#also update that no one asked for: turns out my roommates never clean the drain in the shower and when it was my turn to clean the bathroom

[abba-enthusiast]

I love reading articles on the internet.

[shaydeoffical]

Bright as a Diamond. Shinso Hitoshi x Fem Reader: Chapter Eleven

Chapter Summary:(Y/n) struggles with the idea of having a friend and where to draw a line. It's been years since she was close to anyone, and now she's in his bed? 

Series Summary: When (Y/N)’s co-worker decided to send a picture of her making a diamond to the paper, her life was over. Gemstone based quirks weren’t all that rare, but being able to make a diamond put a target on her back. After years of hiding in the city, it’s time to hide in the countryside with her Uncle Shota Aizawa and his more than ‘roommate’ Hizashi Yamada. With the promise of training her to be self-sufficient, she’s ready to learn.

Author Note: Enjoy this softer update! 

Warnings: Nightmares, flashback, cuddles

Last Chapter: Ten

Next Chapter: Twelve

Good Friends

   It hadn’t been but a few days, and I was already back in bandages. Resting in my bed, tucked away safely from the world… I couldn’t stop glancing from my closet to the window and back to the door. It had been a while since the ambush, but I couldn't close my eyes for two seconds.  

   My ribs and stomach were so sore. I grabbed my favorite pillow, but it didn’t smell the same. Nothing did. Tide or gain? Someone washed all my sheets. Damn it all. When I was at the doctor, I said Hizashi tried to clean everything up. The group had torn my room apart. Even if I had hidden in the bathroom, waiting inside while I was sparing. Nothing was safe.

   Holding my aching body, I stood using my bedside table as a crutch. A dizzy spell washed over me, and I tumbled out of the room and in the silent kitchen. It was four in the morning, and all three men had to work in the morning.

   When I scavenged the fridge, I found a casserole and some leftover chicken. I didn’t bother heating it up, I barely got it on a plate before sitting on the couch and pounding it down. I hadn’t been so depleted since I was a captive in Russia… I guess it was a good thing I practiced making gems every morning.

   The bandages around my hands were from the coals I made. Back when I was a hero student, I had special gloves. Of course, I overdid it during the fight, because it counted. If dad were still around, he would have gone without a struggle, but he also wouldn’t be sitting on our sofa eating in the middle of the night.

   I washed my dishes and moseyed around the home. The window was patched up with garbage bags, and for the most part, that was all that was displaced in the main room.

Remembering my interview in the ER, I’m sure the police already on the trail to the bad guys. They questioned Shinso and Hizashi, too, and they even got the info from Sho. This just needed to end sooner than later. They even took my phone. Of course, it had been the root of a lot of my problems. An early warning system and a ''steal me" beacon. So I couldn't distract myself with music or pictures, or stress over pictures that would be sent to me, of me.

   Going back to bed, I just laid there. Everywhere I looked, I expected to be jumped, photographed, or tracked. The unease slowly turned to an anxiety attack, that turned to a panic attack when Hisoka pawed at my window. There was no way I was going to open it… I loved petting him, but I couldn't do it. It hurt so much.

   Grabbing my pillow and blanket, I slowly approached the hallway. Pacing the hall, I took shaky breaths and tried to get my courage. Trying Hizashi and Shota’s door, I turned the nob, but it was locked to my surprise. The first door in the hall caught my eye, the one I never dared to open. Maybe if I was super quiet, I could just sleep in there and not disturb Lint ball. Yea that'd be a good plan. We were almost friends now...it was okay.

   Tiptoeing, I very slowly turned the handle. It wasn’t locked thankfully, so I sauntered in holding my breath. Shinso’s back was to me, the blanket wrapped around him like a cocoon. The moonlight was shining through the window, lighting up his hair. He looked like he was out cold.

   My shoulder’s relaxed, and I laid my blanket at the foot of the bed, dropping my pillow down. Quietly lowering myself, I got comfy. The floor was hard and stressed my back, but it was easier than being anxious all night. Closing my eyes for the first time in two days, I started to drift off.

   “You want to explain why you’re in my room?” I jumped, sitting up and peering at him over the mattress. He was perched on one elbow, phone lazily in his hand, his light pointed on me.

   “Hu- I-. Good morning. You see, I was afraid. So, I just thought ,since Hizashi had the door locked, that I could just sneak in here and sleep without bothering you.” I played with my fingers and made small hand motions. Putting on a happy tone and trying not to be a creep.

   “You don’t have to sneak in.” He crawled out of bed, lazily yawning. “Hop up, Kitten. I’m not planning on sleeping for the rest of the night.” Hitoshi patted the mattress, and I didn’t even fight it.

   “Thank you. I would argue with you, but I’m too tired.” I rolled into the large bed, and my eyes went wide. Gasping, I grabbed a pillow and buried my head in the fabric. Inhaling the with deep breaths, a wave of joy washed over me.

   “What are you doing?” Hitoshi sat in his armchair and put his phone to the side. Leaning forward on his knees, he raised a brow.

   “Lemongrass and lavender… that was all you?” I sat up, and cocked my head to the side. "You were the one smelling like this the whole time?"

   “I use a pillow mist.” He held up a small bottle, and I blinked a few times, biting my lips.

   “This is going to be weird…but I have been sleeping so much better ever since Hizashi gave me a pillow that smelled like this. You have good taste.” I curled back down, closing my eyes and holding the pillow closer.  

   “It helps me too.” He mused, leaned back, scrolling through his phone again. “You were cool the other day. That cork move, you used in the blizzard biome. It was amazing.”

   “Thank you. It drained me, but it is a flashy move.” I popped my fingers, still filled with energy from being spoked.

   “It's a hero move. Why didn’t you pursue it?” I knew he was faking being interested in the phone at this point. The screen was dark, but his eyes were glued to the screen.

   “I got my license using only my coal quirk…but then I kind of got kidnapped, and then I just moved back in with my mother, didn’t leave the house for six months, and switched to an online university. Things just all changed after that. Just to do a painless summary.” I swallowed, trying to relax my shoulders. "Why'd you ask?"

   “I would have given anything for a heroic quirk when I was younger.” He sat the phone down, closing his eyes.

   “What, your quirk is so awesome. Like you literally saved my life multiple times. If younger you could see you now, he wouldn’t have any doubt that you are an amazing hero.” I got too loud, and I lowered my tone.

   “Aren’t you afraid I’ll use my quirk to hurt you?” He grabbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes. He did that way to often... has he just been nervous the whole time?

   “No. Why would you hurt me?” I blinked the sleep from my eyes and yawned. “Hitoshi Shinso, I am about to fall asleep in your bed, because I know you will protect me while I sleep. It’s very obvious to me that you are an amazing person.”

   “Tolerable to amazing so quickly?” He smiled, genuine, bright, and oh so handsome. “You really believe all that stuff.”    

   “Of course I do.” I got comfortable and inhaled the aroma. “Good night.”

   “Night.”

   Finally, at peace, I drifted off. There were no nightmares or underlining anxiety. It was just me in the middle of a prewarmed bed that made me want to sleep forever.

   I dreamed of Shota, Hizashi, Hitoshi, mom, and I at a picnic on the beach. Hizashi had brought a watermelon, and we all took turns smashing it open and enjoying all the juices. Then Hitoshi, Hizashi, and I went swimming and found lots of seashells I could use to decorate the house for summer.

   Hitoshi started to breathe jaggedly in my dreams and mumbled that he wasn’t a villain. I looked at his toned chest and felt my body being pulled up—mind swirling back to reality.

   The dream was disrupted, and I saw Hitoshi crying. He was slumped backward, struggling in a nightmare. I had been tucked into the covers at some point and struggled to free my arms. He pulled his hair and tenses his feet. Once I was out of the cocoon, I tumbled to the floor and then grabbed Hitoshi’s hands.

   “You’re safe. It’s okay.” I rubbed his knuckles, shaking him slightly. “Hitoshi, you are in your bedroom, and it’s a cold fall morning. There is an annoying girl in your room, and she wants you to relax.” He struggled against my grasp, but his eyes shot open, pushing forward and butting my forehead. Falling back on my ass, I rubbed my temple, mumbling.

   “Shit,” he breathed heavily, pressing his hands to his face. “I’m sorry.” Catching his breath, he wiped his eyes quickly.

   “Don’t be, it sounded like a rough nightmare.” Sighing, I knew what Dad would do in the situation. “Come on,” I tugged him from the chair and sat him on the bed. I got behind him and leaned him back, so he was resting on my chest. Running my fingers up and down his head, I hummed a gentle tune. “You can talk about it if you want.”

   “I was bullied for my quirk when I was younger…even now sometimes.” He sat up, pulling the cover over both of us. His lips quivering with each word, as he gave up laying back on me. “I think I’m over it, but then it just comes back..”    

   “Sounds traumatic. Of course, it would haunt you, it probably didn’t help I hyped you up before you passed out.” I massaged his forehead, and neck, then upper arms. The pressure on my chest hurt, but he needed this. I had several days to heal up, it was just a slight twinge, but I wanted to do this.

   “I just don’t know when I’ll be good enough for myself.” He growled, pulling his hair again. I grabbed his hands and laced our fingers, sliding him to the side so I could spoon him. “(Y/n).”

   “You are a hero. Hitoshi, you proved everyone wrong. You did it.” I reaffirmed, snuggling his back. “That was all with your power.”

   “Yea,” he swallowed, letting my hands go, and turning to face me. I wrapped arms back around him, clutching his shirt. “I never would have thought you’d be so clingy.”

   “Are you trying to change the subject, or are you trying to get me to leave?” I raised my brow, but when his hand wrapped around my hips, I knew.

   “Don’t go.” He looked so innocent, “I just never thought you'd do something like this for me."

   “So from tolerable to desired. What a drastic change.” I pressed my forehead to him, just to comfort him in his time of need. Someone owed me a BFF award for this...

   “It shocked me too, Kitten,” he yawned, eyes dropping, drifting off to sleep.

   The whole point of my coming here was to feel safe, but I was the protector now. If being close meant I could guard his dreams even for a moment, I wanted to do that. Surely I owed him more then a couple. Even if this looked wrong, it felt right. Running my fingers through his hair, I too slowly drifted back off.

   I heard a bunch of shutter sounds and feet bouncing around the room. Instead of getting up, I snuggled deeper into the bed, an arm wrapping tighter around my waist. More shutters and an ‘aww’ bounced off the walls.

   “Mic, can you please just let her sleep.” Hitoshi pulled the cover over my head. Sitting up, he rested his hand on my back getting me a gentle pat.

   “I’ve been caught. You two are just so cute.” Hizashi gushed, and I stirred up at his voice. Hitoshi’s hand kept me down, so I stayed put, yawning.

   “Go get ready for work Mic,” Hitoshi mumbled, laying back down, tossing his arm around my shoulders. "We'll be there in a minute."

   “But my babies-“ Hizashi’s quirk activated booming in the room. Hitoshi quickly shoved a pillow over my head. Mic continued to cry and babble about how cute we were, there was no use trying to sleep any longer.

   “Hizashi, please calm down.” I freed myself from the pillows protecting me and yelled over him.

   “You-“ Hizashi started, but then he blushed. I looked at my shirt, in the night, the string on my slip has snapped.

   “We’ll be in there in five minutes,” Hitoshi promised and removed the pillow from his ears.

   “It was a weird night. We didn’t go anything, pinkie promise.” I assured him and rubbed my neck. Of course, this old slip would give out when I was cuddling a dude.

   “Okay, I’ll see you at the table.” He took a few more pictures and filed out of the room, shutting the door. Covering his eyes as he left.

   Hitoshi stood up, stretching to the point his shirt rose up to show his stomach. He was so handsome...but the bed was colder without him. Instinctively I reach to pull him back down, but I stopped short.

   He turned and quirked his brow, seeing my outstretched hand. I brought it back to my chest and looked at the window. “Thank you for last night.” He sat back on the bed and laid on top of the cover.

“Where did you learn to do that.” He hummed, stretching his limbs even again. We had been tangled like sardines.    

   “My boyfriend.” He stiffened, frozen to the spot. I twirled over and wrapped my finger’s in his hair. “I’m kidding, the look on your face, though." I giggled. "But I've been single since birth, which means I learned it all from my dad. He was a master cuddlier, he tended to me when I was a baby and never sat me down." I thought about stopping myself, but he has been open the night before. "I never knew what it meant to be touch starved till he died. Mom isn’t very big on being touched. So, I just take long showers and hug pillows and bears.” I let his hair go and held myself instinctively. “He was a lot like Hizashi, so bright and loud. The brightest soul in the room. If I could be half of that, I’d be the happiest person alive.” I grabbed a pillow and buried my head in the scent.

   “We said, five minutes.” He pulled the pillow from between us, wrapped his arm around me, and guided my head on his chest. If I thought his pillows were nice, his actual body smelled intoxicating. I had been so consumed with comforting him last night I didn't notice. He was so warm and gentle, and the way he hummed so soothing. "But, I don't think Mic set a timer."

   “This is so nice,” I purred, drifting off again. “Do you have to go to work, Hitoshi?” He ran his fingers under my dress and scratched my back in small circles. This was inappropriate. Maybe sexual. Indecent. and yet…. “A little lower, ahh, that’s the spot.”

   “I have to go." He gently tapped my skin while ghosting his nails up and down.

   “Can we do this again?” I propped myself up my chin, offering him puppy dog eyes.

   “Whenever you want,” he patted my back a few times and got up. “Let’s get ready.”

   “I don’t have anywhere to be?” I sat up and closed my eyes when he took his shirt off.

   “We don’t think anyone else knows this location, but we need to be cautious.” Shinso was fumbling with a belt, and I tried not to think of him pulling on his pants.

   “Is there a reason you’re changing in front of me?” I blurted, using a pillow to cover my face.

   “I’m running late, thanks to you.” He pulled the pillow away and hovered inches from my lips. The space between us was shrinking. Of course, he looked so handsome in his bright purple scrubs.....

   “What did you buckle?” Shinso pressed his forehead to mine and head-butted me gently.

   “You really wanna know pervert?” He towered over me and lifted his shirt. There was his scarf wrapped around his waist and a holster with a small recording device. “It’s intel. You never know what someone might slip that you can catch on recording later.”

   I poked his side, then curled my fingers around his scarf tugging. He didn't budge, and I nodded in thought. “Is that too tight? You might pass out if it’s constricting you, or bruise.” I tugged harder and he actually lost his balance. I took this opportunity to shove him to the floor. There I rested my knee on his chest and restricted his arms. “I did it.” Seeing him pinned fully was so satisfying. In an instant, he flipped me over and straddled my lap. “Aww, that’s so not cool.”

   “You didn’t balance your stance.” Shinso let my wrists go, and I tried aimlessly to toss him off.

   “I thought you were running late?” I gave up, out of breath and flushed.

   “This is worth it.” He stood and pulled me up with him, he dusted off my back, and I knew it was his subtle form of gloating.

   “So I can’t stay home today, what do I need to do?” We went into the kitchen and started to eat breakfast with Hizashi, who was on an important phone call with Shota.

   “It would be dangerous for you to hang around the day care. I assumed you’d go to the radio station with Mic.” Shinso nudged my foot, and nodded towards Hizashi, he was starting to use his heated voice. A fight was about to break out….

   “Hizashi, tell Shota I pinned Shinso this morning,” I hollered over the island separating the space. If they were about to fight, they needed to know we were in ear shot.

   “I had you pinned.” Shinso shot back, munching into an apple.

   “As if I let you.” I crossed my arms, and Shinso offered me a small thumbs-up under the table. Shota and Hizashi had been in turbulent water after Hisoka got sick. We had taken it upon ourselves to buy them enough time for Shota to return home and have a real conversation about their issues. So until then, we were staying around the phone and offering them distractions.

   “I got to go, the kids are fighting. No. No, I do love you.” Hizashi hung up and paced back to the table. "Both of you look me." We sat to face him, and he cupped both of our faces. “ You both know I'm not going to get in your business. But are you two using protection? I can get you whatever you need. How long has this been going on?“

   “Ahh, no nono-we ain’t. Not like that.” Blood rushed to my brain, and I ran my hands across the table to find a knife to cut out my ears. "That's so gross. The hokey pokey, no way." Shinso gripped my shoulder and looked a little hurt. Did he want me to play along? Would this help distract Hizashi from his fight with uncle Sho?

