#also half of them were fucking working class tories????

[sandinmybed]

Dan and Phil arguing about who sounds like a Tory because Phil's northern and Dan's southern BEEN THERE (im southern and went to uni in Lancashire) ITS THE MOST ANNOYING DEBATE NORTHERNERS ARE SO ANNOYING ABOUT THIS 😭😭😭

Edit because someone was already a prick: this post is not that deep

[peachycoreroo]

what about some haikyuu boys trying to explain how morning erection works to their s/o? if you could include Kuroo, Sugawara, Oikawa and Satori I'd be more than grateful 🥺

characters: kuroo tetsurou, sugawara koushi, oikawa tooru, tendou satori

genre: smut, a miiiini plot bc i can't control myself

word count: 1.2k

warnings: fem!reader but can be read as gn!reader, also kinda oblivious!reader?, established relationships, the slightest somnophilia (reader is just grinding while oikawa is asleep, he wakes up immediatly tho), handjob, morning wood (obvs), implied sex

authors note: omg this was my first ever request, thank you sm anonnie! i'm so sorry bc i'm pretty sure i got carried away and only kuroo and tendou really fit your request, but i still hope you'll like it<3 this was actually really hard bc i was so anxious about fucking up my first request, i also didn't really know much about morning woods (well now i do heh) and i find tendou kinda hard to write for but i really wanted to make anon happy. i stayed up till 4am for this🧍‍♂️here's a link to my masterlist<3

pt.2: kageyama tobio, haiba lev, hinata shoyo

kuroo tetsurou:

„your dick does what, why now?”

kuroo rolled his eyes. this is the third time he has to repeat himself and you still look at him as if you’ve never heard anything more complicated in your life.

sighing, the tall male leaned back against the headboard of your shared bed, trying to make himself as comfortable as he could, with you finally quenching your curiosity about his morning wood, and said morning wood pressing against his boxers and your sheets.

“one more time, y/n, there’s a number of reasons. first of all, the male body has its peak of testosterone in the morning. basically, the sudden increase of the hormone in the changing stages from being asleep to waking up, can get your guy up.” as he saw you open your mouth to ask a question, he immediately followed with: “yes, even without actually being aroused”, effectively making you shut your mouth again. the fact that he knew exactly what you wanted to ask, made him chuckle. kuroo knew you like the back of his hand.

“another one is that my body is aware of what’s going on, even when i’m asleep. if your ass grazes my dick, it’s gonna react.” grinning proudly, you sat yourself in his lap, wrapping your arms around his broad shoulders.

“mhh, i’m glad you can’t resist me, even in your sleep. so… you want some help with that?”

the dark-haired male decided to play along, putting his large hands on your waist, pulling you closer and leaning in, just to stop a few inches from your lips and murmur: “you know, i could also just need to pee really bad”, making you lean back and stare at him dumbfounded.

as much as he wanted to actually teach you about this topic, kuroo would never pass up an opportunity to tease you.

sugawara koushi:

as suga jerked awake, he immediately became aware of his severe case of a morning wood. not only that, but he could also feel your ass pressed up snugly against it.

once the sleep slowly drained from the man’s eyes, he noticed that it was still dark outside and quickly checked the time to see his alarm clock reflecting the numbers 5:50 a.m. back at him. he knew he had to get up at 6 if he wanted to be an exemplary teacher and get to school earlier to prepare for class, but with the way your ass was pushing against his hard dick, his mind was too clouded by lust to care. he needed you, and he needed you now.

“baby, wake up”, in suga’s husky morning voice was the first thing you heard as you were gently stirred awake. when you cracked your eyes open, the silver-haired man was already kneeling between your legs, cock heavy and leaking against your panties.

yawning, you asked concerned: “kou’? what’s wrong? is everything okay?”

not being able to wait any longer, sugawara slowly started grinding against you through your shorts, making your breath hitch and legs spread wider.

“y-yeah, just a morning wood emergency. i can’t go and teach like that. let me use you quickly, princess”, suga almost whined, pained.

trying to hold in your whimpers to understand what led to this, your eyes jumping from the male’s handsome face to his pretty, hard dick, you wondered: “what’s gotten into you?”

at that, suga scoffed, amused at you wanting to know what led to his erection instead of getting to business right away.

“woke up to your pretty lil’ butt all snuggled up against my dick. you make me hard, even in my sleep y/n”, he rasped impatiently, but still wanting to quench your interest.

despite the fact that this was definitely not the most romantic thing you have heard from sugawara koushi, you couldn’t stop the butterflies erupting at the thought of him craving you this badly, even while asleep.

“c’mere kou’”, you softly murmured, pulling him down for a kiss, ready to help your boyfriend’s morning problem.

oikawa tooru:

tonight, wasn’t your night. you barely got a wink of sleep, while your boyfriend slept like a stone beside you. you knew it wasn’t his fault you couldn’t sleep, but that didn’t stop you from sulking like a spoiled child.

you were tired but also incredibly horny, and as if some gods heard the prayers you didn’t even direct at them, you noticed oikawa’s morning erection standing loud and proud under your shared sheets like every morning.

not wasting a moment, you ripped the sheets off him, straddling his lap and grinding your soaked panties against his erect boxer-clad cock. it’s not the worst feeling oikawa has ever woken up to, in fact it was definitely one of the best. everything’s better than being slapped awake by iwa-chan’s shoe hitting him in the face back in high school.

as the tanned man started to fidget and his calloused hands landed on your hips to guide you along his cock, your curiosity about his daily morning wood got the best of you.

“why are you hard every morning, tooru?”, you asked innocently, while not-so-innocently continuing to tease him with your hips.

“u-uh, something about hormones a-and, oh shit, faster babe”, oikawa needily pleaded, not in the mood to be explaining the scientific reason behind his reoccurring morning problem.

unsatisfied with the answer, you stopped the grinding to frown at him and complained: “but i wanna know more, tooru.”

the brunet looked up at you, groaning but knowing you wouldn’t just let it go. “fuck, okay. how about this: you make me cum, and i answer all your questions about… morning woods, after. deal?”

“…deal.”

tendou satori:

you woke up before tendou, feeling his hard-on press against your naked thigh, making you want to continue the fun you had last night.

luckily, your boyfriend also woke up, though not as happy about his morning wood problem as you.

“’tori… i need you”, you seductively purred, letting your petite hand slide down to his erection, wrapping around it and giving it a few slow, lazy pumps. to your surprise, your usually vocal-in-bed boyfriend didn’t moan, but only tensed at your ministrations.

not thinking much of it, you attached your lips to the base of his throat, sucking and licking while giving his cock a hard tuck, hoping to get a pretty moan out of him.

what you didn’t expect however, was for tendou to jump up and run to your bathroom while squealing like a little schoolgirl. dumbfounded, you froze in the position you were in, leaning towards where your boyfriend was laying just a few seconds ago, with your hand in a half-fist.

after a few minutes, the red-haired man sheepishly re-entered the room, scratching the back of his blushing neck with a matching blush on his face.

“i-i uh…”, at his voice cracking, tendou cleared his throat before continuing: “i’m so sorry sweetheart, i didn’t mean to run off like that.”

finally breaking out of your stiffness, you looked at him, puzzled, before asking: “why did you run off? if you didn’t want to make-out, I would’ve understood a simple no.”

“it’s not that! it’s just… morning wood doesn’t always mean i’m horny, sweetie. sometimes it happens when you desperately need to pee.”

“oh”, you awkwardly remarked, “i didn’t know that ‘tori, i’m so sorry. i just thought…”

chuckling, tendou leaned down, kissing your forehead and reassuring you: “don’t worry angel, you never stop learning.”

[bluepecanpie]

You know what I find hilarious about this whole ‘Labour right working to change the leadership election process’ thing? The Labour right have pretty much consistently throughout the party’s history controlled its internal structures. The only time outside of the Corbyn era that there was an effort to make the party more democratic was under Michael Foot with Tony Benn insisting on a electoral college rather than the MP secret ballot ‘mandatory selection’ (basically  allowing challenges by prospective candidates to incumbent MPs for local party selection in an election without allowing the weight of the party machinery, unions, local socialist societies for support - essentially encouraging direct accountability to membership, and incentivising the incumbent MP to work harder for support) which was one of the reasons why the SDP split from Labour to begin with. John Smith returned it to ‘one man, one vote” (OMOV) to put a stop to that and to break the influence of the unions - and was further pushed by Ed Miliband to allow in disgruntled Lib Dem types disillusioned with the Conservative-Liberal coalition between 2010-2015.

Corbyn was a (un)happy accident - he wasn’t supposed to become party leader but frustration with austerity and the lack of a clear alternative presented by labour propelled him in - the very machinery that was used to rejuvenate the decaying membership (it had around 200,000 members - about half what it was when Blair came in) with middle class sorts and put in some bland dry technocratic centrist, instead propelled its most left-wing leader since George Lansbury (and maybe more than even him in some respects - either way, he was definitely more left wing than Foot, who was more of a ‘uniter’ type) and it only took 3 quid to get a membership and vote in.

But the machinery was still broadly controlled by pupils of the Blairite style of management, and they raised the membership price to 25 quid (pretty anti-poor of them, tbh), then expelled members for not being members for long enough, or voting Green in the last general election (hilarious when you consider how much Greens are also defined by middle-class types, and Labour’s irritating tendency to chase after Lib Dem and Tory votes) - all of which I remember quite well. And as you might already know, party resources were diverted from left-wing candidates (or people perceived as left-wing) to those MPs in their little cliques.

What the machinery gives, it takes away. What opportunities that the Labour left took to make the party more democratic during Corbyn’s time was squandered thanks admittedly understandable anxieties of a press already grotesquely hostile to Corbynism, and their own myopic electioneering tendencies about getting Corbyn through number 10. Now that we know that commanding the ship, doesn’t mean running it - those who’ve been running the show are now mobilising to push the electoral process back to how it was before Miliband. I think that their long-term goal is to put it back to “MP secret ballot” which would be turning the clock back to 1981 - literally forty years ago. The guy who’s now pushing for a return to the electoral college I suspect only sees it as a first step to this given this gross, tactless article he wrote on the other guy who originally pushed it in to open the party up after his death.  If they win, the only time you’ll see them open it up again is probably was they prioritise killing the union influence than the possibility that anyone like Corbyn could ever happen again (hell, the man is still suspended from their party and they’re figuring if they parachute a candidate during a by-election, they’ll have forced him out)

It’s hilarious that the Labour Party has the nerve to call itself ‘democratic socialist’. This is a party so defined by elitist impulses, and bureaucratic tendencies, that their natural inclination to the wider membership is one of contempt. They fear them, so they wall off any say in their structures - and certainly don’t bother to politicise them. The membership are people to be managed and directed to leaflet and knock on doors, not peers. Some are even to be bought off by patronage with promises to councillor positions where they walk around as community ‘big men’. This is probably the logical conclusion of a reformist party that put having a place in ‘representative democracy’ over socialist politics, and to see this nonsense play out in the face of zombie neoliberalism, and the risk of of irreversible climate change is well and truly pathetic. A part of me thinks that allowing this organisation to be the representative of the British labour movement was a serious mistake, and the only way it would be rectified is if they do the honest thing and join the Lib Dems, so that an actual socialist organisation can emerge - since the LP nothing but liberals posturing as socialists.

The Labour Party does not represent the interests of the working class, but petite-bourgeois wankers who are quite satisfied with anything that goes on so long as their property doesn’t get taken from them at the very least, and business elites at the most. It will continue in its attempts to phase out the unions, now that their attempt at getting a pliable lackey in Unite the Union has failed, and in the event GMB and Unison turn on this strategy. It is aggravating that I spent nearly a decade on this pink pseudo-left organisation without pay to better my situation to see this play out, but here we are. Any serious person who calls themselves a leftist shouldn’t fuck with it, and it is enraging that it takes so much political space that no-one on the British left can’t help even talk about due to its hegemonic influence.

[princesstillyenna]

I’m an American and from your writing I would never guess that you’re British, are there any words, phrases or slang that you find your self editing out when you write? And would you ever consider writing a fic where you left it in?

Nonnie I love this question because UGH it gives me SO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT. Firstly, I am so SO pleased you think it's hardly noticable. This is because I have a LOVELY lovely crew of handy american and canadian friends who put up with me bugging them going "this character is from alberta and they want to say xyz what is the appropriate slang" (I also have gen z friends doing the same thing for when beezer has to speak)

That being said. Without a fucking doubt the hardest word not to use is wank. Crush is also super hard. Like, having a crush on someone is apparently not something you say in america? Like "I'm crushing on this guy"  (Edit: I am informed by one of my wonderful friends that it’s ‘fancy’ that I use wrong here, not crushing you guys do use that? But you don’t say that you fancy someone which is just fucked up. You should deffo say that) and yeah, not calling people wankers. That happens a lot in UK hockey. Oh my god, and I had a COMPLETE breakdown in a fic about wanting to use the phrase "Can I ask a cheeky question?" and my canadian friends not only telling me that you guys don't use that, but also THAT YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE CHEEKY AS A CONCEPT, like BRUV WHAT EVEN IS A CHEEKY NANDOS WITHOUT THE FUCKING CHEEKY. Cheeky is like 90% of my fucking personality. Americans must be BAFFLED by me. So yeah, sometimes I get completely broken by words that like, have no fucking translation. Also, ngl, my fic will never contain the word "spunky". And I'm fucking laughing just writing it. Heh. Spunk. (To you americans, that's one of the many words we use for jizz over here)

That being said, FOR a brit, I don't use a huge amount of slang (I talk fuckin proper innit) with only occasional westcountryisms slipping in before coffee in the morning. (And now I'm wanting to write a fic in which a player asks another player "So you're off on a roadie eh? Where's that bein to?" just to confuse the fuck outta y'all). Most of the time, to my shame, I sound like a fucking tory. 🤷‍♀️ (I'm not. A tory. At all.) and of course, I do edit my work. I know it doesn't seem like it half the fucking time, but I do.

If I were to write EIHL or NIHL fic I would totes leave it in, BUT my bestie who I love who got me into hockey fic is super squicked out by the concept of me writing stuff about our local NIHL boys and so out of deference to them, I tend not to (EVEN THOUGH OUR GOALIE AND HIS BEST D-MAN HAVE THE WORLDS MOST FUCKING ADORABLE BROMANCE GOING) But even then, I'd have to be checking my language because I'm super southern and they are both really fucking scottish. Hopefully I have enough scots roots that I could pull that off convincingly though. The temptation to write some Liam Kirk fic with his fucking gorgeous northern accent in though... that's strong. (Fun fact, I saw his big brother play a couple of weeks ago :D). Buuuut yeah, even writing NIHL or EIHL fic, the amount of variety in british slang not only between different geographical areas but also between different classes - There's very few hockey players who I WOULDN'T have to edit my own speaking language to sound like. (Possibly the closest in terms of age and geographical location would be the coach of our local team, but I'd still have to edit the fucking public school out of myself 🤷‍♀️)

Long story short. If there are any middle class, millennial, english hockey players from the south-west of england that you want me to write, I will 100% write you a fic in my natural speaking voice, all slang left in... I just somehow think you'll struggle to find one ;)

[barbasbodaciousbeard]

If You Love Someone, Let Them Go: Part 4

Summary: Since starting with SVU, Sonny hadn’t kept much terribly close to the chest. The squad knew about his family, growing up on Staten Island, the classes at Fordam. What was hidden was why he didn’t date. Sonny Carisi was also separated from his childhood sweetheart, a separation neither ever took to divorce. They had the same haunts. They’d grown up neighbors. Their paths crossed every few months, and divorce talks would turn into reminiscing would turn into a night spent together, sometimes sex sometimes just talking until the early morning. It always ended with one of them waking up alone however. How will that change when the squad finds out?

Pairings: Sonny Carisi x Original Character

A/N: The babies. I’ve outlined like eight chapters at least, so I think this thing’s just going to go until I run out of steam. So here’s a third part already. Also, I threw up a pinned post masterlist to throw my AO3 links on

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

November 2014

Victoria had gone to her mom’s house, the one by the Carisi’s, for Thanksgiving, but she should have known better than to think that she’d be there. Housekeepers kept the place up, but Irene hadn’t been around much since her daughter was seventeen. She hadn’t been there the year before for Victoria’s first set of holidays alone, and she wasn’t this year either. The year before, Victoria had made the rounds between childhood friends. Rachel would normally be who she went to now that she was coming to terms with the possibility of an actual divorce. She said she was coming to terms with it a lot for someone who just avoided the subject entirely and cried in Sonny’s Fordham sweatshirt at least two nights a week. Coming to her mom’s house when the childhood friends from the year before were at their significant other’s families’ houses was not her best idea when it meant she could hear the bustle of activity at the Carisi’s house. 

“Bella?” she said softly when she answered the knock at her door. It was late, and she’d heard everyone start to wind down and broken out the wine.

“Hey Tori. I know coming over ain’t exactly an option, but I snuck you a plate. And a bottle of wine from their stockpile.” Victoria motioned for her to come in, watching her unload a bag onto the kitchen counter. 

“That’s really sweet of you.”

“I wanted to make sure you ate good. You’re getting awful skinny for a baker.”

“Ain’t got Sonny making spaghetti like three nights a week.”

“He’s getting skinny without the endless supply of cannoli. Maybe you oughta come over and reconcile.”

“Bella, he knows what he has to do for us to be okay. I wouldn’t care if it weren’t for the fact whatever he needs to talk to me about made him push me away.”

“At least say hi before the end of tomorrow? He’s got the sad puppy eyes, watching your house.”

“We’ll see.” Bella said her goodbyes, and Victoria opened the second bottle of wine, settling on the porch. She saw Sonny making his way over a half hour later, sighing as she downed the end of the glass. 

“Bella send ya?” she called, bundled up in the blanket she’d brought out.

“Just said you were here. Heard you pop the cork and needed a break. Besides, you shouldn’t be alone on the holiday.””

“Nosy neighbor, huh?”

“The sound really echoes between these houses. I’d have invited you, but Ma…”

“It’s okay, Dom. You free all weekend? Or they got you working?”

“I’m not Staten Island anymore,” he said proudly. He’d been drinking too, which made it easier for both of them.

“Where are you now?”

“Manhattan SVU.”

“You made it?” Her voice was ecstatic, and he grinned when she jumped from the porch swing to hug him close. “I’m so proud of you, Dom.”

“Thanks, Tor. It’s only been three months, but I think it’s the right place. I feel like I’m really doin’ something, y’know?”

“Yeah. And you’re such a good guy, y’know? I bet victims feel comfortable.”

“That means more than I can tell you.”

“Want a glass of your mom’s wine to celebrate?”

“I’ll grab the second glass.” Before she could stop him, he went in, coming back and dropping on the swing beside her. She poured them each a glass, head resting on his shoulder as she sipped her own. It was quiet, and she wanted to get at least this long to be close to him. The hope from Teresa’s wedding wasn’t there. This would just be an evening, and he’d go home.

“How’s classes?”

“They’ve been good. I take finals next week.”

“Halfway through,” she grinned up at him as he took a share of the blanket. 

“And, I don’t know how else to bring it up, but I’m working on figuring out how to talk about how I felt. It’s like my brain disconnects when I try. I said it to my new boss, and I went to therapy. Apparently it sounded heavy.”

“I appreciate that, Dom. I know that isn’t easy for you.”

“Don’t tell nobody. Ma’s not happy about it.”

“I won’t. Spousal privilege.”

“Now we really can’t get divorced.”

“You’re not wearing your ring.” His hand slid into his hoodie, pulling out a chain with the gold band on it. 

“Yours is on your right hand.”

“It’s just hard to explain.”

“I know. The squad doesn’t know yet. I’m already trying to be the new guy. Saying I won’t divorce my wife even though I only see her ever four to six months because I truly believe she’s made for me and I love her? Way too much to unpack.”

“We hired new people. Hard to seem like the boss with her shit together when you ain’t lived with your husband in over a year.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“You’re confident.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m scared you won’t trust me to tell me.”

“It’s not about trust, Tor. I know it’s a lot, but trust me on this. It’s not about you.”

