to listen to these dry stories in the meantime.

When the standard line of topics ran their course, you expected that the three of you would continue to eat in silence as you always did. Once you finished, you would thank them and leave for the evening. Yet, what your mother asked you after the topic of current trends came to an end, was unexpected. "So dear, when do we get to meet him?"

Though you tried not to be wholly overrun with shock, you knew that surprise colored your features, far more than you wanted it to. "Meet whom, mother?" you inquired, sending the question right back at your mother. This line of questioning made you uneasy, and instead of taking a defensive ground from the start, you decided to feign innocence. With your luck, this question wouldn't lead anywhere. But if you were unlucky... you had to leave yourself some room.

Though you had worked hard to conceal your relationship with Sehun from your parents, it wasn't out of shame for him. You wanted him to meet your parents. You desired to show them how proud you were of him, to let them know how well the two of you matched as a couple. Yet, you also needed to do it when your parents had enough respect for you to be okay with your decisions. At this point in time, they still treated you like a child, one that didn't know any better. If you brought Sehun around now, it would have been like throwing him into the lion's den with no means of defending himself. You knew that you were an adult, that Sehun was an adult, but even so, he would have a hard time with your parents. Particularly, with his background.

Given the success of your family's business, it was expected that they ran in rather elite social circles. As you grew up with an above-average life, one that you were well aware skewed your perception of things at an early age, it also meant that your parents had certain... expectations for any man who you would date and possibly marry. Your parents required that he be from a renowned family. They preferred that this person have a business that they were set to inherit. If he didn't have that, he should at least have the know-how to start his own company. Yet, if none of these were possible, they expected, at a bare minimum, that he be working at a firm that allowed him to climb the ladder. They wanted to see drive and determination at work, the urge to make something out of their life.

In all honesty, in almost every way, Sehun was the complete opposite of what your parents wanted. His family wasn't well off. They were an average household trying to make enough to stay afloat. He wasn't set to inherit anything. His band was attempting to make their big break, hoping that a record label would sign them. And lastly, his job at the record store wasn't exactly earning him the big bucks, nor could he really climb the ladder there.

Still, even if he failed in almost every requirement that your parents had, he cared for you immensely. All throughout college, you had been worried about dating. You knew precisely how your parents would react to each guy you found attractive or had a connection with, and you couldn't bring yourself to put either of you through that emotional experience. Even so, Sehun managed to dive right past those worries. Sehun, just by being himself, by showing you great kindness, care, and love, allowed you to open up. He was special to you. This was exactly why the timing of revealing your relationship was so important.

"Sweetie, we are well aware that you're seeing someone. We've caught you glimpsing at your phone with the fondest look on your face. It's not Baekhyun that you're fawning over. He comes over frequently, and we've never seen you make those expressions towards him," your mother pointed out, her keen eyes noticing how your posture seemed to stiffen in response.

Truthfully, you were surprised that your mother even picked up on how different your interactions were with Baekhyun in comparison to the mystery person on your phone. You and Baekhyun were close, and you had hoped that your closeness would mask any telltale signs that you were dating someone. Apparently, you had let it slip.

"It's not a special someone," you replied, reassuringly. "It's a new friend from work. We have a group chat, and they sometimes say silly things." You had always been a terrible liar, but you were inwardly hoping that it was passable this time.

"Dear, what have we told you about lying. You've never been very good at it," your father said flatly. Well, there went all of your hopes that this was going to stop. "It seems like you're hiding this boyfriend of yours. Is there a particular reason you feel the need for us not to meet? You're not dating some hooligan, right?"

'No matter what I say, you would think he was a hooligan. Sehun's the sweetest man I've ever met though,' you thought to yourself. "I wouldn't say that I'm hiding him. I'm cautious. Our relationship is still in the early stages, and I want to make sure that we're more committed before the three of you meet," you explained. You knew that you couldn't hide your relationship anymore, but you were going to try and postpone this meeting for as long as you could. Nine months wasn't a short amount of time to be together, but it still wasn't enough time to prepare your boyfriend for your parents.

"Just because the relationship is in its early stages, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't meet. How do you know that we won't like your boyfriend?" your father pointed out before continuing. "Unless you already know that we wouldn't approve of him. And if that's the case, if you can't seem to pick a quality significant other, maybe we should look into arranging your marriage again."

You did your best to control your displeasure at the mention of an arranged marriage. As of your third year of college, they decided that it was time you got serious about your future. Without really asking you, they put together dates with the sons of their business partners. You willingly went on these dates, but you never felt a spark for any of these men. They had interests that didn't overlap with yours, and some were just uninterested in you as a whole. When you started dating Sehun, you had made the excuse that you wanted to focus on your career for the time being, that handling a relationship and work from the beginning was going to be difficult. Your parents agreed as none of the boys were a match at the time. But the fact that they wanted to meet Sehun now, and the fact that your father brought up an arranged marriage, it meant that they had started looking for someone behind your back. That bothered you greatly.

"We've talked to some very nice young men about you recently. They feel like they would suit you. Perhaps one of them would be a better fit for you and for the family if you are unsure about the one that you are currently seeing," your mother pointed out, confirming your suspicions. You knew that being the daughter of a wealthy family meant that you had few freedoms, but this felt like it was too much.

Your mind raced to find some sort of excuse. You honestly thought that your parents would love Sehun if they could get over the fact that he didn't meet any of their criteria. But to soften them up, you needed time. You thought about asking for it, but you could already see it in your parents' eyes. They weren't going to take another excuse from you. Fate was telling you it was now or never, and you had never hated fate so much before.

"If you think this boy is the one, then we should meet him. Why don't you bring him by next week, for our usual dinner? It will be an excellent way for us to get to know him. I expect no other excuses. That's that," your mother said, putting an end to the topic.

The remaining dinner chatter had been sparse, and you found yourself leaving not long after. Your steps out to your car were slow, your mind still racing at how the topic of your love life got so out of control. On the entire way back, even after you were already in bed for the evening, all you could think about was Sehun. How were you supposed to prepare him for the worst and most challenging moment of his life?

#oh sehun #sehun #exo #exo scenarios #kwritersworldnet #exo fiction #exo fanfic #exo imagines #sehun scenarios #sehun imagines #kpop scenarios #goodnightkisseu series #gnks: time to heal

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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

Link

“I’M SO OFF MY TITS ON COFFEE,” Stella McCartney admits, knocking back yet another cup in the foyer of a boutique hotel a stone’s throw from her home in London’s Notting Hill. “I had four school drop-offs this morning,” she explains. “I start at 6:30 a.m., and by the time I get to work [by bicycle], I feel like I’m literally done for the day. I’m a big hot sweaty mess, too,” she adds, having decided that a thick organic-cotton flying suit (no pesticides used in its production) was the way to dress for a Monday morning that started grimly overcast but soon turned sultry. “It’s just so difficult being in fashion, isn’t it?” McCartney sighs. “We have to pretend to be so perfect. I’m the one that comes in with a punk-rock kind of ‘fuck this perfection,’ ” says the woman who famously turned up, with Liv Tyler, to the Costume Institute’s 1999 “Rock Style” exhibition, both wearing jeans and custom T-shirts spelling out ROCK ROYALTY. “It’s not maintainable, it’s not wise, and it’s very old-fashioned. So there you go.”

McCartney does the school run five days a week with daughters Bailey, 13, and Reiley, 9, and sons Miller, 14, and Beckett, 11. “When you’ve got a job and you’ve got kids,” she says, “it’s when you get to see them, and you have to wake up super early and engage in that moment. Then I try and squeeze in some exercise, and then I go to work. And I try and get back for the bookending of being a mum.”

On weekends, McCartney spends more time with the family when they decamp to an estate in the wilds of unfashionable north Gloucestershire, the result of a house hunt born, as McCartney has explained, of “a desperate mission to find land so that I could ride my horse.”

McCartney married the dashing and protective Alasdhair Willis—the former publisher of Wallpaper and a creative guru himself—in the fall of 2003, and their aligned aesthetic passions run the gamut from the innovative indoor-outdoor architecture of the midcentury Sri Lankan architect Sir Geoffrey Bawa to old English roses. Over the past 15 years, the couple have transformed their handsome but once desolate Georgian manor house, sitting in bleak open farmland, into “a redbrick box within a garden within a garden within a garden,” as McCartney describes it, a breathtaking landscape of grand walled enclosures and allées of trees reflecting both her belief that “being out in a beautiful garden is nicer than sitting in a beautiful room” and her husband’s passion for such stately English flowering landscapes as Hidcote and Sissinghurst. “We planted a million trees,” McCartney told Vogue in 2010, “made another Eden.”

“You know what I was doing this weekend?” asks McCartney. “I was riding my horse barefoot and bareback, with my daughter [Reiley]. It was about as good as it gets.”

On a visit there in 2010 I was intrigued to discover—among the bridle paths, wild meadows, orchards, and Downton-scaled rose gardens and herbaceous borders—a series of reed-filled ponds that turned out to be the McCartney-Willises’ off-the-grid sewage system. “See?” says McCartney with her impish laugh. “Being an environmentalist can be sexy!”

McCartney has been environmentally conscious since childhood. “I was privileged,” she has admitted. “I grew up on an organic farm; I saw the seasons. My parents were vegetarians—they were change agents.” (That childhood idyll is evoked in her late mother, Linda McCartney’s, book The Polaroid Diaries, which also captures the world of McCartney’s American relatives, including her Eastman grandfather, who lunched at the exclusive Maidstone Club and hung de Koonings and Rothkos in his Billy Baldwin–decorated Fifth Avenue drawing room, where the infant McCartney amused herself with Joseph Cornell’s magical shadow boxes, alluringly placed on a child’s-height shelf.)

The great outdoors is also reflected in McCartney’s state-of-the-sustainable-arts London flagship store—which she designed herself, with a soundtrack that includes a three-hour loop of her father, Paul’s, demo tapes along with a Bob Roth meditation in the changing rooms. “The audio is important for me,” she says as she proudly walks me round it, “because it’s obviously such a big part of my upbringing.” There are papier-mâché walls made from “all of the shredded paper from the office,” along with a silver birch grove and a moss-covered rockery of giant granite rocks brought from the 1,100-acre McCartney family farm on Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre. “My personality is this sort of contrast between the hard and the soft, the masculine and feminine,” says McCartney. “I wanted to have life in the store—to bring nature into the experience of shopping,” she explains as she takes me up in the Stellevator to the floor where she fitted the Duchess of Sussex for the glamorous halter-neck dress she wore for the wedding reception following her marriage to Prince Harry. There are also pieces from McCartney’s “All Together Now” Beatles collaboration, inspired by a friends-and-family screening of Yellow Submarine that her father staged on the film’s 50th anniversary. “It just blew my brains because I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid,” she recalls. “It’s astonishing—just mental and so trippy and so childlike and so innocent and so heavy and so meaningful.”

Since McCartney’s 1995 Central Saint Martins graduation show, her brand has been defined by the urgent desire to do away with animal cruelty in the fashion industry. And while, 20 years ago, there were fake furs on the market, the only glues available were animal-based. “I imagine Vikings sitting around a pot, boiling down the last bones of the elk that they skinned for the fur,” says McCartney. “And I think, Wow—we’re still there.” Today McCartney uses renewable energy where it’s available for both her stores and offices; the eyewear she shows me in her store is bi-acetate, and her sneakers are made with biodegradable Loop technology; she uses regenerated nylon, polyester, and cashmere but also works with producers making innovative fashion fibers—building fake fur from sustainable corn fiber, for instance, producing vegan microsilk, and growing mycelium-based “leather.”

“I was always a bit of a freak in the house of fashion,” McCartney says. “My regime, my culture, has been different from day one.” In Paris, where she was appointed creative director of Chloé in 1997, she struggled with the perception that at 26 she was too young and unqualified for the job (“The Beatles wrote Sgt. Pepper when they were 26,” she told Vogue tartly), and her working practice was “totally at odds with the rest of the industry,” as she recalls. Even now, she says, “every single day in our office is this sort of daily challenge—a way of trying to perfect and persist and find realistic solutions within the luxury-fashion sector—and even in a more broadstream way with the collaborations with Adidas [initiated in 2004]. Each day,” she says, “there are questions that I ask that we try to find an answer for. And if we can’t, we’ll try again tomorrow.”

Despite what she refers to as “a lot of resistance,” McCartney turned the Chloé gig (which lasted through the launch of her self-titled brand in 2001) into a triumph, tripling sales. Today, as we march inexorably to global Armageddon, her commitment to cruelty-free fashion and sustainability is fast becoming the industry norm. In recent years, for instance, luxury brands including Gucci, Prada, Michael Kors, Armani, and Chanel have declared themselves fur-free. “I’m hugely relieved,” says McCartney, “but I’m actually astounded that it’s taken so long.”

McCartney now gives scholarships at Central Saint Martins, her alma mater, for students who “adhere to our ethical charter,” and helps young designers navigate the complicated terrain of sustainability. “We’re in the farming industry in fashion,” she says. “We look at the biodiversity and the soil. It’s crazy. It’s basically exhausting. It’s much easier not to do it. So I kind of understand why the world hasn’t quite followed.”

BUT McCartney has far more ambitious goals for expanding her global industry reach. Last year, she bought back full ownership of her label from Kering, 17 years after the group’s then–creative director Tom Ford had urged the company to invest in McCartney’s fledgling brand. Following her move, “people began to show an interest quite quickly,” as McCartney recalls. “I was fortunate enough that Mr. Arnault was one of the people.” She’s speaking, of course, of Bernard Arnault, the all-powerful chairman and chief executive of LVMH, which acquired a minority share in Stella McCartney in July. “I think it’s incredibly exciting. It sends a big, big message to the industry if Mr. Arnault is asking me to be his personal adviser on sustainability at LVMH. I think that was one of the attractions for me—it is a big, timely statement, and hopefully game-changing for all of us.”

McCartney points out that the fashion brands with the biggest environmental impact in terms of scale are “the high-end luxury houses, and then the fast-fashion sector. They have massive impact in a negative way, and they can have a massive impact in a positive way.” These fast-fashion retailers, as she observes, turned from fur far earlier than luxury brands. “They’re more in touch with the youth,” she says, “and what the next generation of consumers actually wants. It’s a given for my children,” she notes, “that you have to show some kind of mindfulness or awareness.” (In recognition of the next generation’s activists, McCartney has launched the Stella McCartney Today for Tomorrow Award—video nominations via Instagram—“to celebrate,” as she says, “a new generation of change agents and eco-warriors under 25 who are kicking ass for Mother Earth.”)