"Hizashi, nothing happened." Shinso keeps his gaze locked on me, the panic seeping out of me.

"I'm sorry I was so brash jus than. Hizashi, it's just not- not like that." I put my hand on Shinso's smiling.

   Snap. “So cute, I'm glad it's just you two bonding. I'd support you no matter what, but I'm just glad you're not fighting anymore.” Hizashi had his phone out again and cooed. “Anyway, So (Y/n)’s going to work with me?”

   “Actually, I want to go home.” I popped my fingers, going to the fridge. “Mom asked me to visit last week, and I haven’t had the time.”

   “I don’t think that’s a good idea today,” Hizashi smoothed his hair that was up in the air. “We’re all working and can’t go with you.”

   “I want to go alone. To be honest, I haven’t had a second alone outside in months, which I am thankful for, it’s been scary. But I just want to blend in today and be normal.” I looked at myself, reflected in my water. “I’ve gotten braver than ever before, I want to make this trip. Superman could hide his identity with glasses, then so can I.” They neither one looked super convinced, but Hizashi finally nodded.

   “We can’t stop you, so I’m going to encourage it.” Hizashi pushed his phone to me. “Take it and use it to call Shota if something happens.”

   “Yes sir,” I nodded. “I’ll go get ready. Can one of you drop me off at the station?”

   “Sure thing,” Hizashi offered a charming smile.

   “Thank you.” I rushed off to get ready.

   Filling a bag with my Shinso snack stash (he had made it a habit to bring me goodies when he came home from work), and a good book. Then I pulled on a grey hoodie and put my hair into a tight bun to mask all the curls. Once I looked as nondescript as I could, I rejoined the boys and hopped in the car with Hizashi.

   Rock blasted through the speakers, and we both jammed out. Singing along and dancing in our seats. Hizashi and I vibed, and that was the best thing about living with Uncle Sho. I never would have met this fantastic person without moving into their house and getting to live out their closeted daydream. I wished they could be open and share their love with the family.

   Hizashi turned the music off, and I nearly fainted. He never turned it down, let alone off. “Hey, (Y/n).”

   “Yes,” I turned to observe him. His brow creased, and his lips went lax. Slowing down as we took a curve.

   “Do you like Shinso? You two could hardly look at each other a month ago.” He gripped the wheel tighter and swallowed. "I mean, you like him, but is there something I should know?"

   “I like him as a person. Like I told him, I rarely judge someone incorrectly on the first meeting.” Hizashi snickered, holding his voice down. “He’s a fine gentleman, with a smug attitude.”

   “You were in bed with him.” Hizashi couldn't hold back, whacking the back of my seat.

   “Shut up. I was afraid, and your door was locked.” The car hit a bump, and I nearly knocked my head against the windshield.

   “I knew you two would be good for each other,” Hizashi patted my knee.

   “You didn’t know me,” I argued, twisting the seat belt over my chest. "I mean, I just showed up and boom. An extra person to feed."

   “From what Shota said, I knew you two would hit it off. I just didn’t see you hating his guts right off the bat.” Hizashi pulled into the station, turning the music back up.

   “Well, he didn’t like me either. He was so rough and rude.” I unbuckled and wrapped my bag across my body. "I didn't think he'd change at all."

   “You think so,” Hizashi smiled, patting my knee, “he’s been smitten from the start.”

   “You’re a hopeless romantic, Hizashi.” I rolled my eyes, getting out of the car. “He barely tolerates me now. There is nothing between us.”

   “(Y/n), you should reevaluate that statement.” Hizashi drove after me as I walked. “I love you, be safe and text me.”

   “I will.”

[heyyyharry]

Chapter 12: Daddy Issues

(from the Flatmate Trilogy: Two Hearts, One Home)

…in which Y/N is locked out of her flat with the wrong Styles.

Word count: 3.7k

Chapter 11: Needy - Y/N hates herself for being so needy.

Wattpad link

[ANNOUNCEMENT]: I have an exam on Friday, September 13 so I won't be able to update next week (Wednesday, September 11). The next flatmate chapter will be posted on Wednesday, September 18. 

- Love, Allie :)

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Harry was in a bad mood today. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Y/N, because he was rarely in a good mood when she was around, but this time she felt differently. At first, she didn't pay attention to him when he walked in looking like he was attending a funeral. She guessed it must've had something to do with the exam he'd had earlier today. It was very unlikely though. He'd never done poorly on an exam let alone failed one. So she eliminated that possibility and told herself to stop second guessing.

"What the fuck?!"

Y/N heard the scream and dashed into the kitchen, only to burst out laughing when she saw him holding the milk carton with milk dripping down his chin. She was going to make a funny comment when he snapped all of a sudden, "why the fuck did you put spoiled milk in the fridge?!"

"So you'd stop drinking my milk without asking." She stuck her nose up, crossing her arms.

"You're a psycho," he muttered and wiped his mouth and chin with the back of his hand.

She watched in amusement as he tossed the carton into the bin and cleaned up the mess he'd spat on the kitchen table. It was hilarious, yet just a harmless prank. The normal Harry would just laugh it off and say something like "I've underestimated you." But the Harry standing in the kitchen with her right now didn't even move his lips. He had the same frown on his face like the moment he walked in and then walked right past her, out of the kitchen. That was when it dawned on her that this wasn't something she could just ignore. But why was he like this? What had happened today?

He didn't have dinner with her that night. She'd eaten alone many times before when he was out with his friends, but tonight she felt truly lonely. Without anyone to rant about her day to, she finished fast, cleaned the dishes on her own and spent the next half an hour pacing back and forth outside his room, wanting to knock, but in the end, she decided to go to bed. Maybe he'd feel better in the morning, she thought while lying awake until she was too drained to keep her eyes open.

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"Hey, love, can I go to Dustin's bachelor party tomorrow night?"

Y/N widened her eyes at her husband who casually poured a glass of water and settled himself at the kitchen table.

"Who's Dustin?" she asked, pulling out a chair to sit down in front of him.

"My roommate in college." He gave her a shrug. "You know, back when I was living at the dorm."

She looked at him funny. "You're still friends with him?"

"Nope. I just ran into him the other day, we went out for a few drinks and I got invited to his bachelor party," he said smugly and lifted his glass. "What can I say? Your husband is irresistible."

The way his eyebrows waggled made her laugh. "Okay, but you're a grown man, babe. You don't have to ask for my permission to go to a party."

"Are you sure?" he asked, resting his chin on his knuckles. "Because bachelor parties always have strippers and all that shit?"

She crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow. "Are you trying to make me jealous?"

"Well, are you?" He mirrored her expression, grinning from ear to ear.

"Very." Y/N scrunched up her nose and reached across the table to stroke his head. When she stood up, however, he hugged her waist and pulled her in so he could kiss her stomach again and again. It was his ringtone that broke them apart.

"Your dad's calling."

"Just ignore him."

"Harry!" Her mouth fell open when he muted the call and forced her down on his lap. "What if it's an emergency?!"

"It's probably just work," he mumbled, pressing his hands flat against her back as she straddled his waist. She almost got carried away by him nuzzling her breast, but the buzzing of his phone was hard to ignore.

"Just answer the phone, H." She breathed.

Still, he shook his head unapologetically. "One of our investors pissed him off, and as usual, he blamed me for it. It's nothing serious."

"Are you sure?"

Harry didn't answer as he put his phone on airplane mode and faced it down on the table. "There," he said with a grin. "Now...where were we?"

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When Y/N woke up the next day, Harry had already left their flat. She completely understood that he didn't want to talk to her, but she determined to get a word out of him when he returned tonight and maybe apologize. Now all she could do was try to stay positive and carry on with her morning routine.

Y/N always took too long in the shower, yet she could never begin the day without one. This morning, she'd told herself to spend only fifteen minutes in there. Now it'd been thirty, and she was still in the middle of rinsing off her body while belting out the chorus of her new favorite song.

But then,

"FIRE! Y/N! FIRE!"

The girl turned off the shower and poked her head out to make sure it was actually her flatmate's scream that she'd heard.

"THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE, Y/N! WE NEED TO RUN!"

Fire?!

Y/N stumbled out of the shower, holding her breath. She only managed to wrap a towel around her dripping body before rushing to the living room. Harry was nowhere to be seen but the front door was wide open. He had run before her! Of course, he left me here to die! she thought and dashed out of the flat.

But the hallway was...empty?

Peaceful, even.

Wait, if the building had been on fire then why wasn't there an alarm?

She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw, one hand gripping the towel, the other smacked against her forehead. Damn it!

"Wow, you were fast. At least wait for my fire alarm."

His laughter pierced through her brain and she turned around to find him standing with his back against their door, the Bluetooth speaker in his hand, and the assholest smirk on his stupid handsome face.

She marched straight toward him and pushed him hard. "What is wrong with you?! Why are you such a dick?!"

"You only say the word 'dick' when you're with me, love. I feel special."

There he was, the smug bastard she always knew.

"That was for trying to poison me," he said when she groaned into her palm. "Nice towel by the way. Baby blue looks good on you."

A part of her was still aware of the fact that she was standing in the hallway with only a towel on, but the rest of her was glad he'd stopped being mad at her. So she said nothing and pushed him aside to go before anyone saw her like this. But as she turned the handle, the door wouldn't open. She tugged at it several times, more violently and desperately, only to look up and see the same horrified look on his face.

"Please tell me you have the key," she muttered, knowing already that he certainly did not have the key, yet for some reason, she still felt shocked when he shook his head and put the speaker on the floor.

"Are you joking?! I'm naked, Harry!"

"Calm down, I'll call the locksmith!" Harry grumbled as he searched through his contact list, but then smiled at how his flatmate was pacing back and forth in only her towel.

"Don't worry, you look hot," he said, and motioned that his mouth was zipped shut when she shot him a leer.

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.

Y/N couldn't believe it.

This morning when her husband left the house, she had repeatedly reminded him to not to forget his key, but now it was she who got locked out of their flat. She'd tried calling him, but he'd had his phone turned off. He never had his phone turned off when he was out and she was home alone, so she guessed all the guys at the party were asked to so and Harry didn't have a choice. Now all she could do was patiently wait for the locksmith to come for her rescue.

Sitting on the floor with her head in her hand, Y/N was too busy cursing herself in silence to hear the sound of the lift and the footsteps coming her way. It was only until the man cleared his throat loudly that she finally lifted her face, and her eyes widened at him immediately.

"Why are you sitting on the floor?" Devlin asked in concern.

Y/N frantically got to her feet as she straightened her dress and stuttered, "I-I left my key inside, but it's okay, I already called the locksmith."

"Where's Harry?"

"He's at a party and not answering his phone."

The answer made the man in the suit sigh as he whispered, "typical Harry..."

"No, no!" Y/N shook her head fast. "It's a bachelor party so maybe they made him turn off his phone. He's very responsible."

Devlin stared at her for a whole second before releasing another sigh, yet he remained quiet. Meanwhile, she stood still and studied his expression. She was waiting for him to speak, but also second-guessing what he was going to say next and why he was here.

"Do you know why he hasn't answered any of my calls?" He asked.

"No, sir..." she cautioned.

That answer made the man frown even harder. "What's the point of having two children when they're never there when you need them?"

Y/N almost blurted out that Devlin hadn't been there for Harry a lot of times too, but considering the fact that this man absolutely loathed her, she thought she should just keep her mouth shut.

"How are you and the baby? Good?"

The question froze her to the spot. She didn't expect him to ask about her and her baby because he hadn't said a word to congratulate them when Harry broke the news to him. But on second thought, if she hadn't been carrying his grandchild, maybe this conversation would never have lasted for more than two sentences.

"Yeah, we're good." She faked a beam, not knowing how to feel, but that concern soon slipped her mind.

The way he stood with his head hung low and hands in his pocket reminded her of Harry whenever he was nervous about something. The thought made her smile, but her father-in-law couldn't see it so he just said, "can you tell Harry that I came over?"

"What's wrong?" Her voice stopped him just as he was about to walk off. "If it's so important then you can just tell me and I'll help you speak to Harry."

Slowly, he turned around and glanced back up to meet her eyes. The Styles men were the same after all. Just like his son, Devlin couldn't say no to this young woman.

After pondering for what seemed like two seconds, he released a shaky breath. The reluctance was still etched on his face, but eventually, he gave her a nod, pinching his forehead.

"I caught my wife cheating on me."

.

.

.

"Let's talk about something fun!" Harry suggested as his face lit up, but all he received from Y/N was her passive aggressive silence.

They were sitting on the floor and she was naked, probably not the best time and place for a heart-to-heart conversation. But Harry believed he would've already died from boredom and silence by the time the locksmith arrived.

"I have nothing to say to you," she grumbled, crossing her arms, not looking at him.

She was mad, so mad that Harry could imagine smoking coming out of her ears. But there was something about the way she looked right now that made the butterflies in his stomach go insane. He bit his lip, holding back a smile as she kept adjusting the towel so her breasts wouldn't spill out. Why would she even bother to do that? He wouldn't mind. It would help his imagination the next time he shamelessly jerked off to her when he was alone. Jesus Christ, you're one fucked up bastard, said the voice in his head as he shrugged off the thought he would never say aloud and pulled his shirt over his head.

"What are you doing?" She almost jumped away from him but he was quick to catch her arm.

"Here." Smirking, he handed her his white t-shirt. "Put this on."

Y/N stayed utterly still as she stared at him like he'd just committed a horrible crime, and he couldn't help but chortle at the priceless reaction. "It's getting really hard for me to speak to you when you look like this. Please put this on."

Her cheeks reddened in a heartbeat. She parted her lips, wanting to ask what he really meant, but she was too shy to speak so she stayed quiet and put on his shirt. The way he was smiling at her afterward made her feel like she was more naked than before. Her arms automatically came wrapped around herself like a shield as she questioned, "what's so funny?"

"Nothing." He sounded nearly breathless. "You just...look really good in my shirt."

"Oh..." Her face dulled for a split second before she could say "thank you."

Tucking a strand behind her ear, Y/N stared at her feet to avoid eye contact at all costs. She merrily replayed those words inside her head, until she remembered that he'd probably said the same things to all the other girls. Who knew? Some of them might even have his shirts in their closet. Lending a girl his shirt and telling her she looked good in it probably didn't mean anything to him. Now she hated herself for forgetting that he flirted just for fun and for falling for his words every single time. How embarrassing.

"Are you still mad at me?" Harry asked when he saw the way she frowned.

"No."

"I can tell when you lie," he snorted. "Look, I'm sorry. I know that was a bit mean."

"A bit?!" She suddenly snarled at him. "Thanks to you I'm sitting in the hallway, half-naked—"

"Hey, hey, we're both half-naked now."

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes. "You're a horrible person."

"So are you."

"I'm not!"

"You made me drink spoiled milk, Y/N. My stomach is weak, I could've died."

"So I guess we're even now?"

"I guess so." He flashed her a grin and offered his hand. "Truce?"

To his disappointment, she shook her head. "Only if you tell me why you were acting strange last night?"

"I wasn't—"

"Don't deny it. I can tell when you lie," she repeated exactly what he'd told her earlier as she scrunched up her nose. "Just tell me what was bothering you. Was it the exam?"

"No, I nailed the exam," he spoke calmly.

"Then what?!"

The calmer he was, the more frustrated she became.

Y/N couldn't explain why she was like this. All she knew was that it bothered her when he wasn't himself, when he raised his voice at her for no reason, or when he wasn't speaking to her at all. She was desperate to make sure he was alright, that he didn't have to keep his sorrows to himself. Who would do that for someone they claimed to hate?

No, wait.

The actual question had to be: Did she hate him, at all?

"It's nothing," his voice freed her from her confusing thoughts, and so she decided to put them aside to focus on what was more important.

"You wouldn't like to know," he said with a long sigh.

"What does that even mean?" she uttered. "You owe me the truth after all this. If you don't tell me the truth I swear I'll...well, I'll..."

She didn't know where she was going with that, but thank God, he only laughed and patted her knee to tell her to calm down. The simple gesture froze her to the spot, but it also saved her from humiliation.

He took a deep breath as his lips curved into a small smile. "My dad's getting married this weekend," he told her at last.

Y/N pursed her lips as her face contorted. "And you just found out yesterday?"

"Yup. And you know what the worst thing was?"

She shook her head.

"It was his assistant who'd invited me to his wedding." He laughed wryly. "Man, I wished it'd been a prank but, sadly no."