“Okay,” she nodded, taking his hand. “You’ve been really open with me tonight. So I’m willing to believe you.”

“Thanks, doll. I’m going to tell the squad about you. That’s step one. Then I’m going to get my head out of my ass.”

He pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, arm slung around her. It felt weird knowing there were people in his life who didn’t know she existed. It bothered him too. He didn’t know how to go into everything. Whenever he talked to his mom or Gina, it ended with him crying, telling them that he knew God had made them for each other, and he’d ruined it all with his free will. He wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable. Telling them what he couldn’t tell his family was one thing; they saw the same thing, day in and day out. He couldn’t taint them. He could make himself seem broken, some newbie who couldn’t tell a woman he’d been with a decade how cases made him feel. 

“Do I have to go home or can I just hold you tonight?”

“I’m not up for analyzing things tomorrow. Limbo isn’t changing until you can tell me..”

“That’s okay with me, doll.”

“Then okay. I’m eating the slice of pie Bella brought over first.”

“Of course that’s fine,” he chuckled. “I had t’loosen my belt. Had like a quarter of the pie myself.”

“So there was pumpkin. You just ate it,” she teased, leading him in. The house looked the same as it had when they were kids. Once they got married, they never really spent time there, always going to his family’s house, and Victoria’s mom coming if she felt like it. Now that he worked with SVU, he remembered how often she was alone as a kid and felt grateful it was his family that lived next door. That could have ended very differently for her. He’d tell her about that when the damn finally burst. She plated her pie, tupperware stacked in the fridge, before she leaned over the counter and took a bite. 

“Chocolate bourbon pecan. The one you taught her.” He missed that part of the holiday the most. This was the second Thanksgiving he didn’t get to watch Victoria carefully teach his mom a new dessert. She gathered new recipes all year round, spreading them out to narrow down which she’d get the ingredients for the weekend before Thanksgiving. Sonny would usually make lasagna that day, listening as she described the pros and cons of each option and offering his opinion when prompted. 

“She did it perfect.” 

“Nah. Your crust is better. You ever gonna tell the secret?”

“Not a chance. Gotta keep my edge. You think she’s ever going to tell the secret ingredient to her cannoli filling?”

“Noted.” He dropped onto the stool on the other side of the counter, chin propped in his hand. It had taken a couple more beers than he should have had to come over, and now with the wine, Sonny had the sleepy eyes and goofy grin that gave it away.

“You’re drunk.”

“Just tipsy.”

“No gettin’ handsy, Sonny.”

“Promise. I’m a good boy.”

“Mhm,” she laughed, holding out a bite of pie he took gladly. “We’re going to have to get you to bed soon. Otherwise, you’ll get grumpy.”

“You make me sound like a toddler.”

“Only when you’ve been drinking.”

“Y’know, I’m a detective now. If I hadn’t fucked up, we might be down that road.”

“Dom, we’re so far from kids right now.”

“Let me be drunk and sentimental.”

“I thought you weren’t drunk.”

“Fine, I’m drunk.” 

“I appreciate the honesty,” she grinned, putting the plate in the drying rack. “I bet you still got a pair of sweats in my room from high school.”

“Lucky me.” She led him upstairs, digging them out of the dresser and tossing them to him. When he caught them, he was prouder than he should’ve been, stripping his jeans off and pulling them on. Victoria hadn’t taken her pajamas off that day, climbing into the bed. Sonny belly flopped next to her, and she pulled her knees up, laughing loudly. With a grin, he settled the blanket over them and flung an arm over her. Maybe he was taking advantage of the excuse drinking gave him, but he liked hearing her laugh. Sonny Carisi was still a gentleman though, and he was careful to keep his arm on her stomach and his hands on her ribs. This visit was more delicate than the wedding. Memories probably still helped; they were in her teenage room after all. His parents were always home, and her mom wasn’t. 

“Whatcha thinking?” Victoria asked gently, hand smoothing over his hair. 

“I miss this.”

“Staten Island?”

“Watching you eat pie when I’m drunk and staring at ya.”

“You’re sappy. Get some sleep.”

“If I go to sleep, it’s over sooner.” She smoothed his hair back gently, smiling as she pressed a kiss to his forehead. He closed his eyes and hummed, and Victoria thought describing Sonny as a puppy seemed even more apt. He was curling against her, pleased at the attention as she scratched his scalp. WHen they were kids, he’d always said If I go to sleep, it’s over sooner with excitement as they waited on vacations or holiday mornings. He’d said it sadly tonight. She didn’t like that. The more times she saw him, the more tempted she was not to wait it out and come home. So what if she had to worry he’d pull away again?

It mattered because she had to remember how she felt. Waiting at home all those months, fighting him, begging for something to prove he wanted her there. Victoria couldn’t do it again, but she also couldn’t picture turning thirty without Sonny. Having a kid without him. Sitting on a porch with some other guy. After a while, soft snoring alerted her that he’d fallen asleep, arm still flung over her and his head on her shoulder. Her cheek rested against the top of his head as she tried to memorize what this felt like again. 

He’d met a therapist. That was what made it feel more like there might be a conclusion to the separation. Before tonight, she’d accepted this weird limbo may be permanent. Despite the mentions of divorce, she knew neither of them would do it. Therapy wasn’t something Sonny’s family valued, and he’d always been resistant to the concept for himself. When Victoria went, he was supportive and recognized the good it did her, but his father had always demeaned it, and that stuck with him. That wasn’t a problem before when Victoria could weasel the problem out of him. He didn’t think he was in the wrong before, but it seemed whatever was wrong was something he realized was too big for him. It didn’t bother her that she couldn’t fix it for him; she was just glad he was accepting help somewhere.

She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but Sonny was gone when she woke. Her first response was panic, that maybe how they left things the morning after the wedding meant he’d opted for the same response as the first time and gone home before she woke up. Her mind stopped racing, however, when she realized she could smell coffee and bacon wafting through the door. She slipped out of bed, finding him in the kitchen with his hair askew as he flipped a pancake. 

“Mornin’ doll,” he smiled shyly, pouring coffee and sliding the mug to her. It seemed like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be there, and she supposed she didn’t know if he should be or not. “I got some time before I have to go to the precinct, so I figured I’d make you pancakes.”

“Thanks, Dom.” She pressed a kiss to his temple. “Ain’t Ma going to be mad?”

“She can deal with it. She had me all day yesterday. I know I ain’t ready to tell you what you need me to, but I want to leave on a good note. Prove I’m really trying.” Victoria set her coffee back on the counter, arms sliding around him as she pressed her cheek to his back. His free hand rested where hers clasped as he flipped another pancake.

“That means a lot, Dom.”

“You felt like I didn’t want you with me. Leaving when you’re asleep or pressuring you won’t help. You told me what to do, and all I can do is prove I want you while I work on doing it. If you love somebody, let ‘em go. If it’s meant to be, they’ll come back. And it’s meant to be, Tor. Ordained by the big guy.”

“You really believe that?”

“Believe it? I know it, doll.”

“You know I do love you?”

“I know. And I do love you. We just never had to communicate before.”

“How dare we develop real problems in our twenties?”

“Right? What chumps.”

“Should we go to therapy together?”

“I’m not ready yet, Tor. But I think it would be a good idea when I am.”

“Me too,” she said, squeezing him before she let go. “I can see you’re trying.”

“I’m just glad you ain’t mad I haven’t told the new squad yet.”

“It’s super complicated. I understand.”

“Yeah. I’m still growing on them. I don’t want to seem like I’ve got a lot of drama too. Because weirdly, we’re low to no drama. But ‘Yeah, I’m married and we see each other for a day every few months while we try to figure out how to talk’ sounds bad.”

“Only a little,” she laughed, taking their plates to the table as he refilled the coffee. They ate happily, Victoria kissing him softly when he left to get dressed for work back at his mom’s house. Gianna Carisi was in the yard, shooting them a disapproving look. He shook his head at her, ushering the woman inside before she could try to talk to Victoria. Sonny understood his mom’s stance: her son could do no wrong. In reality, they had both done wrong. Victoria should have told him how she was feeling before they were in too deep, and he shouldn’t have waited so long to process what he saw on the job. 

“Ma, you leave my wife alone.”

“You’re not acting married. You’re acting like acquaintances that get lucky sometimes.”

“And you’re not helping my chances of fixing things.”

“Dominick, it’s been over a year.”

“And I’m finally getting off my ass, going to therapy, and trying to work with Tor.”

“You don’t need therapy, Dom. Just man up, like your father.”

“I do. And it’s helpin’ and I just got to spend a night and morning with Victoria with no fighting. That’s a step in the right direction.”

Tag list: @fear-less-write-more​

[jalapeno-princess]

All I Need is You

(Guys I miss Mark so fucking much *Cue Tori Vega I think we all miss Mark)

Songwriter Mark X Reader

Genre: Extremely fluffy angst (is that even a thing?)

Word Count: 5.8K

Summary: For all your life, your parents raised you to be the perfect daughter of every parent’s dreams. You did every single thing your parents forced you to do and never did you complain about anything they’d make you do, no matter how badly you wanted to. That all changed the day your path collides with Mark Tuan. After being stripped of your childhood completely in order to be respective and follow your parent’s desires, Mark shows you how beautiful life can be when you do the things you want to. Mark is the breath of fresh air from a life you feel so suffocated in. For the duration of your relationship, you did your best in hiding him from your parents in fear of them disapproving of the older boy. However, once you graduate from college, you decide you are old enough to make your own decisions and you build the courage to introduce your boyfriend to your family. The night starts off without a hitch; everyone seems to really like him up until your mom asks him what he does for a living. That’s when things take a turn for the worst and your mom gives you an ultimatum; to chose between the love of your life and your family.

A/N: Hey guys, so I’ve been wanting to write an imagine based on the song Paris by the chainsmokers for the longest time and here it is. Only when I reached the middle of writing the story did I realize this is the complete opposite of my other story “Second Chances” LOL. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this story (most of it is written in past tense so I hope you don’t get confused).

We were staying in Paris To get away from your parents And I thought, "Wow If I could take this in a shot right now I don't think that we could work this out" Out on the terrace I don't know if it's fair but I thought "How Could I let you fall by yourself While I'm wasted with someone else

"If we go down then we go down together They'll say you could do anything They'll say that I was clever If we go down then we go down together We'll get away with everything Let's show them we are better Let's show them we are better Let's show them we are better

“Hey, everything okay?”

It was currently 2:45 a.m. and normally, you’d be fast asleep right now but you couldn’t help feeling as if the bed grew more spacious and colder than it was when you first went to sleep. Mark was your own personal furnace; the two of you fell asleep pretty early after a long day of sightseeing and an even longer night of love making.

After multiple rounds of his all but gentle kisses on your neck, jaw and chest as he rammed himself in and out of your velvety walls, you both were too tired to get up and clean yourselves off. He immediately pulled you in to his chest and wrapped his arms tightly around your waist while placing his face in the crook of your neck and whispering sweet nothings until his dreams finally took a hold of him. It’s been like this for the last three weeks since you and Mark ran away to Paris in the hopes of hiding from your extremely overprotective and non-understanding parents.

You’d go sight seeing, visit a couple of museums, cute little coffee shops and sometimes you’d even go to a farmer’s market and you’d buy food to make for recipes you and Mark learned while watching whatever they had on television. Almost every single night ended up in sex; on a few occasions, there were drunken stupors where one of you or sometimes even both of you would have a little too much to drink and you’d have wild, kinky sex.

Then there were the days where you’d argue over minuscule and unnecessary things and usually Mark would be the first to give up and apologizing with his head between your thighs. Most of your love making sessions were soft, passionate and very romantic.

To strangers or people who weren’t familiar with him, Mark gave off an intimidating and sometimes standoffish kind of vibe. It was only because he was actually very shy and soft spoken and those who actually knew him were aware of how talkative and outgoing he could be around those he was comfortable with.

Unfortunately, your parents were the kind of people you’d always sought praise from and you’d do whatever you could to make them proud. Ever since you were a little girl, you went along with every command they would give you, you never complained about the clubs they’d put you in or the clothes they had you wear. It wasn’t as if you were the only child, you had three other siblings but since you were the youngest, your parents were a little more strict with you even if you never gave them a reason to question or mistrust you.

It wasn’t until Mark came in to your life that your relationship with your parents took a completely different turn. You’ve known Mark since middle school and although you hardly ever talked to him, you did admire him from afar and you could only wish to build up the courage so that maybe one day, you’d be able to at least say hello.

He was always such a social butterfly and made friends with anybody he’d interact with. All the girls in your grade had a crush on him, but you couldn’t blame them. Not only was he a sight for sore eyes, he was such a free spirit; he had decent grades and not once did the teachers have any problems with him like they did with his friends. But he was never one to genuinely care about his education, and unfortunately that was his downfall.

When you finally entered high school, it’s as if the world felt like it was time for you and Mark to come together and for your two worlds to become one. In your first semester, he was in almost every single one of your classes. You didn’t think you were the smartest person in your grade, but you did pretty well in all the subjects. All those years of long, grueling days of summer school actually paid off. Sometimes, you hated being the youngest.

Your parents expected so much out of you but they never seemed to care about anything that your two older brothers and your older sister did. They all got to join groups, clubs and sports that they genuinely liked whereas you were coerced in to learning how to play the violin and the cello. You were thankful that school was considerably easy for you seeing as how your parents made education your first priority.

While your brothers would play video games and your sister would talk on the phone with her friends, you’d be practicing math problems and read books about the civil war. You didn’t think you got to experience a legitimate childhood you’d witness all your classmates and friends had. For that reason alone, you always felt different from everybody else and it was the reason why you were so hesitant on continuing friendships with the few friends you did have from middle school.

You could never relate to anything they’d talk about; all their favorite movies they’d watch, the latest installment of Grand theft auto that they’d play, going to each other’s houses—you weren’t even allowed to cross the street by yourself let alone go out with your friends. Entering high school by yourself had to be one of the most scariest things you had to go through and because your siblings were at least five years older than you, none of them would be there at least if you needed someone to confide in or run to.

From all the stories you’d hear from each of them, their high school experiences were ones for the books. Both of your brothers joined each and every sport you could think of and your sister was the co-captain of the cheerleading team. She also had a few boyfriends in high school and you felt as if a lot of the mistakes she made were the reasons why your parents took complete control of your life.

It didn’t take long for Mark to acknowledge your existence; in fact, what you didn’t know was that back in middle school, he noticed you even if you didn’t realize it yourself. While all the girls would ogle over him and try to get his attention, he would find himself admiring you from afar.

Mark always thought you were so cute; you were always hesitant to answer the questions your teacher would ask you even if everyone was aware you knew the answer, whenever someone asked you for help you were always so quick to attend to them no matter what they were asking of you and he could never get the way you would blush when you were flustered out of his head.

He had no problem talking with other girls, but he’d become a mess at even just the thought of having to talk to you. Mark was quick to pick up on how you had most of your classes together, and he was going to use this to his advantage. Only a month in to school, both his algebra teacher and his language arts teacher pulled him to the side to tell him that he wasn’t doing too good in their classes. It wasn’t that Mark was purposefully failing his classes in order to get you to tutor him, he never was all that amazing in school to begin with.

High school wasn’t even half as easy as middle school was. Getting anything lower than a C wasn’t going to cut it and now that he had two Ds, he planned on asking you for some help. When Mark did approach you and asked you to help him catch up with a couple of missing assignments and to help teach him some algebra formulas, you had a hard time believing he was even talking to you. In the beginning of your tutoring sessions, he was always quite the gentleman.

He’d give you his full attention, always waited till you were done talking before he’d ask you a question, he’d tell you silly jokes so that it wasn’t always about studying and learning and sometimes he would drop you home after your meetings. It didn’t take long for your tutoring sessions to turn in to something more and only three months after getting to know each other, he asked you to be his girlfriend.

Dating Mark was a dream you never think would become a reality. He was extremely kind hearted and took care of you in ways you didn’t think you’d be able to experience. You were shocked when he confessed that he’s liked you for all these years, and you were quick to admit the same to him. Knowing how your parents could be, you decided to keep your relationship with Mark a secret and he was very understanding about the entire thing.

The two of you would sneak around during and after school for the entirety of your high school years and your love for one another only grew stronger as the time went by. You fell in love with him in tiny little coffee shops, in the back of the library where you’d be making out together when you were supposed to be studying. You’d lie to your parents and say you were preparing for tests and picking up on extra credit when really you’d be lying in the back of Mark’s truck, cuddling in his arms while looking up at the stars.

Mark did a great job at helping you take your mind off of how perfect you were supposed to be. He was the breath of fresh air that you’ve always craved and now that you had him, you didn’t think you would be able to let him go. Ever. He made you feel like a little kid again; you actually got to experience all sorts of things you’ve wanted to do as a child through your relationship. It didn’t take you long to fall in love with him.

Being in love was an indescribable feeling. Every time something good happened to you, he was the first person you wanted to tell and whenever something bad happened, he was the shoulder you wanted to cry on. He always knew the right thing to say; but if there ever was a time he didn’t know how to respond to something, he would just hold you comfortingly while whispering sweet, encouraging words in your ear.

People claimed that perfect people didn’t exist and if that’s the case, then Mark came pretty close. You felt as if he was sent in your life to be your safe haven; your sanity. The burst of color in your world of black and white. He had a habit of telling you he loved you every single day and even if he weren’t to do so, his actions spoke for him. You don’t know how you did it, but you actually did a great job in hiding Mark from your parents for the last few years.

There were times where you did come pretty close to getting caught; whether it was because of how loud you didn’t think you were while talking on the phone with him, or when you’d come back home with swollen lips and tousled hair. It didn’t matter to you though. A part of you was ready for whatever response you’d receive from your parents. Honestly, Mark was the kind of guy you’d bring home to your parents; so you weren’t afraid of the idea of introducing him to your family.

The only thing you were really worried about was what they would say when they were to find out you were hiding a boyfriend from them for over six years. After graduating from high school, both you and Mark went straight in to college. You went in to study criminal law and he had high hopes of becoming an engineer. Three months in to college, Mark decided it wasn’t for him and as his girlfriend, although you were upset at the idea, you supported and trusted his choices.

College wasn’t for everybody. With that being said, it was then that you found out he wanted to become a songwriter. In the few years that you’ve known him for, not once did he ever talk about wanting to write songs. You didn’t think he was passionate about music in general let alone wanting to write music for artists but when he showed you a few of the songs he had wrote, with most of them being about you, you knew he was extremely talented.

Mark always had a way with words and now that you saw them written down on paper, you knew you’d continue to support his dreams and his future endeavors and that you would do anything to help him if he needed it. Before you knew it, four years came and gone and you graduated from college with your bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. It didn’t take too long for law firms to reach out to you with internships and to see if you were interested to work for their companies. Mark was also very successful  with his career.

He started off small; he wrote a few things here and there for some up and coming artists but it wasn’t anything too major. No matter how patient he was, there were times he did grow discouraged and felt like giving up but you never allowed him to. You saw how passionate he was about writing. You’d watch him stay up trying to write down any ideas that would pop through his head.

The road to success wasn’t easy, but when he got an offer from a record company to write songs for a popular artist you both listened to, he was extremely over the moon and made sure to let you know your love, your patient, your support and your determination to help him succeed was what kept him going.

The day came where you felt like you were ready to tell your parents about the man you were head over heels in love with and the reaction you got wasn’t one you were expecting. When you brought him over for dinner, both your mother and your sister raved over how good looking he was and your brothers tried their best to come off as the older, overprotective brothers boyfriends wouldn’t want to mess with. But when they heard Mark played fortnite, they were sold.

Even your father took a liking to him once Mark told him his favorite football team were the Patriots. Everything seemed to be going perfectly and you were so upset with yourself for keeping him a secret for so long. It wasn’t until your mother asked him what he did for a living that things only went downhill from there. I’m a songwriter. You could still remember the grave look on your mom’s face and with the way she motioned for you to follow her and your father in to the living room while excusing the three of you from the table, you knew it wasn’t going to be good.