She may have her work cut out for her. A week after our coffee klatch and four days before presenting her spring-summer 2020 show in Paris (“our most sustainable collection ever”), Arnault, addressing an LVMH sustainability event in Paris, called out 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg for “indulging in an absolute catastrophism about the evolution of the world” in her electrifying appearance at the United Nations summit on climate change. “I find it demoralizing,” he added. It was perhaps no accident that McCartney raced to put together a sustainability panel (no questions, no photographs) of her own on the eve of her show at the Opéra Garnier—a panel that included Extinction Rebellion activist Clare Farrell, the legendary environmentalist and activist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and author Dana Thomas (Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes), who noted that “we wear our clothes seven times on average before throwing them away . . . we’re perpetuating this bulimia of buying, using, and throwing away.”

“What we’ve seen over the last few weeks and months,” McCartney said, pointedly, “is children and young people taking action.” The designer also addressed the issue of young activists’ rejecting the idea of consumerism. “If the youth of today stop buying into it,” McCartney added, “then obviously, the people at the top have got to deliver on that.”

Rayon, or viscose, an indispensable fashion fiber, for instance, is created from wood pulp. “This year alone,” McCartney says, “up to 150 million trees have been cut down just for viscose.” McCartney now sources hers from sustainable forests in Sweden. “I’m trying to create something that’s still sexy and desirable and luxurious that isn’t landfill,” she tells me. “Every single second, fast fashion is landfill.”

Does McCartney feel that she’s had an impact on the practices of other brands? “That’s not for me to say,” she demurs. “That would be so unchic of us. But we are a kind of incubator. I have sympathy for how hard it is to shift the massive Titanic ship away from the iceberg,” she says. “We’re a little agile sailboat, and we built the ship. And I think that’s easier than changing something that’s been going in one direction for so long.”

While she was at Kering, the company developed an environmental profit-and-loss tool that assigned a monetary value to environmental impact—something that led to McCartney’s decision (to give just one example) to stop the use of virgin cashmere, a material with 100 times the environmental impact of wool. (It takes four goats to make enough cashmere for a single sweater, resulting in a need for grazing land that has destroyed the steppes of Mongolia and led to desertification and sandstorms in northern China.) Her label now uses regenerated cashmere, made from factory scraps that are shredded and respun into new yarn, and focuses on alpaca (“a much more friendly material”) and traceable wool (four sweaters from one sheep).

McCartney also holds an annual forum for all of her suppliers to talk with them about what her company requires and to share information on recent advances. “A lot of people see change as something scary,” she says, “but the mills are interested in working with innovators.

“I think that in a sense we’re a project,” she adds. “We’re trying to prove that this is a viable way to do business in our industry—and that you don’t have to sacrifice any style or any edginess or coolness in order to work this way. At the end of the day,” she says, “we’re a fashion house trying to deliver on the promise of desirability. Without that, I can’t even have this conversation. So I have to try and find a healthy balance—and doing both jobs is a balance. It’s the same as being a mum. My other ‘family’ is work. And I have to find the balance between this conversation of fashion and the conversation of consciousness—and they have to complement each other.”

#stella mccartney #fashion blog #conscience fashion

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elejah-verse · 6 years ago

Text

Bleeding Love/2

Fanfiction 2/3

Elijah Mikaelson x Elena Gilbert

an AU TVD/TO story

a/n: I thought I should have it as one shot but it is turning into a three part.

Thanks so much for reading. xoxo

tags @rissyrapp20 @dendrite-lover @captainshurley @cassienoble2000 @goddessofthunder112

🦌

Days after

Mystic Falls

The doppelganger was awaken by her phone ringing.

Opening her eyes just barely, she took the phone from the nightstand and swiping it said-

"Hey"

"I still have something to deal with here at college, then will come to your house"- Bonnie said.

"What time is it?"- Elena asked.

"8:30"- Bonnie said-"What do you want from the diner?"

"Chocolate-chip mint fudge ice-cream"- Elena replied-"two big buckets."

"Still not over it?"- the witch now asked referring to her meeting with the Original.

"Three buckets"- Elena said now sitting up, rubbing her face with her hand.

"Oh, Lena!"- Bonnie stated-"ok, see you later."

As they both hung up, Elena laid back on the bed her mind transporting her back to the kiss. They had only shared two kisses and both were epic. The only difference was that the second one had the most unusual intensity, as if it was a goodbye of a most strangest kind. Why would he kiss her like that? Was something bad going to happen? Or was this a final goodbye?

Elena shook her head kind of dismissing the thought and the feelings surrounding it and went to the bathroom.

****

🦌

Harz Mountains, Germany

Elijah and the two Strix witches arrived to the designated place, where a lead took them, to find out more about the beginning of the Traveller covens.

Aya and Elijah walked into a building that was a very old Chemistry shop "Zum Roten Fingerhut" asking for Reinhard Pranke.

The man looked somewhat oddly at the woman and the man in the most pristine suit asking why they wanted to speak to his father.

"It is about a small matter of the herb Digitalis Purpurea or as you call it roter Fingerhut."- Elijah said in the German language-"he will know what I am referring to. Say a gentleman of the Organization called the Strix wishes to see him."

The young man gulped a bit when the name Strix came out. He obviously knew the name and who they were.

"I will give him a call."

"Please."- Elijah said.

Not long after the call, the old man arrived and took Aya and Elijah to a cabin in the mountains.

¤¤¤¤¤

In Mystic Falls, later, in the evening

Elena's house

"Ok, so what do we know about those Traveller witch covens?"- Elena asked Bonnie.

Bonnie now read out to Caroline, Stefan and Elena what she had found out after the clues Aya had left her.

"They are a several millennia old community, divided between those witches who sought to preserve what they saw as the natural balance of the world by using their powers for that aim, and those who believed they could use it to do anything. Fearing the power that could be unleashed on the world thanks to this use of magic, a group of powerful witches called upon the Spirits and then placed a curse on Qetsiyah's entire coven. The curse prevented them from gathering as a tribe, an act which would cause disasters such as plagues, fires and earthquakes whenever they gathered. Also, they no longer had access to traditional magic."

"There- traditional magic! That is what they want and the source of it. And it is in Mystic Falls."- Elena said-"but how do these vampire-witches come into the whole thing?"

"Isn't Elijah's witch going to find that out?"- Caroline said.

"Yes, that's why they jetted off to Germany."- Elena said-"the witch part is still weak because of the curse, and they need the traditional part of it to strengthen the magic in them."

"Ok. We need to find out who Qetsiyah is and try to locate the existing covens."- Stefan said.

"Easier said than done."- Bonnie now got up from the table to get herself some water -"because they are also shifters and this is going to be so hard to locate them."

Elena now sighed and mentioned Liv- "We have to find her. She apparently belongs to a Traveller coven as well. I really don't get why she left."

"So, this is all we got?"- Caroline asked.

"Yep."- Bonnie replied-"till we hear from Aya and Elijah. Unless you get one of your visions, too."

"Well, I can't just order them. It's the thing of the moon."

"Right."- Stefan got up-"I am going to try and find out about Olivia the old fashion way."

Caroline got up as well taking her boyfriend by the arm, telling her friends not to start on the ice-cream without her. Elena assured her that they wouldn't.

Outside the house a few seconds later, the blonde and the vampire shared a little kiss.

Inside, Elena took a spoon full of ice-cream before she said-

"I don't know why I am agonizing over it. It's not like anything can ever happen between us. He is sired to me- which still I really don't get how and why we can't -"- Elena said frustrated.

"Because- your blood in him makes him go all wild and violent in the heat of passion and he will have the urge to bite you and drink from you to the point of your death, and he won't be able to stop himself. Also, he will lose the humanity. It is your blood in him that keeps his humanity in tact."- Bonnie said-"it's magic."

"I want to know about the kiss! Was it like the first time you kissed or was this kiss like I want you, I need you, I want to make love to you- what?"- Caroline wanted to know the details.

"The first one was I want you, I need you- but this one was- like goodbye kiss, but like- weird- I mean. Nothing really led to it."- Elena tried to get around it herself.

"So how? He kissed you because he was going away and he will never coming- back- kind-of-a kiss? Not that he kept away since we had the problem with the virus."

"When was he here when we had the problem with the virus?"- Elena now looked puzzled at Caroline and then Bonnie, who both looked at the doppelganger, obviously now finding themselves in the right jam, as they kept that from her.

Bonnie shot a furious look at Caroline for not being able to control her mouth.

"Sorry, Lena"- Caroline now apologized-"but he told us not to tell you, because, he didn't want to - stir up things."

"He brought the Cure, didn't he?"- Elena said feeling happy and sad at the same time.

The witch and the blonde now nodded silently still feeling bad for having kept the truth form their friend.

Elena now got up from the sofa feeling a rush of anger splur, but also pained and full of love for the Original vampire-"This is what he does. How can I not love him? He is sweet, kind, good. And - I just- how am I going to ever move on, when he kisses me like that?"

Both of her friends were feeling for her friend. She tried to have other boyfriends. She even dated one or two from college, and it was a distraction for a little while, but then she knew that deep down she was not fair to them.

"This love is like a curse."- Elena now stated slumping down on the sofa taking the bucket of ice-cream in her lap, scooping out some ice-cream.

''Don't say that."- Caroline, the hopeless romantic now tried to stop Elena from thinking about it in that way- "You guys have like the love of all time."

"Oh, please. We are not Buffy and Angel."- Elena said.

"This was a TV show, you and Elijah are real."- Caroline said, continuing-"Bonnie or- I don't know who is going to do some magic thing, and you will be able to be together." The blonde now looked at her witch friend.

Bonnie had already tried to find a spell or something that would not make Elijah go into full evil vampire-bloodlust mode if or when they ever sleep together.

"I've read everything I could get on the sire-bond from the Strix archives."- Bonnie said-"there is no loophole. I am sorry."

"You see."- Elena said-"I don't know why we are wasting any time on this. It is just hopeless. We can never be and that’s that!”

Elena sighed and now taking a spoonful of ice-cream, closed her eyes for a second. She could still feel him, like it was just minutes ago. All the time. Like there was so much more, and not just a simple goodbye kiss, like he was with her and her heart ached with the love she felt for him.

🦌

Germany

In the cold room in a hotel in a village in the Harz Mountains

Elijah sat down on the bed taking the picture of Elena out of the book of Sonnets. He swore he would not torture himself by thinking of her, looking at the picture of her. But, his heart just wouldn't listen. He now read the sonnet.

Putting the picture back in the book, Elijah laid down on the bed. His heart was aching. More than it ever did. The memories of holding her in his arms, kissing her, making love to her, all heightened the aching undead soul of his. How is he going to go back to her, be around her again? How will he bear it? When he knew what they had that one night, that one day they spent together?

In the room next door, Aya spoke to Sabine.

"He will go back to Mystic Falls and watch over her. Hopefully we will find the Parker coven members in time"

****

🦌

A few weeks later

Elijah woke up with a shuttering breath, breaking out in cold sweat. Another nightmare kicked his undead heart hard.

Collecting himself a bit, he sat up and his thoughts swarmed to the a time past.

Flashback

A year and a half ago, Mystic Falls

Elijah waited for the doppelganger in the Lockwood Mansion, as the family had been a long ally of the Strix. Elijah had arrived in Mystic Falls a couple of days before, and acted behind her back, killing Trevor, a vampire that had plotted and inadvertently killed Katerina Petrova, making her a ruthless vampire. Elena was not impressed by him doing the killing, as she needed Trevor tell her about the moonstone, she and Bonnie had been looking for quite a long time.

As Elena found out, who he was and that he was a guest of the Lockwood family, she went there to give him a piece of her mind.

As she burged in, she shot a tirade at the old vampire without a greeting or anything similar-

"I don't care who you are, but you don't do what you want in this town before you check things with me!"- Elena said, her eyes glittering with anger.

"Hello, there!"- Elijah said calmly.

Her eyes still blazing at him, she took a moment, and composing herself a bit, tried to subside her fury, as Bonnie and Carol had explained who he was. She now replied simply-

"Hello."

"Would you please sit down and allow me to explain why I did what I did without consulting you. Please-"- he now gestured to Elena to take a seat.

Elena nodded a little and with a small sigh she sat down ready to listen to his explanation.

As Elijah was about to start, one of the Lockwood family's help walked in with a tray of tea.

"Thank you."- Elijah said politely to the woman and as she served the tea. He offered a cup to Elena but she refused it.

"You don't mind if I do have a cup?"

"No, but aren't you supposed to be drinking - something else?"- she was referring to the blood.

"It's been a long day and I prefer something calmer."- Elijah explained.

As he took a sip he said-

"I apologize sincerely for having acted on impulse. I would never disrespect you, and your position in this community, nor undermine all your efforts. But, you see, Trevor Ford is responsible for the demise of Katerina Petrova, as well as - my brother."

"Your brother?"- Elena now looked at Elijah surprised.

"Yes. You know that Trevor Ford is the Old one?"

"Yes. I've been told."- Elena said-"You are one, too. And the books don't mention you having a brother."

"No. Because, that was before we ever were turned into vampires."- Elijah continued-"that was nearly 2100 years ago. That was in 83 BC. He took him to the Magi and they cut his heart out as they needed it for the werewolf curse. You see my brother, well to be exact, my half-brother was the First Hybrid, the one you are looking for."

Elena looked at the vampire wide-eyed.

"I think the term you are searching for is OMG."- Elijah said.

"Well, yeah. OMG!"- Elena said.

"I also have the thing you were searching for so ardently."

"You have the Moonstone?"- Elena said surprised.

"Yes, Elena."- Elijah replied and continued-"I suspected that he had it on him, as this was something he could negotiate with, and he had found out that the Bennett witch lives in Mystic Falls, and he needed her to do the ritual. But, what he didn't know was, the Strix witches had altered the spell and could not be performed without the doppelganger's blood. When he came here, he was ready to take you and kill you if necessary, and I could not have that."

"What?"

"The doppelganger is very important in this fight against the hybrids. And, although, your strength is far superior to all other doppelgangers, due to your very mixed family gene pool, you could still not beat him, nor your witches. So, I have intercepted him on the way, before meeting you. You know the rest."

Elena sighed a little and said-"I do."- and continued-"Right. I- am sorry that I came bursting in and wanted to tear your heart out. Not that I could, but- in future- could you just let me know what your plans are?"

Elijah smiled a little-"It's a deal."

"Good."- Elena stood up now-"Your witch said that you will help us with the Harvest. We can meet in my house tomorrow morning- to coordinate-"

Elijah nodded and, the gentleman he was, stood up as well, taking her jacket, ready to walk her to the door.

Elena stood still for a second as she waited for him to give her the jacket and then said looking him poignantly-

"Thank you."

Their eyes locked streaming a commitment and at that moment it was like there was this something more glistening out of them- and at that moment neither of them would ever forget. This was said- I will forever be there for you.

His heart was lost to her, as well as Elena's was to him.

Elena took the jacket off of him and walked out of the Lockwood Mansion. Elijah looked after her through the window until she disappeared into the woods.