He was doing that again, the whole 'I laugh at my problem so no one else could' thing. If only he knew she wanted nothing more than to pull him into a hug, but all that she was allowed to do was rub his shoulder and say, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he gentled. "I was mad for just a while but I shouldn't have put it out on you."

"It's okay. I wish you'd just told me," she said, holding their eye contact intensely.

"Were you actually worried about me?" His voice went soft, like the gaze he was giving her.

She wished he would stop looking at her like she meant the whole world to him, when she knew that she meant nothing more than just a girl he had to live with. But then again, she couldn't resist him. She craved for him to keep staring at her this way until the day she died. That would've been the best way to kill someone, staring at them like you loved them until they couldn't take it anymore.

Ignoring the thought, she answered, "yeah, the next time you're mad...just...you don't have to tell me the reason...just let me know you're mad and I'll leave you alone."

"Don't leave me alone."

When he said that, it took her a couple of seconds to realize those were the actual words coming from his mouth. She held her breath in anticipation as he leaned in...closer...and closer...until they were just one breath away. But instead of doing what she'd wished he'd done, he rested his head on her shoulder, completely unaware of how fast her heart was racing for such intimacy. This was so new, yet so familiar, and now she was sitting like a rock as she feared he might pull away if she moved.

The locksmith arrived half an hour later, cursing the traffic as he stumbled out of the lift and mentally prepared an apology. But then he stopped, rooted to the spot as he found two half-naked college students sitting outside their flat, both were asleep, her head on his shoulder.

.

.

.

"Can you believe it?" Devlin huffed and combed his fingers through his hair as his head tossed back against the wall behind them. "A man my age, got cheated on by his second wife. What a joke."

Y/N had been listening to her father-in-law pouring his heart out for what seemed like half an hour already. Now it was time for her to speak her mind although her thoughts might not be something he would want to hear.

"You shouldn't be blaming yourself for what she did. You've done the right thing by asking for a divorce. It doesn't matter how old you are, you should never forgive a cheater."

He didn't reply, but judging from the way his expression softened, she could tell that her words had affected him, a little if not a lot.

"Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"

His question caught her off guard, still, she said no.

"Have you ever thought about what you would do if my son cheated on you?"

"Not anymore."

"So you have." He nodded once as if to agree with his prediction. "Tell me, what would you do then?"

"I would leave him," she said without reluctance. Then came a long pause as her eyes fell back to her feet. "But...that would probably hurt me more than him cheating on me. He's the only love I've ever known, I wouldn't know what to do without him. Guess I'd be half-dead, half-alive."

Devlin took time to think before he spoke, "you really love him, do you?"

"I do," she asserted. "But do you?"

The question, though simple, took him by surprise. "Of course I do," he said. "He's my son. He was the first person I called when I found out about my wife's affair."

"He should always be the first one you call, not only when you're sad or angry or hopeless." Y/N's words hit Devlin harder than he was willing to admit, but she neglected his reaction and continued anyway, "call him when you're happy, call him when you're tired, call him when you see something that reminds you of him, or just...call him to say you're proud of him and that you miss him and you love him. You don't know how much it'll mean to Harry."

She wasn't sure what to expect as a reaction, but it certainly wouldn't be him pulling her into a hug. Her whole body stiffened, only to relaxed all at once as she finally hugged him in return.

"My grandchild is lucky to have such good parents," Devlin whispered in her ear. And Y/N swore she could feel that same dimpled smile she'd always seen on her husband.

Half an hour later, Harry came home, slightly tipsy and smelling like those frat parties he'd wasted his youth on. He hadn't planned on drinking so much if at all, but they wouldn't have let him leave early had he refused to drink. He cursed himself as he stumbled out of the lift with an apology he'd already drafted in his head. But then he stopped, feeling shocked and amused at the same time as he found his wife and his father sitting outside their flat, both were asleep, her head on his shoulder.

[holdthosebees]

Never Quite Free

Author’s Note: Part 2 of my series, WKELTAOTTMGATMASFAB. Part 1 and explanation here. In this installment: Jon and Martin, in (web-induced) retirement.

Pairing: Jon/Martin, kind of

Quote: Just the whole damned song.

It shouldn’t be possible, the level of domesticity they fall into. They move out into the countryside, away from London and the Institute, and into a tiny little house with a blue door and a neat little garden plot. Fewer people means fewer temptations on Jon’s part, although sometimes he passes someone in the produce aisle or in line to buy coffee and just knows, in that terrible visceral way, and he wants. If Martin is with him, and he usually is, he’ll put a hand on Jon’s shoulder or back and steer him away, the touch gentle but firm. If Martin isn’t with him, Jon will ball his own hands into fists in his pockets and bite down on his tongue until the urge vanishes or the person leaves. Some days, it’s all he can do not to chase after them. Martin gives him a worry stone with a depression like a thumbprint in the center, and its weight in his pocket is both promise and constraint. Another anchor.

    Martin gets a job as an assistant at a bookshop. It doesn’t pay much, but they have the funds they took from the Institute when they left, which they know no one will come looking for. Basira promised them as much, when she took over as head. It was enough to buy the house, and it’s enough that Jon doesn’t have to work, not yet. Instead he spends his days cleaning and gardening and cooking and trawling the internet for supernatural forums, tracking any sign of the lightless flame, or the web. It isn’t enough. Basira sends him statements every month, wrapped up neatly in a cardboard box. These also aren’t enough. 

When he gets the package Jon spends the next three days holed up in his room, reading, devouring. He is no longer the Archivist, but once you are marked you can never return to what you were. Martin leaves food on a tray outside of the door and knocks every night to remind him to sleep. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. When he emerges finally after those three days Martin takes the rest of the statements up to the attic for later, then manhandles him into the shower. Their life together is full of many petty intimacies, some of them uncomfortable; Martin’s hands against his scalp while he washes out his hair is one of Jon’s favorites, although he would never admit it out loud. He can tip his head back under the hot water, sated and safe, and allow himself a short period of rest. 

It doesn��t come easy. The nightmares haven’t stopped, although the new ones come less frequently. One morning he remarks to Martin over breakfast that perhaps he is outliving the statement givers. He makes a joke about hunting them down and killing them for a good night’s sleep, and Martin purses his lips and unfolds his morning paper a little too roughly in response. Later, Jon insists on doing the dishes even though he cooked, and Martin insists on helping even though he’s wearing a decent button up because he has a shift soon, and they even sing a long a little to the radio as they clean. 

This is something Jon has discovered about Martin since they moved in together: he likes to sing, is good at it if he thinks no one is listening, but will try to hit the high notes even if they’re way out of his range. It was annoying, until it wasn’t. And then eventually it was annoying again, but a different, softer kind of annoying, and Jon felt comfortable in the fact that even if he complained Martin would not stop singing, not entirely. 

There’s a cat in the bookstore where Martin works, and Jon starts bringing him lunch as an excuse to see the cat, and then just to get out of the house. This is how he meets Martin’s coworkers: Allen, the owner, who is slowly going deaf. His granddaughter, Kelly, who smells like bubblegum and has never left this tiny town. Amina, who keeps lizards and asks Jon leading questions about how he and Martin met and how long they’ve been roommates, and how nice it is that they’ve found each other. Jon doesn’t bother correcting her. There aren’t words to describe the ways in which he and Martin are connected to one other, not in English, but the closest one is probably husband. 

The world goes on. Jon gets occasional emails from Daisy with rambling updates, most of the information personal. Mixed into the snippets of office gossip and meditation on new tattoos are bits of important information: the Lonely was going to attempt another ritual, the Vast made an attack on the archive, Basira came in one morning and found her entire office covered in cobwebs. Always long after the fact, too long for him to be of any use. He tries not to miss it.

Whenever he thinks about returning to the Archive he remembers the door in his mind, and it is only the thrumming of the thread that binds him to Martin that prevents him from trying to go back. Even for a moment. Just to see a sliver of that endless ocean of knowledge, pure and beautiful. It makes his head ache just imagining it, and he can feel the press of Martin’s concerned disapproval. 

They are tethered to each other, and eventually to the house as well, and Jon does his best to make peace with that. He mostly succeeds, although not without incident. It is five years after they moved in together, five and a half since what Jon has privately and sardonically started to refer to their ‘wedding night,’ when Jude Perry finds them. Martin is at work. Jon is busy in the garden, weeding out the basil. The summer sun is hot on his back, and he stops to wipe sweat off his forehead and grab a drink of water when he sees her. 

She’s leaning on the fence, her arms crossed, watching him. When they make eye contact, she waves, a sarcastic little flip of the hand. Jon stands slowly--his legs aren’t what they used to be, are aging as fast as his mostly-grey hair--and walks down the garden path towards her. He stops three feet away, his burned hand tucked out of sight in his pocket. 

“What do you want?” he says. Once, it would have stopped Jude Perry cold, holding her in place until he’d drained her of information and fear. Now, she only laughs. 

“Don’t even try it, Archivist,” she says. “Except, you’re not the archivist anymore, are you? Pathetic. I was just in the area, thought I’d drop by. See where the Mother of Puppets stashed you away.” 

“Don’t try anything,” Jon says. He puts a little force behind it, voice dropping into a growl. 

“Or what?” Jude is clearly enjoying herself. The wooden fence post has started to smoke where it meets her skin. “You’ll throw a trowel at me? Ooo, scary.”

“I might, if you don’t go away.” 

“Tell me,” she says, tilting her head to the side, “does it hurt, being put out to pasture like a lame mare? Knowing that your little friends in the institute are harnessing the power that should have been yours? Does it rankle, being shackled at the leg to that useless man--”

“That’s enough,” Jon says, with more confidence than he feels. He hefts the trowel menacingly. “Tell me what you’re doing here, or get out.” 

“Don’t fuck with me, Archivist,” Jude Perry says. Her fingers tighten on the rail, and the smell of woodsmoke fills the air. “I could burn this all down around your ears. Maybe you’d even thank me, eventually, for freeing you. If I don’t kill you first.”

“No,” Jon says. “I don’t think you can.”

Jude Perry says nothing. Her upper lip peels back, revealing teeth. 

“If you could,” Jon continues, emboldened, “you’d have done it already. I don’t think the web will let you. For whatever reason, it wants me alive. And you’re not powerful enough to fight the web, not yet. Not on your own.” 

“You’re pathetic,” Jude Perry says. “There’s nothing here worth burning.” She turns away, gives him a jaunty salute as she leaves. Over her shoulder, she calls, “You can’t pretend forever, you know!” 

Jon watches her go. He has clenched his burnt hand too hard; it throbs where his fingernails dug into the skin. Martin will be home in three hours, at which point they will make dinner in companionable silence. If it’s a nice night, they’ll take chairs out to the back deck, and eat while watching the stars. Jon will ask Martin about work, and Martin will ask Jon about the garden. They’ll ignore the strands that bind them together so tightly that sometimes Jon takes in a breath and feels Martin let it out, and they’ll ignore the fact that Jon barely picks at his food and Martin flinches and goes still whenever he sees a house centipede or an ordinary earthworm, and later on in bed they will cling to one another and whisper where only the night can hear them of the dead, of Tim and Sasha and Martin’s mother and everything else they’ve lost, or else they’ll lie in silence and wait for the tide of distant and unforgiving dreams to break. “I know,” Jon says. Then he turns, and walks back to the garden. There is still work to be done before nightfall, and the basil isn’t going to weed itself.

[blackwxtchmccree]

Side to Side (Sugar Daddy!Gabriel Reyes x Reader)

Can also be found on my AO3 >>> here.

Chapter 1 can be found >>> here. 

Taking things a bit slow, but I have some fun stuff planned for future chapters and I’ll update as fast as I can. Enjoy <3 -Valk

Gabriel had spent the better part of the weekend before he had received your call thinking about you. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had been infatuated with you as soon as you had greeted him—unable to pinpoint if it was your charming smile, your soft, caring eyes or the eager way you spoke to him. You couldn’t see it, but the way the sunlight had filtered in at your back when you were taking his picture painted you as something akin to an angel, giving you a glow that had captivated him. The way you spoke to him was easy, casual without seeming too unprofessional and that’s when he had decided—he wouldn’t mind keeping you in his company as long as you didn’t mind, either.

You had never flown first class in your entire life, enjoying the extra leg room and making small talk with the woman in the seat next to you, falling asleep halfway through the flight, grateful for the extra week after the grueling week you had had. Your exam had gone relatively smoothly and you had managed to write the rest of your paper in an excited frenzy Thursday night, motivated by the text you had gotten from Gabriel with your flight time and seat number.

As soon as all ten pages had left your hand and rested firmly in your professor’s, you dashed back to your apartment, grabbing the small carry-on you had packed the night before, petting Mira on the head, then dashing to the airport, shooting your roommate a text that you’d be out for a few days and asking her to feed Mira—but actually feed her, to which she responded she would and you could only hope at that point.

You awoke as the plane was landing, looking out the window with wide eyes, scanning the expanse of buildings below that was Los Angeles. You were actually here and the thought made your heart skip a beat as you descended, looking around curiously at the huge airport when they finally allowed everyone to exit the plane. You stepped out of the gate, looking around for a moment to get your bearings before spotting a man dressed in business casual clothing with a cowboy hat on his head holding a sign with your name on it. You approached him hesitantly, but he was surprisingly welcoming, motioning for you to follow him once he had confirmed your identity.

“I’m Jesse McCree—Reyes’ chauffeur and part of his security detail,” he stated as you walked through the airport, smiling at your curiosity, easily seeing why Reyes had taken an interest in you. “He wanted me to let you know that he has a meetin’ this afternoon, but dinner reservations are for 6:30. He wanted to give you plenty of time to settle into your hotel room and get ready. We’ll be by to pick you up at 6.”

“We?” You looked around as you approached the sleek black car you assumed was your ride, thanking Jesse when he opened the back door to let you slide inside. You were startled to find another man sitting in the passenger seat—a Japanese man with short black hair and brown eyes that met your gaze evenly when you sat down. You were quick to note the green dragon tattoo that peeked out from under the collar and right sleeve of the man’s shirt, impressed by the clean linework that you could see.

“This is Genji Shimada,” Jesse continued, answering your question. “Another one of Reyes’ bodyguards.”

“We’ve been re-assigned with your safety as our top priority, but yes,” Genji corrected Jesse, smiling at you as McCree started the car. “Nice to meet you, Y/N.”

“Likewise.”

The car ride to your hotel was filled with Jesse and Genji bantering with each other and dropping small tidbits about the city as you drove past landmarks. You found they were surprisingly easy to talk to, though Jesse was far more talkative than Genji was—not that you minded. The cowboy was sharp as a tack and Genji, though quiet, was perceptive, noting whenever something you saw out the window caught your eye. Jesse got out to check you in once you reached the hotel, both of them following you up to your room to make sure everything was in place before leaving you with a reminder that they would be back at 6 o’clock before shutting the door.

You looked around the room, almost afraid to touch anything. It was far more lavish than anything you had ever experienced in your life and you snooped around a bit, sliding the doors to the balcony open and stepping out. Your room had a gorgeous view of the city and you stepped inside to grab your camera from your bag, snapping a few pictures, not wanting to forget this. Once you were satisfied, you stood for a moment and leaned against the railing, letting the breeze brush past your face. It was surprisingly warm in the city considering it was December, but you weren’t going to complain, glad for a little bit of sunshine and warm air.

Your phone vibrating pulled you out of your head a bit later and you pulled it out of your pocket, finding a message from Gabriel displayed on your lockscreen.

In a meeting, but got word from McCree and Shimada that they delivered you to the hotel safely. Check out the bathroom if you want a taste of just what I could spoil you with. -GR

That piqued your interest and you stepped back inside, setting your camera aside again before padding to the bathroom and turning the light on. You were met with a view of a surprisingly modern bathroom, though your eyes quickly fell to the basket sitting on the counter. Upon further examination, you found it was filled with bath bombs, exotic soaps, and lotions galore that you definitely couldn’t ever afford. You were quick to respond to Gabe, settling on just sending him the heart eyes emoji and a thank you.

You sifted through the basket, smelling each of the bath bombs before settling on a lavender one, deciding you had time for a bath. You drew the water and threw the bath bomb in, stripping and settling into the water’s warm embrace. You hadn’t realized just how wound up you were with anticipation and apprehension until the water and the lavender scent began to soak into your skin and your aching muscles, relaxing you. You realized you could breathe again—your exams were over and even though you were far from home, you were sitting in an expensive hotel room relaxing in a divine bath with a delicious dinner and an attractive man on the itinerary. You couldn’t have asked for better prospects than in that moment.