You were angry that she didn’t wait for dinner to be finished or even for Mark to go home before ridiculing him on his career. It was obvious that she wasn’t too happy to hear he was a musician but it didn’t matter what she thought. Hell, you didn’t care about what anyone in your family thought about him. You loved Mark, with every beat of your heart and there was nothing your parents could say or do to change your mind about him.

“You are to break up with that boy immediately.”

Your eyes widened in shock at your mother’s command and for the first time looking her, hell, looking at your parents, you didn’t feel afraid of them. This time, you had something beautiful worth fighting for. This wasn’t something minuscule; it wasn’t something you could just stop like piano lessons or tennis practice. This was an 8 year long relationship she was telling you to end and there was no way you were going to lose against your parents without putting up a fight.

“No.”

The scoff that came from your mother’s throat wasn’t unexpected. This was the first time ever you talked back to either of your parents. This was the first time you actually said the word no in your 23 years of existence and damn, it felt really good.

“Excuse me? Did you just tell your mother no? Y/n, he’s a musician! He will never be able to give you the life you deserve! That is not a career! You’ll be the one having to take care of your entire family, I refuse to let this man ruin your life. You’re going to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for—for someone whose position in your life isn’t promised. You know better than this, there are plenty more men in the world with better jobs and probably better living situations. Mrs.Choi’s son is a—“

“I don’t give a shit about Mrs.Choi’s son or Mrs.Park’s son or anyone’s damn son for that matter. I love Mark. I am in love with Mark. I only want Mark. Mark is all I need. I don’t care about what his job title is. It makes him happy and he’s pretty fucking amazing at what he does. But like I said, I don’t give a shit what he does for a living. He could be a garbage man and I’d still love him with every fiber of my being because that’s what love is mom. Love is not money, it’s not a big mansion in Beverly Hills with a doctor husband and six cars I will probably never drive. Love is what I feel when I’m with Mark. He takes care of me. He makes me laugh when I’m sad, he makes me smile even in the most inconvenient situations. He does my laundry, cleans our apartment, blow dries my hair when I’m tired, takes me to and pays for all my doctor’s appointments. We’ve been together for almost 8 years and these last 8 years have been the best years of my entire life because of him. The two of you stripped away the entirety of my childhood from me and Mark was the fountain of youth to help me experience actually being a human.” If looks could kill, the glare your mother was sending you would have you six feet under, but you didn’t care.

“I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m grown. I’m an adult for crying out loud you guys can’t tell me what to do anymore. I’m sorry you can’t accept it but I love Mark and I plan on doing so for the rest of my life and there’s nothing either of you can say or do to change my mind.”

“If you leave with him tonight, you are never allowed back in to this house ever again.” The burst of confidence and bravery you had confessing your love for Mark and the fact that you had every intention of staying with him went right out the window at your mother’s ultimatum. Was she really making you choose between your boyfriend and your family? There was no way you could choose between the two of them. Yes, Mark was the best thing that’s ever happened to you. But to lose all contact with your family because your parents were being unfair and irrational with their decision? She didn’t even take the time to listen to your words; did she not care about your health, happiness and well-being? Here was a man putting her youngest daughter on a pedestal, giving her the entire world and more but yet she still couldn’t accept that. You didn’t know the consequences of your next few words, but it wasn’t even a question. “Mark, we’re leaving. Let’s go.”

Your boyfriend came out from the kitchen and you had a feeling he probably heard the entire conversation between you and your parents, but your mind was so focused on leaving before things could get any worse. “Y/n, wait, sweetie think about this—think about what you’re doing—are you really willing to give up your family for a boy?”

“A man—he’s a man and yes—he’s all the family I could ever need. He’s shown me more love and support in our 8 years of being together than either of you did in the last 23 years of my existence. If you were a really family, you’d accept Mark for who he is and what he does and you’d be happy with the fact that he takes such good care of me but no. Your pride, your reputation, your wealth, your social status and your ego are more important than my feelings and what I want. You don’t care about me. You never cared about me you just cared about what others would think about me and I’m sick of it. I’m done. Have a nice rest of your life. Assholes.”

You marched out of the house and a huge weight was lifted off of your shoulders. With the rate you were walking, your boyfriend had to practically jog to catch up with you because you were filled with so many different emotions. Anger. Sadness. Grief. But no regret, nor any remorse. You knew you made the right decision in choosing Mark because not only did you choose Mark, you chose yourself. You were no longer going to allow your parents to dictate your life anymore.

“Baby—are you alright?” You gave him a sad smile before stealing a soft kiss from the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe not right now, but I will be. Take me home Mark.” Your siblings tried to get in touch with you for weeks, trying to get you to come back and to talk things out with your parents, but the damage was done. Neither of them were going to accept your relationship. It was a tough pill to swallow, but you accepted it for what it was.

Even if one day they came around and accepted Mark being a songwriter, there was no way you could ever forget the look of disgust on your mom’s face when Mark said what his job was nor could you forget how your dad just stood there and said nothing. It genuinely showed that neither of your parents really cared about you even if you were the star child out of the four of you and that’s what was hurting you the most.

Mark did his best to try and take your mind off what had happened and every time you’d look at him while he was sleeping, while he was cooking the two of you dinner or while the two of you would shower together, you’d see the glint in his eyes as he looked at you like you were one of the seven wonders of the world and you knew you made the right choice. You’d pick him again and again every single time.

He never brought up the fact that your parents didn’t accept his passion but you were sure it must have hurt him. Especially because that’s was caused you to be cut off from your entire family, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t extremely content with your decision. A few weeks ago, Mark got a call from the record company he was working for and gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe to work with a couple of the entertainers there and he didn’t hesitate to ask you to tag along with him.

The adventure started off in Italy, then you found yourselves in London and Greece. Each and every city was more than you could even imagine. The scenery was so beautiful, the food was delicious, the people were so sweet and the fact that you got to experience it all with your soulmate; your favorite person was a feeling you would never be able to fathom in to words.

Paris had to be your favorite place you had visited so far and you were sure it had to deal with the fact that it was the city of love and you were making the most of it with the love of your life by your side. It was currently winter in Paris right now; the temperature only grew colder as the days went by which is why you were shocked to see Mark outside on the balcony in only his underwear, but the sight did make your cheeks pink.

No matter how many times you’ve seen him naked, you always got so shy and flustered. He was freezing cold when you finally found your way behind him, you placed your chin on his shoulder blade and left a soft kiss there while lazily wrapping your arms around his hips. The giggle that fell from your lips at the feeling of your bare chest against his back couldn’t be helped, he was so cold and the frost nipped at your skin.

It took you a few moments to notice the cigarette in his hand and when you did, you grew worried. Mark hated cigarettes. He hated the smell and hated the negative effect they had on people’s bodies. However, you noticed he began smoking them after working with a well-known rapper who claimed that smoking helped him relax. It was a habit you weren’t too fond of; you knew it was probably damaging his lungs and you could taste the ash in his kisses, but you knew something had to be bothering him for him to want to even start smoking so you never tried stopping him.

For the last month, you haven’t seen a pack of cigarettes lying around the place nor did the scent linger on his clothes so you knew there was a chance he stopped. Seeing that ugly death stick in between his fingers made your blood boil; you didn’t want anything happening to his health because of a stupid decision he‘d make whenever he was upset.

“Go back to bed baby. I’ll be there soon, I just needed a little break. I’m fine.” You’ve been with Mark long enough to know when he was lying. You didn’t have to see him; the lack of confidence in his voice and the way he tensed up against your body made it clear that something was indeed on his mind, and there was no way you’d be able to go back to sleep knowing he was overthinking.

“Talk to me Mark. Something is obviously bothering you and I want to be able to help you.” He released a long sigh before putting out the cigarette and turning to face you. His eyes were red and puffy and there were dried tears on his cheeks.

The idea of him crying made your heart hurt; he was always the strong one in your relationship. No matter how rough life would get for him, he never showed that he was having a hard time. He hated burdening other people, especially you. So all his battles, he’d keep to himself. You hated that he never confided in you the way you always seemed to with him. You wanted to be able to help him carry the burden or to help fight the war in his mind that he was battling alone.

“Why did you do it?” You immediately looked at him in confusion. What was he talking about? What did you do that could be causing him so much distress and frustration?

“Mark—“

“You gave up everything to be with me. You’re completely cut off from your parents, you gave up your job at the law firm, you had to sell your car, you left all your friends without any explanation as to why you were leaving—just for me. I can’t give you everything that I want to just yet. I can’t promise to give you a big house, a nice car—we’ve been together for years and I have every intention on marrying you y/n but I can’t afford to buy you the ring of your dreams—I’m honestly nothing. I’m a college dropout trying to become a renowned songwriter y/n. Sure, I’ve been getting quite a few amazing opportunities but it isn’t enough for us to be set for the rest of our lives nor can we really be comfortable. Like your mom said, there are many men out there who’d be able to take care of you in the ways that I can’t. All I can do is love you y/n, and fuck. I love you more than you can even fathom yourself. But you deserve so much more and sometimes love isn’t enough—“

“Do you hear yourself right now? Are you really asking me why I left my life behind to be with you? My family, I love them dearly. But you know how I feel about my parents, how they sheltered me, overprotected me, forced me in to doing things I didn’t want to. They never did care about how I felt; not once did they stop and think maybe they were working me to the bone. I was never happy Mark. Until you came in to my life and I really don’t know what I would do if I were to lose you. I’m assuming you must’ve heard what my mom said and don’t you dare listen or even think what she said was true. You are not nothing Mark. You are so talented, so hardworking, so passionate and dedicated and if anyone deserves the world baby—it’s you. I meant what I said when I told her I couldn’t give less of a shit about any materialistic things. What’s a fucking Porsche going to do for me if my husband neglects me? What’s a big house if the person that I love isn’t there to share it with me?” You brought your hand up to cup his cheek and released a sigh of relief when he leaned in to your palm.

“You and I could live in a fucking box and I wouldn’t care and you wanna know why? Because you’re there. All I need is you. I don’t care where we go, who we meet, how much money we have in our bank accounts; as long as I have you right beside me, I’m not worried about anything. I can get another car Mark, I can find another job, I can make new friends—but there is never going to be another you. So stop beating yourself up about the decisions I made in the last few months. I did it for us. I did it because I love you. I will never love anyone the way I love you. Now get it out of your head that I deserve someone better than you because a man like that doesn’t exist. And yes—your love is enough Mark. It’s all that matters to me. The way you take care of me when I’m sick, or hold me close as we watch a scary movie. The way you take a bite out of my food to make sure it isn’t too hot, although I feel like you use that as an excuse just to try my food. The way you can be so tired, yet you want to sit down and listen to me go on about my day. You love me Mark. You never fail to say it, but it means more to me because you never fail to show it either.” At this point, his tears were flowing steadily from the bird of his eyelids and you found yourself wiping them away every time new tears fell.

“A person’s job title, the amount of education they’ve received, the kind of car they drive and the house they live in; none of that matters babe. I know you probably hear this all the time, but it’s what the inside that matters. Genuinely. All the wealth, the riches, it doesn’t make you better than anyone else. Your personality, your selflessness, your golden heart, your generosity, your patience, the love you never fail to show others, that’s why I fell in love with you. Oh—and your stupidly handsome looks but that’s besides the point. I’d go wherever it is that you’ll go. Whatever you need me to do, or be in order to help you grow as an artist or just a human being in general, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you Mark Tuan. And one day, when everything works out with your career, we can rub it in my parents faces. No more tears my love. It’s just you and I; and that’s what makes me the most happy. Oh—and I don’t need a big wedding or a huge diamond ring to get me to marry you. You could get me a ring pop for all I care. I just want to be with you. We could honestly elope in one of the hotel’s chapels if that’s what you want.”

He didn’t miss a beat before bringing his hands on either side of your face and roughly connecting your lips together. His mouth was warm and wet against yours, his kisses were rough and needy. It’s as if he was putting everything he wanted to say to you in to the kiss. How grateful he was for you. How much you meant to him. How much he loved you more than his heart could genuinely handle. Mark knew he needed to continue fighting for his dream in order to prove to you that you made the right decision in choosing him. Soon, the atmosphere was filled of sexual tension and it didn’t take too long for you to feel something hard against your thigh.

“I just—I hope—fuck. Thank you baby. I could never thank you enough for everything that you’ve done and continue to do for me. You’re the most ethereal being to walk on this earth you know that. I really, really do not deserve you but I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that I’m sure happy you chose me. Don’t tempt me, I might just go down to the gift shop and get you that ring pop. I love you—so fucking much my beautiful girl. God , only you could make me hard as a rock while I’m in the middle of crying—I know it’s 3 A.M, and I promised I would take you to the Champs-Élysées later on today, but I really want to show you just how grateful I am for you. I also kinda want to solve this problem in my pants and fuck the shit out of you so let’s go baby. You might have to rent a motor chair to get around once I’m done with you.”

[thedreadvampy]

what do you mean elias bouchard fucked the pig head did i miss something

Ah um context

I'm assuming you're coming at this from a context of Magnus Archives fandom but if not and you need further explanation pls do ask

so I made a moderately popular post a few months ago about piggate, a 2015 scandal regarding Tories, the British upper class and the alleged fucking of a pig head as an entry ritual to an elite student social club which is one of the ones explicitly designed to groom people for power

Around the same time, I had also made a post saying 'Elias isn't hot he's a Tory' with a massive reblog chain of me and others constructing headcanons that were basically just "Elias Bouchard does [rich unpleasant Tory signifier]" and one of those was

'if Elias Bouchard was at Oxford in the 1980s he would have fucked the pig head'

which idk. just really tickled me. and then a bit later on I was looking at my theme like 'haven't updated this blog title since 2010. this isn't really my brand any more. what is? seems to increasingly be Talking Shit About A Podcast Character and also That Piggate Post I Made That Keeps Gaining Notes' so I performed Crimes in my blog header (also changed my theme and added Gay Butts on desktop)

so there's no in-canon context (also given that we've since had info about Original Flavor Elias: this was written about the version of Elias we've known through the podcast)

but the context of that I rather like 'fucked the pig head' as a gesture towards a certain type of moneyed, upper-class, power-hungry posho who's been raised and lived their whole life surrounded by other people who also all went to public school and then to Oxbridge and then into government, finance or academia, and whose motivation and expectation is the accumulation of the power and wealth they feel is theirs by divine right. Like a lot of the time it's shorthanded as 'Tory' but that does obfuscate the fact that it's almost everyone at the top end of establishment politics regardless of party - New Labour is full of them and Tony Blair is practically an archetypal pigfucker, so are half the Lib Dems, Nigel Farage is pure pigfuckery and there's even some scattered through the Greens- and there are a lot of Tories who are Not That but are working or middle class people who want to be that, or haven't really thought about it but have a clan affiliation, or are politically aligned with their policy positions or underlying assumptions. so I'm lobbying for the use of pigfucker as a generic descriptor tbqh.

[urslasherbaby]

May I request an imagine of the collector about to attack the s/o in her home but, she thinks he's a male stripper for her birthday her friends set up with? Humorous & nsfw-ish x3 😄

Okay, okay, okay... I don’t know who you are but you need to become a producer and start making movies 🤣🤣🤣

(also I know this took a really long time, I’m so sorry)

Rent-A-Booty - The Collector/Asa Emory x Reader and Her Birthday Surprise

In all honesty, you weren’t a big fan of birthdays. Your parents were a bit... overenthusiastic and it never really wound up the way you wanted. Fortunately, as you grew older, you got a lot more control over how many small horses showed up at your party. Unfortunately, as you grew older, you also gained friends--amazing friends--who also had their own ideas of how you should celebrate.

Which is why you are now in the middle of a conversation about how much a stripper would cost.

“Ooh! Ooh! Rent-A-Booty! I totally have enough for their Sexy Deluxe package,” one of the girls, Tori, exclaimed.

“No way, (Y/N) deserves at least the Sexy Premium package,” another friend, Charlotte, added, “Look! It even lets you touch the dancers!”

As your very good, yet very inappropriate, friends continued arguing about pricing, you couldn’t help the blush that rose to your cheeks. You weren’t the prudish type by any means, but that didn’t mean you wanted a strange man gyrating in front of your face. 

“Alright, that’s it: executive decision, no stripper,” you insisted. Both of the girls looked up from the laptop in shock. 

“(Y/N)! This would be so much fun!”

“Yeah, and the service even lets you do themes! Everything from police officer to movie characters,” Charlotte gushed. 

“Oh my god, remember in the ninth grade when you said you had a sex dream about Michael Myers? What if we could make that dream into a very sexy reality?” Tori added.

“First off, it was not a sex dream! We were just making out with some medium to heavy petting. Second off, the amount of tequila I would need to bump and grind with a stripper who looks like a serial killer in front of all of my close friends is inconceivable. No. Stripper.”

Tori and Charlotte slumped their shoulders in disappointment, but ultimately closing the laptop and dropping the matter. You nodded your head contently and everyone decided to head home to prep for the party. Luckily, Charlotte had kicked out her sorority sisters for the night so you had the house to yourselves. Tori had already set up snacks and booze beforehand, so by the time you met up with them, the party was practically in full swing.

Friends from class, people from work, and even a few past roommates all came to wish you a happy birthday. It was a little daunting at first, but having Tori and Charlotte by your side all night definitely helped. Before long, the mood changed from full-blown rager complete to the much more intimate get together you wanted complete with your favorite tequila.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Charlotte began, handing out the fifth round of shots, “Last round before we sing happy birthday, let’s go!”

“No, no, no! You know I hate that dumb song,” you whine.

“Exactly why we saved it for last! One, two, three!”

Hearing a drunken version of a song you already hated would’ve sounded like torture to sober ears, but it filled your heart with nothing but glee. Swaying your head to the beat of the song, you noticed something moving outside the window in front of you. The more you focused, you recognized a white truck posted just across the street. You couldn’t quite tell but the logo on the side had very familiar colors...

Rent-A-Booty.

“Hey, guys... do you have something to tell me?” Tori and Charlotte both looked at each other with wide eyes. Between the whispers and accusatory smacks against the arms, you definitely figured something was up.

“Alright, we may have gotten a small surprise for you. Don’t be mad, we just couldn’t help ourselves!” Tori defended. 

“Just wait here, we’ll go grab it for you,” Charlotte finished, grabbing Tori and stumbling out the front door giggling like little kids. You rolled your eyes and took another swig of the tequila they left. You figured you’d need it for what was about to go down.

Suddenly, as if on cue, you heard heavy footsteps that didn’t sound like either of your friends from down the hall. You smirked and slowly picked yourself up to claim your “surprise”.

Quietly rounding the corner, you got a peek at the guy the girls picked out. It looks like they kept their promise of hiring a true lady killer. He was dressed head to toe in black with a strange black mask covering his face. Funny, you imagined it would be a bit more gimmicky, but the doubt quickly left your mind as you noticed the rest of him. He was certainly big. It looked like he could toss you around the room and you were very curious how those nitrile gloves would feel on your skin. Before you knew it, the prospect of getting down and dirty with a stripper was a lot more appealing. The very idea had your core aching.

So you decided to shoot your shot. Why not? The half a bottle of tequila you drank was already making your skin hot.

“So,” you announced, clearly shocking the man who spun around to face you, “is this the part where I’m supposed to cower in fear and beg for my life?” The stripper cocked his head silently but didn’t approach you.

“Or would you like it more if I ran and hid while you tried to find me?” you pressed further. He still didn’t make a move, but you could tell his breathing was getting heavier. You were definitely having an effect on him. That’s when you noticed he had pulled something out from his side: a small knife. Going method, huh? You took a few steps closer and leaned up to his ear.

“Interesting... planning on cutting me up a bit while you have your fun,” you whispered teasingly, causing a low growl to leave the man’s throat. You couldn’t help but utter a similarly wanton moan. 

That’s when he pushed you up against the wall and held you there with a knife to your throat. You couldn’t help but reminisce about your dream and it made you all the wetter.

“Oh god... please tell me they paid for the Sexy Premium package,” you said to yourself. The man only squinted his eyes in confusion before pressing the knife further into your neck. It was sharper than you expected but somehow that made it better.

“Fuck if I care,” you sighed and pulled him closer until your lips met in a heated kiss. The stranger was hesitant at first but quickly took control with a level of ferocity that made you whimper. He bit on your bottom lip hard, making you gasp and allowing his tongue inside. Meanwhile, his free hand was already under your shirt and playing with your nipples. 