Elijah now got up and walked into the bathroom to refresh and get ready for the meeting with his witches.

¤¤¤¤

🦌

In Mystic Falls

After a long night of chatting and watching romantic comedies, Elena got up early and went for a run. She needed to clear her head and focus on whatever was coming. But focusing was just not going well, and there in the woods, she bumped into another fellow runner.

"Tyler, hey."- she greeted her werewolf friend.

"Hey. You're back?"- Tyler said.

"Yeah, got back like a night ago."- Elena said-"what's up?"

"I am surprised you don't know already. Olivia is gone. No word. No goodbye. Like we didn't date a year."- Tyler said.

"I heard. We are looking for her, too."- Elena said.

"She was acting weird, couple of days before you left for New Orleans. I thought it was because of Lexie giving her shit over killing that witch back in New York?"

"I don't know. We had a huge argument before Lexie left, too, but I had no time to deal with that. You have to ask Caroline."- Elena said.

"Yeah. Ok. See you at the thing this weekend at the Mansion?!"- by the thing, Tyler meant the Music and Art Festival the Lockwoods hosted every year on the grounds as a special one-day event.

"Can't wait. Seriously need big time distraction."- Elena said-"Caroline said that it will be bigger than ever."

"It will be sick."- Tyler said.

"See you there."- Elena said and went on running down the track.

¤¤¤¤¤

In Germany, Elijah convened with Aya and Sabine.

"I am going to check the New England lead. Sabine is going to Oregon."- Aya told the vampire.

Elijah nodded a little and than said-"I think it is worth going to New York, to check on John Lorenzo. You said they would not strike before the third new moon rising after the Lungsanadh."

"Well, not according to Reinhard Pranke"- Sabine said-"but that is coming from his witch ancestor seven times removed."

"Their magic now can't work on you. We made sure of it when we turned you back. So, you will have to look after Elena, who can be suseptible to it, as they might posses the blood of the doppelganger. You need to be back in Mystic Falls as soon as possible."

"You were saying something about imposing a boundry spell on the town?"- Elijah asked.

"Can't be done. The mystical convergence is not letting us do it. The Bennett witch has already tried it."- Aya replied.

They soon wrapped up and then each went their way.

The Mystic Falls Scoobys spent the same day, as well as the next one passed by in research about Quetsiyah and the Traveller covens.

They would not only live and breath supernatural stuff, they also concentrated on the very human things like the upcoming one-day Festival event at the Lockwood Grounds.

This being Mystic Falls, supernatural Central, as Caroline called their hometown, the Lockwoods being chairs of the Secret Council, knowing that the Festival also attracts all different supernatural beings, made sure there was a special protective spell cast, so there is no trouble.

"All done."- Bonnie said as she went to check upon everything with her mom, who was there as well, visiting. Although Abby could not perform magic any longer, due to her having passed the gift to Bonnie to live as she was on the brink of death as a child, she still could check upon the spells being done right.

Carol Lockwood thanked them and went off with the festival organizing team.

Abby then picked up her bags and with a little see you later, left the Mansion. Bonnie stayed on, as waited for her boyfriend Luka to pick her up.

The whole town was buzzing with people coming from all over for the Festival, and so were Elena and Caroline.

"Tonight I want to forget about the world and -"- Elena said to her friend as they met for drinks at the Mystic Grill.

"And?"- Caroline asked as Elena didn't finished the sentence.

"You know."- Elena said asking for another Bourbon as she shot the first one down.

"You plan on getting wasted- but you have to be - on call- "

"On call?"- Elena looked at Caroline puzzled that she chose that word-"I am not a doctor."

"But you are -what you are"- Caroline also didn't know what to call the doppelganger-"You are not really a hunter, cos you don't hunt anything. But not really a slayer- who cares. But shouldn't you kind of still be - less slashed?"

"You know that I have to have a whole bottle to be a bit drunk. I know that I have to be on stand by. This is my life, always on stand by. I just want to let go. At least one night"- Elena said.

Stefan now entered the Grill and Caroline's look directed with a wide-eyed nudge the vampire about Elena, which told the vampire that Elena was not in a good place.

"Caroline I don't need baby- sitting."- Elena said seeing her friend's facial mimic to her boyfriend.

"I am totally ok if you need me to be on alert."- Stefan said-"You deserve to unwind and go party."

"Thanks"- Elena said-"sorry for being bitchy. Three years ago I was just a High-school graduate and then- pouf - 18th birthday- and Elena is not just a girl anymore, but this weird natural occurrence. So, tonight I just want to be a 21 year-old and - party. Do stupid things like get drunk. A bottle!"- she now asked the bartender to give her a bottle. The bartender gave her the bottle and Elena looked at her friends saying-

"Shall we?"

Stefan and Caroline followed. The vampire reassured the blonde that she shouldn't worry and that they would look after the doppelganger.

And the doppelganger forgot world a little later as the event began, letting completely loose.

Bonnie, who stayed only a little while at the gig, went to patrol the woods. All seemed to be as usual. There were no strange witch energies. No unusual hybrids appearing. Until she got to the road leading to the Wickery Bridge-

"Hey there, witch."

Bonnie looked startled as the vampire now swooped like out of nowhere.

"Damon!"- Bonnie exclaimed.

"The one and only"- the vampire said.

■🦌

Elijah also arrived in town and as he swished to Elena's house, his heart stopped in his tracks as he now saw Elena kissing a man in the car.

And a few seconds later they got out, laughing and kissing some more as they walked to the house, and as Elena unlocked the door, they entered it.

It cut him deep.

____

#Elijah Mikaelson #Elena Gilbert #tvd imagine #tvd fanfiction #Fanfiction

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dantediscoversfic · 6 years ago

Text

Chapter 40: The Crap Cave

“Dante! You found us!” Clio said as I hovered awkwardly in the doorway of the art room that first day of school during lunch period.

She bounded over and grabbed my elbow to draw me into the oddly dark classroom. The overhead lights were all off, the window shades partially drawn down and gloomy pop music I vaguely recognized as The Cure droned from a cassette player. About ten kids were sprawled out around the room, most of them sporting various degrees of punk/goth/New Waver style. Two corset-clad girls in billowy skirts drew intricate designs on each other’s arms in black pen; a couple dressed in “normal” clothes was making out with gusto in the corner by the potter wheels; a boy wearing all black continually skimmed his pointer finger over the top of a Bic lighter flame; and the rest were eating lunch, chatting, scribbling in notepads or singing along to the music. Clio flicked the overhead lights a few times to get everyone’s attention, eliciting a few winces and hisses and boos from the group.

“Everyone, listen up, this is Dante. He’s new. He’s from Texas, but try not to hold that against him. He’s a brilliant artist. Dante, this is everyone. That’s Raija, Jane, Sachi, Fletch and Kelly back there sucking face, Joseph, Ann, Dave, Forest and Vee.”

I was greeted with a few head nods and finger waves, except for the couple making out who kept at it with sloppy yet admirable enthusiasm. Everyone went back to their conversations as Clio led me closer to the girls she’d pointed out as being named Jane and Sachi.

“So, Dante from Texas, welcome to 'The Crap Cave’”, Clio said using air quotes. “We have lit mag meetings here and also make our own ‘zines and stuff. Raija’s mom Ms. B is the art teacher—she just stepped out for a minute—so she doesn’t care if we hang out here as long as we don’t you know, perform ritual animal sacrifices or set anything on fire. Again.” She coughed pointedly in the direction of the boy with the lighter seated a few desks down from us and the girls chuckled. Seeing my apparent confusion she said, “See, Joseph’s a bit of a pyro and went through a destruction of property phase last year, didn’t you, Jo-Jo?” The boy in question grinned slyly up at us. “But he’s got it under control now,” Clio continued. “He channels his urges into sculptures where he can use an actual blowtorch from woodshop.”

“Blowtorches rule,” he said and cast me one more glance before focusing all his attention back to his lighter and intrepid pointer finger. I couldn’t help but notice that all his fingernails were painted black and he was wearing eyeliner and dark lipstick like the girls.

I pulled my gaze away from him, not wanting to stare too hard and be rude. “What did you call this room? The ‘crap cave’?” I asked Clio. “Did I hear that right?”

“Oh yeah, you heard me right.”

“Do I even want to know?”

Clio laughed. “Don’t look so scared, we know how to use the bathrooms like everyone else. It’s a sort of long story. You ever hear of The Batcave?”

“You mean like from Bat Man comics?”

“No. Well yes, but no. Same but different. The Batcave is this famous club in London for people like us. Bauhaus, Robert Smith, Siouxie, Nick Cave, Specimen all hang out and play there. Jane actually got to go there this summer, that lucky bitch,” Clio knocked Jane’s shoulder with friendly admiration. “So we kind of started calling it that in homage to the club like a year ago. But then the school had this gross mouse problem and their little poops were, like, this constant presence in our lives, so somewhere along the line we started calling it ‘The Crap Cave’ instead. Because that's how we roll.”

“The mice were perfect and adorable, not gross,” Sachi said.

“Sachi, no. Just no. The mice themselves might have been cute but their poops definitely weren’t.”

The two girls bantered about whether the mice should have been saved and kept as pets or if they were indeed an icky health hazard while I took everyone in, trying not to gawk, and sat down to eat my packed lunch. I was fascinated by the group’s collective style: a motley assortment of teased and spiked dyed hair, leather jackets, ripped band t-shirts, corsets and lace, fishnets, heavy boots, winged eyeliner, black lipstick and nail polish, powdered white faces, spiky hardware chain jewelry mixed with rosaries, crosses and pentagram necklaces. Some of the boys were even wearing makeup, which was something you hardly ever saw in El Paso. Joseph, the pyro boy, was particularly fascinating to me. His raven hair was teased out as much as Clio’s and his dramatic eye makeup accentuated his blue eyes and delicate, almost pretty features. The flame from his Bic lighter cast a warm glow on his ghostly pale skin.

Clio must have caught me staring because she leaned in close to my ear and said, “Don’t worry, Dante, we might look at little scary but we don’t bite. At least most of us don’t. Forest over there is saving up to get his teeth filed, but it’s not for blood sucking purposes. It’s because it’ll look badass.”

“Wow. My old school in El Paso was a Catholic private school so we all had to wear uniforms. It’s so cool you can wear whatever you want here. And be whoever you want. Do you all make your own clothes? I love your corsets,” I said to Jane and Sachi.

The girls grinned at me with approval and Clio said, “I knew you were a good egg, Dante. Jane made the corsets. She’s an amazing designer and sewer. I think the rest of us get by with thrift stores, hot glue and a crapload of paperclips.”

“I’ve never really thought about my clothes before,” I said. “But now I feel so boring compared to you all.”

“Aw, there’s nothing wrong with being a normie,” Clio said and patted me on the back. “It doesn’t make you boring.”

“Well, if you want to try something new, let me know,” Jane said. “Jo-Jo’s my twin brother. I make stuff for him all the time. Cravats, vests, things like that. I’m sure he’d let you borrow something.”

“Wow, thanks. You think I’d look good?”

“Yeah, for sure. But don’t let us pressure you. We dress like this because it feels right, right? But it’s not for everyone.”

The girls nodded.

“How did you all know you wanted to get into goth stuff?” I asked.

Jane said, “Well, for me, growing up I loved making clothes and dressing up since forever. Halloween was my always my favorite holiday. I was obsessed, like obsessed. Like I’d start planning my costume and how to decorate the house six months in advance. And after it was over each year, the next day I’d get so sad and cry for days and beg my mom to keep the decorations up and let me keep wearing a cape or whatever to school every day. So when I figured out that I could dress however I wanted whenever I wanted and basically have Halloween all year round and have my clothes express how I feel inside all the time, it was like a big weight was lifted.”

“Do people make fun of you?”

“I mean, sure, dicks are dicks,” Jane said.

“We get all sorts of ignorant comments at school, on the street, wherever. Like…‘Hey Morticia, Halloween is over,’” Clio lowered her voice to a dopey male grumble.

“Or ‘Errr….Do you sleep in a coffin?’” Jane said.

“Or ‘You look pretty hot for a dead girl!’” Sachi said.

“Or my personal favorite, the classic ‘Going to a funeral?’” Clio said with an epic eyeroll. “Yeah, your funeral if you don’t shut up about it. Please. But there are lots of people who aren’t asshats and you can just ignore the losers.”

“Yeah,” Sachi said. “People say things like ‘Oh, you’d look so pretty if you didn’t dress like that’ but this is how I feel pretty and beautiful. I didn’t feel right before. Now I feel good. Right. Like myself.”

“Raija’s mom is super cool because she’s an old hippie and gets it,” Clio said. “But my mom is still waiting and praying for the day when I let her dress me all in pink pouffy dresses again. Sorry Anita, not gonna happen.” There was an edge to Clio’s voice when she talked about her mom that I hadn’t heard from her yet. It made me wonder what her home life was like.

Sachi said, “Yeah, my parents were all worried at first that I was depressed and wanting to kill myself. They tried to have an intervention with all my aunties and cousins. ‘We’re worried about you, Sachi.’ ‘This isn’t the real you.’ Um, first off, yes it is. And second off, I’m so much happier now than before when I felt like a fake.”

“Yeah, people think that we do this for attention or as a cry for help or because we’re suicidal or worship Satan or are in a cult, but that’s not true at all,” Jane said. “I started making clothes for myself when I was ten. This isn’t a ‘phase’. I’m not going to just grow out of it.”

“And finding people who are into the same bands and fashion and movies and everything makes putting up with all the weird looks and comments easier. We’re here for each other, ” Sachi said.

“And sure, we get attention,” Clio said, “because we stand out with our awesome amazingness. But it’s not like we do it for attention.”

“Yeah, I totally get it.” I said. “I think it’s great.”

The girls smiled at me and I wondered how it would feel to dress like them, if that would feel ‘right’ for me or not. I understood what Sachi had said about feeling like a fake, though, and not liking how that made me feel. I felt that way when I used to tell people my name was Dan and not Dante. I felt that way still, a little. Because I didn’t quite know what it meant to be totally free and open with myself and the world and the universe. Not when it came to the biggest secret I had. In El Paso, I felt like I already stood out by not looking Mexican enough, by liking art and poetry and books and astronomy too much. It was enough to blend in and not get teased or bullied for being a little strange. Now I wondered if I flipped the script and really tried to stand out—if I dressed all in black and put on makeup and spiked my hair and embraced my innate weirdness—if that would make me feel more like me. It might make me feel tough and cool and badass for a little while, but I doubted it would make me feel more like myself the way it did for this group. How did I know, though? I’d never tried it before.

I wondered what Ari would think of my new friends. I bet he’d like them. And then I wondered what Ari would look like in black nail polish and eyeliner. I bet he’d look like a dark glamorous rock star. The thought did funny things to my insides.