An hour later the clock read 4:54 pm and your phone buzzed again—another text from Gabe.

There’s another surprise in the closet. Put them on. I’m sure you’ll look divine. Can’t wait to see you. -GR

You sat for another few minutes, unwilling to subject your body to the cold bathroom air just yet, but eventually curiosity got the better of you and you stepped out, draining the tub and wrapping a towel around your midsection. You moved towards the closet, sliding the door open, your eyes falling on a sleek, off-the-shoulder black dress that hung there. On the floor below sat a pair of strappy red platform heels. For a moment you were daunted—you hadn’t walked in heels since graduation at the end of your senior year of high school. Not wanting to make a fool of yourself, you dried completely off and slipped your undergarments on, mentally thanking last-night you for packing a strapless bra.

Slipping the heels on, you adjusted the bow that had been sewn on to the strap before tightening it to fit the front of your foot, surprised to find they actually fit (and leaving you wondering how Gabriel guessed your shoe size correctly). You then took a few brave strides across the hotel room and back until you felt you could walk successfully enough without twisting your ankle. After, you slipped into the bathroom again to put on a bit of makeup and fix your hair before pulling the dress over your head, looking in the mirror and admiring the way it hugged your frame. Upon further inspection, you decided to throw on red lipstick to match your shoes, finally fully satisfied with your look as the clock struck six.

There was a knock at the door and you grabbed your wristlet and the keycard into your room, opening the door to face McCree and Shimada again. They both stopped dead in their tracks, looking you up and down for a moment, making you blush.

“You look stunnin’ darlin’,” Jesse complimented, tipping his hat. Genji gave a nod in agreement before offering you his hand, leading you towards the elevator, then to the car once you reached the bottom floor.

The ride to the restaurant was shorter than you expected, and didn’t lead where you thought it would, either. The car veered through the city and up the coast a bit to the cliffs above what you learned from Jesse was Beverly Hills and Hollywood in the distance. Once you reached the top of the slope and pulled into a parking lot in front of the restaurant, the cowboy parked and Genji got out, opening the car door for you and letting you step out.

“Mr. Reyes is already inside waiting,” Genji said, nodding towards the restaurant. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you.”

You gave Genji and Jesse a farewell nod before turning and making your way to the entrance. The front of the restaurant was modern; a path lined with lit bowls of fire glass led to the front patio, where several elegantly dressed people were talking amongst themselves with drinks in their hands. Your heart was racing as you politely pushed past them, looking around the open-air balcony trying to spot Gabe among the delicately decorated tables. You spotted him leaning against the bar on the balcony railing overlooking the bay, drink in his hand, his face highlighted by the setting sun—he looked good, brown eyes glowing and broad shoulders relaxed.

You approached cautiously and Reyes looked up as you got closer, his eyes scanning your frame leisurely, a small smile gracing his lips as he extended a hand, giving you a small twirl. The dwindling sunlight made you look ethereal—giving your figure the same glow as when you two had first met. It seemed to settle into your hair and on your lips as you spoke, your eyes looking up at him through thick lashes.

“Y/N! Right on time,” he greeted you warmly, the way he was looking at you making you blush again. “I suppose Jesse and Genji would be poor escorts if you weren’t.”

“They’re delightful company,” you replied earnestly, a smile lighting up your face. “I see why you keep them around.”

“You look stunning, by the way.” He was hardly subtle about the way he was eyeing you, though his gaze lacked any hints of lecherousness or debauchery, his eyes tracing every one of your curves appreciatively.

“Are you complimenting me or your own choice in outfits,” you retorted playfully, crossing your arms across your chest.

“Both—though the outfit is only as good as the person wearing it.”

“You’re flattering me,” you replied quietly, unused to being complimented.

“I’m trying,” he quipped back, watching as your gaze moved to the view just over his shoulder, your eyes falling onto the water below, captivated by the rolling of the waves.

“Have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean?” Reyes followed your gaze, infatuated by the innocent curiosity and amazement reflected in your eyes—something he hadn’t seen in anyone in years.

“No. I’ve never been too far from home. Doesn’t look too terribly different from the Atlantic, though,” You replied with a huff, watching as the last sliver of the sun slipped under the horizon, the orange water fading to a muddy brownish blue.

“We could change that,” Gabriel offered, looking down at you almost mischievously as he sipped at his drink, suppressing a smirk when you looked up at him with wide eyes. “I could take you wherever you want to go.”

That gave you pause and you fell quiet for a moment, suddenly bashful, realizing the gravity of the decision you had laid out before you.

“We can discuss it once we sit. Do you want something to drink?”

“Do you mind,” you asked, knowing the drinks here were likely expensive, but then again he had already flown you out, paid for your hotel room, and bought you clothes.

“Of course not. Order whatever you want.”

Gabriel made fun of you when you ordered wine and realized that it could actually taste good, going down surprisingly smoothly, not making you grimace for once. You were seated soon after, ordering your food and munching on appetizers. You realized you hadn’t eaten much all day except for a granola bar you had wolfed down this morning before you left. The soft, ambient lighting in the restaurant calmed your nerves a bit and you found that just as you had witnessed before, Gabriel was easy to converse with. You were cutting into your entree and eating the most delicious steak you had ever had in your life when the topic of conversation fell to what you had visited for.

“How would this… work, then,” you asked hesitantly, taking a sip from your wine glass before setting it aside, looking across the table at Reyes as he leaned leisurely back in his chair.

“You provide me with companionship and in return, I’ll pay your bills and tuition and give you a monthly spending allowance,” he replied, twirling the whiskey in his glass idly as he looked at you, his lidded brown eyes glowing a honey-gold color in the candlelight. “I get invites to a lot of galas and charity events and usually I go alone, but after a few hours it grows stale. If I had someone at my side, I think I’d find them a bit more tolerable.”

“That’s it? What about…” but you faltered, unable to meet his gaze, instead turning your eyes back to your mostly empty plate.

“Look at me,” his voice was soft, but stern and you cast your eyes back up, heart fluttering in your chest, almost relieved to see he was smiling slightly. “As I said before—not unless you want to. I’ll pay for everything—I just need you to be where I ask when I ask.”

“I can’t say that I’m the… ‘gala’ type, though,” you replied sheepishly, your brow furrowing, though you managed to hold his gaze this time. “You should have seen me walking in these heels when I first put them on. I looked like a newborn calf. I felt like I was in 7th grade again trying on my mom’s heels for the first time.” That made Reyes laugh—a beautiful, deep sound that made your legs weak even when you weren’t standing.

“That’s alright. I’m not asking you to be perfect,” he replied gently. “I’m just asking you to be there. I’ll show you the ropes when the time comes. And we’ll have plenty of opportunities to go shopping and pick out clothes and shoes you find more suitable I promise.” You responded with a small nod.

You were silent for a bit, taking a moment to look back out over the sea, finding that even over the soft music you could still hear the waves below, a small sea breeze filtering in and brushing past your face, flushed from the alcohol. It was a bit of a risk—you would likely have to find ways to circumvent your parents and prevent them from finding out, not even bothering to imagine how they’d react if they did find out. On the up side, it meant you could quit your job and focus a bit more on your classes, though you hoped that whatever Gabriel had planned didn’t interfere with that, either. Ultimately, you just hoped it would work—this seemed too good to be true. You turned back towards the man across from you, letting out the breath you hadn’t realized you had been holding.

“I’m in—wherever you need me.”

A smile spread over Reyes’s face and it made your heart skip a beat.

“Good—I’m glad to hear it,” he replied sincerely, raising his glass towards you. “To my new sugar baby.”

You raised your glass to meet his, clinking them together before downing the rest of your wine.

Sugar baby.

That was a title you could get used to.

[eccacia]

wonderful you came by [part 16]

Summary: Caitlin’s a no-nonsense science major. Barry’s the quintessential charming star athlete. When they’re paired off and forced to interact in class, Caitlin’s determined to resist his charms, but Barry’s also pretty determined to get under her skin… It all boils down to a battle between head and heart, and Caitlin’s not one to give in to her heart so easily. [College AU]

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, or read on ff.net

Rating: T

Notes: I know it’s been five months, but… Look! An update! Sorry I’ve been gone awhile. This chapter was tough, life’s been tough, being newly unemployed is tough, etc. etc. Anyway, I miss you all. This is more of a friendship chapter, since I want to wrap up all the loose ends and lay the groundwork for the last plot point. After this, I’m estimating we have 1-2 more chapters to go and then an epilogue (AAAAH! Can you believe it?!) so I hope you’ll stick around. :)

Some shout-outs: To Gaby, as always, for the encouragement, and in celebration of our three-year long friendship on this site. To @panalegs27, for the unwavering enthusiastic support and the messages that make me smile. To @purpleyin, who, to my great surprise and delight, left a review on all my stories and on every chapter in this fic (!!!). To Random Lurker, for leaving such a sweet review; it made my terrible day better. And, last but not the least, to Of Pencils and Penguins (formerly The Pickle System), who beta-read this chapter in a flash (pun fully intended)—he fixed all the pesky grammatical errors, cleaned up my dialogue, and pointed out the scenes that needed tweaking or rewriting. I can’t thank you enough. This chapter won’t be what it is without your help. :)

Disclaimer: Nope, I don’t own The Flash.

Barry parted ways with her outside of her dorm, and as she moved from the open, starry night to the closed, fluorescent-lit hallways of the building to her dark, unoccupied room, unease replaced the earlier sense of lightness she’d felt. She’d been harboring this sense of unease since her fight with Felicity yesterday, but her anxiety about the orals and about Barry had dominated such a large portion of her emotional landscape that this unease had receded into the background.

But now, faced with a Felicity-less room, which had been voided of the sounds of their easy companionship—the scrape of the wheels of her chair against the floor, the quick, light tapping of her fingers on her laptop, the rip of Swiss Miss packets at the end of a long day—Caitlin felt the unease return with a vengeance.

She slumped into her chair. How was it that she managed to push two people who were important to her away in the space of a week? For someone who’d always thought of herself as self-sufficient and fiercely independent, she was realizing how emotionally affected she could be when the relationships in her life went awry.

Well, at least she knew Felicity better than she did Barry. She knew, for instance, that her friend dealt with her hurt by avoiding its cause, and that while she was in this avoidance phase, it was best to give her space. But she also knew that approaching her first was already winning half the battle. So it boiled down to timing—intuiting when enough time had passed since the avoidance started, and intuiting when the best time was to approach her.

It was, she supposed, the same way Felicity would tiptoe around her when she was deep in work mode, hazarding guesses at the best time to disturb her. She had guessed wrong yesterday—had prodded her at the wrong time, in the wrong way—and much to her shame, she had exploded.

She grimaced. She could call Oliver right now to ask if he’d seen her, but she was already so tired. There’d been more emotions packed into this day than she’d had in her entire twenty-something years of existence, and even if some of those emotions were pleasant, she still felt incredibly drained.

Tomorrow, then, she thought, crawling into her bed. She’d apologize tomorrow.

The next day, Caitlin set about to look for her friend in all her usual haunts, but as expected, she couldn’t find her in any of them. She texted Cisco on the off-chance that he’d seen her, but he merely replied with, “? u can call her? and aren’t u roommates” and, a few seconds later, “OH wait r u fighting :( idk where she is bt i hope u make up soon”.

So she had no choice but to give Oliver a call, which, in the first place, had been the most logical thing to do.

…But also the most awkward, because she and Oliver weren’t exactly on calling terms. There was also the fact that she had been staunchly against them when Felicity had really started liking him. Sure, she’d been the one to dare her to talk to him, but she’d done it because she’d believed that her friend had more common sense than to fall for the shallowest rich boy on campus, and because she didn’t think that Felicity was Oliver’s type.

Needless to say, Felicity did not have as much common sense as she’d expected, and Oliver turned out to be decent under his party-boy exterior. While she was right in guessing that Felicity wasn’t his type, she hadn’t guessed that he’d fall for her anyway. He’d liked Felicity so much that, upon sensing Caitlin’s unspoken antagonism, sought to prove all her previous notions of him wrong—he cleaned up his act, stopped flirting with every leggy girl he came across, and stopped hanging out with the shadier cliques in the popular crowd—until she finally came to accept them together.

Still, that didn’t mean they would be besties, or that they’d take to each other the same way Felicity had taken to Digg and Barry and Tommy and the rest of Oliver’s friends. They were content to regard each other with civility.

Which brought her back to her current dilemma: She and Oliver were civil, but not on calling terms.

She sighed. Well, it wasn’t like she had much of a choice. They would have to be on calling terms now if they both cared about Felicity.

Having decided on her course of action, she sent him a short text to ask when he was free to take a call. His answer was immediate: “Now is good.” He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey. You’re looking for Felicity?” he said.

Well, if there was one thing Caitlin respected him for, it was his propensity for cutting right to the chase.

“Yes,” she said. “Did she stay over at your place?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But she left for class this morning, and she hasn’t been back yet. I thought she’d headed to the dorm.”

Caitlin frowned. “Well… she’s definitely not here.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “She’s… been really down the past few days,” he ventured tentatively. “Said something about this being a replay of sophomore year, but didn’t go into the specifics.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Care to elaborate?” His tone was careful. “I mean, when my girlfriend and one of my best friends share a bottle of Smirnoff from my bar because of the same person, I feel like I deserve an explanation from the said person.”

Caitlin winced. “Can said person just buy you another bottle of Smirnoff instead?”

“Nice try,” he said wryly. “Spare me the details with Barry, I know way too much already. I just want to hear about the whole… sophomore year thing. If… that’s okay. She—she usually tells me everything, and I can’t—I don’t know how to talk to her if she doesn’t—talk. To me.”

When he said those last two sentences, Oliver sounded as if he was having a nail extracted for every word he spoke. She could almost see his grimace deepening the more he talked. Strangely enough, it comforted her, because this was something she could identify with. He was nearly as emotionally stunted as she was, stripped of that glamorous façade, and she imagined that she had the same expression that he had now whenever she talked about her feelings. Granted, this was the same reason they couldn’t be friends, and were instead friends with people like Felicity and Barry who were so open about their feelings that they were practically begging to be taken advantage of, but still. This kind of kinship was also comforting. Painfully awkward, but comforting.

So Caitlin took a deep breath and proceeded to tell him about sophomore year—the year they had their first real fight as friends.

It happened towards the end of their first term as sophomores. She’d been swamped with so many requirements and had been putting so much pressure on herself that she’d turned down all of Felicity’s invitations to parties, dinners, and even their hallowed Sunday lunches. Sometimes she didn’t even bother to acknowledge her in the room, because she didn’t want a break in her concentration. This went on for a month, until Felicity gave up trying to talk to her altogether. She avoided all their usual haunts and materialized in their room only to sleep. It was a miserable few months for both of them (and for Cisco, who’d shuttled back and forth between them), and it went on for as long as it did because, ironically, it had been easier to keep snubbing each other than to break their deadlock.

“Eventually, I just swallowed my pride and just went up to her during lunch. And even before I said anything, she burst out crying and hugged me,” Caitlin said.

He chuckled. “That sounds like her.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she said. She decided to leave out the embarrassingly sappy things they told each other that time, like when Felicity told her, in between hiccups, You know, real talk—I’d get over a breakup with a guy faster than a breakup with you. Like, a friend break-up. Because guys are so… replaceable, you know? And there’s only one of you, and… where’ll I ever find another Caitlin Snow?

She didn’t think Oliver would respond favorably to that.

After their tearful reunion, though, they’d implicitly agreed never to talk about that time again. It seemed they both knew that the smooth continuation of their friendship hinged on completely burying that hatchet. So Felicity continued to tiptoe around her when she was busy, and continued to clam up when she was hurt. Maybe that was why she thought that her recent blow-up was an echo of sophomore year.

“She’s in Jitters, by the way,” Oliver said. “She told me not to tell you, but I don’t like seeing her miserable, and I don’t think I’m the person to cheer her up.”

“Oh,” she said. “Um, thanks.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just… go talk to her. And make sure that she doesn’t steal too many drinks from my bar.”

Her lips lifted into a small smile. “The former, I can promise. The latter, not so much.”

. . .