“Fuck, please... touch me,” you begged. The man seemed enthusiastic to oblige and spun you around so your chest was pressed against the wall. You could feel the knife pressed into your back, but your only concern was his hand reaching around and unbuttoning your shorts.

Just as he managed to get them undone, you heard a knock at the door that distracted you for a moment. You immediately elected to ignore it and waited eagerly for your Sexy Premium package. You realized, however, that the small prick you felt earlier was gone, and once you turned around, you saw the stripper was too.

“Goddamn it.”

You went back up front and ripped open the door to find Charlotte and Tori covered in clearly fake blood with a phony scared look on their faces.

“Oh god, (Y/N)! You have to help us! There’s a maniac after us!” Charlotte screamed. Wait a second...

“And he wants you too!” Tori finished. The two girls moved out of the way and revealed a shirtless man with a six-pack and a plastic machete wearing a clown mask. Tori then pulled out her phone and started playing a raunchy club mix. Clownface didn’t waste time to start dancing and gyrating while the girls waited for your reaction.

All you could was smile and nod along while panicking about whoever the hell you were seconds from fucking in the middle of the hall... and when you would get to see him again.

Luckily for you, Asa was watching you all from his truck across the street and was planning on finishing what you two started the moment he got you alone.

[anarchist-soupkitchen]

ooop its a really long essay

A brief list of why the Tories is pretty rubbish

 Before we start, I have a few things to say. As this is intended for UK audiences it might be a little difficult for people outside of the UK to understand the wording of certain topics, I will include somethings that need more explanation up here but if I do not include it here, please feel free to ask down in the comments.

Tory: someone who is a part of the conservative right

Anglicanism: the English church’s version of Christianity

This essay is a PERSUASIVE ESSAY this means its BIASED I hope you could tell from the title. This essay is from the view of someone who is white I am not trying to speak over people of colour on issue like race and I encourage you to look at non-white creators within the UK to get views on this matter.

I am pretty armature when it comes to my writing so do not expect something ground-breaking. And with that out of the way, let us begin.

1.       The tory party we know today was founded in 1834, you would think that would be plenty of time for its members to grow and shape the party into the best organization it can be. But with the tory party still stuck on the same ideas that Anglicanism is the only true religion, and that queer people should not have rights you would think that the party is straight out of the early 20th century, or still stuck on the same ideas the party was founded upon. It does not matter what side you are on and how your choice to view the tory party, people can agree on the prominent figures inside the tory party from old to recent. An example of a prominent tory of old was Winston Churchill a well know racist who also, coincidentally got us through WW2 when he was appointed by Chamberlin. He fostered such views that white people should govern over the “primitive” black and indigenous people of Africa and that Indian people “bred like rabbits”. To anyone who knows their UK history, 1983 was a very eventually year for politics and the UK as a whole. You now have to wear seatbelts in the front seats of cars, the dismembered victims of serial killer Dennis Nielsen are found in his London flat, unemployment was on a record heigh since the 1930’s and a general election found that Margaret Thacher was to be the next prime minister after a landslide win in the polls. Over the course of her 11-year reign of terror she periodised free-market capitalism and privatised public sectors including transport, railways and mines. Then because she did not like the Scottish government, she through a hissy fit and closed all mines in Scotland. Just like that she fucked up the economy, where in the big mining areas of the past are still experiencing the aftershocks today. I remember my granny telling me how she made up food packages for the miners around town and how it was so devastating to the town’s economy. Everyone was unemployed and starving, even my grandad. These examples really show that the Tories will support people who are the worst in British society if they have the parties’ interests at heart. You would think the tory party cannot get any worse but with modern polices such as pledging to get 50,000 nurses for the NHS while only giving them a 1% pay rise, which is only £7.78 for a low band nurse, by 2023. Or being “tough on crime” even though 96.4 crime were recorded by every 1000 people in 2019. You can see how tough they are about carrying out their polices. Let me tell you my favourite of the lot, Boris Johnston, our current PM, wants to limit immigration by 100,000 people. They want to only let in “the brightest and the best,” what a load of shite. Our immigrants are the backbone of our society doing everything people like the Tories would not even dream of doing. Imagen seeing Boris working in a McDonalds or in your local call centre. That fucker probably has not worked a day in his life. According to the migration observatory, migrants make up 50% of the low pay workforce. Either way you look at it, its abysmal. The government should do more for these people that letting them rot in a McDonalds or in a low paying job. If you have taken time to be a model citizen, train and get your qualifications, possibly learn a new langue to mover over to a shitty wet rock I do not see any problem with the government providing necessities to get you started in your new life. We have got the money.

2.       Can I ask you, what side do you think Boris Johnson is on? I will let you think for a moment. The Working class makes up more than half of our population according to the BBC’s class calculator. They say that a government is reflective of the people’s views and I think that is bullshit. Out of the working-class eligible to vote, who do vote, only three in ten vote conservatives. Do you want to know why people in the working class do not vote tory? Because under tory leadership since 2010, 6000,000 more children and their families were forced into poverty. The need for foodbanks skyrocketed 12.3% in the last five years and that is no even accounting for the pandemic. It is clear by now; I have given you enough time to think. “we know whose side Boris Johnson is on- the billionaires, the bankers and the big business.”- labour shadow chancellor, John McDonell. We know the conservatives are very busy committing acts of voter suppression and giving money to their friends instead of caring about you. They are buzzy introducing laws that make it mandatory to have voter ID in order to vote. If you do not make it free people will stop coming. The electoral commissions think 3.5 million voters just will not come back. this is all a part of, “takle[ing] every aspect of electoral fraud”- tory manifesto. It is well known that many rich people have been investing in the party for quite a while. Here is just a few: Anthony Bamford head of machinery in JCB, he gave £12.1 million since 2005. Charles Cayzer owns a shipping tycoon, he gave £480,00. Did you also know, Boris is known to be very generous when it comes to giving back. You’ve probably herd in the news about the conservatives handing out £3mil in contracts to tory owned covid PPE companies over the course of the pandemic. Some of that went to a MP, Nadim Zahawi who is a shareholder in SThree. SThree was given £1mil in contracts over the course of the pandemic. With all the evidence I have given above you’d think the government its rolling in it, I suspect they are but I doesn’t look like it from the outside. They have cut funding to courses drastically, as well as benefit schemes. Like cutting access for eighteen- to twenty-year-olds to the housing benefits. Yet with all the money they been cutting away from services and councils who desperately need it they still have enough money to cough up a commission for a royal yacht named after the duke of Edinburgh, costing over £200 million. Seems sweet does it, name a yacht after the ghoul of Edinburgh, right? You probably know the just of it now, your wrong. Not only is the yacht being paid for by taxpayers, but they are also naming it in honour after a racist. Or how the BBC would phrase his words as “memorable one-liners”. Here is a selection I find quite fitting: “The Philippines must be half empty if you’re all here running the NHS”- while meeting with a Filipino nurse. “If you stay here much longer, you’ll be all slitty-eyed”- he said to a group of British students while on a royal visit to China. My favourite must be “It looks like it was put in by an Indian.”- referring to and old-fashioned fuse box in Edinburgh. He is supposed to be the duke of the bloody place! I really like how one article what I read put it “[Prince Philip] screams out loud what other racists like him have learned how to conceal and camouflage in what they think and project as civilised demeanour.”- Hamid Dabashi.

3.       What I find absolutely astounding, is the Tories inability to show compassion to the people who have nothing. If you did not know the vagrancy act among other things crimeless the homeless and rough sleepers, which is by far a very bad mixture with the recent homelessness statistics, homelessness has risen 28% since labour was last in office and if the Tories continue down the path they are now, it is only going to keep rising. What you would find is most shocking is that there’s solutions for the homeless crisis right in front of us, what the Tories must to not be able to see. Layla Moran of the liberal democrats thinks they “must take a more compassionate and holistic approach, starting by scrapping the vagrancy act”. I think that would be a step forward and away from the old ways of prosecuting people for not being as fortunate as the rest of us, but there is something even more simple than that. Repossessing the 200,000 buildings that have been vacant in the UK for more than six months. Not only would that put a sizeable dent in the houses we need, but it also saves space. The UK is small collection of islands and I do not think the Tories can see that. We do not have the land available to just start building everywhere while leaving all those homes empty and unfilled. Its not a way to solve the housing crisis and its certainly not a way to save the money we supposedly need. Even the homes the Tories are building are left dormant because they are too expensive for the area, they are located in. With the way things are going the Tories will have to build more houses than they ever built before, because by 2041 homelessness is expected to doble. That is 400,000 more households if things do not change -a study by heriot-wat university. The evidence suggests that whatever the Tories are doing to end homelessness it is not working. Everything is not as bleak as I just told you though, the conservative has ended homelessness before. In the hight of the pandemic the conservatives got 90% of all rough sleepers off the streets and put them in hotels or hostels. This helped people apply for benefits, find jobs and get some more permanent assistance. People was helped during the pandemic, but when the funding ran out last July, homeless and the rough sleepers in the hotels and hostels where back out in the streets again. Alone and forgotten by the government that promised to end the very crisis they are apart of years ago. Theis shows that the Tories have the money to help the unfortune but they would rather sit on their arses chatting about what colour they should paint the walls of their house. More recently the Torie introduced a law what will fine people for sleeping in doorways. It really shows what the Tories care about, getting linings for their pockets. The Tories have the money to stop homelessness and when it was a danger to them, they stopped the issue what has been so recuing in our politics for decades. They helped the people who so desperately needed it only to chuck them back into the cold when covid-19 was no longer a danger to them.

4.       The conservatives fail to keep minorities safe in the society that they created. It is not surprise that the Tories are the most incompetent as ever. A study by BBC radio 5 found that hate crimes have doubled since 2013. An optimist would assume that is great, that there must mean that people have been reporting it more, right? Partly so. Although we have seen a rise in reports of hate crimes, the rate of prosecution has dropped down from 20% to just 8%. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, in a survey of faith-based organizations; the home office found that seven in ten of the employees surveyed has never reported a hate crime to the police where one happened. For a country where we are supposed to be the most tolerable it is no surprise that a big portion of the hate crimes committed are ones where the religion the victim followed played a big part. Our population, like many others, is influenced by our politicians. After Boris described Muslim women in burkas as “letterboxes” in an interview; citizen UK found that there where a surge in hate crime directed to Muslim women where the word “letterbox” was used. Again, continuing with the theme of hate crime against religions, Muslims made up half of the statistics in 2018 – 2019. The biggest spike we have seen in the last few years has been to Jewish people, where hate crimes against them have more since doubled. It is not a surprise since people seem to relate being a ‘good’ Jew to being a Zionist. Other minorities like trans youth under sixteen in England and whales now must go through everything that goes with puberty on top of not wanting to have the body you cuntly have all because TERF’s and conservatives do not think puberty blockers should be available to them.  At this point I genuinely think they want trans kids dead, how could you not see that the benefits of puberty blockers far out way the potential consequences. If puberty blockers really where the target they would have taken them of the shelfs completely, but they did not do that did they? They just restricted the rights of an already marginalised group more. Its not just trans kids but the fight for a third gender to finally get recognised is still waging on despite it being a battle since 2018. The government petition has been signed 136,000 times demanding non-binary finally be recognised as a valid gender in the eyes of the law. I hope I can get recognised as well as everyone else. It may not seem a big deal to some of you reading this but it is to thousands. Especially the people who want to go on hormones and medically transition. Because right now I and many other people are restricted and not allowed to get that service. If you are in the UK and you are of age, I urge you to signs the government petition. In other news the conservatives are just now getting to outlawing conversion therapy three years after they announced they would do so. It just shows how the party is not on target. On the topic of not on target let us talk about the increasing number of racial minorities becoming homeless because of lack of funding to their communities. Since the conservatives got into power in the 2010 racial minorities now make up 40% of all homeless despite being only 15% of the current population. It really shows how much they care about anyone who is not white. Yet people like my gran will continue to say they are doing enough for these underfunded communities.

the tory party really has nothing going for them, they are certainly not for the working class, they cannot solve homelessness and they do not give two fucks about minorities. To think anyone would vote form them is just amazing. Its fucking stupid to believe that they are anything but a bunch of rich shites dawdling around and thinking up ways to get more money into their pockets. To end this really all over the place essay, if you vote tory you are a massive twat.

Sources in comments:

[thejudgingtrash]

Virgin Percy and chad Annabeth omg

Here you go, love! :D Also kids feel free to stay away. It’s sfw/nothing explicit is going on, everyone is an adult but obviously there are small references about sex.

Let me swing that cliched trope, anon! :D also thank you again Torie @percyheartsannabeth ^^

Red Solo Cup (WC: 2.4k)

It didn’t come as a surprise to Percy that Annabeth rushed past him into his apartment and threw herself onto the sofa. She basically was at home at the Jackson’s and a more than welcome guest. “What happened?” Percy asked.

“Broke off with Ethan,” the blonde shrugged and grabbed his cherry coke. Another boyfriend that the college freshman dumped, another nonchalant reaction from his 19-year-old friend. Percy had learned early on not to ask Annabeth why her relationships didn’t work out. His best friend would rage into a monologue for hours and talk about every little detail. Every single one.

From the small size of a penis, to the number of warts her ex’s grandma had. Every detail. Percy had been burned more than once before.

“Well another one bites the dust,” the young woman said and turned her favorite show on. Percy had to admit. He was jealous. Whereas Annabeth was living her fullest and free as a bird with relationships and flings, he didn’t. Instead of hanging out with new friends, he stayed in and babysat his sister. His interactions were mostly limited to group chats. The Dominican rarely got out. Percy didn’t know whether it was social anxiety speaking or just an extreme case of introversion.

He looked okay, passable. According to some of Annabeth’s girlfriends he was cute and looked exotic, although he didn’t like that word. Having light eyes and a deep complexion shouldn’t count as looking exotic. Percy wasn’t built like his cousin Charles Beckendorf and he also didn’t have the charm of Annabeth’s ex Luke Castellan. Or the coolness of Annabeth’s latest fallen boyfriend Ethan Nakamura. But he was passable. More than fine. Not a huge slob, a great listener, an amazing cook and a great friend. So how come he never had a real relationship. How come that he never had been kissed, that he still remained a virgin to that day? Was his quietness that off putting? Percy just hoped that he wouldn’t join the crazy ranks of 40-year-old incels spewing their bullshit online and potentially harming people. He just wanted to find his soulmate he could cover in his baking goods.

“What’s going on?” asked Annabeth who was confused at his silence. Percy was usually way more talkative and would fight for the remote control because he hated watching her dramas.

“I don’t know. I’d really like to meet someone to talk to,” he confessed and didn’t dare to look her in the eyes.

“Huh? What do you mean? We’re talking right now.” She took another sip from his drink.

Percy rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. I’d like to have a relationship. Explore crushes and love and all of that.”

Annabeth was surprised. She didn’t know that being single annoyed him that much. “Oh please. Relationships are overrated. Trust me.”

“It’s not just that. I haven’t got any experience.” Percy was a terrible flirter. Sweaty palms, accelerated heartbeat, and stuttering. Middle school and high school had been hell. “I haven’t even kissed someone and I’m nearly twenty!”

“So what? You’re making a deal out of this. It’s so weird and just not like you. That literally doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of life. Don’t force it. When you’re ready, you’re ready.” His friend shrugged. “Also, if I remember correctly, we have kissed before.”

A sloppy wet kiss that Percy buried deep into the darkest pits of his mind.

“Come on, Annabeth.” Percy rolled his eyes. He almost would have been offended if he hadn’t been so tired. “That was in ninth grade and part of truth or dare.”

Annabeth crossed her arms. “I still think that counts!” she disagreed.

Percy just sunk into the sofa and sighed. “Alright. How many people have I kissed that haven’t been you?”

Annabeth remained quiet. Percy had a point. He really didn’t go out to meet new people. Meet new friends or acquaintances. Meet someone who he could see as a date. The blonde felt uneasy and licked her lips. Her gaze rested on the young man next to her who had a sour expression on her face and continued watching Grey’s Anatomy against his wishes.

“Okay, Mr. I’d like a relationship. There’s a party next week at Reyna’s,” Annabeth started and caught his attention.

“You want to have some experiences? That’ll be the place to be and see what you’ve got. You’re in?”

Percy had to admit. He felt uneasy and nervous. But then he sealed his fate and nodded.

“Okay, let’s go to bed, I’m tired.” Annabeth and he sleeping in the same bed was a habit they had ever since they were nine and it never stopped.

The week passed. Seminars and classes had been attended and assignments were half way done. Friday evening was the time where everyone was finally letting loose. Percy was getting ready in his room.

Annabeth’s advice was a text she had sent an hour earlier which only said don’t show up naked, wear something comfortable. Not particularly helpful. He settled for a white dress shirt and dark jeans. Perhaps too much, perhaps too little. He wasn’t a party person so he wouldn’t know. It wasn’t much until he saw Annabeth in front of Reyna’s house where people were already drinking and laughing in front of it. She was speaking to a little group of people and seemingly cracked a joke as they began to laugh.

“Percy!” She waved him over. She looked good in her jeans and the dark crop top. Lose golden curls that rested on her shoulders. The group dissolved and entered the house.

Annabeth examined him. “You look good,” she smiled.

“Likewise.”

Annabeth’s mouth was agape. Then she laughed. “You really need a lesson in flirting. Let me be your teacher.” He’d rather not. Annabeth in hunting mode was something you only wanted to witness once.

As soon as they stepped into the house, they were greeted by clouds of weed, sweat and cheap alcohol. A brunette shadow walked up to them.

“Perseus! You made it!” Reyna hugged him and he stiffly hugged her back. Yes, he was that bad with people. Even people he had known for years.

“Hi Reyna,” he laughed. Reyna raised an eyebrow and looked at Annabeth. The native Puerto Rican thought that Percy would bounce like he always did.

“Reyna!” Thalia, Reyna’s girlfriend called for her.

“Okay, see you guys around.” Reyna excused herself.

Annabeth turned to Percy. “Alright. Let’s scout and watch out for some prey for you.”

“You’re making it sound like you’re Bear Grylls ready to fight for some survival shit.” Percy was weirded out. Party Annabeth was scary.

Annabeth laughed and slapped his shoulder. “That’s basically the spirit.”

He followed her into the living room which was full of drunkards shouting and grinding over the worst DJ Khaled remix that he has ever heard. Before Annabeth could talk about the plans she had in her mind for Percy, the fates had other intentions for them.

“Oh hey! Annabeth, right?” Some blond schmuck approached them. He looked like a trust fund baby that has never heard the word no in his life before.

“Octavian! Oh my god, it’s been a while!” They hugged and Percy felt incredibly awkward. Being the third wheel was not fun.

“Who’s that?” Octavian eyes the tall young man behind her.

“Oh, that’s just Percy, don’t mind him.” Ouch. That hurt.

“I’m going to get myself something to drink. You two have fun,” Percy decided. Annabeth waved and promptly forgot about him.

Percy fought his way to the kitchen. He had forgotten how rude drunk and high people could be, especially when they loved to block paths. As he entered the kitchen, he ran into someone. A young woman with auburn hair and a frown on her face.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, are you okay?” He asked and helped her stand up right.

“Oh yeah. I’m just tired of this place. Why did I agree to come to this party?” she sighed and was glad that the cute stranger wasn’t part of the annoying drunk crowd.

“I feel you. I hate this,” he sighed. They both shared a smile and a laugh.

“Why did we agree to this?” she giggled.

“I guess we like to torture ourselves,” Percy chuckled. She was nice. Found an instant liking to her. “Percy,” he introduced himself.

“Call me Calypso,” she smiled. An instant connection had been made.

“Want to drink something? Non-alcoholic that is?” Percy proposed and hoped that his voice didn’t crack.

“Gladly,” she left and took his hand.

It dawned Annabeth slowly. She had forgotten something. Didn’t she come to this party with an intention? Not just drinking and dancing. But something else. The college student had been talking to Octavian, danced with him, talked a bit with his friends and now they were alone again. It was abundantly clear that he was interested in a short fling.