Then the art teacher, Ms. Baldwin a.k.a. Raija’s mom, came in. She had gray hair in a long braid all the way down her back and wore a long flowy dress and bangle bracelets. She turned the overhead lights on and said, “Hey darklings, the cruel daylight beckons. Gotta get ready for the next class. Lunch is over in five. And you two, yoo-hoo, Earth to Fletch and Kelly! Please rein in your raging hormones during lunch if at all humanly possible? I can’t have anyone getting pregnant on school grounds.” Everyone cracked up at that and Fletch and Kelly turned beet red but finally disentangled their entwined limbs (and tongues).

I had an art class with Ms. Baldwin later in the day so I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Dante Quintana, I’m in your painting class during sixth period.”

“Dante, it’s so nice to meet you. You’re new, yes? This lot showing you the ropes?”

“Yes, Clio invited me to eat lunch with her and be part of lit mag.”

“That would be lovely. I’m the advisor, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of you. How are you finding Chicago? Settling in all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am! Please, call me Ms. B. Where are you from?”

“El Paso.”

“Ah. I’ve only been there once. EPMA is a lovely museum. Have you been to the Art Institute yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“We’ll be doing a field trip later in the year, but if you are a lover of art you must go. It’s one of the prides of Chicago.”

“Thanks, Ms. B, I will.”

"Now if you’ll excuse me, Dante, I have to prep for next period. See you in a few hours!”

Ms. B went over to her daughter Raija, who had been sitting off to herself drawing in a sketchpad for most of lunch, and gave her a quick side hug before disappearing into a supply closet. Since everyone else was getting packed up I ate the rest of my lunch quickly and consulted my schedule to see where I was headed next.

“You’re in sixth period drawing?” I looked up and saw it was Joseph who had asked me the question. Standing up instead of hunched over the desk I saw how truly long and lanky he was. He was about a foot taller than me.

I nodded up at him and tried to smile but had a hard time keeping eye contact.

“Cool. Me too.”

He flicked his lighter a few times in his right hand and then grinned a lopsided grin at me before heading out into the hallway right as the bell rang.

This was shaping up to be a much different first day of school than I had expected.

#aridante fic #aaddtsotu

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finiarels · 7 years ago

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Morning Blues

Pair: Takayama Kazuya X Shiraishi Mai

Details: Part 1 of 2

Summary: A story of KazuMai household morning in a pretty special day

Bright sunlight roused Shiraishi Mai as it filtered through the blinds. Groggily, the woman stirred, blinking a couple of times to shoo away the massive headache, grunted when her attempt turns out to be fruitless. “Shit,” the 25 years old muttered as she stumbled her way through the toilet which thankfully is still inside the room. Kneeling next to the toilet bowl as her body retched to push out whatever it is that was in her stomach. Soon enough someone pushes her hair back from her face, another hand rubbing the spot where her back and neck meet. “Take it easy,” the voice said, shadowing her as she moved to the basin and wipe her mouth with a warm water. Shiraishi felt grossed out when she realised just how much she has vomited but chosen not to overthink that as her eyes met the guy who is standing behind her. “Sorry. I really hope I didn’t cause you any trouble last night.” She apologised as she tried to remember what she had done while under the influence of alcohol. The last time she was fully conscious she was still on the private plane back home, she could remember asking the cabin attendant to pop her a bottle of fine pinot noir, which has proven to be a bad friend when she has a lot in her mind. “It’s fine, it’s not like I haven’t been in your position. But just to make it clear, when I said that you could handle your liquor well, I wasn’t challenging you to gulp down two bottles of $500 wine in one sitting.” The man chuckled as he hands her a warm towel to dry off her face. Shiraishi mouthed inaudible thanks before burying her face in the soft fabric which smells faintly like a fresh detergent. Her brain started to remember the turn of events of the night before, starting from how stressed she was from having to skip the last half of New York Fashion Week that leads her to blabber how she probably wouldn’t get any offer for future events anymore. In addition to that, her personal assistant who wasn’t thrilled with her decision to fled from the most important fashion event in the world wasn’t helping her case at all. “That fucking CA should have stopped me.” “Hey, hey, wouldn’t want little Momo to start cursing around, are we?” The man reminds her as he gives her a gentle hug from behind. “By the way, thank you for taking care of her while I was away.” Mai relaxed to his embrace. “I hope she didn’t give you any trouble.” “Not at all, she is a nice kid, just like you.” His answer is followed by a peck on her cheek, which has caused him to scrunch up his nose and took a step back. “Okay, I think you need to take a shower ASAP, you smell like a bad mix of alcohol and vomit.” Mai laughed, provoking a little smile from the man. She spun on her heels and gave him a deep kiss. “You’re cute when you’re grossed out.” “Are you sure you’re not still drunk?” He joked as he gently pushed her towards the shower. “I’m going to cook us some decent breakfast and help Momoko get ready for school. Do pancake and scrambled eggs sounds good for you?” “You’re the man.” She gave him another kiss on the cheek before letting him go and stepped into the shower. The man’s name is Takayama Kazuya, albeit just turning 24 years old earlier this year he has achieved far from most people around his age. While the other people on his age are still struggling in a company junior position, Kazuya already invests in numerous business around Japan and even few overseas. He definitely has talent when it comes to deciding which company will actually do well and which won’t, thus’ he earnt his place among the top 20 richest people in the world, placing him among other people with similarly great minds. Meanwhile, his other half is also successful in the different field. Shiraishi Mai is a world-famous supermodel. Unlike Kazuya who was born in an average family, Mai is a daughter of a rich politician in the country, so she has basically never been in any situation where money is much of a concern. This is probably one of the reasons she is sometimes more reckless and a bit uncontrollable than him. However, just like her man the young woman takes her job seriously. After a nice warm shower, Mai dressed in a nice long sleeved black top with a red skirt that reaches her knees. The shower does help a bit on making the hangover more bearable, but still, it was hard to resist the temptation of jumping back to the bed and sleep. “Mama! I didn’t know you will be back so soon!” A voice greeted her excitedly as she stepped into the kitchen. Shiraishi Mai smiled and approached the young girl, giving her a kiss on the top of her head and a warm hug. “Look who’s sitting on the grown-up chair,” the young mother teased, noticing how the 6 years old is sitting on the kitchen counter’s stool instead of the chair in the dining table. “Kazuya helped me up. He said it’s okay now because I am tall enough to reach the first footstep.” The girl explained merrily, giving the man a toothy grin after she finished her sentence. “Just be careful, okay? And no climbing up there unless there is me or Kaz helping you out.” She warned, not letting the girl break their eye contacts before she gave a nod. For months Mai has been forbidding the young girl to sit there as she is afraid she will fall over considering the stool design and height. But seeing the girl looking proud and happy refrain her from being mad. Besides, they have been trying to win the girl approval of Kazuya. Especially now that she and he are engaged. The thing is, Mai and the girl’s father were not together from the beginning. It was actually a drunken mistake that happened when Mai has just graduated high school, but thankfully the guy was responsible enough to help her raise Momoko, taking the girl share of custody while still keeping a good friendly relationship with Mai. When Momoko was young she tried to make her parents together. However, it’s impossible to do so as her papa prefers the company of men. It took them a hard few months to explain to the young girl how not every mama and papa is together, several rough months to explain that some people fall in love with the same gender, and another few weeks to make her sure that no matter what happens both parents still love her very much. Now that both Mai and the girl’s father already has a respective partner that keeps them happy. Sometimes it makes Mai a bit paranoid that it will be too much to take for such a young girl. “Are you feeling much better now?” The man asked as she grabbed a glass of apple juice near him, taking a seat next to her daughter in case the young girl clumsiness kicked in. Mai nodded as she started to eat the scrambled egg on her plate. A bit surprised when she finds it more pleasing than usual. Not that Kazuya cooking is bad, but the man usually serves average food, which is far below Mai’s level of dishes. “I don’t know if this is just my empty stomach talking but this egg is something else.” She complimented. Kazuya smiled, looking proud of himself. “I told you that sooner or later your skill will rub off on me.” “Two days ago, he spent two hours to watch YouTube video and learnt to cook this,” Momoko revealed. Shiraishi laughed, “that sounds fun. Care to tell mama what else has happened while I was away?” She had expected her daughter to throw another fun story, however, the girl just looked at her food with a gloomy face as she eats the last piece of pancake left. Frowning, Mai throws a look at her fiancé asking for his explanation, however, the guy was also looking at the girl with a confused face. “Hey, sweetie, you know you can always tell me if there is something.” Momoko gives her a look, “promise me you won’t be angry.” “Well, I don’t even know what you did, so of course I can’t be angry,” Mai try to twist her sentence, urging the girl to tell her what is happening. The kid moved sloppily on her chair, almost falling down from jumping out of the stool. Then she grabbed something from her bag that sat on the floor. Handing Mai a paper which from the way it’s folded can be known that it is from her school. Shiraishi Mai eyebrows furrowed as she read the letter. Her expression getting harsher as she finally reaches the end. “I can explain. The letter makes it sounds really bad but it’s not actually that bad. And he kind of deserved it.” Momoko defended herself before her mother could say anything. “What part of using a stick to hit someone’s waist until it bruised is not that bad. I had enough! I thought we have agreed that kendo is a sport and that is not something that you learn to beat people up. This is the third time this year alone. You’re grounded, young lady! No iPad for a month and no more practising Kendo too!” Mai jumps off from her stool and roughly grabbed the tablet inside the young girl’s bag. “Hey, isn’t it too early to ground her? Can you tell us what happened, Momo-chan?” Kazuya tried to calm the situation down. Momoko’s lips starting to quiver, her eyes starting to water. “He was mocking papa. He called him a fag and he said papa will go to hell because he is a fag.” After that Momoko pretty much run back upstairs, a slam of door can be heard not long after. Mai squeezes her forehead, trying to relieve a headache that has started to worsen because of her daughter problem. Now that she knows the reason, Shiraishi Mai felt a bit shitty. However, she didn’t feel like taking back her words as she doesn’t want her daughter think that it is okay to resort to violence in any kind of situation. “I’ll talk to her, just finished your breakfast first.” Kazuya put his plate and Momoko’s in the sink, giving Mai a gentle squeeze on her shoulder before leaving the room. A minute hasn’t even passed since Mai started to finish what’s left of her breakfast when the house bell rang. “I’ll get it!” She shouted as she jumped off from the stool and did a mini-run to the front door. She opened the door without even checking from the camera view first as she already knows who will be there. “Good morning,” the man softly said, tilting his head a little bit to see past Mai. “Where is Momoko? Is she ready yet?” Mai sighed, stepping aside as a signal for him to come in. "She got herself into a problem in school and decided to get her revenge with kendo style hitting the guy,” Mai explained. “The school sent a letter asking her parents to come.” “What kind of problem?” The man raised his eyebrows. “Some kid was mocking your sexual orientation and Momoko lashed out at him. I kind of regret letting Kaz teach her kendo, it seems she’s not that emotionally matured yet for that.” “So, you’re going to stop her from learning Kendo?” “Not stopping her completely of course. Just postponing it until she’s old enough.” Nishino Nanao sighed, his eyes looking at the stairs that led to the second level where his daughter room is. “Let me take care of this matter. I’ll go to her school and meet the teacher. Also, I don’t think you should stop her from learning Kendo. It’s good for her self-esteem. She is less shy ever since-.” The man was interrupted by the sound of footsteps from upstairs as Kazuya and Momoko came into their field of view, the girl's eyes were still red from crying and she said nothing as she latched on her father, not even bothering to look at her mother. “Maiyan, it’s totally up to you but please consider that.” The man softly said before, crouching down to see his daughter at the same eye level. “I heard from your mother about what happened. You shouldn’t have done that, sweetheart. The next time it happens just ignore them, okay? Now you don’t need to worry, I will come to your school and talk to your teacher.” Momoko nodded, tugging her father hand a bit before asking. “Can we go now? I don’t want to get yelled at from coming late to school.” “Before that, I believe your mother wants to talk to you,” Nanao said as he opened the door to step outside, Kazuya tailing behind him, excitedly telling him a funny story from his office. Kazuya and Nanao were childhood friends, this is also how Mai met Kazuya in the first place. When Momoko was born, Nanao basically chose Kazuya to be the girl’s godfather without batting an eye. Somewhere along the road, Kazuya started to gain his spot in Maiyan’s heart. Mai crouch down to meet her daughter gaze, which she failed to do as the girl was looking to the floor, refusing to see her mother. “Honey, I am proud that you are strong and able defend yourself but that wasn’t how you supposed to handle the situation. How about this, if you can promise me you won’t do something like this ever again I will let you continue practice Kendo. What do you say?” “What if they are the one who hit me first?” The young girl replied with another question. “Then you should defend your ground, not hitting them back.” Mai stroked the girl’s head a bit. “Because that what makes you stronger than them, both mentally and physically. And I believe you are strong enough to do that.” “Okay.” “Good.” Mai smiled as she gave her daughter a kiss on her cheek. “Don’t trouble your papa so much, okay? You are an older sister now so you should try to set an example.” Momoko rolled her eyes, “Mama, Yuki is not even 2, she can barely run.” “More the reason you should be more careful around her.” Mai winked. “Tell Waka I said ‘Hi’. I’ll see you in two days.” The young girl nodded, letting her mother hug and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. She dashed towards her father once Mai finally lets her go. Both Mai and Kazuya waved the father and daughter goodbye, not leaving their front porch before the car has finally out of their sight. Mai exhaled loudly, feeling like going back to the comfort of bed as soon as possible. “What a rough morning, huh?” Kazuya joked as he closes the front door, earning a simple hum in agreement from the woman who totally has lost her will to keep up with his humour. This didn’t escape the man observation, as he tails behind her, he circles his arms around the woman's waist. “She is going to be fine. You don’t need to worry.” “I hope so.” Kazuya raised his eyebrows, “I think you need to go back to bed and sleep some more.” “Sadly, I can’t.” Mai bit her lower lips. “I have a photoshoot in 3 hours, well I can always get some sleep in the car or while they are doing my makeup.” “But you just got back. And this is valentine’s day,” Kazuya frowns. “Don’t be over-dramatic, it’s not like you’re taking a day off work. Our dinner is still about 12 hours away, the photoshoot will be done by then.” Mai started walked past the bed and straight to their huge walk-in closet, carefully looking each of the shoes on the floor. “This one or this one?” Kazuya pointed at the white Gucci, a limited-edition sneaker that should have cost fortune yet Mai got it for free when she signed the deal with the luxury brand. “I don’t think you should wear heels. I mean you’re going to the photoshoot, right? You will have to change anyway so there’s no point. Keep the heels for tonight.” “Great point.” Mai smiled, placing the heels back to the closet as she moved back to one of the chairs in the middle of the room to wear the sneaker. “You actually has pretty good fashion sense, remind me to ask you to be my personal stylist when this new girl finally quit.” “That girl has just started to work with you for like a month, isn’t it too soon for her to quit?” Kazuya chuckled as he grabbed a set of business suit from one of the section in the closet that is dedicated to it. “23 days actually.” Mai corrected in a low grumble. “And among 17 styles that she had to arrange for me, most of it was basically an off-shoulder clothing. Like seriously, I know it is good but isn’t that too much. The only thing that kept me from firing her is that I have made a promise to Sayurin that I will let 2 months pass before firing anyone ever again. Oh wait, I won’t be breaking any promise if the person is found dead, am I?” “Technically no, you won’t be breaking any promise. But well, I am somehow deeply concerned. As someone who develops this city from nothing, it will be bad for my company if a single, 22 years old, fresh graduate is found dead in valentine’s day.” Mai finally laughed, observing the man as he sits next to her to wear his pitch-black shoes. After he is done she gently tug his blazer, making him turn a bit to face her as she started to help him with his grey stripped white and blue tie, admiring the soft silky material as she neatly adjusted it around his neck. She didn’t retract her right once she is finished, instead, she let it linger on his chest, eyes gazing up to his eye. “So, besides the heart-shaped pancake, strawberry smoothies, and the homemade chocolate in the fridge what else have you prepared for today?” “Well, there is the dinner.” He replied in a whisper, giving her a kiss on the side of her face after that. “And where is this dinner will be?” “That would be something you should find out by yourself when the time comes.” “Feeling secretive, aren’t we?” Mai was about to do something when the door-bell rang for the second time in that morning. The man laughed, letting his fiancé out of his hold. However, instead of going to open the door, the woman scooted closer and kiss him, ignoring the person who is standing in front of their door. “Not that I hate what we are doing right now but I am pretty sure one of us needs to open that door.” He said as he pulled away. “Nah, let it be. That’s Sayurin, she will drive me to the photo shoot today as I am still feeling the aftermath of the wine last night.” Mai explained. “But yeah, that kind of means I should hurry.” “Ah- no adult stuff in this Valentine's morning?” Kazuya’s kiss goes lower to her neck once he heard that, his voice turned a bit more husky, tempting her to forget about her world and do what he had just implied. “I will make it up to you tonight. I promise.” Mai claimed his lips in a gentle kiss as she slowly stepped back, earning an excited look on the man's face. Kazuya walks with her to the front door, where her assistant is waiting with both hands folded, looking pissed because the woman is taking too much time. “Sorry for the wait, we kind of had something to talk about.” Kazuya reasoned, giving the shorter haired woman a little smile of apology. “We are running late, come on, Maiyan.” The person said. “Oh, and I always accept restaurant voucher as an apology.” Kazuya laughed, “seriously, this is valentine’s day and you are asking more than what my own fiancé did.” “That’s why they call it valentine’s day,” the assistant winked at him. “I swear if you flirt with him one more time I will strangle you,” Mai grumbled, pushing the other woman away as she comes closer to Kazuya and gave him a quick kiss. “Don’t let Sayurin or any other woman get through you. I’ll be back before dinner, I love you.” Kazuya laughed, “don’t worry, I am sure they know how scary you are to even dare to touch me. And I must be really foolish if I want someone else when I got the hottest woman wearing the ring that I have given her.” Kazuya motioned something to her and ran inside for a couple a second before coming back with something in his hands. Shiraishi's eyes widened as Kazuya hands her a small bag that she can identify as a lunch bento bag, “are we doing the high school styled romance now? Well, I can’t guarantee that I will even eat it as they will totally give me catered food” “That’s a valentine’s special bento, I guarantee, it will taste better than food that is made without love.” Kazuya smiled, giving his fiancé a kiss on her forehead, “Have a great day. I love you.”