In a way, it made sense that Felicity was at Jitters. Since she knew that Caitlin was avoiding Barry, and that Barry frequented Jitters, then she must have thought that there was a good chance that Caitlin would also avoid Jitters.

It didn’t take long to spot Felicity’s messy high ponytail in the crowd, and she was so deeply absorbed in her work that she didn’t even feel her approach.

“Hey,” Caitlin said, touching her shoulder, and Felicity immediately startled in her seat.

“Oh my God! Don’t scare me like th—”

When she saw it was her, though, she schooled her expression into a neutral one. The change was so dramatic that it unnerved her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” God, she was terrible at this. “Can I… Is this seat taken?”

“No.”

This was agonizing. Any dim hope she’d harbored of this being like their first make-up was quashed.

“Felicity,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

Silence. And then, “Okay.”

“Okay as in…?”

She shrugged. “It’s fine.”

It was decidedly not fine. Felicity was not as adept at hiding her emotions as she thought, because Caitlin could see her trying to hide them. “Felicity…”

Silence. And then, softly, “I’ve been tiptoeing around you for years, did you know that?” she said. “No, wait—you probably never noticed, but I’ve been doing it since we started rooming together. Since our first year. When things would get busy—for both of us, not just for you—you would transform into this ticking time bomb. One wrong move on my part, and you’d explode.”

Caitlin sat very still. “I… never knew,” she said. “It’s just…”

She trailed off. She was about to say that it was a bad habit she’d picked up from her father, who’d regarded disturbances—a category which even his young, too-inquisitive daughter and his flaky wife fell into—with murderous intent, so everyone had always adjusted to him without question or complaint. But this sounded like an excuse, and in a rare flash of human insight, Caitlin saw that an excuse wouldn’t save their friendship.

So she held her tongue.

Felicity continued, “Every time you get like that, I have to worry about how to get you to eat and function like a normal human being without risking our friendship. Do you know how tiring that gets?”

Caitlin exhaled. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I never meant you to feel like…” She paused to gather the right words. “Like I’d only be friends with you if you never made me mad.”

“Yeah, but that’s how you come off sometimes,” Felicity said. “Would it hurt to say, ‘Hey, Felicity, I’m really stressed and I don’t want to talk about it now’? It’s not hard. I mean, I let you know when I’m about to binge-code so you’d know better than to expect me to clean my part of the room for the rest of the week.”

“Or shower, for that matter,” Caitlin couldn’t help saying. When she realized her misstep she quickly amended it with, “Sorry—”

“God, not relevant, Cait,” Felicity said.

“Sorry,” Caitlin said. She’d unknowingly slipped back into their usual easy banter at the worst possible time. “Sorry.”

Her friend’s expression was now shuttered, and Caitlin had the sinking feeling that she’d blown her attempt at reconciliation.

The silence stretched between them.

“Felicity,” she finally said, unable to bear it, “I’m sorry, I really am. Please don’t shut me out.”

“Oh, you mean like what you do to me?”

Caitlin winced. The accusation rang so true that it hurt. The silence grew more and more tense the longer those words hung in the air, and she frantically reached for something appropriate to say.

“I… It… was wrong of me… to do that to you,” she said quietly. “You didn’t deserve any of it.” A pause. “I’ve been an asshole friend. I’m sorry.”

Felicity fiddled with the keys of her laptop. She gave no indication of having heard her.

A crazy sense of desperation seized her. She felt like she would do anything—anything—to get Felicity to talk to her, anything to draw her out of that damning silence… It made her more painfully aware that this was the same emotional distress she put Felicity (and Barry, for that matter) through whenever she gave her the cold shoulder. She would never do this again, she thought vehemently. She would never make her friends—her best friend—feel this shitty ever again, if said best friend would still care to talk to her. No wonder Felicity had burst out crying last time the moment she approached… Any move to break this kind of silence would have brought on waves of delirious relief.

Felicity continued fiddling with her keys. She uncrossed her legs. She leaned back against her chair. She let out a breath, and since it was so quiet between them, Caitlin could tell that this breath was a beat longer than was normal.

Felicity seemed to be on the verge of speaking. Caitlin braced herself.

“You’re not an asshole friend,” she finally said. She still wasn’t looking at her, but at least she was talking to her. She was talking to her. “You just… revert to assholic behavior when stressed.”

Caitlin held her breath. That was it. That was Felicity’s olive branch. She would have sagged in her seat from sheer relief, but she had to play this right.

“Assholic behavior,” she said carefully.

“What, you’re not used to Feliciticisms yet?” her friend said, finally looking at her. A small smile stretched across her face.

Caitlin blinked. She smiled. Definitely a good sign. Definitely a sign to play along, to ease back into the usual banter of their friendship. “I still can’t figure out how you say that,” she said. “Felicisms would have been a lot easier on the tongue.”

“Yes, but I’m a Felicity, not a Felici,” she said. “Although, come to think of it, Felici sounds a lot chicer.”

“True.” Caitlin paused and took a risk. “Probably why it doesn’t suit you.”

“Hey. You were the one who proposed Felicism.”

She tried to contain her smile. “Because it would be easier to pronounce, not because you look like a Felici.”

“Same banana.”

“No, they’re not. And for the record, there are more than 1,000 discovered varieties of bananas in the world.”

“Okay, just, no,” Felicity said. “How do you even know stuff like that?”

“The same way you know who invented ramen.”

“Technically, Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles, not…” She trailed off. “…Right. Point taken.”

Caitlin nodded. “The internet is a dark place.”

“Ah, yes. Two young, impressionable women frequenting websites with lurid pictures of bananas and noodles—positively scandalous.”

They shared a smile.

“Just… give me that heads-up, okay?” Felicity said, sobering. “So I know how to help you. Like how you fix my bed and buy me takeout when I’m binge-coding, or how you let me interrupt you to whine about how hard troubleshooting a faulty segment is. Even if you have zero idea of what I’m talking about.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said. She would’ve agreed to anything at this point. “I can’t promise I’ll always be able to do it, but I’ll try. I’ll really try.”

“You better,” Felicity said, grinning. “We’ve been friends for almost seven years. I’d say it merits some amount of trying.”

“Well, seven years is only slightly longer than some marriages, after all. I can manage more than some amount of trying.”

Felicity’s smile softened. “So. Friends?”

“Friends,” she affirmed. “Seven years and counting.” She paused. “I think we’re supposed to hug at this point, but can I just give you a mental hug? I’ve reached my sappiness limit for the day.”

Felicity laughed. “Mental hug accepted. I knew there was something weird about you today.”

“Well, I was apologizing to you. I had to summon the appropriate amount of sappiness.”

“Have you been manipulating me with sappiness?”

“I wouldn’t call it manipulation,” Caitlin said primly. “It’s more like scheduling sappiness usage for a rainy day.”

“By scheduling sappiness,” Felicity said, her smile turning wicked, “do you also mean the Saturday night you spent with a certain Bartholomew Henry Allen under the stars?”

“That was an unscheduled and unintentional leakage of sappiness,” Caitlin said. “And how much do you already know, anyway?”

“Only that you kissed,” Felicity said with feigned nonchalance. “No big deal. It was only your first kiss, after all, which you kept a secret for almost a week from your best friend, your companion since girlhood, the sister of your heart—”

“Are you done with the melodramatics?” she said dryly.

“—oh, wait, I’ll have to call Cisco and Jax,” Felicity said, pulling her phone out. “They need to hear this. It’s more time-efficient, too, since you’ll only have to tell the story once.”

“Time-efficient,” Caitlin repeated. “You’re talking to me about time efficiency.”

“Yeah. What, think I haven’t learned a thing or two about your reasoning after seven years of being the foremost Caitlin Snow scholar? Although,” she mused, “it looks like I’ll soon have to relinquish that title soon, since a certain Barry Allen is proving to be a quick study—”

“Felicity, you’re rambling,” Caitlin said.

“That was hardly—oh, fine, calling them…”

“Can you tell them that we’ll meet in front of the library instead?” Caitlin said, casting a furtive glance around them. “Jitters is kind of—”

“His turf, right,” Felicity said. “Got it.” She tucked her phone between her ear and shoulder, and slipped her laptop into her bag. “Hey Cisco, any chance you’re free now…?”

. . .

“Ola, ladies,” Cisco said, making his way to their table with his usual grin. Even from afar, they heard him coming by the tinkle of the many keychains he’d hung all over his backpack. “Glad to see you two have reconciled. I thought I’d have to be your messenger again or something.”

“Yeah, well,” Felicity said. “Signs of maturity, I guess.”

“Boring,” Cisco said. “In a good way, I mean. No one needs drama all the time, am I right?”

“You sure? Because Caitlin has a lot of drama to tell.”

“Oooh, saucy. You sure are getting a lot of drama lately, come to think of it,” Cisco said. “Where was all this in high school? And in the last, I don’t know, two years in college—”

“I don’t know, Cisco, I don’t think one can space out the dramatic events in one’s life—”

“Rhetorical question, chica,” he said breezily, waving a hand. “I’m sure you know what that is—”

“What’s up, guys?” Jax said, sliding into the seat beside Cisco. He pocketed his phone and dropped his duffel bag to the ground. “Is this an update on Barry or what?”

“Well,” Caitlin said, “somewhat.”

“I am so excited,” Felicity said. “I can’t wait to hear your version of the kiss.”

“THE KISS?!” Cisco gaped. “Whoa, okay, slow down, this is too much—”

“I… haven’t even started yet…”

“Her version?” Jax interjected, looking at Felicity. “What other version is there?”

“Dude,” Cisco said. “I can’t believe that’s what you fixated on.”

“I heard it first from Barry,” Felicity said, waving a hand. “Anyway, long story, and not exactly relevant—”

“Not exactly rele—Felicity, what was his version?” Caitlin said suddenly. “What did he tell you?”

“Oh, pretty vague stuff,” she said. “Mostly it was about you breaking his heart.”

Cisco blinked. “Is it just me, or are things moving way too fast?”

“Last I heard you weren’t even sure if he liked you,” Jax said, also confused, “and now you already broke up? And if you”—he gestured to Felicity—“and Barry’re tight, why didn’t you just ask him for advice, instead of asking us?”

“Well,” Felicity mused, “a little Smirnoff goes a long way in solidifying friendships…”

“She and Barry shared a bottle of vodka between them the other night,” Caitlin clarified. “Well, technically, it was Oliver’s vodka, but anyway.”

“Dang,” Jax said. “Any chance I can get an invite to one of those in the future?”

“Yeah, it’d be nice to hang out at Oliver’s pad again,” Cisco said wistfully. “That sound system is to die for…”

“Wait,” Felicity said suddenly, turning to her, “that’s how you knew where to find me—you called Oliver and Oliver told you, that traitor—”

“Yes?” Caitlin said. “You thought I just guessed?”

“Well, I didn’t really—okay, never mind, we’re getting way off topic. So, Cait, tell us what happened last Saturday.”

“We all saw the sing-off,” Cisco said smugly. “And boy, you owe me big time for that—”

“It would’ve been better if you’d given me more drinks,” she muttered. “No chance kissing him if I’d passed out.”

Cisco ignored her. “—and we saw you slow-dancing to that weird Despacito remix,” he said. “Well, Felicity and I did. Jax probably didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, to fill you in, they slow-danced to a Despacito remix.”

He gave Cisco a withering look. “Yeah, I grasped the concept, thanks.”

“You’re caught up, then,” Caitlin said, pleased. “So after the slow-dancing, we went up to the balcony—”

“The one for VIPs?” Jax said.

“Yes, the one for VIPs,” she said. “Anyway, I was slightly tipsy. As a result of faulty judgment, I leaned in to kiss him. I quickly realized it was a mistake, so I left and ignored him for a week. But we made up again just yesterday, so everything’s fine now.”

Silence.

“You know, you gotta brush up on your storytelling skills,” Cisco said.

“For a moment there I thought I was listening to a weather report,” Jax said.

“Well,” Caitlin bristled, “it’s not exactly something I want to recount in detail, so—”

“How did it happen? How did you let it happen? What did you feel?” Cisco insisted, accompanying his words with hand gestures. “What did he do? What did he say? What did you say? What were you thinking?”

“As I’ve already mentioned, I wasn’t thinking—”

“Okay, I think we’re overwhelming her,” Felicity said. “Cisco, ask her something again, only one question at a time.”

“Oh! Oh! I’ll start with this one,” Cisco said. “I have a feeling I’m going to regret asking this, but I am way curious, so here goes.” He took a deep breath. “Was there tongue?”

Caitlin squirmed. “Oh my God—”

“OH MY GOD,” Cisco said. “OH MY GOD, THERE WAS, WASN’T THERE?”

“OH MY GOD,” Felicity said. “THERE WAS, CISCO, THERE WAS—”

“…The hell is going on?” Jax said. “She hasn’t answered the question yet—”

“If you’re fluent in Caitlin,” Felicity explained, “you’d know that if it isn���t a direct no, then it’s a definite yes.”

“Huh,” Jax said.

“Damn,” Cisco said to Caitlin admiringly. “So you’ve finally lost your tongue-ginity. Welcome to the club.”

Jax scrunched his brow. “I never signed up for that.”

“Did we ever make that a thing?” Felicity said. “I don’t think we ever made that a thing…”

“We totally did. We made it a thing in high school, when I was with Kendra, remember? After we made out in the—”

“Okay, stop,” Felicity said. “I vaguely remember you breaking down that make-out scene, and I don’t want to remember more.”

“I second the motion,” Caitlin said.

“Third,” Jax piped up.

“Fine, this is Caitlin’s show anyway,” Cisco said good-naturedly. “It’s your turn to give us details.”

“No.”

They were all unfazed. “Did he lean in first?” Felicity said. “Or did you?”

Caitlin paused to consider it. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think we—it was done at the same time.”

“And it lasted for some time,” Cisco prompted, “since there was tongue.”

“Well, it wasn’t unpleasant,” she hedged, “so we were there for some time, but I was the one who put an end to it.”

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Jax said. “You guys made out and you were really into it, but for some reason, you walked away and ignored him after that.”

“…It doesn’t sound very nice if you put it that way, but yes, basically…”

“What made you ignore him?” Felicity said. Caitlin recognized this voice—it was the one her friend used when she wanted to steer the discussion into a more serious direction. “I’d always assumed that he said something stupid, but…”

“Well,” Caitlin said, “he mentioned that we’ve only known each other two weeks.”

“Which is true,” Cisco said.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Still, I lost it. I just didn’t think that it was possible—for me, at least—to like someone in such a short time. I was scared of it, of myself, so… I ran away. Ignored him. Pretended like ignoring him could reset me to before I met him.”

There was a pause as the statement hung in the air. It was perhaps the most honest she’d been since last week’s debacle, and they seemed to feel it, too.

“Okay, since things are getting serious,” Cisco said, standing up, “anyone want some food? Nachos, maybe?”

“Dude,” Jax said. “Way to ruin a moment—”

“No, I’m pretty sure Cait doesn’t want to talk about her feelings on an empty stomach,” he said, grinning at her. “Just like how you won’t study chemistry on an empty stomach.”

Caitlin smiled. “It’s fine, Jax. Nachos with beef and bacon bits please.”

“And extra cheese,” Felicity piped in.

“And Diet Coke with no ice,” Caitlin said.

“Same, but with ice and no straw for me,” Felicity said. “Save the environment and all.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” Cisco said. “Hey, man, how about you?”

Jax looked at them. “You guys are hella weird.”

“But?” Cisco prompted cheekily.

He shrugged. “You’re not bad.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Barry does this thing where I’m not sure if he’s complimenting or insulting me,” Caitlin said. “Is that an athlete thing?”

“Way to stereotype us,” Jax said. “And I’m pretty sure that’s called a backhanded compliment.”

Caitlin snapped her fingers. “I knew there was a word for it…”

Cisco went to buy their snacks, and when he came back, the conversation—even with nachos and the best of intentions (particularly Felicity’s)—didn’t quite stay on track. It was, as usual, one-part insight and three-parts insanity, but Caitlin didn’t mind. It was good to be in their company again.

When Monday came around, Caitlin had the uncanny feeling, as she walked out of her dorm, that she was being stared at.

It wasn’t something she realized right away. After all, she’d spent most of her formative years in a state of near-invisibility. The only exception to that was when teachers announced the highest score in class (which, in science subjects, would almost invariably be her) and she would, for a few minutes, be the spotlight of the everyone’s awe and envy. But after class, she drew no more stares, elicited no more whispers. Smart wasn’t as valuable a currency as pretty or sporty was in high school, and she was perfectly content with that, as she never had to expend energy with the sort of self-conscious thinking that came with assuming that her peers were interested in her.