“Oh fuck,” she remembered what she had forgotten. Or more who she had forgotten. Percy. Where was he?

“Huh?” Octavian asked.

“I’ve got to check in on a friend, don’t move, I’ll be right back,” the blonde smiled and winked.

“Oh, alright.” Octavian said. He was trapped in Annabeth’s web. Just the way she liked it.

Annabeth looked out for Percy. She had seen her friends Piper, Clarisse, Hazel and Reyna again but none of them had seen him. Annabeth checked her phone. Apart from Instagram stories that had been shared frantically, no new messages. Percy was the type to text her immediately should he leave. Hell, he would have told her in person.

She reentered the living room with a frown on her face. Her gray eyes scanned the area and actually found his messy black haircut on the dancefloor fairly easy. Percy and dancing. A smile slipped onto Annabeth’s face. Then it dropped. Percy wasn’t working it in the middle of the room alone. He had his hands around the waist of a curvy small brunette. Percy had gotten his wish. The entire purpose of this operation was to meet someone new. And the way he threw his head back to laugh proved that he fairly enjoyed himself.

Annabeth felt a thing and that one thing only: boiling rage. Her feet acted immediately. She marched to the dancefloor and pushed everyone aside that had been in her way until she got to Percy and the mysterious girl at his side.

“Percy! There you are!” Annabeth said and threw herself onto him in a hug and broke his embrace with the stranger. Then she grabbed him and pulled him out of the crowd. Confused, the mystery girl followed them.

Percy was perplexed and looked down at Annabeth, who was behaving very oddly. That was not the usual chill Annabeth he knew. Percy looked to Calypso and saw the hurt in her eyes. Oh no, she must think we’re together, he thought.

“Uh, Calypso this is Annabeth, a friend of mine,” Percy explained and saw how the brunette visibly relaxed.

“Best friend you meant to say,” Annabeth corrected and stole his red solo cup. She had to admit that being reduced to a friend hurt her way too much. Her smile cracked at the taste of soda instead of a delicious liquor. She had forgotten that Percy was a non-drinker in the heat of the moment. She needed something that would wash her annoyance away. Annabeth shook hands with that Calypso girl.

“Calypso, like the dance?” she asked with a slightly condescending tone.

“Uh yeah, exactly. Like the dance.” Calypso said and raised an eyebrow as Annabeth got a hold of Percy’s arm.

Percy looked back to Annabeth and gently tried to pry her off. Her grip only tightened, and her fingernails dug into his skin.

“And what is this supposed to be?” Calypso asked and pointed at Annabeth who claimed Percy’s complete right side. She sounded annoyed.

“Nothing,” Annabeth innocently smiled. The cold harsh look in her eyes said something else.

“Um, Annabeth, weren’t you talking with that Octavian guy? Or what was his name?” Percy’s discomfort was clear, and Annabeth ignored the hint.

“Oh yes, but I’d rather spend my time with you!” she grinned and didn’t let go of him.

“Sorry girlie but it’s clear that you’re ruining our moment.” Calypso’s hand waved between her and Percy.

“What moment? Am I not allowed to hang out with my best friend?” The irritation in Annabeth’s voice rose. Percy and Calypso looked at her in shock.

“If he’s your best friend, then I’m pretty sure that you’ll see enough of him? Just leave.” Calypso rolled her eyes.

“What if I don’t want to?” Annabeth innocently pouted and tilted her head. “Percy’s always there for me which is what I want right now. Sorry Calypso. We’re having a moment right now.”

Calypso’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Annabeth enjoyed seeing her frustration rise up.

“Alright, listen Annabeth normally I wouldn’t say this but you-” Calypso’s eyes widened. Annabeth had turned Percy’s head to herself and pressed a kiss onto his lips.

Percy’s eyes widened before they automatically shut down. Annabeth was an excellent kisser and her soft lips felt like a dream. Percy had to admit that he enjoyed the kiss. He enjoyed it way too much. Then he broke it off. Shock was written on his face and his eyes wandered from the all too pleased Annabeth to a speechless and hurt Calypso.

“I can’t believe it.” Calypso shook her head, turned around and left.

Annabeth smiled a victorious grin. Then she looked up to Percy and saw him for the first time. Not as a friend, but as a handsome guy that she happened to know all too well. His sea green eyes scanned her face and his lips were slightly parted.

“Annabeth, what in the fuck was that-” Annabeth cut him off with yet another kiss that she deepened. This time Percy didn’t break the kiss off. He held her tight and touched her warm back. He felt her grinning between the kisses.

“Come with me.” Annabeth said. She didn’t give him a choice. She took his hand and dragged him out of the building. Party be damned, they could celebrate at home amongst other activities. Alone.

“What are you doing? Where are we going?” Percy asked.

“Oh,” she said and turned around to look him in the eyes. “I’m just making sure that no one else is bothering you.”

The End

Tbh, I don’t mind me some hot girl Annabeth... Thanks again for the suggestion, anon!

All Cookout Fics

Cute/Cursed Cookout Writing Prompts

[hilllsnholland]

White Party

Rich!Tom x Reader 

Wc: 3k 

Warnings: smut, oral (f receiving), drinking, and swearing 

Summary: The party might look innocent, but your intentions are as naughty as they come 

Thick, hot late-summer air created a dreamy haze around the White Party. The richest of rich, the most affluent people in the world gathered at the Holland’s summer house for the last bash of the season. Fall would soon arrive and the aristocrats wanted one more excuse to drink expensive wine and complain about mundane problems. 

You were dressed in a short white dress with small crystals covering the bodice. Your lips were sporting the perfect shade of red lipstick, one of Tom’s favorite colors on you. A beautiful silver chain hung from your neck, a ring with your initials engraved into it. A gift from Tom, who was now no where to be seen. It would be the first outing as a couple for the two of you but he was so busy schmoozing he’d completely forgot about you. So now you were stuck talking to Holly and April about tory nonsense. 

“Wouldn’t it be nice to go on holiday in Belize?” Holly asks you with wine coming to her lips. “They got loads of beaches and those tropical huts with the hammocks! It’s an Instagram dream!” 

“Uh-huh…yeah. Great…weather,” You look around for your boyfriend but he’s hidden amongst the white-clad guests. Holly frowns at you.

“You can’t expect him to be at your side you know,” April narrows her eyes at you. “He has a party to host. You’re a big girl,” 

April was trying to be helpful but it came out in a condescending manner. You ignored her though, placing your glass on the table and leaving them. Tom had an obligation yes, but you wanted some attention too. You could be by his side, making the diplomats laugh with your witty humor. But no, you were on the sidelines talking about designer shoes and holidays trips. It was mind-numbing when you wanted to be a part of the action. 

That’s all you wanted, to be included in on the fun. There was deep conversations to be had, but your friends were not the brightest in the bunch after having one too many Bellinis. Which is why you wanted to show your brains, and beauty, off with Tom. The two of you would be the dynamic couple of the socialite scene. Not like it mattered, but it would make you happy knowing that everyone adored the coupling. 

You cross the party, looking everywhere to find Tom. You catch glimpses of his parents and brothers, but none of them have your boyfriend in your grasp. Harrison is standing in the doorway of the summer house, fanning himself off with a napkin, a white suit making his eyes glimmer. 

“Hey,” He says to you in a small voice. “It’s fucking blazing and Tom insisted I wear this,” 

Harrison points to his ensemble, which to be fair was really thick. You think back to Tom, wearing white slacks that were fitted to his body and tight in the right places. His sports jacket was left open and he looked so delicious. Maybe that was bothering you the most, how much you needed him. 

This morning you were practically begging for him to touch you. Although he was busy making last-minute decisions for the party. His parents put him in charge of it this year, a right of passage for the oldest boy. Tom was hands-on for months, but was a stress case all summer. This only deepened your desire to make him feel good. To know you were easing his tension, making him feel good. But also how he could relax you with his expertise. How you longed for his skillful hands and tongue to make you cum, over and over again. 

“Are you looking for him?” Haz asks. 

“Yeah, I can’t find him anywhere,” You shrug, your cheeks turning a pink as those naughty thoughts filled your mind. 

“I was talking to him earlier, he said he was going to go check on the food or something,” 

You nod, walking into the house with Harrison right behind you. He’s muttering about the heat again, shrugging his coat off and exposing the clean white shirt underneath. It reminded you of the plain t-shirt Tom wore on one of your first date. 

Tom had taken you on a picnic in the gardens, wearing that t-shirt with plain jeans. It was simple, so out of character for him. You had felt overdressed, wearing a designer dress that your father bought you from fashion week. Although you were embarrassed, Tom assured you that you looked beautiful, then kissed you. He tasted like raspberries and white wine. 

You snapped back to reality as you walked into the kitchen, staff were running around frantically trying to get all the food and alcohol on time. There was no Tom though. He’d usually be talking to the head chef, trying out the food and complimenting him on his hard work. Charlie, one of the busboys stops in front of you, slicking his hair back and greeting you. 

“Hi Y/N! Looking for Tom? You just missed him,” He points towards the side door. “He said he was going to his room for a bit to freshen up if you want to catch him,” 

“Oh that’s perfect Charlie, thank you,” You smile back at him and turn to Haz. “Coming with?”

“Nah, I’m gonna head back out with some ice.” 

You respond with a bare ‘hm’ and a nod before walking out the side door. This led to the second set of stairs that went up to the upper floors. It came in handy when you needed a midnight snack and didn’t want to walk through the crazy corridors and hallways. You trot up the stairs, wishing you didn’t wear such clunky shoes to the event and wobbled towards Tom’s door. You don’t knock, pushing the door open and scanning the room for Tom. 

“Babe?” You call and close the door behind you. 

He’s not laying in his misshaped bed or standing in the walk-in closet so you wander to the en-suit bathroom, which is adorned with blue accents and your very shirtless boyfriend. His shirt is laying on the bathroom counter, wrinkled by the half-hazard throw. Tom stares at you, a smirk appearing on his face while you stare at him in all his glory. 

“Costume change?” You quip as you pick up the shirt from the counter. 

“Small one. I thought the shirt looked too baggy so I’ve been trying to decide on a new one,” 

Tom gestures to the seven white shirts hanging up on a rack, all looking identical but with slight differences. You couldn’t help him though, your mind was concentrated on his chiseled chest and tan skin that tempted you. Tom watches your glazed eyes wander his body, his ego-boosting with the lick of your lips. He turns, flexing his muscles just for you and you swear it’s gotten a hundred degrees hotter in the room. 

“What’s on your mind?” Tom pulls a shirt from the rack and eyes it casually. 

You pause, strutting towards him and tracing his back with your acrylic nails. He holds back a shiver, he loved the way your nails tickled his back. It was comforting, but also arousing in the right sense. 

“Did you know,” You blow hot air across his ear. “That the White Party tradition has racist roots?” 

Tom snorts. It’s not a laughing manner but because of the way you are he can’t help but laugh. 

“Like all upper-class things, it dips its toe into the waters of oppression and systematic injustices,” 

You smile, kissing the back of his neck playfully. Tom’s hairs stand up straight as he leans back into your hot touch. 

“Does social justice talk get you riled up love?” He turns to meet your lustful eye with a glow of confidence. 

“Only if it’s with you,” 

Tom’s hands cross your waist, pulling you tighter against his body. You can smell the peach champagne on his breath as he moves his lips towards your neck. He’s moving slowly. Agonizingly slow that you want to push him against the counter and take him now. 

“What’s really going on?” He nips at your neck. “Not enjoying the party?” 

Tom’s voice is smooth as it rolls over your prickled skin. He knows exactly how to play you, his fingers crawling over the thin fabric of the dress and playing with the outline of your undergarments. He knows what’s underneath. A skinned colored set that he got for you a few weeks back. The one that perked your breasts up and hugged your hips perfectly. The thought made him almost salivate on the spot. 

“Not really, I’d rather have you by my side than those girls,” You pout as he moves away from you. “And I’ve been horny all day so,” 

You drag him back, pulling him against you roughly. His coy smile strengthens the heat building inside of you. It’s no longer a want, it’s a need for him to be inside of you. His touch was your only salvation. 

“Well if that’s so,” Tom teases. 

He extends two fingers towards your lips, brushing them across for permission to continue. You lick his long fingers, meeting his eye as you simulate what you’ve done plenty of times before on his hand. Tom loved it, the innocence in your eyes that drove him mad or maybe the way he knew how it felt but loved the way it looked more. You create a pop with your mouth as you pull them away, cocking a brow. 

“Get over here,” 

Tom’s voice was rushed as he lifted you into his arms, lips smacking against yours in a hungry rage. His teeth skimmed across your bottom lip while his hands rushed to pull the white dress from your body. You were just as hasty, shuffling the belt off of his trousers and throwing them to the floor. It took mere seconds for the two of you to be in your underwear, but it felt like decades had passed since the last time you were intimate like this. This kind of hunger was new and it needed to be filled. 

Tom places you on the cold countertop while he scavenged your chest for skin to make marks on. You lean back onto the mirror, admiring your gorgeous boyfriend attending to your every need. He knew where to kiss, touch, and suck to make your sense go wild. It was tunnel vision with only his heavy breathes and the heat between your legs in the center of your thoughts. Suddenly, your panties are thrown to the floor, the flesh lace slightly ripped from the looks of it. Oh well, he’d buy you a new one anyway. 

“Can I get a taste?” His voice is muffled against your stomach as he kneeled down. 

“Y-yes please,” 

Tom slips between your legs that were vibrating with excitement. You have never been under such a deep spell over him since the first time you were intimate. It was a moonlight dinner on his yacht. The breeze was cold so you were cuddled against him for warmth, his mouth giving hot kisses to your exposed skin. It was a misty memory of skin against skin, moans, and hushed ‘I love you’s. You would never forget that feeling of the first time being in his embraced. 

Your eyes draw back while a breathy moan escapes your parted lips. Tom dances his tongue along your slit, teasing slowly with his middle finger on your clit. You arch against the mirror so your wet entrance brushes across his lips. Tom kisses it, wide mouth while skimming across the folds. It’s a fucking dream, it has to be. Only this much euphoria can be formed in an imagination. You curse out, panting as his rubs your clit a little harder, your insides bubbling and tightening. Tom continues his feast while raising a finger up to your lips to remind you to be quiet. The house is filled with staff and guests that would love to find a scene like this to gossip about. 

It’s almost impossible though, you’re at the edge of exploding. His loud smacks and moans of satisfaction are enough to make you dizzy. You buck towards him, yelping as a sign of what’s to come. Literally. Tom takes long licks of your heat, dragging out every last bit of pleasure he can. You’re a mess of heavy breathes, eyes rolling back as your muscles pulse and release onto Tom’s tongue. He chuckles, sitting up from your heat and grabbing a towel to wipe his face off. 

“Where do you want me?” He asks breathlessly. 

“In me,” Your voice struggles to make it out without a whine. 

Tom picks you up again, taking you to his half-made bed and laying you across the pristine white sheets. His hand caresses your cheek, thumb drawing around your red lips in satisfaction. You see his smile only for a moment when he flips you on your stomach, taking a hold of your knees and throwing your back so your tiled up into the air. 

“New position,” Tom murmurs. 

His hands rest on your ass while you feel his tip ease into you. Glittery spots appear in front of your eyes as he bottoms out, your mouth dry from being hung open too long. Tom takes his time to feel every part of your pussy, dragging his cock in and out to hear every whine and curse leave your lips. The same lips that dragged red stains on the sheets, your lip prints making a temporary marker of how amazing he was fucking you. Tom grips your bum tighter, moving your body to a rhythm against is hips. You almost choked on your own breath, the new position hitting deeper than ever before. Both of your hips hit perfectly, the sound of your skin filling the room along with Tom’s muffled grunts. 

“Yes…fuck…love you’re so…fuck,” 

It’s taking all of his will power to not raise his voice. If no one was home he would praising you at full volume, making sure you knew exactly how you were making him feel. The way you clenched around him and swiveled your hips against his, fuck he was going mad. The stress from the party really drove him away from your perfect body. Never again would he let that happen. He needed you as much as you needed him. It took his mind off impressing the Uppers, and more focused on how to make you crumble around him. 

Tom pulls out suddenly, flipping you onto your back and diving on top of you. Lips now moving as one as he entered you again. This time the speed is hungrier, desperate for the release he’s dying to have. You can feel the low growls against your mouth. Tom can barely hold it together. He was coming undone but wanting to make you get your filling at the same time. You pull back, grabbing his face to focus on you while you reach another climax. His fingers go to your clit again, knowing it’ll be even more intense than the last. 

“Fuck, fuck, oh my-“ You shake with pleasure as your eyes screw shut. 

He captures your lips against, engulfing you in an embrace as he thrusts faster into you. It’s hard to even keep the room straight, the overstimulation making your eyes flutter open and shut while your insides unravel again. 

“Good girl…cum…cumming…fuck,” Tom finally whines. 

His head dips to your chest while his hips stutter against yours. It’s the slowest moment in the lustful rush, Tom unloading inside of you with soft moans on your skin. You feel the warmth run between your thighs as he pulls himself away. The room is spinning while lights twinkle above you. The reflection of the light on your necklace makes it look like there are tiny rainbows surrounding you. It’s like heaven, especially with the angel laying next to you. Tom’s arm is protectively thrown over you as he catches himself up with reality. Your legs tangle with his as you roll over to meet his glazed eyes. 

“Now that’s a party,” 

Tom, red in the face, rolls his tired eyes at you. He rolls to embrace you again, kissing your shoulder lightly. 

“I’m glad you’re finally enjoying yourself,” He hums against your skin. “I still want to show you off though. You’re my girl and I want everyone to know,” 

You look down to your body, bruised from his love bites and roughed around from his relentless thrusting. 

“I think if they saw me like this they’ll know,” You laugh. “But we should get back before people get suspicious,” 

You roll from the bed to retrieve your dress which was still in pretty good shape. Your lipstick has been smeared off and your mascara had fallen onto your cheeks. It was gonna be a real mission to fix yourself up but you had to do it. With a few ruined face towels you had perfected your face again. Tom appeared behind your with a fitted white shirt and his pants from before. He looked like a cover of a romance novel. Toned, muscular, and beaming with after sex. 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Tom kisses the top of your head while admiring your body. “So lucky. But I want everyone to see that,” 

“Well show me the way,” 

Tom bites his lip, shyly smiling as he takes your hand to lead you back into the party. His hand is molded to your hip while you enter the belly of the beast. All eyes are on the two of you, gleeful smiles from friends and family at how amazing the both of you look. Tom rubs your hip, kissing the side of your face. It was exactly what you wanted, Tom by your side while making your mark on the party. 

“I love you,” He whispers. 

You meet his eye, the white clothing making him look even tanner and more dashing. The glittery rainbows from before are back, dancing along his skin from your necklace. You kiss him again, leaning your forehead against his. 

“I love you too,”

///

///

tagging: @mcuspidey  @stuckonspidey  @worldoftom  @cmonpetertingle @blissfulparker @starksparker @spiderboytotherescue @madmadmilk

[prolapsarian]

Notes to Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

The great ruse of our political epoch: Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, and their crows in press, scorched a set of oppositions in the minds of the people. The whole of society encapsulated in an image of “workers versus shirkers”, “strivers versus skivers.” The great tragedy of our political epoch: the Labour movement, the left, and the social democrats took the bait of these laminated ghouls. They responded simply by saying that there were no skivers: instead there was a worthy working class, labouring away ever harder, and getting ever poorer. They said the whole thing was a myth, that the shirkers were a phantom, a chimera, a scapegoat, an image invented by evil overlords to turn the working class against itself, leaving it prone to the ideologies of reaction. The labour movement talked instead only about the working poor, or the unemployed who wanted always to get back to a good job, on a good wage, forever and ever.

Few resisted the ruse, but Sean Bonney was one of them. Perhaps it was because Sean himself was a skiver, a drunk, a scoundrel, a villain, an addict, a down-and-out, a fuck up. More likely it was because of his deep political intuition and understanding. For him, the politics of class warfare was never about worthiness; it was never about what the working class deserve at the end of a hard day’s work, but instead its crucible was the hatred of the social conditions that pummelled people, silenced them, boxed them in, boxed them up, oppressed them, made them suffer. This politics was uncompromising because it understood that any compromise was a failure: there is no weekend that redeems the week, no pension that makes good on the life wrecked by the conformity and unfreedom of work.