#nogizaka46 #nogizaka46 fanfiction #OS

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koganphrancis · 7 years ago

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Season H8 Episode 2 Recap

TV Guide’s review of this ep begins thusly: I don't want to write this story. Can I start by saying that?

I hear that-there’s so much just truly AWFUL in this episode that I’m not sure I can do it justice.

An important point I want to hit right away is that what really gets to me the longer the show goes on is how nothing that happens to Ian is advancing his story. In this week’s episode I can’t even begin to count how many splats of poop plop onto him, and by the end nothing has changed. He’s still in grief, he’s still pretty dumb, he’s still “with” Terror. What was the point of any of it?

I’ll try to summarize the other storylines as quick as I can-Fiona continues her nowhere near reality building manager life. She’s battling tenants for the rent (??? this is the first month she’s collecting rent even tho Monica died months ago?) and SOOOOO much time is wasted with her yelling at people we don’t know. By the end of the ep, she’s slapping an eviction notice on a door and warming that if the family isn’t out the next day, she’s calling the marshals. I know this show isn’t a documentary, but that bit was so far from the way things work I wanted to cry. I’m stuck working in the next cube over from a woman who owns a couple of small apartment buildings with her husband, and I’ve had to hear how hard it is to evict someone more than once. It takes months, and lawyers, and court appearances, and if there’s little kids involved-like the family they showed on Shameless-it takes even longer. There are no branches of “marshals” sitting around waiting for landlords to call and tell them to kick people out, same day service. Also, it’s already getting to me how unrealistic it is for Fiona to even own this building. Who is taking care of cleaning the common areas? How does she pay anyone to fix clogged pipes, broken heating, etc? She’s still working at the diner too, so she’s not rolling in cash. The show just handing her this enterprise to run is too hard to believe (or get interested in, but don’t let me digress). It’s so soap opera-y, they might as well have said she was suddenly running her own fashion design firm or cosmetic company or something.

Lip continues to be a dink. Mooning over Snore, wanting to come up with a way to show her her ex is no good. He takes advice from fucking Frank and has a pizza guy come to the diner so he can order a special pizza to be delivered to the ex-why does Lip know his address? The pizza has a bag of coke on it, and the ex runs to a meeting to resist the temptation. Now, I don’t know if he’s also an alcoholic also, so he goes to AA meetings too, but in an incredible coincidence, Lip and the ex are at the exact same meeting! Fancy that! While he’s talking about trying to not snort the coke, he conveniently mentions it’s still sitting in his house. Lip tears out of the meeting, breaks into the guy’s house and gets his leg chewed up by a guard dog for his trouble. Too many coincidences PLUS the shitty idea it was to begin with make this storyline pretty unbearable. We also learn, in passing, that Lip is 23 now, so that makes Ian 22, Debbie 18, and Carl 17-he could totally be charged as an adult for dealing that meth, not that the show is going to go there.

Debbie got her hair washed. That’s it. That’s what we see now on this show.

They continue to push the poverty vs the 1 percenter life style with Liam. I’m sorry, I can’t get into it. We all-including the Gallaghers-have TV, we know that rich people live differently than most of us. Can we move the fuck on, please?

Carl was barely in this ep-all he did was sell Ian’s meth and set Ian off at the end of the episode.

Frank is, as usual, not really worth talking about-we all know it’s just a matter of time before he’s back to his old ways. However, in his job interview scene, the other character got to sit there and tell the story of his past relationship and cry about it-so, another scene Ian should’ve had long ago where he talked about Mickey like that, grrr.

Now Ian, eye roll. The “here’s what you missed” went to him this week-he’s on the job, running from the EMT ambulance to a victim and he says, “Shit, I’m out here saving lives...” and I couldn’t help but think, “and looking to push my meth.”

Ian shows up for breakfast that Carl’s making, and Lip is at the sink with a plate, filling his face. Ian teases him, asking if he’s eating for two, and oddly rubs Lip’s stomach for an unnecessarily long amount of time. It made me realize how little those two have physical contact-they never even clasp each other on the shoulder or anything. This OOC rubbing from Ian was wicked weird, but of course it’s setting up the fact that Ian is very aware of BMI and how much a low one means to him. Lip says he’s trying to fight the urge to drink with extreme nausea, Ian answers, “Sounds healthy”, foreshadowing the other theme the show will hit hard this week-trading one unhealthy thing for another, sort of a lesser of two evils thing.

Carl says he can finally move Ian’s meth, so he runs to get it, but when Ian goes to hand it over, he gets weird about it-not because it could kill people/ruin lives, but because it’s the last (I would say “only”) thing Monica gave them, and “when it’s gone, she’s gone”. Carl couldn’t care less, and says he’s going to take a bigger cut from Ian than he did from Lip since Ian’s being a pussy or whatever.

Ian’s at the youth center, outside, taking care of a couple of kids and he’s all mopey and doesn’t even acknowledge Terror. Terror, of course, can’t have Ian not hitting on him, so he asks Ian if he’s okay. Ian says he got “kinda sad about Monica today”, Terror says that’s not weird (who said it was weird? Him not hitting on you is the only thing you think is weird, you rapey idiot), she hasn’t been dead very long. Ian sadly says, “I guess.” Terror tells him when he’s sad he goes to Bear Back. Ian is incredulous. “The chub bar? You’re into chubs?” The bigger the better,” says icky T. Ian says, “How do I not know this about you?” Because, Ian, you know almost NOTHING about this little asshole-there’s nothing to know and the writers haven’t bothered with anything other than he’s trans and he’s annoying.

I’m not going to bother trying to describe the disdain on Ian’s face and in his tone with everything that had to do with this part of the story-suffice it to say it was there, and it made me very sad that they’re painting Ian as this shallow, callow person who only cares about a guy’s body type not being big. Line up Mickey, Faileb, Terror, Kash, and Ned-none of them even have the “same” body type, but none of them were overweight. I guess that’s the only thing that bothers Ian.

Ian says he doesn’t get it, so Terror finally, after all this time, says they should go get a drink and Ian will “get enlightened”. “Or smothered,” Ian says-oh ho, that’s a great joke!

Cut to them at the bar. They have the following conversation:

Ian: This is seriously your type? Terror: Sometimes. I: What’s the attraction? T: They like to please. They’re tender. I: (to the bartender) Two shots of well whiskey. (What, no “please”? What a prick!) (to Terror) These guys? T: It’s not like I go for them all the time. It’s just when I need someone really nice in my life. Like let’s say there was this guy that I really loved (I screamed while watching this when he said that, Ian just sort of made a dismissive face-it’s not like he was hurt thinking that Terror truly loved him. Terror knew him for what-18 days before Ian ran off with Mickey?) and he deserted me (why are you being such a drama queen?) for three days to go to Mexico with his escaped convict ex. (I think you mean love of his life, asshole) I: Um-hm... T: I would come here, find a chub to worship me. (Get the fuck over yourself!!!!)

Terror tosses back his drink, leads Ian over to meet some guys at the pool table, they say Hi all interested, Ian sucks down his drink, looks like he’s not into this at all. Hello scene with the girl on the train all over again.

Next thing we know, we’re watching Ian have an orgasm-something we never got with Mickey-as he sits on a couch getting a blowjob from one of the big guys who is on his knees in front of him. In the background, about 15 feet away, the other big guy is on a bed facing the room Ian is in while Terror plows into him from behind. Seriously? Ian and Terror are this type of fuck buddies now? Ian’s wanted to get back with Terror since getting back from Mexico (allegedly), but he’ll put up with the two of them having sex in basically the same room?

Ian’s guy finishes him off and sits on the couch next to Ian and says, “Oh, you’re such a good boy.” 5 years with Mickey and we never got to see them talk after sex, but this rando gets to compliment him? Ian makes a face and says thanks and gets up-to leave, I hope, and not to go join in on the bed with Terror and the other guy. Ian’s guy asks where’s he going, Ian looks over at T on the bed and says, “What?” The guy says “Come here,” and lies down on the couch. Ian immediately gets in the little spoon position for no reason we can see whatsoever, but then Nancy pulls a little fan service and has him cry lying on his side, just like that scene from yesteryear. Ian doesn’t say anything, so it’s not like we can think he’s crying for Mickey, or because he’s flashing back to when he had meaningless sex with too many strangers to count before or because he feels bad about using this guy-it’s all supposed to be about Monica.

Next time we see Ian he’s in the hot tub and Fiona comes and joins him and he tells Fiona “other than crying in some fat fucking furry stranger’s arms tonight” he’s great. They have a boring talk about her day, and then Fi says she wants to know what’s going on. Ian says it’s embarrassing, Fi says, “Okay”, Ian tells her, “Terror said that hooking up with a chub would make me feel better about Monica but it don’t-it made me feel worse.” Fiona: Really? You’re upset she died? (This is why you never go to Fiona for advice about interpersonal relationships, Ian! She’s not wired like you!) I: Yeah. I know you guys have all moved on and I haven’t. (Shit, Ian, you really are all alone in this world now, aren’t you? You really should’ve gone to Mexico with the one and only person who cares about you!) F: Moved on while she was alive. I: Well, I guess I’m the family freak for not wanting to forget about her. (yeah, you should just forget about her-you could do it with Mickey, and he actually had your back!) F: I don’t think you’re a freak cuz you don’t want to forget her. I think you’re a freak cuz you cried in a fat dude’s arms.

They splash each other and the next day I’m reading posts about how great it is that Fiona’s acting like Ian’s sister again-huh? Did I miss when she said, “I’m sorry you’re hurting, I’m here for you, what do you need”? She told a fat joke and didn’t look the least bit worried over Ian’s suffering-or what he did to try to alleve it. And what about her worrying/saying that fucking Terror will set a match to Ian’s sweet life that he’s worked so hard to achieve? Shouldn’t any big sister’s response to “Trevor said...” be, “If Trevor told you to sniff glue would you have done THAT? That’d make you forget your pain over Monica for a while too, but IT’S NO FUCKING SOLUTION.”

Also, this whole thing just proves that Terror has no credentials whatsoever. He’s probably just a volunteer at the youth center-they let him drive kids around without a valid license and now his advice to someone who’s had bad sex almost his entire life is to go have some more to feel better for a while. Fuck this noise. There’s no way he’s ever had formal training to be a counselor working with at risk kids.

At least this time the hot tub had steam rising off it.

You’d think that’d be enough bad for one ep, but no! We still have the tattoo to get through! Ian’s already getting inked when the scene begins, and the artist asks if he’s doing okay, and Ian says yeah, he’s digging the pain. The tattoo guy says a lot of people say that especially if they’re going through a hard time. Ian asks why is that and the guy says, “Emotional pain has no location. Physical pain does-you can name it. So it becomes a little more manageable.” Um, Nancy? Did you just sign off on self-harm? That is NOT good or reasonable advice! What is it with this episode pushing Ian into destructive behavior?

Anyway, Ian asks how’s it looking, the guy says, “Your girlfriend’s gonna love this one, bro.” Ian says, “It’s not my girlfriend, it’s my mom.” The artist says, “Your mom? Oh you shoulda told me that before I started working on these titties.”