But today, something strange happened. As she walked down the near-deserted hallway of her dorm—it was still early, and the lone souls who were already awake walked around like zombies in their bubbles of half-sleep—she registered the sound of voices in the early morning hush. Out of idle curiosity, she looked around until she found the source of the whisperings—a group of five freshmen, two of whom quickly turned away when her gaze settled on them.

She blinked, wondering if she’d imagined it, and then concluded that she must have. Freshmen, she thought, were especially prone to sticking in groups like that and over-sharing noisily, in hopes that it might translate into friendship.

But then it happened again. When she passed by two more groups of girls outside the dorm and sensed the tickle of whispers in her wake, she wondered if maybe her intuition was right. It was disturbing to suspect that one was the topic of someone else’s conversation without knowing what, exactly, was being said, and without having the means to confront them about it.

So it was when, upon reaching the foyer and seeing Eliza and Bette deep in conversation before abruptly falling quiet when she approached, she narrowed her eyes and said, “Not you, too.”

Bette raised a brow. “Hi, Caitlin.”

Eliza said, “Good morning to you too, sunshine.”

Caitlin sighed and took her seat across them. With a cursory look, she ascertained that three of the boys from her block were there—no sign of Hartley yet—along with two other people from Applied Chemistry (or was it Chemical Engineering? She could never really keep track). Most of them were half-asleep, using their backpacks to pillow their faces from the cool granite surface of the tables.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “I’ve been having this strange sensation this morning that people have been talking about me. Paranoid, I know—”

Eliza and Bette exchanged glances. Like she and Felicity, the two had been friends for so long that they seemed to be able to communicate just by looking at each other.

Caitlin was immediately suspicious. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Eliza said innocently.

“That look you just shared. It’s suspicious.”

Bette, who was usually quiet and stoic—even more than she was, probably because she was always with the animated Eliza—said, amused, “Aren’t we allowed to look at each other?”

“I think we’re allowed to a few secrets,” Eliza added with a sly smile, “since you’ve obviously been keeping yours.”

Caitlin paused. She knew that these girls meant well—they had a pleasant relationship formed on the basis of their being stranded together in a testosterone-dominated course—but she wasn’t comfortable divulging her feelings to them in the way she had with Felicity, Cisco, and Jax. They were the kind of friends she’d complain on coursework with, not the ones she’d have a heart-to-heart with.

She said cautiously, “If this was about the sing-off…”

“Oh, the sing-off was last week’s news,” Eliza said.

“It’s already been dissected to death while you weren’t around,” Bette said, with an apologetic smile. “It’s common knowledge now that you’re Barry Allen’s new girl.”

Caitlin blinked, feeling strangely violated—or rather erased—by the term. “Okay, no,” she said. “First of all, I am not ‘Barry Allen’s new girl.’ I’m me. I’m still the same Caitlin Snow majoring in Molecular Biology with you.”

“Right, of course,” Eliza said, smiling at her while propping her face up in cupped hands. “But it’s already pretty obvious to everyone that you two are a thing.”

“We’re not…” Caitlin trailed off when she realized she didn’t have anything to say to that, because what were they? They hadn’t gone out on a date yet, so they weren’t dating, but they weren’t a thing, either. Or… were they? In the first place, why in the world did people invent a term as vague as ‘a thing’ anyway? What spectrum of togetherness did ‘a thing’ encompass? And why was it that even before she and Barry had defined what they were to themselves, other people were already clamoring to define their relationship with nosy collective authority? Couldn’t they just mind their own business and leave a budding romantic relationship unlabeled?

Caitlin resisted the urge to press a hand to her temple. She couldn’t deal with this. It was too early in the morning to puzzle out the confusing semantics of human romantic entanglements.

Instead, she said, “Never mind.  Second of all, last week’s news? Was there news this week involving him and me that I, of all people, wouldn’t know of?”

“Oh, I’m sure you know this,” Eliza said, giving her an enigmatic look. Caitlin felt like that look was her cue to spill what she apparently knew, but since she didn’t know anything, she remained quiet.

“If you’ll remember,” Eliza went on, when her pause became awkward, “there was a commotion last night at the dorm. Specifically, outside our wing.”

“What commotion?” Caitlin said, furrowing her brow.

Now, Eliza and Bette exchanged looks that were as bewildered as hers.

“You mean you really didn’t hear the commotion?” Bette said.

“No,” Caitlin said. “Should I have?”

“Oh my God, she has no idea,” Eliza said. “One of the hottest guys on campus is courting her—”

“Courting—of all the sheer nonsense—”

“—and she doesn’t have a clue,” Eliza finished.

“That is ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know what commotion you’re talking about, but he’s not courting me. All I know is that he left a note on my window with ‘Good morning’ written on it.”

That was the abbreviated version. The full version was as follows:

Good morning :) I know, I know, when I walked you back, you said one week of no texts or calls or voicemails, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t say anything about sticky notes on windows. I’m kind of a pain in the ass, as you can see, aside from being a mildly annoying campus cutie and an insatiable hug monster (only for your hugs, though). Just so you know what you might be getting into. Anyway, I lost my main point for this note sometime after the smiley. I think I was supposed to write a poem, but I got sidetracked, and now I don’t have enough space. Well, I’ll find my main point tomorrow. In the meantime, ‘I miss you’ is probably enough. Can’t wait for Saturday. – Barry

“Mmm,” Bette said. “So you’re telling me that clambering up two floors of the girls’ dorms in the middle of the night, with a bouquet of flowers, a gift, and a note in hand, doesn’t qualify as courting?”

“A bouquet of flowers? How is that even—”

“At first I thought it was Cisco,” Eliza said, “because he visits your room sometimes, right, and he always makes so much noise. But when I opened my window to tell him to tone it down, guess who I saw instead?”

“Oh, by the way, here you go,” Bette said, pulling a single, long-stemmed rose from her backpack and handing it to a dazed Caitlin. “Half of the flowers were crushed during his climb,” she added, by way of explanation. “The others that weren’t crushed lost too many petals. This was the only proper rose left.” She pushed a box towards her. “Also, a gift from him. Said it was fragile.”

“He was supposed to sneak the stuff into your room,” Eliza said, “but he didn’t know that your window would be locked. Obviously he didn’t think things through.”

“Yeah, he also wrote his note on the wrong side of the post-it. We had to give him tape so he could stick the written portion against the glass facing your bed,” Bette said.

“Oh, and to clarify, we”—Eliza said, gesturing to the two of them—“weren’t the ones who gave him tape. Someone from the room below did.”

“It became a sort of group effort,” Bette said.

“Although his best friend—can’t remember her name, the one who wrote that article about sexism on campus—”

“Iris West,” Bette said.

“Right, her. She clearly didn’t support it,” Eliza said. “Stormed out of the dorm when she caught wind of what was happening just to tell him that he was an idiot.”

“She wasn’t yelling, but it was so quiet out there that people could hear what she was saying, anyway.”

“Good thing our dorm mom sleeps like a log.”

“Yeah, and good thing everyone loves Barry, so no one’ll tell on him…”

“It’s really strange that you didn’t hear anything,” Bette said, looking puzzled. “He made so much noise.”

It wasn’t all that strange. She and Felicity slept through the commotion courtesy of the remaining contents of the Smirnoff that she’d brought back from her drinking session with Barry.

“Hello, ladies,” came a voice that Caitlin knew all too well. “Finally got to interrogate her, huh? Do I finally get my—is that a rose? Why the hell do you have a rose?”

“Language, Hartley,” Bette said. “As you can see, the subject is still in shock.”

“The rose is from Allen, isn’t it?” Hartley said, scoffing. “Jesus, how predictable. Even I can tell you aren’t the roses kind.”

“Thank you for your valuable input, Hartley,” Eliza said. “Why don’t you run along now and compare notes with Barry, since you’re such an expert on Caitlin’s botanical preferences?”

“Dial down the bitchiness, sweetheart,” Hartley said. “It’s not even nine yet.”

“The rose isn’t the worst of it, really,” Bette said.

“Oh?” Hartley said gleefully, smirking and pulling up a chair from the other table, seeing as Caitlin’s backpack was still occupying the space beside her. “Do tell. Does the worst of it have something to do with this box?”

Caitlin finally snapped out of the daze she was in. She was having difficulty processing all… this. She needed another coffee. Maybe three. “I’m having difficulty imagining how he moved from the staircase to the window holding all this…”

“He had the bouquet in his mouth,” Eliza said.

Hartley’s brows shot up. “What,” he said, “the fuck?”

“What he said,” Caitlin muttered.

“She was kidding,” Bette said, giving Eliza a stern look. “He had a canvas bag.”

Eliza laughed. “Fine, but you have to admit you can totally imagine it.”

Hartley rolled his eyes. “I actually find it more unlikely that he had the foresight to bring a bag.”

“Well, are you going to open it?” Eliza said, gesturing to the box. “Bette and I have been dying to see what’s inside.”

Caitlin gave them a look, and Eliza said, “Hey, you can’t blame us. We’ve been safekeeping it for the last seven hours.”

“This really is beneath me,” Hartley said casually, “but I am curious to see what sort of disgustingly sentimental gift he got you. Gifts are a reflection of the giver, as someone once said. Can’t remember who it was, though…”

“You know, you can admit you’re curious without having to insult anyone,” Caitlin said.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he smirked. “Well? Are you opening it or not? We don’t have all day, Frosty.”

Caitlin sighed and relented, if only out of weariness. She opened the box without ceremony—there was no wrapper so she simply had to lift the flap—and peered inside. Three other heads neared to peer in, too.

It was a cactus.

On the flap, it said, I already got the roses when I saw this, but this is way better. You’re more of a cactus person, I think. ;) – Barry

Hartley barked a laugh. “I take it back. Allen is a fucking genius.”

“I don’t know,” Bette said dubiously. “It sounds like an insult.”

“It’s definitely an insult,” Eliza said. “You’re more of a cactus person—does that mean you have the qualities of a cactus?”

“He’s not wrong,” Hartley said. “Caitlin’s botanical identity aside, though,” he added, “everyone still owes me money, because she obviously accepted his advances…”

Caitlin, on her part, had already tuned them out. Barry Allen was a hopeless romantic and a complete idiot, and he also possibly had a screw or two loose, but he meant well, and he really and truly seemed to like her, and he was…

He was hers to like back.

Still, he had to stop climbing walls in the middle of the night to give her… whatever else he was planning on giving her. She had no clue about what courtship entailed, but she was sure that it didn’t have to be as life-threatening as he made it seem.

Caitlin didn’t think to approach him right away about this, though, because she didn’t think he’d be sending any more gifts her way. She thought he would have desisted with the flowers and the cacti, opting to leave only sticky notes instead.

She was wrong.

Well, not exactly. The next day, she did receive another note on her window, but she also received a heart-shaped box of chocolates and another cactus (both delivered by Cisco). This was puzzling, because she had no use whatsoever for a heart-shaped box, and she had no strong feelings about chocolates. Not that she didn’t like chocolates, per se; she’d just never particularly craved for them or sought them out. She didn’t want them to go to waste, though, so she ate two or three pieces before welcoming Cisco and Jax to finish up the rest.

This, surely, she thought, would be the end of it. Surely he knew that giving her gifts every single day until Saturday, for no particular reason and with no particular occasion, was an absurd and costly enterprise.

But she was wrong again. On Wednesday, she received the requisite note on her window and a teddy bear named Beary—See what I did there? ;) he’d said in his note—sporting a cactus pin. (She must’ve forgotten to lock her window last night after Cisco and Jax had left, so he was able to slip them onto her bedside table.) Now, if the chocolates were mildly puzzling, the teddy bear was downright bewildering, because she had given up stuffed animals altogether at the age of five, when her father had introduced her to illustrated encyclopedias. If she had no use for a teddy bear back at five years old, she had even less use of it now at twenty-one. She was aware that it was common for other couples to give each other stuffed animals, but that was other couples. For some reason, other couples found it cute to give their significant others a reminder of a more infantile period in their lives. Or perhaps the intention was for the recipient to endow the inanimate object with some of the partner’s qualities, so that it could serve as a reminder of the partner when he or she was away…

This was all just conjecture, of course. She’d never quite understood it. Even now that she herself was the recipient of a stuffed animal, she still didn’t understand what she was supposed to do with it.

To be fair, Barry didn’t know that she didn’t particularly care for chocolates or for stuffed animals. But perhaps that was the point—he didn’t know what she liked, and had simply assumed she would enjoy this standard romantic fanfare.

This brought to mind something Hartley had said the other day, about gifts being a reflection of the giver. Irritating as he was, she had to agree with his assessment: These gifts were less a reflection of her than they were a reflection of Barry. They conveyed the sincerity of his intentions well enough, but they also conveyed a startling lack of knowledge of who she was.

Well, not exactly. She did enjoy the sticky notes, and the cactus symbolized an inside joke that only the two of them shared and understood. Everything else, though, puzzled her.

She didn’t want to discard them, because that would mean discarding Barry’s feelings, too. (And, on an aside, Beary seemed to grow cuter the longer she looked at it [him?], which made her more reluctant to discard it [him?]. She made a mental note to Google the evolutionary value of cuteness even in lifeless objects.) But at the same time, the sole function of the rose, the chocolates, and the bear was to convey Barry’s intentions, which had been fulfilled the moment she’d received the gifts. Ergo, she no longer had any use for them. Was she obliged to keep these things around as relics of his affection for her? Then again, she knew that he liked her anyway, so why did she need all these things to remind her of it?

She frowned. She was trapped in a symbolic deadlock. Clearly when she confessed to him she didn’t foresee that things would become this complicated—and this when they weren’t even ‘a thing’ yet…

She sat back to view the gifts on her now-crowded bedside table and considered her situation. The most obvious course of action was to tell him to stop giving her gifts, but she could already tell that it would hurt him. But she also couldn’t think of a nice way to say it. The truth—“Please stop giving me gifts, I appreciate the sentiment but I find them useless” was too harsh, while a white lie like “I don’t have space to put them anymore” was too unconvincing. She could give him a list of what she liked, but she didn’t want to make it seem like she was asking for more gifts. Then again, she could inform him that she simply didn’t make a fuss about gifts, but clearly he made a fuss about gifts, so…

Great, she was back to her earlier deadlock.

Maybe it was time to call a friend. Felicity might know what to do. And, even if she didn’t, she might know how to soften a sentence like “Please stop giving me gifts, I appreciate the sentiment but I find them useless.”

Right, talk to Felicity it was, then.

. . .

On her way out of her room, though, something unusual happened: She bumped into Iris West.

The fact that Iris was here on her floor was already unusual in itself. Iris lived two or three floors above her, and she didn’t seem to have close friends residing on the second floor, so Caitlin had never actually seen her in this hallway.

The second unusual thing was that Iris was alone. Caitlin may have only glimpsed her on campus a few times, but she had no recollection of Iris being alone—she was always either surrounded by her friends from the school paper, or she was with a tall, clean-looking guy—her boyfriend, presumably.

The third unusual thing was that Iris was walking towards her now. Caitlin resisted the urge to look behind her to see if Iris was walking towards someone else, and instead she pasted on a tentative smile, the sort she reserved for people with whom she knew only vaguely, and so wasn’t sure if she should greet or not. If the person noticed the smile and greeted her, she’d return the greeting with relief. But if the person didn’t notice the smile, then she’d look like an idiot, but not as big an idiot as she would have had she uttered an ignored ‘Hi’.

Iris, as it turned out, returned her smile. “Hi, Caitlin,” she said, slowing when she reached her.

A greeting and a slowing down. Clearly she was about to engage her in conversation, but what did Iris have to talk with her about? Did Barry send her to deliver a package, or to do some reconnaissance? But if she was going to do reconnaissance, wouldn’t it be wiser to approach someone closer to her, like Felicity?

“Hi?” Caitlin said.

“I’m glad I caught you on your way out,” she said. “I would’ve messaged you first, but Facebook says you haven’t been online in three days, so…”

“Sorry,” Caitlin said. “I don’t go online often.”

“No, no, don’t apologize,” she said. “I mean, I’m the one asking for your time. Not because I’m spying on you for Barry or anything,” she added hastily. “I just wanted to talk, that’s all. If you’re busy, though, I could—”

“I’m not,” Caitlin said. Her curiosity was sufficiently peaked. “My next class is in two hours. What did you want to talk about?”