I like to think of Sean as the thing that terrified those Tories most, as one of those beautiful creatures who so absolutely threatened them that they had to transfigure him into a phantom. His poetry too was one with this politics in this. Every line is written in solidarity with the shirking class, a class whose underground history crawls and stretches backwards, a perpetual dance, an unending squall, as anonymous as it is enormous. If Sean was a skiver he was also always hard at work, undertaking an immense labour of compression, in order to make that history heard. And this furious labour was quick and angular, because it always came with some sense that history was, already, ending. As a singular voice that resisted the ruse, his writing is one of the most important political efforts of our time.

o scroungers, o gasoline there’s a home for you here there’s a room for your things me, I like pills / o hell.

*** Since hearing of Sean’s death I have been thinking a lot about what I learnt from him. Learning is maybe a strange way to look at it. Because Sean’s poetry was not really so complicated. He stated unambiguous truths that we all knew and understood. Just like Brecht’s dictum in praise of communism: “It’s reasonable, and everyone understands it, it’s easy […] it is the simplicity, that’s hard to achieve.” This was the plane on which we met. All of us, Sean’s friends, comrades, loves, beloveds, others we did not know who all were invited, all in this common place where we know how simple these truths are, even if none of us were able to express them with such concision as Sean – even if we were all somehow less rehearsed, less prepared, less audacious. And suddenly I know it was a common place he made, wretched and hilarious.

*** So communism is simple. But running beneath all of Sean’s work was an unassuming argument, from which I have learned so much. Although argument was not his mode – his poems were always doing something, accusing but never prosecuting – an argument is there, even if it was exposed as a thesis in its own right. It is something so simple, easy, and so obvious that it barely seems worth saying. Sean’s poems made an argument for the enduring power of French symbolism – for a power that surged through history in the spirit of that movement. No surprise for a poet who rewrote Baudelaire and Rimbaud. But constantly a surprise to a world that thought that mode already dead, a world no longer animated by the literary symbol, nor transfixed by the resurrection any such symbols could herald. His writing followed the traces of this hyperhistory that wrapped around the world and back, from the high culture of decolonial revolutionism back in to cosmopolitan centre where bourgeois savages feast greedily on expropriated wares; into the dark sociality of the prison, and out again into every antisocial moment that we call “society”; sometimes making the earth small within a frozen cosmos ringing out noise as signal to nobody and everyone; sometimes bringing the whole cosmos in crystalline shape (sometimes perfect, sometimes fractured) as the sharpest interruption within the world - every poem charting a history stretched taut between uprisings and revolts. He knew the rites of symbols, the continuing practices with which their political power could be leveraged.

Sean was one of the few untimely symbolists of our time. His poems are full of these things: bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc - never quite concepts, never quite images, never quite objects, but pieces of the world to be taken up and arranged, half exploded, into accusations; treasured as partial and made for us to take as our own, a heritage of our own destruction, at once ready at hand, and scattered to the peripheries on a map of the universe, persistently spiralling, in points, back to the centre, some no place.

But if Sean was a symbolist, if he was attentive to its fugitive history, a slick and secret tradition of the oppressed, then this was also a symbolism without any luxuriant illusion. It is a symbolism in which all knowingness has been supplanted with fury and its movements. Sean’s poems are spleen without ideal. They have nothing of the pointed, almost screaming, eternal sarcasm of Baudelaire when he ever again finds the body of his beautiful muse as white and lifeless cold marble, utterly indifferent to the desirous gaze. There is no such muse, no callous petrified grimace, half terrified half laughing, ancient enough to unseat Hellenism itself - although there is beauty still but it exists otherwise, amid a crowd, darkened and lively. When I think of Sean’s monumental work I imagine an enormous bas-relief of black polished marble jutting out from some monstrously disproportioned body, angled between buildings. This great slab flashing black in the white noise of the city. This great slab as populous as the world. Flashing black and seen with the upturned gaze. There is no oppression without this terrified vision that sees in ever new sharpness the oppressor.

When you go to sleep, my gloomy beauty, below a black marble monument, when from alcove and manor you are reduced to damp vault and hollow grave; when the stone—pressing on your timorous chest and sides already lulled by a charmed indifference—halts your heart from beating, from willing, your feet from their bold adventuring, when the tomb, confidant to my infinite dream (since the tomb understands the poet always), through those long nights in which slumber is banished, will say to you: "What does it profit you, imperfect courtisan, not to have known what the dead weep for?" —And the worm will gnaw at your hide like remorse.

*** I haven’t explained what I learnt. I ask the question, What does it mean to find the late nineteenth century stillborn into the twenty-first? Why should these febrile years, from 1848 to the Commune have been so important? What was Sean leveraging when he recast our world with this moment of literary and political history? And what was he leveraging it against? I have a sense that what was important to Sean was a sense of mixedness. There were those who would read these years, after the defeat of revolution, as a dreadful winter of the world. There were those who saw only society in decline. “Jeremiads are the fashion”, Blanqui would say while counselling civil war. And then there were those for whom arcades first provided an extravagant ecstacy of distraction and glitz. These were the years of monstrocity, from Maldoror to Das Kapital. These years of the great machines that chewed up humans and spat out their remains across the city, of great humans who chewed up machines and made language anew. These years in which the fury of defeat burnt hot. These years of illumination. These years where gruesome metallic grinding and factory fire met the dandy. Few eras have been so mixed, so utterly undecided. No era so perfect to carve out the truly Dickensian physiognomy of Iain Duncan Smith. This was neither the stage of tragedy nor comedy, but of frivolous wickedness and hilarious turpitude. The world made into a barb, and no-one quite knowing who is caught on it. The great progress. The great stupidity. Street life. The symbol belonging to this undecided realm.

Marx was famously dismissive of that “social scum” the Lumpenproletariat, who he described at the beginning of this period as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.” Marx saw in these figures, in their Bonapartist, reactionary form, a bourgeois consciousness ripped from its class interest and thus nourished by purest political ideology. But if he could excoriate the drunkenness of beggars, Marx failed to appreciate its complement: the intoxication of sobriety of the working classes, the stupefaction in methodism, their imagined glory in progress. Wine, as the beggars already knew, was the only salve to the social anaesthetic of worthiness and the idiotic faith in work.

If Sean were here I’d want to talk to him about this learning in relation to a fragment by Benjamin, which he wrote as he thought about the world of Baudelaire; this world of mixedness of the city constructed and exploded, and the people within it subject to the same motion:

During the Baroque, a formerly incidental component of allegory, the emblem, undergoes extravagant development. If, for the materialist historian, the medieval origin of allegory still needs elucidation, Marx himself furnishes a clue for understanding its Baroque form. He writes in Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1922), vol. 1, p. 344: "The collective machine ... becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one — that is, the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected not only by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative." Here may be found the key to the Baroque procedure whereby meanings are conferred on the set of fragments, on the pieces into which not so much the whole as the process of its production has disintegrated. Baroque emblems may be conceived as half finished products which, from the phases of a production process, have been converted into monuments to the process of destruction. During the Thirty Years' War, which, now at one point and now at another, immobilized production, the "interruption" that, according to Marx, characterizes each particular stage of this labor process could be protracted almost indefinitely. But the real triumph of the Baroque emblematic, the chief exhibit of which becomes the death's head, is the integration of man himself into the operation. The death's head of Baroque allegory is a half-finished product of the history of salvation, that process interrupted — so far as this is given him to realize — by Satan.

I won’t pretend to know all of what Benjamin means here but I have some idea. And those last sentences terrify me. Modernity begins with a war that is a strike, one that repeats through history. And the shape of this strike, this war, this repetition, is the shape of detritus of production interrupted. We shift perspective and the machine is revealed as other than it was once imagined: it is not some factory churning out commodities, but a world theatre of soteriology. An exchange takes place: the half-finished product for the half-destroyed body. Although what is created (albeit as a “monument to the process of destruction”) is some monstrous combination of the two. One and the same seen with two different perspectives, and the two perspectives separated by the distance between the promise that production will be interrupted, in rhythmic repetition, and the force of the machine that completes the product, kills the body into it, sealing death perfectly within the commodity, as its catastrophe. This distance, a tropic on the edge of the end of the world, is Hell.

This is a lot. But maybe it gets close to what I learnt. That all those bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc were for Sean the emblemata of our political times. These are the monsters, half-finished, half-human, half-machine, the bird interrupting itself with a scream a silent as the cosmos once seemed. I don’t know if they are to be taken up as weapons in the battle for salvation, or as mere co-ordinates on the map of hell. But they are certainly potent, and set here in commitment to redemption, for the work of raising the dead. Sean’s writing was always ready for this task, in constant preparation, and in constant interruption. Its angles quickly pacing between the two.

This has become theologically ornate. But perhaps something of the point is clear: that in the symbolic realm of Sean’s language are staked the great theological and materialist battles of our age. He had to deep dig into our time for that, furrow and dig so deep that he found the nineteenth century still there, crawling everywhere, right up to us. And all of this was set, furiously, against a more everyday view that production has all but disappeared from sight: society fully administered slips across screens with nothing but a sense of speed and gloss. His poetry decries, digs into, a laminated world with which we are supposed to play but in which we are never supposed to participate, never mind to get drunk, see the truth, raise the dead, even now as they slip away ever further through the mediatized glare.

*** Are we not surrounded by those who cast spells? Sorcery is the fashion, if only for the blighted, the meek, the poor, the oppressed. And it would be easy to mistake what Sean was writing for just another piece of subaltern superstition; promising mighty power for as long as it remains utterly powerless and otherworldly. But this is not right. Seans symbols are not just any old sign, or signal, or sigil. They are not arcana, but materials taken to hand out of the dereliction of the present. They are certainly magic, just as Sean was certainly a seer. But this is a materialist magic, a fury, a joy. They are not drawn from some other mystical world, but from this one. And his magic was to suspend them between this world and the next, between law made in the mouths of a class who hated him, and justice. He saw more deeply than most of us dare, and invited us along. Invited everyone along, including the dead who will rise, even if we have to dig and dig and drag them out of the ground and through the streets, to show the world what streets are really for. Here in this common place, between buildings, together. This is the place of magic, for riots, for burning cars; here a wall, there a blazing comet. Let his poetry dance on, and we will dance on too.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 29 Feb 2020 (EFF dream-job, Medicare For All Bond Villain, Bloomberg's Sackler connection, Tory housing crisis and more!)

Today's links

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director: It's a once-in-a-lifetime dream job.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to sign a binding arbitration waiver."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL: A 26% alcohol habanero spirit from Empirical Spirits.

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations: Just helping out the "Friends of Mike."

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis: No one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII.

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts: Tories are always swallowing spiders to catch their flies.

This day in history: 2012, 2016 (leap years!)

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director (permalink)

There are lots of ways techies can help EFF – contributing code to our projects like Certbot, Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere and/or joining up and writing a check. But right now, there's a rare chance to work directly to make profound change with us.

That's because EFF is hiring a Tech Projects Director.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/eff-seeks-tech-projects-director-lead-awesome-technical-team-and-help-us-save

It's a huge gig, the kind of thing that only comes up once in a very long while. You don't just get to oversee the impressive roster of EFF projects, you also get to set future priorities.

"Some people join EFF having been burned by unfeeling tech companies or corporate law jobs, and coming to EFF can feel like coming home – a place where everyone genuinely wants you to be successful, where we do our best to leave drama at the door even as passion is welcomed."

I've been with the org for EIGHTEEN YEARS and this is so, so true.

Even if you're not right for this gig, keep checking in with our help wanted page.

https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs

We're growing fast, first because the world is severely messed up, and second because our member-donors recognize how well situated we are to make a difference and they're funding us to expand.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition (permalink)

We're all familiar with the Bond villain setup: "Mr. Bond, I see you've ingested my poison."

But what follows in Matt Haughey's "Monologuing" is a fabulous satirical take on the Medicare For All moment.

https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2020/02/28/monologuing/

"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to…"

Locate in-network doctors on our website

Cross-reference with the benefits PDF you were sent last month

Create a login

Verify your last three home addresses

(before the poison hits)

Call your doctor and agree to see a physician's assistant so you can get treatment in less than 3 week

Agree to a $100 urgent-care co-pay

Pay $1200 for the ambulance to the ER

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, I expect you to continue to wait on hold because your call is very important to us and may be monitored for quality assurance purposes."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL (permalink)

"FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL" is "a habanero spirit made from a base of pearled barley, Belgian saison yeast, and koji. The clear product is rectified with a habanero vinegar that gives it a 27% ABV. This imparts an intensely fruity habanero profile without any of the heat."

It actually sounds delicious.

https://us.empiricalspirits.co/products/fuck-trump-and-his-stupid-fucking-wall

It's $85 plus $35 S+H in the USA for 750ml.

Serving suggestion: "With red grapefruit juice, topped with sparkling water and cornichon as garnish"

I'm a little bummed that they take out the capsaicin, as I love spicy booze.

My current favorite is a spicy, sugar-free Old Fashioned:

2 shakes Hellfire bitters 2 shakes Angostura bitters 1 jigger decent bourbon Orange zest (wipe over rim, squeeze into glass, then drop in the drink) Serve over a whiskey rock in a lowball glass

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations (permalink)

The Sackler family became some of the world's richest billionaires through the actions of the family business, Purdue Pharma, which committed a string of felonies as it conspired to addict the world to its killer opioid, Oxycontin. The company's bribery of doctors, scientific frauds, and corruption of its regulators allowed it to kickstart the opioid epidemic, which has so far claimed 200,000 US lives, more than were lost in Vietnam.

And yet, until very recently, the Sackler family was primarily known for its art philanthropy, firehosing its money and name over some of the world's most prominent art institutions. As the family's role in corporate mass murder came to light, artists demanded that institutions remove the Sackler name. It worked! Nan Goldin's stunt of showering the Guggenheim with Sackler opioid prescriptions was just one of many amazing actions.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/nan-goldin-leads-a-protest-at-the-guggenheim-against-the-sackler-family

The Louvre also removed every mention of the Sacklers from its spaces.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190721-sackler-name-removed-louvre-opioid-crisis-france?ref=tw_i

But you know who DIDN'T ditch the Sacklers as they were becoming social pariahs? Guess who expressed rock solid billionaire class solidarity with the poor, beleaguered plutes when their reputation laundry failed them?

Mike Bloomberg, of course!

As @propublica reports, when the Sacklers worried about their collapsing reputations, they knew who to turn to: the ex-mayor whose return to his news organization meant that reporters who chased billionaires were sidelined.

https://www.propublica.org/article/bloomberg-sacklers-opioid-crisis-public-relations

While Bloomberg had been mayor, his newsroom created a "billionaires team" that investigated the doings of the super-rich, including the "Friends of Mike" (FOMs) whom everyone understood to be untouchable under Bloomberg's management.

Upon his return, he heaped scorn upon these investigative reporters: "Why is that news? Why do we have to probe into that stuff?" Mike's return to the newsroom created "a culture of not wanting to upset billionaires."

So naturally the Sacklers turned to him! And Bloomberg obliged. After meeting with Mortimer Sackler, Bloomberg gave the Sacklers crisis communications advice and helped them his old mayoral press secretary, Stu Loeser. According to Bloomberg, Loeser was perfect because of his new communications company's "political instincts and deep connections."

Loeser went on to work with the Sacklers as they pushed out the story that opioid addiction was the fault of weak-willed criminal addicts, not corporate drug-pushers.

Loeser now works as a Bloomberg presidential campaign spokesman.

With Bloomberg's help, the Sacklers were able to continue to leverage their philanthropic donations to shore up their reputations, particularly by embarking on joint projects with Bloomberg Philanthropies. Bloomberg posed with Sackler heiresses at the opening of the Sackler Wing of London's Serpentine Gallery (which eventually took the Sackler name off the building), and then served as chair of the Serpentine Sackler Galleries.

His news organization ran multiple, glowing stories about the Sacklers' generosity, and continued to work closely with the Sackler families, even as they were committing a string of crimes.

For example, money laundry to the tune of billions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Fraudulent misrepresentations of the company's role in the opioid epidemic.

https://www.propublica.org/article/data-touted-by-oxycontin-maker-to-fight-lawsuits-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story#167506

And giving some of the weirdest, most risible, most terrible testimony in the history of corporate criminal depositions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

Just more Friends of Mike!

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis (permalink)

The climate crisis is an existential threat to our species (and many other species besides). It turns out that Keynes was more prescient that we knew. He proposed that you could start an economy by paying half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. Instead, we spent more than a century subsidizing our ancestors to dig up fossil fuels and now we'll have to pay our descendants to spend 200-300 years getting all that carbon back into the ground.

If we don't, our civilization will collapse and our species may go extinct. There's no time for half-measures. That's why Bernie Sanders's version of the Green New Deal is such a big deal.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615292/bernie-sanders-has-an-audaciousand-hugely-expensiveclimate-plan/

He's the only leadership candidate whose plan actually confronts the scale of the crisis.

The $16T (yes, TRILLION) plan includes $2.5T to convert all US energy to renewables, "ending subsidies, mountaintop-removal coal mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels."

He'll also ask the DoJ to investigate criminal frauds committed by energy sector companies that spent millions to delay action on climate by pumping out disinformation along with their CO2.

The budget also includes $2T for a retrofit of our homes and workplaces, $1T to retrofit roads and other infrastructure.

There's $3.6T to convert the US's vehicles to electric, $85B for charging stations and $100B to improve electric car manufacture.

There's $900B for mass transit and high-speed rail, and $150B to improve emissions from aviation and marine transport.

In all, the plan creates "20 million jobs, while offering wage guarantees, job training, and other assistance to displaced energy workers."

As James Temple writes in MIT Tech Review, there are some odd quirks, like a rejection of carbon capture, but these are issues in the margin that administrative agencies staffed by independent experts (not corporate shills) might tweak.

But this is the plan we need. Remember, no one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII, and a Nazi victory would have merely put half the human race in mortal peril, while the climate crisis threatens us all, and without the hope of regime change down the road.

The purpose of the economy, the justification for markets, is that they promote human prosperity and progress. Scratching in flooded rubble for canned goods and drinking your own urine is not "progress." If our spreadsheets can't figure out how to allocate capital to heading off an extinction-level event, we need new spreadsheets. As our friends at Prager "University" like to remind us, "facts don't care about your feelings."

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts (permalink)

Margaret Thatcher sold off council houses to create more Tories, on the theory that home ownership made you a Conservative. But the end of council estates just meant that private landlords were able to gouge local governments for substandard housing for poor people. Predictably, this only worsened, with rents spiraling for poorly maintained, dangerous housing. Eventually, David Cameron got a genius idea: he'd cut how much money families could spend on private rent.

After all, this was much more politically feasible than ordering landlords to provide decent housing at a fair price. Landlords make campaign contributions and vote Tory, and a majority of Tory MPs are landlords themselves.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/corbyn-tried-pass-law-make-homes-safe-last-year-conservatives-rejected/14/06/

By contrast, council tenants vote Labour and are (by definition) too poor to bribe politicians. Just as with Thatcher's selloff, the outcome of Cameron's policy was totally predictable to anyone whose wealth didn't depend on their denying it.

People couldn't pay their rent, so they became homeless.

You know what's more expensive than paying rent for poor people? Helping homeless people. The savings from Cameron's cruel policy of limiting rent subsidies were totally wiped out by the millions more that local governments had to pay to find temporary shelter for the wave of homelessness Cameron had created.