So, what, exactly, was the conversation when Ian got there? “I want a woman’s headless torso tattooed on my back-I’ll explain the significance of it later”???? As with everything on this show, their complete lack of research and respect for the work people do in the real world is non-existent here.

Next time we see Ian he’s drinking a beer shirtless in the Gallagher kitchen and TERROR is there-all my earlier hopes while I was watching that the dueling sex scene was going to be a deal breaker for Ian, at least for a while, has flown out the window. They don’t even say why he’s there-if those two assholes are back together and Terror’s settling in there again, I’ll riot.

Carl comes in from the front door with a random girl we never see up close. He walks all the way to the kitchen leaving her in the background and says Ian’s “lost it” when he hears the tattoo is supposed to be Monica. Oh, that reminds me-when Ian gets his money from Carl, he asks what Ian’s going to do with it and Ian says he’ll use it to do something to memorialize Monica-so, Carl gave Lip 9 grand, even if he kept an extra thousand from Ian, you mean to tell me that tattoo cost Ian all his money and he couldn’t pay the guy to cover it or turn it into something else?

Ian flips out when he recognizes Monica’s jacket on the girl. Carl said he gave it to her for some beers and a blowie. The whole time he’s drinking the beer, Ian’s acting like he did the day at Mickey’s when he wanted to go after the protesters at the serviceman’s funeral. Are we supposed to think he’s getting manic again? That would certainly explain a lot of shit/bad decisions that have gone down in this episode, but they showed him with his pills in the first episode and the writers have said they “dealt with” Ian needing to be medicated-although then they did cave and give us that brief look at Ian needing to get his dose adjusted last season. I hate how the show cares so little about anything, that you just don’t know if there’s reasons for Ian’s behavior or it’s just the indifferent script writers trading off week to week. Anyway, Ian insists Carl bring him to Monica’s storage unit since there’s still some of her stuff there, and Carl calls him “Psycho” but says he will.

The next day Ian’s wearing his bright red Nike high tops, out on the stoop shooting daggers from his eyes as the snooty rich mother of Liam’s sleepover friend is waiting. I assume there was some dialogue that got cut, because why is Ian so hostile towards her? Is he hurt because she’s judging him for living in a bad neighborhood-looking down on him? Isn’t that how this hypocritical fuck was about the big guys in this episode? Why does this show suck so hard now?

The woman’s kid and Liam and Carl come out, and Ian and Carl go to the storage unit and discover a big bad meth dealer there. He figures out they’re Monica’s kids and that she either gave them his meth or they stole it and either way he wants his $70000 back. Setting up the next pointless episode...

There was one scene with a kid playing Yevgeny in it (bring the Henckels back!), and Kev’s cancer scare that I had already read in a spoiler was going to be just that-only a scare. And Kev gets to join a cancer support group but we can’t send Ian to grief therapy because Gallaghers don’t do therapy.

The show is going nowhere. To Cameron after his rant this week I can only say, “Fuck me for giving a shit, you prick.”

#Recap #Season H8 Episode 2 #TW Self harm mention #Still smarting from the fat shaming but I tried to keep my temper in check

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fmm85 · 4 years ago

Link

Img source: unsplash.com

Bitcoin is considered to be mostly used by investors to trade on various exchanges. The fact is, there are many products and services that you can buy with Bitcoin but we urge you to think long and hard before you do.

In 2010 Laszlo Hanyecz made the historic, first purchase with Bitcoin. He ordered two pizzas from a local Jacksonville, FL “Papa Jones” restaurant and paid 10,000BTC. Back then 1 Bitcoin was worth $0.008; today 1 Bitcoin is $9,500, which means he paid for pizzas $95 million in today’s’ money. This is exactly the reason why you should think twice before your purchase with Bitcoin.

More and more retailers accept BTC as a form of payment every day. Some have been around for a long time, while others shied away from it up until recently. The reason behind it is that they were not sure where and how to use the digital currency. Here’s the list of some that will gladly take Bitcoin instead of the traditional payment.

Real Estate

Img source: freepik.com

Cryptocurrency can now be used to buy a house or commercial land, or any kind of property for that matter. It has become common to put down payments in Bitcoin, and take the loan for the remaining amount. Banks and real estate developers have started accepting cryptocurrencies in recent years and they couldn’t be happier.

Gift cards

Img source: pexels.com

The most common way of giving presents to someone is to buy them gift cards. So, online, as well as traditional retailers started selling them for Bitcoin. Since then, many people began using their satoshis for purchases.

Food

Img source: diabetes.org

Fast food restaurants started accepting Bitcoin, from KFC, Subway, Burger King, etc. Delivery guys can take cryptocurrencies as well, but most people still like to order and pay online for their food. Some are still on the fence regarding this form of payment, but more and more food joints and major franchising are willing to take their chance.

Cars

img source: freepik.com

Dealers across the United States began accepting digital coins instead of credit cards. However, the vast majority of people are still attached to the good old ways of payment, and use the traditional bank transfers for such purchases. However, super-expensive cars are usually purchased by Bitcoins since their owners are often times investors that got rich trading on the open market of cryptocurrencies.

Airplane tickets

Img source: roadaffair.com

The practice of using cryptocurrency to book flights have been around for quite a while. Many spent their Bitcoins on first-class tickets. In the beginning, it was available for one-way trips, but today airliners began accepting coins for roundtrips as well as all the airport services and purchases.

Cab

img source: freepik.com

You can pay your taxi ride with Bitcoin if you like. It’s probably going to be just a couple of satoshis, but still, is you choose so, you can. Is it a smart way to spend your coins? Probably not, since there are better ways to invest and trade.

Medicine

Img source: pexels.com

Pharmaceutical companies decided to keep up with the latest technologies, so they started accepting cryptocurrencies as a way of payment. Since some medicines are very expensive, you can use it to partially pay for it, and purchase the rest in real money. Pharma’s have become very flexible, and since the value of the Bitcoin is likely to go up, they will be happy to make even more profits in time.

Home goods

Img source: homedepot.com

Many retailers, big and small, started accepting Bitcoin. Customers can now use their coins to buy everything from furniture, appliances, vacuum cleaners, toasters, and so on. Literally, everything can be bought with cryptos.

Luxury items

Img source: etftrends.com

As with the pricey cars, luxury goods are often purchased by the people who trade with cryptocurrencies. When we say luxury, we don’t mean couture bags and shoes. Traders who have experience in investing, so these goods that they purchase are also going to gain value over time. For example, buying gold with Bitcoin is a smart investment, since both are going to be worth more over time. On more investing tips go to bitcoin-pro.live.

Online gambling

Img source: freepik.com

It’s not exactly the purchase but many people consider it to be an investment. A high-risk investment, but the one all the same. So, online casinos began taking Bitcoin, happily rubbing their hands. If you lose $100 today, let’s say, in a year you’ll realize that you actually lost $150. If you win, you’ll be a big-time winner, since your awarded coins are going to rise in value over time. So, in case you’re winning, leave the casino right away.

Clothes

Img source: jilldbell.com

The fashion industry saw the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin by letting its customers pay for high-end clothes. Online platforms that offer you to pay in coins for the latest fashion gimmicks started popping up all over the Internet. Everyone was pleased with this, retailers, fashion designers, and customers.

Jewelry

Img source: avenuecalgary.com

Luxurious watches like Rolex aa well as the super expensive jewelry can be bought using cryptocurrencies. It became a form of the prestige for people who got rich investing in crypto markets years ago, to validate their smart decisions and show the world how digital coins are the future of trading. World-famous jewelers started accepting Bitcoin and other cryptos since there were so many people willing to pay using them. Win-win.

Cryptocurrencies

Img source: pexels.com

This would be a smart purchase. Buy, or we should say rather invest in other digital coins. If you do proper research you can profit enormously in a few years down the road. Maybe it’s not a traditional purchase or something that you had in mind, but you should at least consider it. The value of the coins, legitimate ones, are only going to rise, and there is no way that it’s going to depreciate even with all the fluctuations on the market. Experienced investors save their coins, and don’t splurge their cryptocurrencies on expensive cars and clothes. You can spend a bit, just for fun mostly, however, try to play smart and save the majority in your e-wallet. No one knows how much the value is going to go up, it might be that it has reaches its top, but if not, you can only collect more real money by saving the digital one.

Using crypto makes the purchase of products an easy and hassle-free process. Even services can be purchased via crypto currency. Did you know that the company of a charming escort can be paid with and for via Bitcoin? This makes the whole booking extremely easy and anonymous. Should you be interested in booking a charming lady to keep you company, please feel free to check out this site here.

#CryptoBlog #Bitcoin #Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Markets #money

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idombledore · 5 years ago

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The Corona Monologues

In 1918, the world was embroiled in the Great War (1914-1918), a conflict that would eventually claim twenty million lives. Despite the terrible conditions of trench warfare, soldiers always had letters from loved ones back home to look forward to, a time when they could shut out the shelling, the gas attacks, the mud, the never-ending dampness and dream of a sunny day walking to church with wives and children. Then suddenly, letters from home started speaking of darker content, a darkness that rivalled the soldier’s own. Soldiers were being told that people were dying. People were getting sick with something and dying. The protagonists of the war had to maintain morale on the front line so letters from home were stopped. Newspaper articles referring to a deadly illness were banned. Only in neutral Spain, was the press able to broadcast the horrors. The perception was that the disease was only affecting people in Spain and so it was called Spanish Flu, but the truth was it was everywhere. The Spanish Flu was an H1N1 virus, a strain more recently known as Swine Flu in 2009. The Spanish Flu took an estimated fifty million lives worldwide between 1918 and 1920, more than double the casualties of the full four years of war in only half the time. Nowadays, 2020, people must have the words ‘Corona,’ ‘Covid-19’ and ‘Pandemic’ branded into their life like they’ve been looking at the sun too long. The Covid-19 virus, part of the SARS family of viruses, originated from Wuhan in China. We might imagine a medieval slaughter pit that surely had to give birth to something nasty eventually. We imagine how a place could possibly make a virus twist and morph and finally metastasize into such a killer. What ungodly conditions would have to prevail? Wuhan wasn’t a boggy medieval slaughter pit. It was a modern city of eleven million people. But Wuhan had within its confines, the equivalent of that medieval slaughter pit and with it, the gravest danger, the extent of which we do not yet know. The virus most closely resembled viruses found in bats and pangolins, scaly anteaters, so they tracked it down to a market selling bats and pangolins, alive or dead. Early conspiracy theory pointed the finger at a virology lab some twenty miles away but scientists said Covid-19 bonded to its target receptor in humans too perfectly to be anything but a natural evolution. This diary comes from the small Spanish town of Javea in south-east Spain. It attempts to catalogue the thoughts and fortunes of a new generation locked in a new battle with an old enemy. Soon enough, cases started appearing in Europe and it became the conversation du jour from mid-January. Italy was the hardest hit initially. The usual jokes and photos cropped up on social media. It was almost exciting, something newsworthy. Maybe this would be the ultimate virus, the final molecular war, the one that put an end to us. I didn’t know it at the time but, one evening I witnessed a sign of things to come. I was returning home from a friends house and was stopped by three police cars patrolling the port area. They stretched their hands out to ensure I didn’t come any closer and then one of them gestured for me to turn round and get my hands up against the wall. I was waiting for a pat-down but it never came. Words were exchanged between them and he asked me for ID. I went to pass it to him but again an annoyed hand came out as he squinted to see it in torchlight and take a few notes. He said I could go but if they caught me out after dark again, there would be trouble. I didn’t bother telling him I wasn’t aware of any curfew and went on my way, more confused than I was expecting to be. When casualties appeared in Spain and eventually spread closer to home, that mild excitement waned and the exodus began. It was another sign that something had changed on a deeper human level, a descent to survival instinct. People were taking this seriously enough to run for the hills, fly home, move house, anywhere away from other people. They were scared. There were no schools open, no factories or shops. Buy half a shelf in the supermarket and hole up. The next day, the lockdown was implemented. Bars and restaurants shut, everything but pharmacies, tobacco shops and supermarkets shut. Two weeks. We switched to good old-fashioned home entertaining. It’s safe. It’s people we know. It feels like we’re fifteen again, sneaking out of the house to go drinking with our friends. Forget the dirty handshake, it’s now an elbow tap salute, possibly more out of sarcasm than safety. Any sort of touch is considered a mark of absolute trust and a hug just isn’t necessary. We’re given our own personalised glasses, plates, cutlery. We’re given our spot and boundaries are established. There’s even been no-touch dancing. We’ve become accustomed to everything being closed. We’ve also become accustomed to the patrols of the Guardia Civil and Policia Local. We’re being watched and if they catch us without a shopping bag and a shopping list or otherwise verify the authenticity of our escape from home, they will have a certain approach to the conversation and there may well be a fine. A couple of days later, I heard something you normally hear at fiesta time, a sudden uproar of applause and cheers down in the port. And then the church bells started to ring. I looked up to catch any fireworks. Fiesta and lockdown just didn’t correlate. It can’t be. A quick search confirmed there were no festivals until Easter. A Spanish lad from Javea finally posted that’s what they do. In a time when we are at risk and we have to be safe, the police are still out there, supermarket workers, gas station workers, pharmacies, tobacconists. They’re all still out there. That’s who the applause is for. Every night at 8pm. The next evening when the bells rang, I knew what it was all about but it was now the third sign of living in a slightly different world. I remembered castaway comments the previous week, ‘maybe this will be the one.’ Was this the one? The thing we’ve always said we should plan for but never did, the chaos and the Bear Grylls stuff that’ll get us through it. Are we going to have to run for the hills, are we going to have to arm ourselves? A week or so after the lockdown came the grim sequel. The lockdown was to be extended by a further month. This was now more than an inconvenience. A friend said they always bring in the initial idea with a short penalty clause, knowing full well they’ll tell us the full story after we’ve got used to it. Social media was full of worthy wellwishers urging us in pretty pointy lingo to stay at home. I feel ostracised for even thinking of getting the onions I forgot last time. I’d be someone obviously happy to give someone else a deadly disease. We’re all getting an awful lot of work done. We cook things we’ve never tried before, we see parts of the house and garden we hadn’t considered worthy until now. Then, I noticed the sun hadn’t shown itself and the rain hadn’t stopped since the day the lockdown started. A full week of un-Spanish weather. On balance, I took it as a good thing. There was less temptation to consider something fun. My phone became a journalistic tool. I wondered if I should try and film something. Not the nooks and crannies of the house. Out and about. But who would I interview anyway apart from the police? I can shoot empty streets, bars and beaches and I WILL get caught, again. I looked at the curves every day and watched them grow, watched the death toll grow. The curve was still accelerating and that was an awful lot of people dead. After two weeks, I wondered how long it would take before it was all over and we could start touching each other again. I missed hugs more than I thought. Although social media was still up and running and I didn’t feel lonely, I just felt a little more alone than I was. I wanted to stand with my people against this nasty little virus but I couldn’t. I wanted to go to designated places just to interact with other people, but when I got there, I couldn’t. They didn’t want to and neither did I. Maybe it’s something about just seeing other humans that makes us feel better. Other people were doing things I probably should be doing myself, wearing masks and gloves but there was also something people tend to notice more easily in Spain. Usually, it’s the way of it to pass a stranger in the street, make eye contact and say ‘hello’. But that would serve only as a temptation to converse and interact. The way of it now is distance. In the supermarkets, the security guards make us take plastic gloves when we go in. About half the people I see wear masks but the place that sold masks sold out then shut. A lot of people get the mask idea wrong. The masks are not to prevent inhaling the virus. Corona isn’t airborne. The mask is to prevent us from touching our faces, transferring what’s on our hands to our mouth and nose, Corona’s cosiest place. It’s only when we think about it do we realise quite how many times we touch our face in the course of the average day. It’s an awful lot, mostly for unknown autonomic reasons but it did suddenly feel like I was spending most of the day with my finger up my nose. So, in the absence of officially approved masks, I made do with a scarf. I look like Billy the Kid in blue plastic gloves. No hugs. We start thinking about the people near us. Could they have it? How close is it? A week ago, it reached Denia, just the other side of the mountain. That’s close enough. It’s here. It has to be here. Who's got it? That’s when the loneliness sinks in a bit deeper and the final sign. We can’t assume anyone is clean. If they wait maybe four days to two weeks and they’re OK, they didn’t pick it up two weeks ago, but they could have picked it up yesterday. This had to be true isolation. Still, the sun hadn’t reappeared and even the church bells at 8pm became more ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ than the symbol of resistance and solidarity the Spanish are famous for. Families with kids were settling into something more like a TV show. No outside influences to help make it work, just them. A week ago, a young German couple and two very young kids took the house just down from me. I look over their back garden. They came here for some Easter sun but they landed in lockdown. They couldn’t go anywhere and they couldn’t go home. Every day, they came outside with balls and bikes and frisbees and they’d laugh and play until the time came for small people to get sleepy. The parents were laughing and joking and loving each other too, doing what families who live here are doing. Making it work. It could be an enlightening time but probably also a time that stretches the elastic a little. In Spain, as with anywhere else, elderly people form a major part of the death statistics. Most would say that makes sense but conspiracy theories keep cropping up, not just who released the virus but was it targeting the elderly? The Spanish government announced last week that, at a certain number of cases, medical facilities would have a cut off age, an age at or beyond which, people will not be treated. That age is 67. The conspiracy is how cunningly in line with retirement age that is. But for most people, conspiracy tends not to wake up with us in the morning. I speak to a computer screen instead of humans and walk around the house talking to myself far more than I did. I need to see the curve decelerate. And I need to see the sun again. It’s April 1st 2020. My birthday. The oddest birthday party ever. Skype will be live with six other households later and we will all be listening to the “Corona on the Rocks” jam on local radio. So, until next time…. Stay clean, stay safe, stay with us.