“Great,” Iris said. “Could we… talk somewhere more private, like your room? Or my room’s fine, too. Gossip spreads pretty fast around here.”

“My room’s nearer,” Caitlin said. “It’s a bit of a mess, though. Well, Felicity’s side is a bit of a mess, so we could stay on my side…”

They both headed back to her room, and while Caitlin felt like the silence was awkward, Iris seemed completely at ease. She did look out of place in the shabby dorm room—with her red chiffon top, black leather skirt, and knee-high black boots, she looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue rather than a classroom—but she carried herself with the relaxed confidence of a person who made and followed her own rules.

“I know this is weird,” Iris said, “but Barry has also been acting weird lately, so I felt like I had to do something.”

“Weird, how?” Caitlin said, silently asking Felicity’s permission to borrow her chair. She pulled it up beside hers in front of her desk. She gestured for Iris to sit. “I haven’t known him long, but this”—she pointed to the items on her bedside table—“doesn’t seem too uncharacteristic of him.”

“Yeah, well, that’s true,” Iris said, sitting. From the direction of her gaze, Caitlin noticed the way Iris catalogued details carefully with her gaze: She scanned the usual school supplies on Caitlin’s desk (a plain white mug for writing materials, another one for highlighters, and a tray for bond paper), glanced at the stack of printed journal articles with notes and post-its, and lingered on the books on her shelf—The Double Helix by James Watson, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox, What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks—all with yellowed pages. Those books were the only memorabilia she kept on her desk.

“Why do I feel,” Caitlin ventured when Iris reached the end of her quick survey, “that you’re already mentally writing profile of me?”

She was aiming to sound amused, and she supposed it succeeded, because Iris gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” she said. “Guilty as charged. Had to convince myself that I’m doing the right thing, and after seeing this”—she gestured to her Spartan desk and the books on display—“and that”—she gestured to her cluttered bedside table—“I’m pretty convinced. I’m guessing—no, I’m one hundred percent sure that you’re not the romantic type.”

“Not at all,” Caitlin said. And then, upon realizing that Iris might report all this to Barry, she added, “I do appreciate the sentiment, though.”

“Right,” Iris said, “but not the gifts.”

“Well…”

“Here’s the thing,” Iris said, sensing her hesitation. “I thought about talking to you back when he pulled that crazy stunt in the middle of the night, but for once, I stopped myself from meddling. Which is difficult for me, since I meddle in other people’s business for a living,” she added with a self-deprecating smile. “But I managed. ‘How bad can it be?’ I thought. ‘Who knows, maybe she likes flowers.’ When he gave you the chocolates, I thought, ‘Okay, fine, maybe she likes chocolates, too. Flowers are tricky, but chocolates are pretty safe. A lot of people are nuts for chocolates.’”

Caitlin was about to say that was nuts for neither flowers nor chocolates, but Iris seemed to be on a roll, so she let her continue.

“But when he gave you that teddy bear”—she gave the poor innocent Beary a dirty look—“and named it after him, that was the last straw. I said to him”—she made the phone gesture with her hand and brought it to her ear—“‘You gave her a teddy bear? Are you crazy? Do you even know if she likes teddy bears?’ and he was like, ‘But teddy bears are cute! Who doesn’t like teddy bears?’ and I was like, ‘Barry, if Eddie’—Eddie’s my boyfriend—‘gave me a teddy bear, I’d either donate it to charity or tell him to return it to the fricking store. Honestly, how old do you think she is? Five?’”

At this, Caitlin couldn’t help smiling. She was starting to like Iris. Iris made sense. “My sentiments, exactly.”

“Shit, I knew it,” Iris sighed. “I should’ve stopped him earlier, but it’s too late now. There’s no stopping him once he gets into planning. Although if it’s any consolation, he hasn’t gone this all-out since… Well, since. And there isn’t even any occasion. Can you imagine what sort of production number he’ll come up with if there is an occasion?”

“I’d really rather not,” Caitlin said, wincing. “If it’s going to involve a grand public display of affection, it’s going to be a nightmare.”

“Not a fan of PDA, huh?” Iris said. “This must be really uncomfortable for you. I mean, people have been talking nonstop about what he’s doing. I’ve lost count of how many times someone came up to me to ask about”—here she made quotation marks in the air—“‘Barry’s new girl.’”

Caitlin must have made a face, because Iris nodded sympathetically and said, “Yeah, I know.  I was ‘Eddie’s new girl’ for some time, too, although for some reason he was never ‘Iris’s new guy.’ Ingrained sexism, that’s what it is. Really subtle, too, and harder to root out, but since women empowerment is having a moment—right, I’m ranting. Sorry. Bad habit.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m used to ramblers.”

“Ranters,” Iris corrected with a smile. “Wouldn’t want to be lumped in the same category as Barry. At least I don’t lose my main point while talking.”

Caitlin smiled. “He is prone to that.”

“Don’t I know it. Sometimes I just tune out until like, three hundred words later, when he finds it again. Come to think of it, I shouldn’t have tuned him out when he was spouting all those nonsense ideas… I might’ve been able to stop him from doing all this…”

“Is there really no way to ask him to stop with the gifts?” Caitlin said tentatively. “The sticky notes are okay, just not… this production number, as you called it.”

Iris paused. “I could try to talk to him again,” she said. “And anyway, isn’t he supposed to be giving you space?”

“Yes, well. Obviously he failed. I even have less literal space in my room now.”

Iris laughed. “That’s true.”

They fell into a brief, comfortable silence.

“Hey, Caitlin,” Iris eventually said, “thanks for being honest. I know it sounds like I’m selling my best friend out, but it’s just, he really likes you, and I don’t want him to screw himself over. He can be really eager, you know? When he’s excited he just jumps into things without thinking. Loses all sense of timing and subtlety, too.”

Iris paused as if debating whether or not to continue, but before Caitlin could come up with a response to fill in the silence, she went on. “His mom and dad were also really big on romance,” she said. “We grew up watching them trying to out-surprise each other on their anniversary and on Valentine’s Day. It was crazy, the things his dad did. Once, he decorated their whole house with flowers, because his mom absolutely adored flowers. This other time, he ordered chocolates from France, Sweden, Belgium—you know, places where those fancy chocolates come from—and made it look like a chocolate buffet from around the world. His mom was like that, too. She used to throw him these themed surprise parties. There was one party where she invited everyone—his former patients, his students, his colleagues from the hospital, his colleagues from whatever medical association he was part of—and she had someone from each group give him a toast. He was so teary-eyed at the end that he couldn’t give a proper thank-you speech.” Iris sighed. “His parents had something really special, you know? Even my dad thought so. Everyone who knew them thought so. The happiest couple in the world, people would call them.”

Caitlin absorbed all this in silence. “He does look like someone who grew up surrounded by that kind of love,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Iris said, smiling. “He was such a happy kid. Still is, actually. And I think—and this is pure speculation,” she added, “but I think that more than having a great career, more than being rich or famous or successful, more than anything, really, Barry wants what his parents had. I’m not telling you should fulfil that,” she added quickly. “I just want you to understand where he’s coming from.”

“I understand,” she said slowly. “This is a lot to take in, though. I’m the antithesis of that picture of his parents you just described, as you can see.”

Iris laughed. “Yeah, that’s pretty clear to me. And honestly, I don’t think he’ll want you any other way. Just give him time to adjust.”

“Alright,” she said. “Thank you for… talking to me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to proceed with all this.”

“Oh, no problem,” Iris said, waving a hand. “If you need help with Barry—or anything, really—you can message me any time.” She stood up. “Anyway, I should go. You have class, right?”

“In an hour, yes,” Caitlin said, accompanying her to the door.

“Hey, maybe in the future, we could do a double date or something,” Iris said. “You and Barry and me and Eddie. I’ll take you to all the best hole-in-the-wall places. A lot of the owners know me already, so I get discounts, too. It’ll be fun. What do you think?”

Caitlin blinked. “Okay,” she said.

“Great,” Iris smiled and squeezed her arm. Caitlin tried not to shy away from it. “I’ll go talk to Barry before he brews tomorrow’s disaster. See you around, Caitlin.”

When she left, Caitlin returned to her desk. Well. That was strange, but not entirely unwelcome, especially since Iris herself had offered to talk to Barry. She also found herself relieved that she could get along with Iris. She wasn’t exactly the friendliest of people, but Iris had enough friendly in her for the two of them.

“Now,” Caitlin muttered, staring at Beary’s placid smiling face, “what to do with you? You’re going to want to stick around, huh? A real nuisance you are, just like your namesake…”

She stopped abruptly when she realized that she was talking to an inanimate object, and then squinted warily at Beary. She was beginning to be gripped by this whole stuffed-animal craze, and she wasn’t sure what she felt about that…

. . .

“Cait? Hey Cait, bananas!”

Caitlin looked up from her laptop. “What? What’s happening?”

“Ha, got you to look!” Felicity grinned triumphantly. “You ready to sleep? I’m going to kill the lights now.”

Caitlin gave her friend an odd look, but, being used to such antics (or Felicitisms), she merely saved her file and slipped her laptop onto her table. “Yeah, sure.”

The lights went out. Felicity shuffled to her bed, and Caitlin heard her fold her glasses and place them on her bedside table with a soft thunk.

A few moments later, Caitlin ventured, “Hey. Are you sleepy?”

“No, not really.” Felicity turned to face her. Her face was blurry in the moonlight. “Are you?”

“No.” She paused. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, okay. Shoot.”

“Remember that story I told you, the one Iris told about Barry’s parents?”

“Mmm. What about it?”

“It bothers me.”

“Why?”

Caitlin curled further into her side. Had she been talking to Felicity during the day, with Cisco and Jax with them, she might not have said this out loud. But now, wrapped up in her blanket and enveloped by the warm, inviting darkness of their room, filled with the well-worn and well-loved things they had shared for over two years, Caitlin felt brave enough to be vulnerable.

“He wants a happy ending,” she said. “I’m clearly not his happy ending. He needs someone who can match his… exuberance, I guess. His generosity. Someone who’ll give him what his parents had. I don’t think I can. I don’t think I’m capable of it.”

“You don’t know that,” Felicity said. “You haven’t even started dating yet.”

“I think that’s the point. We haven’t started dating yet and we’re already incompatible,” she said. “At first, I thought admitting my feelings was a bad idea because I didn’t want to get hurt, but now I think it’s a bad idea because I don’t want him to get hurt. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“Ah,” Felicity said. “So you don’t think you’re good enough for him?”

“Well,” Caitlin exhaled, “more like I’m not right enough for him.”

“Yeah, I get that. I still feel that way with Oliver sometimes, you know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Well, we haven’t been together for long, but still. I was terrified, remember? And you were terrified for me, too. Told me that if I had any common sense, I’d walk away from him right this instant, before things got too serious.”

Caitlin smiled. “Fortunately for Oliver, you had zero common sense.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes, when I’m with him and I’m feeling really happy, I get hit by sheer panic. Like, I start thinking, It’s impossible for anyone to be this happy. He’s going to cheat on me one day, or else he’ll get bored with me and break up with me… Oh my God, if he does, I’ll never find someone like him again, I’ll never be this happy again… and so on.”

“You still think about that?” Caitlin said, incredulous. “Have you seen the way Oliver looks at you? When you’re in the room he literally cannot focus on anything else.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said, with a modest shrug, “but I guess sometimes we sabotage our own happiness.”

Caitlin moved to lie on her back. “I think I’ve felt what you’ve felt with Oliver,” she said quietly. “I just feel… so light with Barry. Or happy, I suppose. I’m not sure. But I know that when I’m with him, I don’t want the moment to end. And when I saw him with Patty—I told you about that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When I saw him with Patty, I was devastated. But there was this small part of me that was almost… gleeful about it. It’s hard to explain, but that part of me seemed to be saying, You knew this would happen. You were right, he’ll never like you. Good thing you didn’t get too attached.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Felicity said. “Sometimes I hear that voice in my head, too.”

“Why does it do that?” Caitlin said, confusion and frustration seeping into her tone. “Why does our mind do that? Why is it that when we’re happy, our first instinct is to be skeptical of happiness?”

Felicity was quiet for a moment. “Maybe our mind is trying to protect us from getting hurt,” she said. “Maybe we only open a little part of ourselves up to happiness so that when it leaves, it doesn’t take all of us with it.”

Her words sank into the darkness of the room.

“Or, wait, no,” Felicity said. “If Oliver… breaks up with me, yeah, I’ll be devastated, and I’ll probably cry for days, and the part of me that was only me around him will be gone. But I don’t think that means I’m less of a person if he leaves. I won’t be left with like, only a few pieces of my heart or something. Pretty sure I’m stronger than that.”

“You definitely are.”

“Thanks,” her friend said, smiling. “So I guess what I’m trying to say is... we try to protect ourselves from that one painful moment we think we won’t be strong enough to withstand. For me it’s Oliver breaking up with me for whatever reason. For you it’s disappointing Barry. And we sort of obsess over it, that painful moment, because we want to do anything to prevent it. And when we do that we forget to enjoy whatever’s happening now. Or that even if that moment does happen, we can and will survive it.”

“Like having tunnel vision,” Caitlin murmured. “Being scared of the pain is like having tunnel vision. You stop seeing possibilities around you.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You’re saying that I should give this thing with Barry a real chance, aren’t you?”

Felicity grinned. “I’m saying that, or you are?”

“Touché.”

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” she said. “You guys have a lot to talk about. I mean, flowers and chocolates and teddy bears are sweet, but they’re just not your thing.”

“So I heard. Apparently it’s common knowledge for everyone besides him.”

“You’ll think of something,” Felicity said. “I think he’s just excited now so he can’t think straight, but he means well. He really wants to make you happy.”

“I suppose so.”

“And if he can’t see you behind all those romantic notions of his, believe me, I’ll be the first one to tell you to stop trying.”

Caitlin gave her friend a smile. “Thanks.”

There was a lull in the conversation.

“Think we should go to sleep now?”

“Yeah, we probably should,” Felicity said, pulling her blankets to her chin. “Oh, before I forget, Oliver says thanks for the Smirnoff.”

“Tell him he’s welcome.”

“You traitors,” Felicity yawned. “Scheming behind my back.”

“Good night to you too, Felicity.”

Her friend smiled and buried her face in her pillow. “Good night, Cait.”

[mary-gs-travel]

Two Days

How can I describe a months worth of time onboard the Africa Mercy in Douala, Cameroon? I am finding the task impossible, so today I set out to describe 2 days. Let’s start with this Monday.

 A Messy, Magnificent, Manic Monday on the Mercy Ship

 0630 Wake up to alarm. Climb out of top bunk as quietly as possible with a flashlight to avoid waking up my 3 roommates (If they’ve managed to sleep through my alarm). Brush teeth, wash face, and dress into my blue scrubs that I laid out on top of the mini-fridge the night before.

 0645 Walk up 1 flight of stairs to stand in line in dining hall. Grab a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. Sit in corner and keep head down. Eye contact invites the morning people to engage you in conversation; this must be avoided until the caffeine helps my brain realize that yes, I am, in fact, awake.

 0700 Go down 2 flights of stairs to Deck 3. This is where work begins. I am assigned as Charge Nurse this dayshift, so as I step onto the ward I sign all the Day Crew in and out and make sure all our Nurses have arrived. I greet the few patients that are already awake. I lead the team in a quick prayer, and then we start handover report. I can feel the patient in Bed 10 poking my back through the curtain as we pray, and when I peak around the corner of the curtain I see her mischievous grin.

 0715 Read the notes from the weekend’s Charge Nurses. Our woman in Bed 13 has been ill since Friday with various symptoms that don’t seem to make sense.

 0730 Rounds (check on the patients) with the current surgeon onboard.

 0735 I learn that 1 of our 2 bathrooms for the patients is not draining properly and has flooded. Page the Plumber.

 0740 We’re out of a handful of medications. I scamper over to B-ward to pilfer some of what we need until Pharmacy comes by to restock our supply.

 0745 Go up to Deck 6 for Monday Morning Meeting, where I take notes to relay information given back to the nurses who are on the wards and will miss the meeting. We learn about some places to go and not to go in town and about events that will be happening on the ship this week.