That's not all, of course. Voter turnout among affected households plummeted, and when they did vote, it was in the Brexit referendum, where the housing benefit cuts strongly correlated with a Leave vote: "We also observe that a one standard deviation increase in the level of exposure to the cut in a district is associated with up to a 2.2 percentage point greater level of support for 'Leave'."

https://voxeu.org/article/housing-insecurity-homelessness-and-populism

The inability of the British private sector to build affordable housing and the unwillingness of the public sector to fill in the gap has produced a ghastly quality of life. In Camden, £1500/month gets you a 27sqm "flat" whose bed is literally a mattress wedged next to the toilet.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/uk/london-renting-compared-berlin-gbr-grm-intl/index.html

And yet, Greater London has never had a better ratio of bedrooms to people. It's just that HALF the beds in the region are empty on any given night. But with 60% of the UK national wealth represented by property in the southeast, the last thing the Tories want to do is fix this misallocation, which has been such a boon to the ownership class.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/14/great-housing-disaster-danny-dorling-review

This day in history (permalink)

#8yrsago In Minecraft, a fountain of cats at the top of the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iNw2YcAK9Wc#!

#8yrsago Smithsonian building archive of printable 3D scans https://www.cnet.com/news/smithsonian-turns-to-3d-to-bring-collection-to-the-world/

#8yrsago Finance industry bemoans hard times in an era of reduced bonuses https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex

#4yrsago Crapgadget apocalypse: the IoT devices that punch through your firewall and expose your network https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/

#4yrsago Press looks the other way as thousands march for Sanders in 45+ cities https://web.archive.org/web/20160314104804/http://usuncut.com/politics/media-blackout-as-thousands-of-bernie-supporters-march-in-45-cities/

#4yrsago FBI claims it has no records of its decision to delete its recommendation to encrypt your phone https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160226/14181133727/fbi-claims-it-has-no-record-why-it-deleted-recommendation-to-encrypt-phones.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Alice Taylor (https://twitter.com/wonderlandblog), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/) and Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/.

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[derryhawkins]

I Love Him, Your Honor

summary: During college, Richie works part time at a law office for the sole reason it pays well, and he honestly thinks it’s utter hell. But then he meets another part time employee who works down in the file room and, well, maybe the law office isn’t completely hellish. words: 4.5k a/n: i honestly don’t even know why i’m posting this but hey i made an ao3 account finally and you can read this on there if you want! richie’s part time job is purely based off of mine; i got this idea yesterday when leaving and just ran with it, and thus this chapter was born. idk when the next chapter will be up but pls give this love 

chapter one: you need a job

“Look, Rich,” Ben Hanscom starts as they exit their shared physics course, sidestepping a few other college students who were being slow. He calls back a genuine sorry after accidentally shoving one of them before turning back to his friend, the curly haired boy just barely passing him in height. “You need a job. You’re nearly twenty! Bev says they need help over there, like, so bad. They had to fire someone, and two others quit and they’re leaving in a week.”

Richie Tozier looks at Ben incredulously. The dark haired college student knew full and well of Beverly Marsh; the short little redhead is one of his best friends and Ben’s fiancée. Richie likes to give himself credit for their relationship, because according to him, he set them up back in freshman year of high school. Six years later and they’re engaged, and Bev has a full time job after finishing college within two years, and Ben’s on his way to (hopefully) be an architect. Of course, that’s not how it went. Richie and Beverly met Ben in a crappy, run down elevator that worked from time to time at their school. Ben had been running late, the other two were ditching. They got stuck for five hours in that crappy elevator. Richie just likes to say he planned it. But, of course, that’s not what this current situation is about. (And the school banned anyone from using the elevator there on out).

“Bev works at a law office, Ben!” Richie yells, throwing his hands in the air as if to make a point. “All they do is sit at desks in front of computers.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Like sitting at home on your phone or in front of the TV aren’t the same thing as sitting in front of a computer.”

Richie ignores the sarcasm. “I don’t need a job.”

“You quit your other one last month. We’re in college, man! It’s like, I dunno, death not having a job. You need to eat food!”

“I can get breakfast, lunch, and dinner here because I’m in a dorm, and on the weekends when I’m home the ‘rents cook. I’m fine!”

It’s silent as Ben gives Richie a look while they continue to walk down the steps of the building, mixing in with other students who are either leaving or heading to class. Thankfully for Richie, he only has physics today; the only down side is that it’s an 8am course, and it had been the only one available when he signed up for classes. He has Ben, though, so it isn’t all too terrible. And it’s his only 8am. Half of the others are hybrids – he only has to show up for the midterm and final, and turn in work online – and the others are either afternoon or night classes. He has it pretty easy this semester.

So, yes, he can easily get a job, and he has been thinking of getting one, but now both Ben and Beverly are pestering him about it and suddenly he doesn’t want to get one. Richie scratched at his jaw as he thought of his previous job – the stereotypical college job at McDonald’s. He’s worked there since junior year of high school, and it wasn’t that it was bad. It had been decent, at most. He liked the money, liked the food he got to bring home and to his friends, and liked the cute girls and guys who walked in. He just quit because it got too ‘going through the motions’. Richie knows a law office isn’t going to be much better.

If he gets a job, he wants to at least like it.

The January wind nips at them as they step outside, both guys’ faces scrunching up in various forms of oh shit it’s cold. Ben fixes the scarf around his neck to cover his nose and wraps his arms around himself. Meanwhile, Richie just hunches his shoulders, clenching his teeth together. In just a t-shirt, a thin zip-up jacket that’s not zipped up, and ripped skinny jeans, he wasn’t dressed properly for the winter months; Ben, on the other hand, who’s decked out in a scarf, a thick winter jacket, comfortable jeans and gloves, is dressed properly.

Richie can hear his parents’ voices now reprimanding him for not wearing the proper clothes, and soon enough her could hear his other best friend, Stan Uris, with them.

“Just… At least think about the job, okay?” Ben speaks as they get to the sidewalk by the road, lowering the scarf so his friend can hear him better. They both stop walking and face one another. “And wear decent winter clothes, man, you’re gonna catch another cold.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” he says. “You’re starting to sound like Stan the Man, Mistah Handsome.”

The corners of Ben’s lips turn up. “You’re genuinely getting better at those voices, Rich.”

Richie feigned offense. One hand moves to his chest as if his heart were hurt. “You say that as if I haven’t always been amazin’,” he says, voicing sounding like it could be southern but neither of them were too sure.

“Well…”

A gasp. “Ben!”

They both start to laugh then but it dies down soon after. Ben unwraps his scarf and tosses it to Richie, who catches it with ease, and then starts to leave. “Gotta blast, Rich.”

Richie smiles. “Ah, yes, get home to the Missus!” He puts the scarf on. It’s not much at all, but it still helps.

“No, I got another class and then I’m taking the almost Missus lunch.”

“Tell Bev she sucks for me!”

“Why?”

“She ate my last bag of hot Cheetos when she stopped by yesterday.”

Ben laughs. “Alright, yeah. Will do!”

And just like that, Richie is alone. It honestly isn’t often he and Ben get to spend time together. Hell, even his time with his two best friends isn’t much. They all have school or work or both, and it’s just hard not spending as much time together as they used to. Which was where Wednesday night game nights came in. Weekends, they all went their separate ways to their parents. So, they did the next best thing: Wednesdays. At the thought of their game nights, Richie pulls out his phone as he hurriedly walks to his dorm and opens the group chat, sending a quick game suggestion.

+++

Music plays softly from the laptop at the foot of the bed, a generous amount of papers and a text book between Richie and it. He doesn’t particularly like studying – who does? – mostly because he’s never had to properly study before, but physics isn’t exactly on the easy side of things, and he doesn’t want to fail; his mom claims he probably doesn’t even need to study too much given as he understands math easily, and Richie thinks that’s the exact opposite of what a parent should be saying to their child who’s trying to successfully get through college. But, hey, they’re relationship isn’t on the rocks anymore – a shit load of teen angst on his part, a small drinking problem on her part, too engrossed into his job on Wentworth’s part, and being batshit annoying on his little sister’s part – so the legal adult doesn’t mind not being told to study, either.

The Tozier family is back to being good and mostly healthy, and as happy as they were when Richie had been a little kid. Only now, Tori is the one with teen angst and Richie’s doing his best to be a decent big brother by helping out with it.

A shrill ring cuts off the music and pulls him away from his thoughts, flinching at the sudden change in sound before reaching over and muting his laptop. He pauses the music and answers the call on his phone before pressing speaker. A smile forms at looking at the caller I.D.

“I was just thinking about you, T-Rex!” Richie exclaims and he goes back to copying down a problem from a work sheet the professor handed out in class.

“Oh, the amazing Richard thought about me,” she sarcastically says. “What ever will my fangirl heart do?”

“I predict that you will sob once the call is over and scream at your equally fangirly friends about how I graced your ears with my wonderful voice.”

“More like made them bleed.”

“You wound me!”

“Good!”

“First Ben, now you – my poor old heart can’t take it!”

“Then perish.”

He snorts out a laugh.

“But, hey, I’m calling for a reason, dickhead. Stop whatever you’re doing and listen to the best little sister in the world,” Tori tells him.

Richie sighs and drops the pencil dramatically. It hit the notebook with a soft thud but it’s loud enough for Tori to hear over the phone. “Why, do tell, young maiden,” he says, using a Voice.

“Mom’s sick with a bad cold.”

He blinks. “…Okay?”

“Dad’s gonna still be at work until five-.”

“Whoa, hold on, wait a damn minute!” Richie sits up and pulls his computer close to look at the time as he realizes what’s happening. More accurately, what the girl was getting at. “Victoria!” Richie had been so caught up in doing the math problems and messing with the sixteen year old demon he calls a sister to even take notice of the time until then. It’s not even time for her to be out of school – hell, it was barely 11:30. “T-Rex, how scandalous of you! Skipping school.” He pauses. “Fuck, you’re me.”

“I mean…we are related.” A beat of silence. “But I’m not skipping. I got suspended. Mom’s too sick to answer the phone, and Dad’s too busy at work. I convinced them to let me call you.”

Richie sighs. “It’s two weeks into the semester, T-Rex.” He leans an elbow on his knee and put his forehead in the palm of his hand.

Getting suspended isn’t exactly a new thing for either Tozier children. Richie got detention countless of times for various reasons, earning him a few times of suspension, and Tori just has a habit of mouthing off adults – similar to her big brother – but also has one of fighting – not so similar to her big brother.

“I don’t know what you want me to do, kid.”

“Pick me up,” she replies with a duh tone.

“My truck’s still in the shop, dingbat.”

“Well, I don’t exactly have a car, either, douchebag.”

Richie is quiet for a split second. “Okay. Look. I’ll try to get one of my friends to drive me over there. Stay in the office, and just walk home if I’m not there by twelve-thirty.”

Tori grumbles. “Fine.”

Richie makes a face at her sour attitude, about to say something – “Ah, teen angst, what a marvelous thing it is” – when she hangs up before he can ever utter another word. He gasped at the device and sent her a bunch of middle finger emojis before dialing his three friends one by one. Ben didn’t answer. It stopped ringing halfway through the third ring and not a minute later, Ben’s text of “still in class” lit up his phone once again. He then calls Beverly, who he knows won’t answer but did it anyway for the sake of annoying her. To his surprise, she answers; only to greet him with a short, “No,” before hanging up on him.

“Stanny Boy, you better pick up,” Richie mutters as he crawled off of the dorm bed, finding his shoes.

“This better be good, Trashmouth,” is Stan’s form of greeting not even two seconds later.

Richie grins, pleased at least one of his friends is letting him explain. “Not good in the long run but it’s for a good enough reason, Bird Brain,” he says. “Where are you?”

“…What did you do?”

He rolls his eyes. “Not me. Our ferocious T-Rex.”

“She’s your sister.”

“She’s adopted you as her ‘better big brother’. This is what you get for befriending me when we were four and she was one, and staying best friends with me our entire lives. If you need to feel better, know that I did call Mister and Missus first because I know you enjoy your lazy Mondays.”

Stan hums. “It doesn’t.” Then Richie hears shuffling on the other end, and his hopes rise high. “But I’m on my way to pick you up. You can explain everything then.”

“You’re the best, Stanley, might as well marry you right now! Let’s go elope – take a road trip to Vegas!”

“I’ll castrate you.”

“Kinky.”

“Oh, my god.”

“See ya when you get her, my love.”

“Yuck, don’t ever call me that again. Bye.”

+++

A year and a half later, Richie never once thought he would be entering his old high school ever again – excluding the reunions he knows Beverly will drag them all to, none of the boys exactly having a choice in the matter – let alone the office of said school. Yet here he stands, all of the memories flooding back to him; both good and bad ones. He wasn’t exactly popular in school. More of the annoying class clown everyone hates but secretly finds funny. At least, at first. Everything eventually changed in sophomore year.

Richie makes a face and turns to Stan. No one was at the front desk, so they were being forced to wait to collect the youngest Tozier from the principal’s office.

“I should’ve let her rot here.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “You’re too good of a brother for that,” he says. “The principal hated you and she’s most likely getting secondhand hate from the douchebag himself.”

Richie’s eyes widen behind his glasses at the realization. He hadn’t exactly left the high school on good terms with anyone, minus his three good friends and the math teacher for the freshman, and maybe the woman who usually sits at the desk in the front office. “Fuck,” he whispers. Then louder, “What if she’s getting bullied?”

Stan gives a look that said he was crazy. “She just got suspended for fighting. I’m sure she can take care of herself, man.” He pauses, worries his bottom lip, and sighs. “But now I’m worrying about that too. So, thanks for that.”

Only a few seconds of silence goes by before Richie speaks again. “You think people still talk?”

“Nah. Everyone who was here then has graduated. Unless, one or two got held back.”

“The teachers are gossip royalty here.”

“I doubt they gossip about former students to current students, especially when one of them is your baby sister.”

“Our baby sister.”

“Just because I helped you babysit all throughout middle school doesn’t mean I’m her brother, too. We’ve been over this!”

“Try telling her that; the kid adores you! Always has.”

“Which is weird. Besides, back to the point, it's twenty-nineteen now. People who shit on someone for liking the same gender should just become extinct cavemen.” The words cause Richie to let out a laugh.

“Well, look who it is,” the lady who sits at the front desk finally appeared. Both young adults smile at seeing her, genuinely pleased. Miss Mims was one of the few adults at the school Richie and his friends liked; Hell, they still like her. In a year and a half, the woman hadn’t changed much. Long dirty blonde hair had been cut to her shoulder, and her dark eyes seem happier. Her usual blouse and nice pants are the same, and she’s still just under five feet. “Uris and Tozier, what a pleasant surprise.” Miss Mims smiles at them.

“Hi, Sara!”

“Hey, Miss Mims.”

She chuckles and holds up her left hand. “It’s Mrs. Delaney now, kids.”

Stan grins and leans forward to check out the rings on her finger. “Congratulations! When did it happen?”

Richie leans forward too, and nearly knocks Stan over, mouth in a big toothy grin. “Give us the deets, Sara! Who’s the lucky fella? Or gal, y’know. Bet they’re good in bed, huh, Staniel?”

“Rich,” Stan warns, almost in a reminding tone.

He blinked. Then, “Oh! Right, forget those questions Sar- Uh, Mrs. Delaney! My kid sister is stuck in the principal’s office, I’m sure you’ve heard why. Suspension. Fighting. The shticks.”

Mrs. Delaney snorts. “You Toziers are something else. But yeah, I’ll go get her. Where are you parents?”

“Sick and working. I’ve got the rest of the day free, so I volunteered myself to do the dirty so Went wouldn’t have to leave.” He purposefully didn’t say anything about not telling their parents, or even planning on it. At least, he knows Tori isn’t going to tell. And he’s not going to throw her under the bus no matter how funny it’ll be.

Stan rolls his eyes. “His truck isn’t working so I got dragged along.”

“You love me, Staniel.”

“Debatable.”

“I’ll go get her. Shouldn’t be long at all.”

And it isn't.

Within five minutes, the baby of the family is stepping out while Mrs. Delaney goes to her chair behind her desk, marking the girl as being picked up by a family member. The sight of Victoria, to put it simply, surprises both college students greatly. There's a cut on her bottom lip, and the intricate fishtail braid she had done that morning after straightening her usually wild curls is gone. All her knuckles are scabbed over and bruised, and there's a tear at the knee of her jeans, showing a pale bandaid instead of her pale skin. Richie quickly stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets as his brows lower in concern but mostly anger, lips pulling into a thin line. She's gotten in fights before but never has she gotten so beat up. Stan, still beside Richie, is barely hiding his shock. The stares from the two quickly make Tori uncomfortable and she shifts on her feet, tennis shoes squeaking against the polished tile. It's clear she's in a worse mood Richie originally thought. He just believed she punched someone, yelled a few choice words, and then got sent to the office. Rather, it had been a full fledged fight with two fists and blood, and he can tell Tori isn't happy. Not even angry right now. Just...sad, almost.

"You should see the other guy," she tries to joke, but it falls flat quickly.

"It was a boy?!" Richie shrieks, finally blowing his top. He can handle, for the time being, his sister fighting another girl; he can't handle a boy hitting her physically. He turns to Mrs. Delaney accusingly, the newly married woman jumping at the sudden movement. "You let a boy hit my baby sister?"

"Rich, whoa, calm down," Stan quickly moves and sends an apologetic look to the woman. "It's not her fault, man."

Tori messes with the ends of her brown hair. "I... I'll explain later. Can we just please leave?"

He shakes his best friend off of him, and Richie huffs. "Fine, okay. Whatever." He pauses. "Uh, sorry, Mrs. Delaney."

The woman just gave a smile that tells them that she forgave the outburts. Then, the three of them walk out of the school and to Stanley's car. The ride is silent almost the entire time. Stan got a phone call from his boss at a café he works at, which shifts their ending destination to Stan's work place rather than the university seeing as he needs to get to work pronto, and a spare uniform is in his trunk. Twenty minutes later, the Uris is ushering the Toziers out of his car. Richie doesn't make a move to talk about the fight. Tori doesn't make a move to explain. It's clear she doesn't want to, not yet, and even though Richie desperately wants to know what happened, he can't just force it out of her. She shuts down completely; he's learned that the hard way.

"Hey," Stan speaks up as he gets the uniform out of the trunk. "Sorry I can't take you the rest of the way."

Richie shrugs, looking around. His eyes then land on a familiar beige and dark brown building, and in the front parking lot he takes notice of a familiar black car. He checks the time on his phone, and then starts off, telling his little sister to stay by Stan's car, ignoring their calls of questions as he races across the busy street. He nearly get hit a few times and flips off anyone who honks at him, but he eventually made it to the other side. He jogs to the building and walks in, smiling widely at the receptionist up front.

"Hey, has a blond guy about my height come in by any chance?" He asks the woman who can't be much older than thirty, leaning on the counter, slightly out of breath.

She looks at him as she hangs up a call she just ended. "Yeah." Her brows pull together. "He went back that way, why?"

He doesn't answer. Instead, he spins on his heel and goes in the direction the lady pointed in. It's not long at all until he hears the familiar laughter of Ben mixed with Beverly's. "My, if it isn't two my favorite people in the whole world!" Richie exclaims as he enters the office.

Ben yelps in surprise but quickly relaxes. "Jesus, Richie..."

Beverly grins and lunges at Richie, pulling him into a tight hug. "Hi! Have you made up your mind already?" She pulls back a split second later to look at him, hopeful.

"Uh." Richie holds up a finger. "No."

"Rich-."

"I need Mr. Handsome here to drive me and Tori back to the university," he interrupts her, and clasps a hand on Ben's shoulder. "And then I need to borrow his car to take her home so our parents don't find out she got suspended."

"She what?!" The two shout in unison. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that they were heard throughout the building.

"Long story," he mumbled, trying not to show how upset he was.

Beverly's blue eyes narrow the slightest bit. She knows something's up; she always does, somehow. Like a sixth-sense for when her friends are upset. Maybe it's because she's a year older than them all. "Ben's not driving you unless you agree to work here," Beverly says quickly. "Period."

"Oh, c'mon, Bev-," Richie tries. He looks to Ben for help, but the guy looks away as if he's admiring the awful pale green color on the wall.

The twenty year old shook her head, strands of red hair falling in her. She brushes them away with ease. "No. You need a job, Rich, you know that. And Maggie and Went would be agreeing with us." She motions between herself and Ben.

Richie makes a face.

"The pay's good," Beverly says quietly after a few seconds.