#covid19 #corona #virus #conspiracy #lockdown

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josephkitchen0 · 6 years ago

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Chicken Clothes for Halloween and Christmas

By Wendy E.N. Thomas – Olivia Dougherty, who lives in Delaware, Maryland, created her chicken clothes for a contest, sponsored by Cooptastic, one of the nation’s premier educational conferences dedicated to small and backyard poultry flock. And each conference holds a chicken costume contest.

“It’s along the lines of the lamb- and sheep-dressing contests frequently held at 4-H shows,” said Brigid McCrea, PhD, associate professor at Delaware State University and extension poultry specialist who organizes and helps judge the conference’s contest.

“Audience loves it to pieces,” McCrea continued. “Not only for the creativity but also for the conversation. It provides an opportunity for people to converse with one another and to talk to other poultry people.”

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For her entry in the contest, Dougherty designed a “Superman” cape, complete with an egg logo. “I made it for my favorite chicken who is our biggest, white and black, ‘Supersize’ chicken.” Although her family no longer has chickens, if she were to design future chicken clothes for costumes, Dougherty thinks it would also have a superhero theme, along the lines of a Chicken Spiderman.

Dougherty does have goats and a pig and she admits to dressing them with collars, necklaces and little blankets. She has also dressed up her dog up as a lady bug and has put tiny shirts on her cat.

“It’s fun,” she says of the experience.

Holidays

A holiday chicken. Photo by Dead End Acres.

For some, the urge to put their backyard chickens in chicken clothes simply comes from a need. Kelly Nichols of Bloomville, New York, wanted to do a Facebook Christmas card, and decided what better subjects to use than a kid and her chicken? Nichols also works with a few of her hens to participate in agility challenges as well as hen therapy.

“It has been difficult,” said Nichols of the designing aspect. “I’ve tried a few dog outfits, but they just don’t fit right. I make our own chicken clothes. We’re pretty lucky; we have a couple different hens that will be patient enough to let me pattern on them.”

Raise Awareness

Some people, like Jennifer Pike, of Florida, became inspired to dress their flock in chicken clothes on a whim. “I was shopping with my mom at a store and came across a cute teddy bear outfit. We started joking about how people dress up dogs, and I said I was going to get it to put on my house chicken for a cute picture … and that started it all.”

Pike, who said she suffers from depression, also sees posting her chickens in their chicken clothes on Facebook as a way of bringing enjoyment to others, and has helped her connect with others who also use chickens as a means of coping.

“I liked posting funny pics of my chickens,” Pike said, “as raising chickens can be a heartbreaking hobby and many people who I chat with on forums. … The cute pictures bring smiles to people and also get non-chicken people interested in how chickens can be neat pets.”

Throughout the years, Sophie’s chicken clothes for her favorite pet Silkie chicken have included: a pirate costume, a police officer, a cheerleader, a bride, a Santa suit and a rain jacket. Pike has also had her chickens wear barrettes in topknots in shapes of bows or flowers along with a chicken diaper when they went to stores.

Everywhere Pike takes a dressed-up chicken, people can’t help but stop and ask questions. “Kids seemed very interested as well as parents. They never knew how diverse the looks of chickens could be or how sweet. Sophie traveled with me in my truck everywhere. She often rode in my lap, looking out the window glass or in a towel sitting in my seat console.”

Once, Sophie said, a lady at a drive-through got so scared of the chicken — “a little fluffy chicken with a hair barrett and a flowered diaper” — that another lady had to hand her the food.

“Eventually she started asking questions and became less afraid,” Sophie said.

Bring Joy

Holly Olejnik from Huntington Mills, Pennsylvania, first started dressing up her chicken, Cheep Cheep, four years ago for a Halloween contest on Facebook. “Everyone loved her and went nuts on how well she took to being photographed.”

That was only the beginning. Cheep Cheep’s chicken clothes are fairly small now with about 30 dresses.

Dress and photo by Holly Olejnik.

“We donate all that she has worn to family and friends that have little ones on the way,” Olejnik says of Cheep Cheep’s dresses. “All the chicken clothes that she wears are bought from thrift stores or yard sales. We shop in the children’s department or look for Halloween costumes that look fun. My grandmother Carolyn Gensel loves to go hunting for my next dress to post to Facebook. She carries a photo of me and shows off her grand-chicken to anyone wondering who the pretty dress is for.”

Cheep Cheep has quite the Facebook following from around the world. In fact, Olejnik says, “A lot of her friends, if they are in the area on vacation, ask if they can come meet her in person because she has brought so much joy and smiles into their life.”

If you’re interested, Cheep Cheep’s Facebook fan page is “Cheep Cheep Olejnik,” and her regular profile page is “CeeCee Olejnik.”

Functional Attire

Sometimes, chickens need functional accessories like aprons (for protection against a rooster’s nails) and diapers (for, well, you know). Julie Baker, owner of Pampered Poultry (pamperyourpoultry.com) decided that if a bird has to wear functional chicken clothes, then it might as well look pretty. She has made designer chicken clothes, including floral chicken diapers and has added ruffles to chicken aprons to make them look more like attractive summer dresses.

Designer chicken attire by Julie Baker. Photo by Julie Baker.

Plain Old-Fashioned Fun

And then there is Kevin, the chicken that just showed up in Leona Palumbo’s driveway one day.

“I never had chickens nor did I know much about them,” Leona said. “My husband found her in a tree next to our driveway and brought her in to me as a joke, and she fell instantly asleep on my lap and it was love at first sight from there. We put flyers up about her around the neighborhood, but never heard from anyone. It quickly became apparent that potty issues needed to be dealt with, so I did a quick search online on a lark for ‘chicken diapers,’ and lo and behold, several designs popped up. I picked out the one I thought would work and ordered it. It works great and she fit in at home inside with all of our other pets just fine.”

Then one day, she bought Kevin a Christmas sweater.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why the heck I bought it and put it on her … I really don’t. I just did and it she was so calm and easy going about it that it just became a thing we did and took pictures of. … We try to do holidays and family events and just fun things. I keep her page completely free of hot-button topics and I am amused and pleased at the incredibly varied following she has acquired in a very short time.”

Most people think it is fun, says Palumbo, but she has gotten some negative comments from animal activist types who think it is mean.

“But they just don’t know how loved and spoiled Kevin is. We never do anything that makes her uncomfortable and I swear, she even knows what’s going on as she sits so calmly, and once the picture is taken, she goes off again on her little way. Some other people have remarked that they can’t believe I let a chicken on my counters and furniture. Well, ‘That’s why there is soap and water in the world,’ I usually remark. Kevin is my pet, no different than my cats, dogs or other animals, and she is just as loved and welcome anywhere in my home.”

Kevin, on her motorcycle. Photo by Leona Palumbo.

Safety Tips

Whether it be for a competition, holiday, or just for pleasure, many people enjoy putting clothing and accessories on their chickens in order to dress them up. If you are going to costume your chickens, advises Brigid McCrea, PhD, associate professor at Delaware State University and extension poultry specialist, for the health and safety of your birds keep the following clothing guidelines in mind:

• Watch the weight of the costume, as chickens will get flustered if an outfit weighs them down.

• Along with fabric weight, be careful to not use fabrics that will overheat the bird. Polar fleece is a lightweight material but if worn for a long period, it may make your chicken too warm.

• An interesting fact about chickens is that they are naturally attracted to the color red and will peck at it; be careful of where red is used in the bird’s costume.

• Make sure that the chicken can move her wings and that the outfits do not in any way restrict her wing movement.

• If you are putting something around the chicken’s neck (necklace, bandana), make sure that it is lightweight and does not hang down so low that the chicken could potentially trip over it.

• Try not to use hats or head coverings. Chickens are prey animals, meaning they are constantly on the lookout for predators who may be after them. A hat restricts vision and won’t be tolerated very long by any chicken. Consider this the first step toward learning how to protect chickens from hawks and other predators.

• Be careful of beads and hanging decorations that the chicken may be tempted to try to eat them. Likewise, inspect the construction of the outfit to make sure that it does not have loose, dangly threads or that it might fall apart while the chicken is wearing it.

• Allow for waste to happen (because you know that with chickens it eventually will); either leave the back area open in a costume or prepare the chicken to wear a diaper. Composting chicken manure is an excellent way to add nutrients to your garden.

• Lastly, make sure that the costumes are made from washable fabrics, and for bio-security reasons, wash them after each wearing in order to avoid possible contamination among chickens.

Have you ever dressed your flock in chicken clothes?

See our fun fan photo shares and share your own #BackyardPoultryHalloween inspired pics on Instagram.

Originally published in 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

Chicken Clothes for Halloween and Christmas was originally posted by All About Chickens

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futurelivinginspiration · 6 years ago

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Where Tiny Houses and Big Dreams Grow

A tech entrepreneur and his friends make a weekend community in the woods.

BARRYVILLE, N.Y. — Five years ago, Zach Klein, a successful tech entrepreneur then in his late 20s, was living in New York City but dreaming of the wilderness. A former Eagle scout, partner atCollegeHumor, and founder of Vimeo, the elegant online video platform, he was in between ventures, teaching entrepreneurship at the School of Visual Arts and spinning cycles, as he put it, while looking for land to buy — a lot of land — upon which he hoped to spend time building things and reconnecting to the scouting skills of his childhood.

Most urgently, he hoped he could persuade his friends to come along for the ride.

Mr. Klein got lucky in Sullivan County, N.Y., where he found 50 acres of forest with an understory of ferns and mossy boulders, lightly accessorized with a rough-hewed, one-room shack free from plumbing and electricity and a separate sleeping porch perched on a steep hill overlooking a rushing stream called Beaver Brook.

The property belonged to Scott Newkirk, a New York designer, and much of its appeal lay in Mr. Newkirk’s aesthetic: His shack and porch were lovely enough to have been featured in New York magazine. After 10 years there, Mr. Newkirk was ready to move on, and for about $280,000, Mr. Klein had found his utopia.

Beaver Brook, as he named it, inhabits a nexus of themes: a millennial’s version of the Adirondack camps of the robber barons, the back-to-the-land movements and intentional communities of the 1950s and ’60s, and a combination folk school/artists’ residency.

While hedge funders tend to express themselves in ever-bigger shingled simulacrums of early 20th century waterfront estates, those in the tech world who’ve enjoyed similar success may be more interested in experience, community and relationships, as Lane Becker, a founder of digital start-ups and the author of “Get Lucky,” a tech business primer on serendipity, pointed out.

“To the extent they want to spend their money, it’s on stuff like that,” he said. Mr. Becker and his wife, Courtney Skott, a furniture maker, were in Denver last weekend for a wedding, staying with a couple — a start-up entrepreneur and a television producer — who had rehabbed a Masonic Lodge. “They Airbnb some of the rooms out,” Mr. Becker said, “less because they need the money but because they’d like to get know different people. That’s sort of the model of what Zach’s doing. Some might see a sort of hipster-twee affectation, but I think there’s a more genuine impulse at work.”

Mr. Klein’s inspirations are familiar: the writings of Stewart Brand, the ’60s era eco guru and editor of the Whole Earth Catalogue; and John Seymour, the author of “The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it, ” along with the architectural ideals of Christopher Alexander. Other touchstones included a maple sugar shanty he once visited as a child, a community of Hobbitlike tiny houses called Trout Gulch built by some tech friends in Santa Cruz, Calif., and a yurt village built by a family in the Adirondacks.

But his pitch was pretty simple, said Courtney Klein, a digital strategist and entrepreneur, who married Mr. Klein at Beaver Brook in 2012. “It was, ‘Let’s get a piece of land and we could bring all our friends together and have a good time.’ ”

And so it began. In August 2010, the couple hosted a weekend of “bonfires, contemplation and wood chopping,” among other activities. They cooked stew in the shack, now called Scott’s Cabin, for Mr. Newkirk, and which Mr. Newkirk had outfitted with a propane stove, and washed up by hauling five-gallon containers from the brook.

Some guests bunked in the shack and sleeping porch; others pitched tents among the ferns. The experience was the model for what would be a kind of weekend commune, an experiment in episodic off-the-grid-living with a core of eight friends that has grown to about 20, including five children (Nell Klein arrived just over a year ago. )

There was Brian Jacobs, a sound designer and composer and Mr. Klein’s former roommate in New York City. He had been a junior Maine guide and his proficiency with an ax served the group well. There was Jace Cooke, a founder of the tech start-up Giphy, and other young creatives — animators, app designers, musicians and filmmakers.

Mr. Jacobs brought Grace Kapin, who worked in fashion, one weekend; having survived that, they are now married and building a cabin there. Before long, everyone became handy with chain saws and other power tools; they brought in more experienced builders to oversee large projects and teach the group carpentry skills.

There were rookie mistakes. An early project, a barrel-shaped tub, floated away one spring when the snow melted and the brook rose. Composting drew bears. (Ms. Kapin named their ursine visitors: Alan Ginzbear, Stephen Colbear, Marion Beary.)

The group made art on their camping weekends, including a winsomeshort film about building a stool from an oak tree, and took enticing photographs that looked like they had been art-directed by the editors of Kinfolk magazine. Since 2009, Mr. Klein had been collecting images of sheds, shacks, cabins and huts into a Tumblr blog he called, cunningly, Cabin Porn, and he also posted Beaver Brook’s embellishments, captured in those photographs, there.

When the blog, an enchanting rabbit hole of tiny handmade houses, quickly went viral, his private utopia became public record, and book publishers came courting, seeing in Cabin Porn the architectural equivalent of Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York. The result, “Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere,” is out this week from Little, Brown.

Three years ago, Mr. Klein began inviting artisans like Tom Bonamici, a product designer with an expertise in woodworking and timber framing, to hold annual weeklong workshops at Beaver Brook for paying students to learn building skills. Mr. Klein, whose latest endeavor is DIY, an online “maker” site for children, is keenly interested in turning Beaver Brook into both a folk school and an artists’ residency.

After his first workshop, and at Mr. Klein’s urging, Mr. Bonamici, a gentle Oregonian with a passion for traditional Japanese timber framing, became a Beaver Brook resident.

Like all utopias, this one changed as it grew. It was three years ago that the Bunkhouse was built, on a piece of land across the brook with road frontage, electricity and a well. Camping in Scott’s Cabin or in tents strewn about the hill had lost its luster, Mr. Klein said, “People got slower and slower about volunteering to do the dishes on cold nights.” And without power, Beaver Brook’s season was contained to the warmer months.

Yet there is some nostalgia for the time “before,” when there was no cellphone coverage, Wi-Fi or hot water. This year’s Beaver Brook workshop project was timber framing, the foundation for an outdoor kitchen the residents hope will bring some of the action back to the Arcadian side of the brook. Six students paid $500 for Mr. Bonamici’s tutelage; the fee covered a week’s worth of chef-cooked meals and groceries (Mr. Klein and Ms. Klein paid for materials and Mr. Bonamici’s stipend).

On the last night of the workshop, students and residents ate by candlelight among the sturdy framework they’d built. “It was like old times,” Mr. Klein said.

The Bunkhouse, Mr. Klein said, was also bait for a plan he was hatching to draw Ms. Klein, Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Kapin into full-time residency at Beaver Brook. The four discussed buying a local market, perhaps putting a bar in its basement until Ms. Klein put the kibosh on the plan.

While Beaver Brook, she said, “did snowball pretty quickly from something that had more meaning than a weekend house,” it was not her life plan to settle permanently in rural Sullivan County.

“Courtney was the voice of reason,” Ms. Kapin said.

The Kleins have since moved to San Francisco, where DIY is based. Ms. Klein and Ms. Kapin, who still lives in Brooklyn, are partners inStorq, a line of maternity clothes that Ms. Klein founded.

Mr. Klein and Ms. Klein are Beaver Brook’s owners, and they pay taxes and insurance on the properties. Beaver Brook residents are divided by their dues into two categories: Bunkers pay $150 a month for a guaranteed bed in the Bunkhouse. Campers pay $75 a month for a spot across the brook.

Bedrooms at the Bunkhouse, an airy open-plan house designed around the frame of a 19th-century barn, are first come first served. It’s the most practical system, Mr. Klein said.

Last year, 100 people, give or take, spent at least one night in the house. Over Labor Day, he and Ms. Klein and Nell were sleeping in a first-floor bedroom that has been outfitted with a crib, one of three separate bedrooms.

Most of the sleeping options are communal: In an open loft space upstairs, there are two double beds; the Bunkroom, which is also upstairs, has eight futons on its wide-planked yellow pine floor. It’s Mr. Klein’s favorite place to sleep. “I love being up here with eight snoring buddies,” he said.

As for projects, there is one simple rule, Mr. Klein said: “As long as the thing you want to do doesn’t cause irreversible change, just go for it.” Idan Cohen, an amateur chef, organized the building of a cob oven one work weekend this summer. As it happens, Ms. Kapin’s and Mr. Jacobs’s stunning wedge of a cabin, dubbed Clydeshead for their dog, Clyde, was Mr. Klein’s idea.

“It’s his special skill to talk people into doing something ambitious,” Ms. Kapin said. (Given Mr. Klein’s hope to anchor his friends more permanently to Beaver Brook, one suspects in this instance a deeper motive.)

With a budget of $10,000, Mr. Jacobs’s and Ms. Kapin’s original vision of a cube tucked into the hill receded pretty quickly. “Once we talked to people who knew what they were doing,” Mr. Jacobs said, “we realized we’d have to build a retaining wall, there’d be backhoes involved...”

Mr. Jacobs’s brother, Mike, is an architect, and he designed a refined 350-foot rectangle cantilevered out over the hill that uses the surrounding trees as supports. That particular innovation depends on treehouse technology, an anchor bolt known as a Garnier Limb. (Michael Garnier, an Oregon based treehouse builder — and treehouse dweller — is sometimes known as the father of the modern treehouse movement.)

There are Beaver Brook rituals, like the annual talent show, held New Year’s Eve in the Bunkhouse. Newbies earn a nickname after their third night on the property, and following a requisite post-sauna plunge in the brook after dark. (Mr. Klein’s is Zubaz, for the virulently patterned pants that he and other Buffalo Bills fans like to wear. Ms. Kapin’s is Guns, for the Linda Hamilton-like biceps she developed building her cabin.)

On work weekends, newcomers might be assigned grunt work chores like path maintenance. “It is much, much harder than you’d imagine,” Ms. Kapin said with a slight shudder.

There’s an email chain, for planning projects and working out domestic issues. Laundry has been particularly thorny. With so many beds and no assigned rooms, the residents were struggling until it was suggested they bring their own sheets and towels. One resident offered to cross-stitch everyone’s names on their linens.

Beekeeping has been broached as a project for next summer (Mr. Klein has a hankering for mead). In August, Mr. Klein sent around a Beaver Brook logo he and Mr. Cooke designed as a book stamp for their growing Bunkhouse library.

Unlike the vicious, trollish tenor of, say, the internal communiqués of Manhattan co-ops, Beaver Brook residents write with civility and a regular refrain of “awesome!”

“I think this is an important step,” Mr. Klein wrote, weighing in on the recent laundry discussion, “towards delegating the responsibilities for making BB work, creating a more camp-like culture, and raising the bar of participation to be more intentional. Cheers or jeers?”

Back home in San Francisco, the email chain is Mr. Klein’s primary online community, as he pines for his East Coast retreat.

Sunday nights are rough, he added. “It’s when everyone is driving back to the city from Beaver Brook,” he said, “and I get a flurry of photos of the meals they’ve made, or of building the cob oven, and I feel on some level I’m missing out on the life I made.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/fashion/the-cabin-porn-commune.html

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emilyemcnabb · 7 years ago

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Ally and Taylor’s wedding at The Kelley Farm

Ally and Taylor met in high school but had few memories of each other when they reconnected years later. Within two weeks of dating Taylor told Ally he loved her and that they would be getting married—about which he was 100% correct. Months later, the couple celebrated their big day at The Kelley Farm with close family, friends, their faith and a beautiful barn wedding and brunch. Ally attributes much of the design success to the rentals from The Meaningful Details and we’re into the pastel florals by Paisley Petals. Check it all out in these images by B. Jones Photography who was on hand to capture the joy of the day.

What made the wedding special and unique?

Our wedding was special to us because it was centered around our faith. Our relationship with God is the most important thing in our life, and it was an amazing blessing to have our family and friends together with us to celebrate. Being able to bring people together from all different backgrounds and faiths, all people whom we love is not something we have the privilege of doing very often. There was a time when we considered making the ceremony something that would be more vanilla, and a little less focused on our faith, but we chose to stick to what was important to us. We wanted to make sure our ceremony was true to who we are and our beliefs, and it was so special to be able to share our wedding day with the people who are most important to us.

Tell us about the gown and where/how you found it!

Looking back at the gown I wore for our wedding, I’m not surprised I fell in love with it. It was everything I could have hoped to find. I always envisioned our wedding being classic and timeless, something where wouldn’t look back at the photos and wonder, “what the heck were we thinking?!” I fell in love with the Pronovias brand after seeing many of their dresses online. I was excited when I found a boutique shop in town that carried the Pronovias line. I went to MeaMarie Bridal Atelier in Kirkland, WA with my mom and we loved everything about it. It was beautiful, chic, and has an overwhelming sense of ‘bridal’ which I really appreciated. There’s only one time I’ll be getting a wedding dress for myself, and I was ready to soak it all up! Rachelle, the attendant at the shop, brought me a beautiful selection of dresses to try on. I originally thought I wanted something with lace, and I quickly found I did not like the way it looked on me. When I tried on the Pronovias Tatiana gown, I was blown away by its simplicity and elegance. It quickly became a favorite of all of ours, but I didn’t want to purchase anything right away and end up with buyer’s remorse. I let a couple days go by, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful the gown was! That weekend my mom and I went back to MeaMarie and let them know I had found my dress!

What were some touches added to make the wedding personal?

We found this amazing woman, Dawn, who really helped our wedding vision come to life! Dawn owns The Meaningful Details in Bonney Lake, WA and has the most amazing decor rentals! I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of wedding decor that I would probably never use again and end up trying to sell anyway, so I was overjoyed to find Dawn. We rented a ton of vintage picture frames from her to use for different signage, to have wedding photos of our family generations, and photos of Taylor and I around the reception area.

What was the most memorable part of the day?

Leading up to the wedding Taylor and I talked numerous times about whether or not we would cry. Our first look was so special and the anticipation of it was overwhelming. I was so excited to see Taylor. When I walked over to him behind the barn he turned around and it truly was the most unforgettable moment as we embraced one another. I assumed Taylor would be somewhat emotional, but he bawled. To know someone loves you so much and also knowing you get to spend the rest of your life together creating memories and a legacy together, it’s truly the best feeling in the world. In that moment, it all hit us both that we were about to embark on the most amazing journey.

Tell us how you met and became engaged.

Taylor and I actually met many years ago while in high school. However, we only had a few memories of each other up until April of 2016. Today we laugh thinking about how hilarious it would be to go back in time and tell our high school selves that we would be getting married. Neither of us would have believed it, nor would any of our friends. Taylor was two grades below me and was, what some might refer to as a punk, class-clown type whose charm happened to be his saving grace. I was much more reserved, spent my days playing soccer and was never an issue for my teachers.

We lost track of each other over time as I took off for college and Taylor began his career immediately following high school. After nearly eight years of no communication, one night Taylor felt compelled to reach out to me over Facebook. We ended up messaging each other for a few weeks and despite my traditionally patient nature, I got tired of just chatting and requested that Taylor finally ask me out on a date.

We didn’t waste any time getting to know one another. From early on, our conversations included talking about the big stuff. The kind of stuff that might scare people away early on in a dating relationship. We bonded over our passion for God and as the days went by, it became more and more clear to us that our re-connection was not just mere happenstance or coincidence, but a divine intervention.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much Taylor had grown and changed over the years. I learned that he too has a burning desire to achieve great success in life. He has an amazing heart and curiosity for people, places, and things like no one else I had ever met. We spent many days and nights having so much fun getting to know one another and learning about what was important to each other. No more than two weeks into dating did Taylor tell me he loved me, followed by letting me know that we would be getting married.

Fast forward to October 2016, Taylor and I were ready for our life to begin together. Taylor respectfully met with my parents and my older brother, and asked each of them for their blessing to marry me. They all were overjoyed at his request and then it was time for the proposal.

I had plans to go to brunch with my mom on a Sunday morning in October before an afternoon we had planned together. I woke up late and only had time to hop in the shower before my mom was going to stop by my house and pick me up. Hair and makeup was going to have to wait for later. My mom urged we had reservations that we could not miss that morning, and looking good did not seem like a priority at the time. As we got to brunch I could tell something was up with my mom, but didn’t think much of it. She began to tell me a story about how the neighbors had all been receiving weird mail. Hanging onto every word she spoke, I hesitantly accepted an envelope with my name on it from her. If my neighbors were getting weird mail, I thought, “what the heck could this be?!” As I opened the letter, I realized it was a very sweet note from Taylor. At first I didn’t think too much of it because he had left me notes many times before. However, at the end of his note, I started thinking, “oh my gosh, maybe he is proposing sometime today!”

Right after I finished reading the letter, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Taylor! At this point, I knew a proposal was about to happen. Our table was against the windows overlooking part of downtown, and the tables surrounding us were filled with other guests. Taylor took my hand, I got up to my feet and he began telling me all the things he loved about me. He placed my hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat—Taylor is not one to get nervous, but his heart was nearly exploding out of his chest. He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. In that moment, all of the other people in the restaurant seemed to fade away as I said “yes!”

vimeo

Ally + Taylor from Channeled Wedding Co. on Vimeo.

Photographer: Becca of B. Jones Photography // Florist: Paisley Petals // Ceremony/Reception Venue: The Kelley Farm // Rentals: The Meaningful Details // Wedding Dress Salon: Mea Marie // Cake: Hoffman’s Fine Cakes & Pastries // Hair/Makeup: Katya Gudaeva | Bridal Beauty Agency // Bridemaid’s Gift to the Bride: Christian Louboutin// Bridesmaid Dress: Azazie // Groomsmen Attire: Calvin Klein & Men’s Wearhouse

The post Ally and Taylor’s wedding at The Kelley Farm appeared first on Grey Likes Weddings | Wedding Fashion & Inspiration | Best Wedding Blog.

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brandilaguerre-blog · 7 years ago

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Street Dealing with Tips, Steps And also Strategies

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magnificentcloudtragedy-blog · 7 years ago

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Poker Legal In India

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