The look goes away. "...How good?" Not a minute later, Beverly grabs a check she has yet to put in her account and handed it to him. Brown eyes widen from behind the frames of his glasses. He let out a low whistle. "Damn..."

"They're lawyers, Richie, it's not exactly gonna be a bad pay. It's not McDonald's. And you'll most likely work part time, meaning you'll get to pick your hours. They're lenient. Just show up, do your job, respect them and everyone else, and they'll be happy."

Richie stares, thinking it over, and hands the check back to Beverly. She takes it quickly and puts it back in her purse, both her and Ben waiting for Richie's answer. He crosses his arms and looks between his two friends. Good pay. Lenient. Pick your own hours. A sigh leaves his lips and he lets his head fall backwards. He does need a job. He can't live on ramen forever, and he certainly can't live off of the box of Cosmic Brownies hidden in his closet away from his dorm mate. "Alright," he finally says, sounding defeated.

Beverly grins like a madman and squeals. "Perfect! Kim!" She dashes out of the office and grabs Richie to make him tag along. They pass by the lobby in a flash, and Richie barely has time to smile at the receptionist cheekily. They continue down the hall, passing cubicles that are mostly empty and a few offices that have people in them, and don't stop until the very end. She's then dragging him into a slightly bigger, nice office with shelves for books and a bigger desk with two chairs. A woman in her forties at at the desk, typing on her phone. She has brown hair that went to her shoulders and blue eyes peer up at them both as they stand behind the chairs. She looks nice, Richie has to admit, but there was also something about her that demanded respect and oozed authority. "Kim, this is Richie Tozier, my friend I told you about."

Richie smiles, and decides to be a decent human. "Hi, it's nice to meet you," he says, sticking a hand out for her to shake. If he could stay the way he is with his friends, he most definitely would. But Kim actually scares him a bit, and he doesn't want to get on her bad side just yet.

Kim smiles back and shakes his hand after standing. "You too, Richie. Beverly's told us a lot about you," she tells him, chuckling. "I guess she's told you about how we're low on employees?"

He chuckles. "Yea- yes, ma'am."

"He's decided to work here, as long as you and Thomas and Peter are okay with it," Beverly explains.

She scoffs and then lets out a loud laugh. "Of course we're fine with it! Work has been piling up for everyone already, and its only going to get worse when those two officially leave. We need all the hands we can get."

"I'd have to work part time," Richie tells the woman. "I'm in college."

"Completely okay," Kim says pairing her words with a smile.

"And I don't have my truck right now, its in the shop, so I don't know when I can start."

"Oh! Tomorrow! We can carpool, it'll be your sophomore year all over again - minus, y'know, the thing," Beverly says. Her hand waves in the air and she half rolls her eyes, and Richie snorts. The thing... It certainly was a 'thing', alright.

"Bev-."

"Fine, I'll make Ben drive you."

"Dude, he has barely any free time, don't do that to him... Okay, we can carpool until I get my truck back."

"Yes!"

Kim chuckles at the two, softly shaking her head. She looks at Richie then. "Welcome aboard, Richie. Come in when you can tomorrow, and then we'll figure out set hours. Sounds good?"

Richie nods. "Yes, ma'am. I'll probably be here around ten."

"Perfect."

Finally, after that and after stealing Bev's hot Cheetos Ben had brought her - he wasn't a total ass, he left the sandwich and drink - he left with Ben, the blond taking him over to where Stan works; where Tori is still patiently waiting. The girl climbs in without a second thought and thankfully Ben doesn't mention her disheveled appearance. As they leave, they wave bye to Stan. Well, they wave by to the café and grill, hoping in some weird way Stan might be able to see them.

[call-me-rei]

Chapter 24

TW at the end (illusion of self-harm)

~~~~~

“Say anything that could make this all okay.”

---

“Why are you a dumbass?”

I was sitting in calculus, my first class of the day, when the aggressive question was asked. I looked up from my notebook to see Lynn leaning against my desk. She was staring down at me with an angry face. “Nice to see you too, Gunn.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why are you a dumbass?”

“Why would you keep asking the same question if you don’t want the same result?”

“Because I wanna know why you’re a dumbass. Why would you ruin it?”

I cocked my eyebrow in question. “Ruin what?”

“What you had with Vic. I thought you guys were going to be great. Why would you ruin it?”

“What do you know about it?” I wanted to gauge Lynn’s knowledge of the subject. Since she was talking to me about it, it was obvious she knew a bit.

“Well, I know it’s all over school.”

“What is?” I asked.

“Well,” Lynn started as she took a seat next to me, “I heard that a certain Fuentes brother is pissed at a certain new kid for something said new kid said to him yesterday.”

I frowned. “Why would Mike be mad at me?” I tried to joke. Lynn gave me a stare I had never seen before. It made me want to apologize for every wrong thing I’d ever done to avoid her rage.

“Cut the crap,” she seethed. “What did you do?”

I took a breath to regain my composure before I answered. “It’s all your fault,” I accused.

“My fault? How is what you said my fault?”

I sighed and put my pen down. I didn’t want to admit anything, but Lynn being Lynn knew what I was going to say before I said it.

“Is it because of Alex? I knew I shouldn’t have told you anything about him.”

I nodded sadly. “Yup.”

“Oh my gosh Kells, they’re rumors. We talked about this. Alex is straight.”

“Okay but we thought Vic was straight and that’s obviously not true so try to tell me that Alex is and that the rumors that they’re sleeping together are fake.”

Lynn sighed. “I can’t tell you that for sure, but I can tell you that you’re being a fucking idiot.”

I had stayed up all night calling myself an idiot for blowing up at Vic. He didn’t deserve it, and I knew that, but my insecurities got the better of me. I usually obsessed over things until they drove me crazy, and this was no different. I couldn’t get over that Vic could be leading me on, especially since I had real feelings for him. I didn’t want to admit to myself for a long time but after our date those feelings were confirmed. I wanted to be with Vic.

“I just don’t wanna get played,” I whispered.

“I get that but you’re going about this the wrong way. You’re basing your opinions on Vic on things you’ve heard from other people. You’ve only been going to school here for a month and a half and in that time, people have shaped your opinion of him before you were able to form one for yourself. That’s not how you should go about your life.”

“But you and the rest of our friends were the ones who told me those things about him.”

“Unfortunately, you have a point,” she said before she ran her hand through her brown hair. “I get that it makes me a hypocrite to say that, and I’m sorry if I put bad images of Vic in your head. But I mean it when I say that your opinions of him after we told you those things are all your own and you should form them on your own.”

She had a point. I let out a deep breath. “I know. I also know I fucked up. How do I go about forming my own opinions when everything I’ve heard is so horrible?”

“Well,” Lynn began, “how do you feel when you’re with him? Are you always scared and on edge?”

I thought back to my moments with Vic. Although they were few and far between, they had a special place in my memory.

I thought about our first encounter when he walked in late to our government class and threatened me. I thought about how later that same day he took my notebook, resulting in both of us getting detention. I thought back to going over to his house for the first time and working on our project only to rush out of there because I thought he’d figured out that I was gay.

Despite all those horrible memories, I remembered some good ones.

I remembered him coming over to my house and our game of truth or dare. I remembered having dinner with his family. I remembered the moment in the practice room when he told me he couldn’t read music, yet he was such a talented musician. I remembered our talks during lunch in his car and by the stream. I remembered our date and how I wished it didn’t end.

I remembered every time I looked into his eyes and hoped he felt the same feelings.

“Maybe I was at first,” I answered, “but now I feel...calm. And I guess I feel this sense of wanting. Longing maybe. Like I wanna be near him because he makes me feel things I haven’t ever felt before.”

“There you go.”

“Huh?” I questioned.

“Well, I don’t wanna say ‘I told you so,’ but you should know by now that you fucked up.” I hung my head.

Yeah, I know.

Lynn continued. “Word around school is that he’s pissed at someone because of what happened in class. The people in your music appreciation class know it’s you, but some other people are making other assumptions. Either way, the school knows that Vic wants nothing to do with the person.”

I put my head in my hands and sighed deeply. I didn’t want Vic to be done with me. I wanted answers; I wanted the truth.

I wanted Vic to reciprocate my feelings.

“What do I do, Gunn?” I groaned. I felt a hand rub my shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t know what you said, and you have a closer relationship with him than I do so I can’t tell you what you should do to fix it.”

“Thanks for the help,” I mumbled.

Lynn chose to ignore that statement. “All I can tell you is to be honest with him and tell him how you feel and why you said what you said.”

I lifted my head from my hands in shock and confusion. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “I can’t admit that.”

“You have to! Look at what keeping your feelings to yourself got you. Do you really think it’s gonna be better if you continue?”

I groaned in frustration as I threw my head back and shut my eyes. I didn’t want to do any of this.

“I can tell by your response that you know I’m right.” I straightened up and stared at Lynn. She had a cocky smile and a smug know-it-all look plastered on her face.

“Shut up, Gunn.”

“You’re still confirming that I’m right so no, I will not.”

I did my best to shoot daggers at her with my eyes. I really hated her.

“You’re cute when you think you’re menacing,” she giggled. I rolled my eyes.

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

The bell rang signaling the start of the school day. Our teacher, who was sitting behind her desk while Lynn and I and other students were having our own conversations, got up and started the lesson.

I tried to focus on my teacher, but every so often my mind went to Vic. I wondered if he was thinking about me too. I wondered if he wanted to talk to me again. I wondered if he’d forgive me.

***

After two other classes – English and choir – it was time for lunch. I shut my locker after I had put all my books and backpack away and leaned my forehead against the cold metal door.

Lynn was the first one of my friends to talk to me about Vic, but I knew that everyone else knew some of what was going on. As much as I didn’t want to talk to everyone about it, I knew I’d have to. I was just so tired of being the center of attention because I talked to Vic more often than they did. It made me feel like an exhibit at the zoo.

I exhaled deeply then picked up my feet and trudged to the cafeteria, following the smell of fries. I may not have had much of an appetite, but I couldn’t resist fries. Tyler waved me over as I stepped in the table’s line of sight. I smiled at him as I pointed to the line, letting him know that I’d sit with them after I got some food.

Once I had my tray of food I walked to the table where my friends were sitting. Tori and Sav scooted over to give me some room to sit. As soon as I sat down all eyes were on me. I rolled my eyes inwardly and tried to focus on my plate of fries, but even though we were in the noisy cafeteria, my table was silent and waiting for me to give them my attention.

I sighed as I looked up. “Out with it,” I groaned.

“What?” Trent asked innocently.

“Well, I know that Lynn already knows so that means you guys must know too. Just ask whatever it is you wanna ask.”

They looked around at each other, probably deciding who would interrogate me first. Finally, Sav spoke up.

“What’d you say to him to get him so upset?”

“I accused him of playing me and leading me on.” I sighed. “Not my proudest moment.”

“Why would you do that?” asked Tyler.

“Because I heard a stupid rumor and overthought it.”

“What ru-” Tyler was cut off by the cafeteria getting decibels quieter as Vic and his friends walked into the room. Normally no one would care that they were walking in, but since there was word around the building that Vic was pissed, the student body wanted to see what he would do next.

My table, as well as the other kids at other tables, stopped what they were doing and looked at the four guys walking toward the lunch line. Jaime was going around smiling at people he made eye contact with, no doubt trying to ease the tension. Tony walked silently with his hands in his pockets. Mike walked next to his brother, occasionally looking down at him for some reason.

Then there was Vic.

Vic walked looking straight ahead. He ignored the whispers about him and kept his eyes focused on the entrance to the line. My eyes stayed focused on him as soon as he reached the front end of our table. I could hear my heart beating in my chest. I so badly wanted something to draw his eyes to mine, to connect us so he could see how upset and sorry I was. I wanted to make sure he was okay as well since I had never seen him look so distant from everything and everyone before.

I guess my wish came true because I saw Vic’s eyes flicker to mine as he walked past our table. It was quick; you would have missed it if you blinked, but I saw it. His eyes that held light and some humor whenever I looked into them were cold. Did I hurt him that much?

The cafeteria went back to its normal volume once Vic and his friends sat down at a table. I stared at the back of Vic’s head hoping that the feeling of my eyes boring into him would get him to turn around and acknowledge me in some way.

It didn’t. And I was too much of a punk to go over there and talk to him.

So my friends and I left the cafeteria. We walked past Vic’s table. I was hoping to get the feeling of his eyes on me, or of him wanting to get up and stop me. Neither of those came. I glanced behind me to pretend to talk to Kortney when I really wanted to check on Vic. His eyes were on Jaime and Mike who were sitting in front of him. He was engaged in conversation with a hint of a smile dancing on his lips.

He wasn’t worried about me. He didn’t care. He was mad and it was my fault. I ruined my chance with him and now he was done with me.

That thought repeated in my head during my last class of the day. It repeated while I drove home. It repeated while I sat in the attic at midnight and saw red lines across my wrist and a warm red liquid trailing down my arm, making me feel everything and nothing at all.

[leovand]

ARIZONA U is proud to introduce you to LEONARDO “LEO” VAN DOREN , the twenty-five year old, undergraduate fine arts major in his SENIOR year. most of their peers deem them as someone who is +eccentric , +intelligent & +self-sufficient but i know that some of their professors think they’re more -self-righteous, -precipitous & -self-destructive, maybe that’s why the police are still interviewing them on the reopened cold case. maybe it was because they were also A BAD INFLUENCE for NATALIA LINDERMAN. i mean that is just a little suspicious, but i only really think of scuffed black combat boots, a car that always smells like weed, and meaningless tattoos when i hear their name, not murder. but i could be wrong. — MAXENCE DANET-FAUVEL.

boo bitch i’m gin, bout to head out to work but tbh i’ll be around to chat n plot bc whew it’s boring there !!!! anyway down below you’ll find a terrible bio + some wcs so come hmu and we’ll plot some angst or give this a like and i’ll slide in ur dms woo ah

also a tl;dr is right before the wcs and above that is a brief description of his connection to natalia

trigger warnings for drug use/abuse, addiction, and infidelity

background info

leo was born in london to two very wealthy parents, richard and cynthia van doren. richard was something of an inattentive father (particularly when it came to leo) and from early on beginning to distance himself from the family, and while cynthia certainly loved leo, she’d always wanted a daughter, which she got two years later when his little sister victoria ( @toriivd​ ) was born. thus, it was from an extremely young age that leo began to feel like something of a black sheep in the family. richard was, unbeknownst to any of them, already having an affair with a woman in america whom he’d met on several business trips to arizona. all they knew was that he hardly seemed invested in their family anymore, let alone to take an interest in their lives. of course, victoria was a daddy’s girl, and though she often pretended not to see this happening leo knew perfectly well she was lying deliberately to herself. it was something he only pulled out when they fought bitterly, and they both knew it was a low blow when he did. 

this was especially apparent in high school, when leo’s acting out turned to drug use, skipping school, and even trouble with the police a few times. richard was almost never there either to lend fatherly support or to discipline--the only time he was, leo got the tongue-lashing of his life as well as a slap in the face, and if he had to pick a specific event which led him to the realization that he hated his father, it would be that one. 

even as things were looking rockier and rockier with their parents, leo was 12 when his mom got pregnant again. 13 when she had their baby brother, bradley. it was frankly a mess and for the first couple years leo was not at all good about helping. he resented the further attention drawn away from himself and hated his dad more than ever for his seemingly endless supply of bullshit

when he was 15, tori 13, and bradley 2, their parents finally got divorced. he and tori listened in on the final, blow-out fight from the stairs and learned that the reason their father had been taking so many business trips to the states all these years was in fact another woman, and even better, the two kids he had with her. tori had processed this in her own way, and leo had tried to be there for her, but his own self-destructive method of processing it made it difficult to do so. in other ways, however, the whole thing changed the nature of his relationship with his mother, which had always been a little distant. the fact of his father’s betrayal had the effect of inspiring within leo a fierce love and protectiveness over her, and in the rubble of their family the four of them found something much more intimate than they’d had before. 

he graduated high school in spite of all this but spent the following two years doing nothing productive; it was sex drugs rock n roll and rebellion, and through it all giving a huge metaphorical middle finger to his dad, who’d officially moved to arizona to pledge his allegiance to his chosen family. leo and tori eventually came to the morally questionable agreement to tell people that their father had died in a car accident rather than explain the truth, and for leo, it was as much an act of spitting on his father’s memory as it was a tactic to avoid talking about it. 

it was when tori finally graduated high school that they formulated the plan to go to university in arizona, and while they were there to try and find their father. not because leo missed him, of course--it was closure he was after, and only seeing him and his other family would allow him to find it.

a year ago now, leo went back home to england for a month and a half to check himself into rehab, but the only person he told was his mom. it was for an opioid addiction that had gotten out of hand and he did indeed manage to get clean. he’s even managed to stay clean when it comes to the opioids, but he’s started doing coke now and then and dabbling in pills. mostly though it’s just a lot a lot of weed all the time. 

he’s in his senior year of his bfa and has almost no prospects, although that’s mostly due to his screwing them all up by being high and careless about it. a part of him despises the whole idea of school and the work force and having a career and is lowkey self destructing bc he can’t handle the idea of growing up and having to act like an adult

personality

so for the most part, leo is super super chill, doesn’t take anything very seriously, is cracking jokes 24/7 (his sense of humor is so so so dry), almost always high, and if no one stops him will start rambling on about literally anything in his pretentious know it all way that he genuinely doesn’t realize is so wildly pretentious

he’s a fine arts major with a focus in illustration but he also does a lot of sculpting. so he doodles a lot, probably on things he shouldn’t doodle on, and he makes money on the sculptures here and there (which he’s telling himself he can sustain for his entire life lmao)

pansexual, tends to sleep around but genuinely likes being in a relationship. he falls in love rly easily and has little crushes on random people all the time and is prone to infatuations with people who don’t feel the same way. most relationships he’s had have failed bc of his drug problem interfering and/or becoming too much for his partner at the time to deal with

for everything he’s been thru, leo actually has quite an optimistic view of the world and people in general and he just really likes human interaction and being around people. he can come off as wildly eccentric and difficult to keep up with and sometimes makes it seem like he thinks he’s better than everyone and doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks but on the highest of keys he cares so much what everyone thinks and will probably admit that out loud tbh ftyegudhsujka

cares about his mom, sister, and little brother more than anything in the world and feels guilty as HELL about not being there while his brother is growing up

will lose his mind if u call him leonardo

connection to natalia linderman //  natalia was the good girl, and that was certainly part of leo’s motivation to corrupt her—there was something thrilling about being able to effect such change in someone held in such high esteem on campus—but that wasn’t all of it. some part of him had developed feelings, too, and it killed him that she never saw him that way. the drugs and the class-skipping to smoke weed made him feel close to her, even when she was talking about other people. he eventually began to feel guilty for what he saw as poisoning her with his way of life, and he’d been working up the nerve to tell her this until she went missing. he now lives with the fear that whatever she got mixed up in that resulted in her death could be blamed on the drugs, and more specifically, him.

tl;dr // comes from a wealthy british family whose father left when he was 15 in favor of his second family in america; weed smoker, class skipper, pretentious art boy acts like he doesn’t give a fuck but actually gives the most fucks and readily admits it; surprisingly soft but will Fight for his mom and sister; spent two months that nobody knows about in rehab last year for an opioid addiction

wanted connections/plot ideas

this will have to be discussed with me n maia but !! a boy who tori was dating six months ago (for however long before that) who seduced leo and then told him he wanted to be w him instead, and then broke up with tori when leo said no and told her he cheated on her but not with whom fytsugeuhkdij so hmu if u wanna fill that and i’ll give u more deets 👀

the two kids!!! from their dad’s second family!!!! PLEASE!!!

randomly someone he was in rehab with showing up in arizona somehow???? more likely than u think !!

a few exes from arizona + any exes from back home in london would be cute

someone with a s/o whom leo is practically in love with who does not feel the same way back p l e a s e ideally they’d be rly close friends too

stoner buds thanks

gimme some of tori’s exes/suitors for leo to fight OR even softer.....to rly like and root for

a bad influence who encourages his drug use :/

good influences!!!

whew also someone who kind of.....had an idea of what he was doing with natalia and was Big Sus about it and maybe still is !!!?????!