 0830 Return to ward and do rounds (check on the patients) with Medical Doctor onboard. Be interrupted multiple times with questions and news that the second of our 2 toilets is no longer flushing. Send up a mental prayer that the plumber will arrive soon. Bed 4 has a hernia in addition to her childbirth injury. It causes her much discomfort, but our general surgeon is not yet onboard and the surgery schedule for hernias is already full. We can treat this patient’s women’s health issue, but not the hernia. I try to remind myself that treating something is better than nothing, but my insides feel rotten. If this women had proper access to healthcare, like I do in my home country, than she never would have suffered this childbirth injury in the first place.  

 0900 Check in with Nurse Team Leader and ask her all the questions that have arisen over the weekend and the past two hours. Hear the good news that 8 of our patients (5 who have already been discharged and 3 who are still onboard) will be in the Dress Ceremony today to celebrate their healing.

 0930 Watch as a Nurse and Day Crew inform Bed 10 that she will be in the Dress Ceremony today. Enjoy the smiles.

 1000 One of our Day Crew isn’t feeling well. At the Crew Clinic it was found she has a fever, so I sign her out to go home and rest.

 1015 The toilets and vacuum system seem to be working again, thank you to the plumber. One of our Day Crew mopped up all the water and cleaned both bathrooms without anyone asking him to.

 1030 Lab results are in, hand delivered by our Lab Crew. I page the Medical Doctor. Bed 13’s labs are not great, but not worse. Bed 10 has an infection, so after the dress ceremony she’ll need to stay a few more days for IV antibiotics. Two other patients have infections that will require antibiotics. One patient’s culture showed no infection, so she will get to be discharged tomorrow.

 1100 Meet with Admissions, OR and Team Leaders to determine what beds the patients being admitted to the hospital this evening will be placed in.  Today is a screening day for Women’s Health, and we don’t yet know who our admissions will be. Per suggestion of my Team Leader I have 3 beds set aside for admissions, but we won’t know until the last minute who those admissions will be.

 1105 Meet with Ward Supervisor to discuss nurse staffing for the next 3 shifts. She leads us in a mini-devotional before we talk about how many nurses we have and how many we need to take care of our patients.

 1130 Return to ward. Organize Nurse/Day Crew Lunch breaks. The Day Crew already had planned who would go first and who would go second.

 1200 Another Day Crew feels unwell and complains of headache. I send her to the Crew Clinic and hope no one else is going to be sick today.

 1230 Sit at desk and update patient information from the morning into the computer system while fielding questions from Nurses and Day Crew about various patient issues. Make assignments for which nurses will take care of which patients (including our still unknown admissions) on the next shift.

 1250 I say goodbye to our patient being discharged. She is in her early twenties and came to us for a biopsy of a tumor. The results showed that the patient has advanced cancer that is beyond our abilities to treat. She is being sent back home with her husband. While onboard she and her husband received counseling with our Hospital Chaplaincy Team, and we’ve sent her with pain medication to manage her symptoms, but it doesn’t feel like enough. It is not enough. She deserves so much more than this.

 1255 Go up to dining hall to grab lunch before it closes at 1300. Onion Soup and carrot sticks.

 1320 Return to Ward. Check on Patients, Nurses and Daycrew. Find a saline syringe sitting on the Charge Nurse keyboard. Squirt saline water gun style at Nurse Ashley. Watch Bed 10 laugh.

 1330 Find out that I was supposed to send half my Daycrew to a Malaria education session a half hour ago, but it’s too late now to send anyone.

 1340 Bed 13 is vomiting.

 1345 Find Malaria Education for Daycrew flyer underneath my stack of papers on the Charge Nurse desk… oh, that’s where that was. Try to input the last of the shift’s information into the computer before the next shift arrives.

 1400 Shift change. I relay all the information from Monday Morning Meeting. Then we pray together before I give a handover report in the hallway (it’s too noisy in the ward) to the Charge Nurse taking my place.

 1445 Return to the ward. All the patients except Bed 13 have been moved down the E-ward for the Dress Ceremony. I’m exhausted and am not sure if I really want to go sit for the Ceremony, but our Team Leader encourages me to go. “It’s the best part,” she says.

 1500 I’m in E-Ward for the Dress Ceremony. 8 of our Ladies are walking into the ward singing songs of praise and worship. They are dressed in bright colors and look radiant.  Our chaplaincy team has spent the morning setting up the ward and preparing the ladies. We celebrate with them and sing songs of worship. Each lady takes a turn to speak into the microphone and tell their story. They tell stories of loss turned to triumph. Each woman is presented with a gift. I get to present a gift to a patient that we all referred to as our Mama on the Ward. I have never given a gift before during a Dress Ceremony, and I am so honored that I was able to present Mama with hers.

 1600 Picture time with the ladies in their Dress Ceremony outfits. We shared lots of hugs and laughter and joy. This is also the time where it starts to become bittersweet because soon I will have to say goodbye.

 1620 I see a positive malaria test sitting on the counter in the Ward. So that’s why Bed 13 has been so ill.

 1630 I fill in a few orders in charts that I hadn’t had time to do during the dayshift. I say goodbye to the patients in the ward and give hugs to the ladies headed off the ship.

 1645 I walk up a flight of stairs, down the hallway, and into my cabin. Time to sit for a moment and process my day.

 1730 Grabbed dinner from the dining hall. Dinner is a hamburger patty on bread with carrot sticks and a papaya. I took my meal to a conference room where a group of my friends and I watched Agent Carter (we are attempting to watch all the Marvel Movies and some TV shows in chronological order during this field service).

1900 Shower

 1930 Play a round of Qwirkle with friends in the dining hall.

 2100 Climb up into my bed and watch Game of Thrones on Movienight (our online video sharing system on the ship) until I fall asleep.

   And then here is Today, Tuesday, a typical day off.

  0930 Wake up to find 2 of my roommates had woken up and left while I slept. I lay in bed drowsing a little while longer because today I have no where to rush off to.

 1000 My 3rd roommate has left and I have the cabin to myself. I turn on all the lights and use my electric kettle to boil some water to make coffee with my pour-over pot. I play some music without having to use headphones. I drink the Cameroonian coffee that I bought from the grocery store a few days ago. Sadly, it’s not very good. But I drink it slowly while I journal and relax on the couch in our room.

 1200 I get dressed and venture out of my cabin to go look out a window. The sky is grey, cloud covered. I grab some lunch (Onion Soup, again, and a salad) from the dining hall and take it to the café. I eat lunch with friends and then spend the afternoon drinking more coffee and working on this record of my days. People filter through the area and I take many breaks from writing to chat.

 1630 Nurse Ashley stops by my table to say hello. Promises revenge for yesterdays water-gun saline prank.

 1715 Dinner is being served, but I’m not hungry. I grab a plate and wrap it up to save for later because dinner closes at 1830. I change into my Cameroon-appropriate exercise gear (got to keep those knees covered) and head out to the dock. I run some laps around our dock, which is lined with cargo containers and barbed wire that serves as our “Wall”.

 1845 Watch the sunset from Deck 8. The clouds have broken up and every now and then you can see snatches of Mount Cameroon off in the distance.

 1930 Shower followed by dinner. I get a FaceTime call from home and get to see my sister and my nieces.

 2000 Back to my room to finish this.  

 So there you go. A typical day at work and a typical day off.  I felt like these two days expressed the highs and lows of ship life and working in a volunteer hospital. The pros and cons of living in such a tight knit community. The joys and sorrows of the Women’s Health ward.

[socialjust-ish]

In regard to the one post with the best friend and the bloody bathtub, if you were to take your own original course of action what would it be? Or would it be similar to the preexisting idea + your edits?

The post in question, for the unitiated

I mean, I’ve never murdered anyone (allegedly) and I wouldn’t use this as personal advice for a murder, because that’s how I become an accomplice, so don’t use this.

Realistically, I’d turn my friend into the police unless there was a verifiable self-defence/suicide story.

But here’s what I’d do if I had to help with the body and an unlimited budget:

The setup:

The first thing I’d need to do is establish who knew my friend had been with the girl. Was it a tinder hookup? That’s dangerous, the app has a clear record. Was it a prostitute/stranger pickup? Less dangerous, no tangible connections. Depending on who knew, the situation becomes easy/hard. But either way the goal is to establish an alibi. They were with me the whole night, we watched a movie after he dropped the girl off. If I got there quick enough, I’d establish that through texts. “Hey man, just dropped the girl off, you can come over now” and “Cool, where’d you drop her off” kinda deal.

Then I’d immediately have the friend change into new clothes and shoes (blood gets places) and go buy gloves, plastic sheeting, and some rubber boots. He’d buy each of these things from separate stores, in cash, and preferably at stores that don’t have security footage of a high quality (think a payless shoe store, a really crappy convenience store, and a mom n’ pop hardware store in a good enough neighborhood that security cameras are unnecessary

If we know who this girl is, and she doesn’t have a roommate/security system, we break into her house and get her phone/laptop. We write a suicide note on the device. Have it saved as ‘just in case’ and if possible, edit the documents creation date/use an old document so that it looks like something they update constantly. Make this so that when people look for her, you raise the possibility this was a suicide/runaway rather than a victim of an attack.

Leave the apartment, go somewhere like a club and enter with cash so there’s no distinct sign-in time. Buy some drinks on your credit card, have photos taken of you at the event. When you get your coat tip with your credit card so there’s a ‘he was there until this time’ stamp. Make it as large of a buffer between the time of death as is reasonable. Create the possibility that you two were out when she died.

The Bathroom

I would lay down as much sheeting as I could, roll the body into it, and seal it as airtight as possible. If my friend had a vacuum sealer thing and it was feasible to use that, I would. I honestly don’t think there’s much of a point to the whole ‘remove the teeth and fingers’ thing because DNA testing is really good. If the body is found (even a bone) it will likely be identified if the victim has any sort of DNA record at all - which is increasingly common, especially thanks to sites like 23 And Me. If they don’t have DNA, they also likely don’t have print records, so it’s unnecessary

Then, I’d get to cleaning. Bleach is a good start, but you need to be thorough as fuck. 

Destroy the tub. This is a Victorian claw-footed tub, so it’s likely much easier to remove than a wall-fitted tub. Take it into their garage if they have one. Take a sledgehammer to it on your previously purchased plastic sheeting. Gather it up in the sheeting. Incinerate it. Garbage fire, whatever, take it down. Make it so this tub does not exist, install a new one. Do it by hand if you have to.

Bleaching the drain is an... okay idea, but I think it might damage the pipes. I’d go for more of an industrial-grade cleaning situation. If the police are digging up your pipes to confirm the murder, you’re at a point where you’re probably already caught dead to rights. This would be more for personal sanitary/smell reasons than evidence destruction. I’d then install a new claw-footed tub/use this opportunity to remodel the bathroom. Remodels are common and not likely to raise suspicion, and give a good excuse for the plastic sheeting: You used it to cover the floors while you painted.

Sweep the apartment. Use a blacklight and as many forensic tools as you have at your disposal (not a lot). Destroy blood, vacuum and steam the carpets, clean the walls.

I honestly think that’s the best I’d be able to do for the building, I can’t say if that would succeed, but it would make you at least a bit safer.

Similar to the bathtub, I would destroy anything you used in the situation. Knives? Shattered. Etc.

Wipe the entire apartment down for prints. Anything that it’d be reasonable to touch. Handles, knobs, countertops, glasses, etc. After wiping it down, you and the friend need to re-touch things. Once the bathroom is remodeled, host a party. Only one set of prints in an apartment is suspicious.

The Body:

There are a few difficulties with the body. The first is getting it out of the building. If you have an attached garage this is easy, just walk it into your trunk and take it out. If you don’t, you’ve got to do this at 3 AM, pray you get lucky and have minimal camera activity in the area. I’d even consider causing an active scene nearby to distract onlookers. Get that crazy homeless man to light off some firecrackers on the opposite side of the building or something. Just make it hard to find you.

Disposing of the body is tough. Did you know that even funeral home incinerators don’t destroy all of the bone of a human body? You need enormous heat to destroy bone, and even if the bone cracks, DNA is often still preserved. Burning the body doesn’t eliminate your ability to find it.

However, it certainly helps make it more difficult to find. I would take it deep into a forest and burn it if possible.

I’m torn on what to do with the body after that point. You could bury it. If you were to bury it I’d make sure to do so in a non-floodzone, go at least regular grave depth, and seal it as tightly as is physically possible.

Another classic option is the ocean. Drive your boat out a few miles and dump that motherfucker in the Marianas trench. 

Bogs are an enticing option, but the problem is they can mummify their victims, and preserve crucial details if done improperly.

I’m always a personal fan of the ‘sneak into a graveyard and place the body under a thin (thin being 1 - 2 feet) layer of dirt in a newly dug grave, so that in a day or two it is covered by a body that is supposed to be there.

The goal is to make it so the body is never even found. If you have time and the confidence, I would drive as far as is reasonably possible. If you live in Florida, drive up to Georgia to dump the body. If you live in California, hit the Oregon Trail. The further you get, the less likely the initial search is likely to succeed, and the longer it takes for the various governing bodies to coordinate and figure out the ID. 

Any personal belongings she had on her (phone, watch, wallet, etc.) you want to take. Wipe them off so there are no prints. Destroy them. Phone? Ocean. Keys? Hole in the ground in New Mexico. Driver’s License? Shredder you then throw into the ocean. 

Keep one personal, completely incriminating memento. A lock of hair, a photo of you and the corpse, their left index finger. Keep this in the frame of a photograph in your living room. Every time you have company over, make sure to comment on how much you love that photo because of the memories. When guests ask what memories, just smile and go “Oh a girl I used to know gave it to me.” Change this answer every time a guest asks why you like the photo. 

The risks in this plan:

The alibi might actually raise suspicion. If your texts don’t make chronological sense, and they’re investigated, it becomes the gateway to being suspect number 1.

Purchasing the plastic sheeting is also suspicious. You’d need to purchase paint and other ‘remodeling’ materials to justify it. 

Security cameras are common nowadays, and if you’re caught on tape buying rubber gloves the night of the disappearance that’s very suspicious.

The digital age allows for detailed tracking. Her phone records will likely show her phone was with you when she went missing. I don’t know how to deal with this. Maybe drive the phone back to her place ASAP, then do the whole text-alibi thing. But I really don’t know.

Body discovery can be totally up to chance. Maybe you bury the body perfectly, but then a month later the city decides to develop that area into residential housing and it’s found. Maybe the gravedigger is asked to make an extra-deep hole for some wacky family. Maybe fish chew through your sealed back and the feet float up to the surface in a series of weird ‘floating feet’ cases on the coast of British Columbia that I definitely had nothing to do with.

General forensic technology nowadays is advanced, and human error is also pretty complicated. One minor slip up/goodluck on the side of the investigation/something unforeseeable like the girl having a dead-man’s switch for hookups and it’s game over.

[drennalynspast]

[ yay roomate ]

Tuesday, Jun. 08, 2010

Typed and emailed to myself 3/2010

Thank god this is my last semester at this school.   As much as I am wanting to “turn over a new leaf”,  I still feel conflicted about several things.especially during this past week.

Roomate:     it was an ecstatic thought having one of my best friends live with me in my apartment for this semester.  I thought it would be one of those mutualism type symbiotic relationships where both people benefit.  To my dismay, I feel like it is parasitic at times.  I feel angry, frustrated and drained.  I have some pet peeves which are petty and I know that it is something that I should deal with myself and suck it up.  For one, after she uses the rice cooker and eats her meal for that time, she doesn’t put the cooked rice in the container and store it in the fridge.   Nope, she leaves it out overnight in the cooker or even more than 1 day. 

Whenever my I go home on those rare occasions, my mother would always cook a bunch of food for me in containers so I could reheat the food and eat it.  She also made a lot and said I could share with my roommate  which I do.  My roommate, on the other hand, doesn't really do that for me.  Her parents don't think about doing that for their child.  I feel like most of my food that my mom cooks is what is feeding her.  And then when we run out of that food she complains about what is there to eat around here.  Then I mention, go buy food and cook something.  She says, “I don’t know how to cook though.”  I said, buy canned /box stuff and microwave them, google for recipes that teach you how to cook something.     

On the snow days, she asked if she could use my ice scraper because she didn’t even have one in her own car.  She also didn’t have gloves.  Underprepared much?  Sometimes I feel that if she were living with someone else, she would be worse off.

This morning, good god. I was late for my class.  We always carpool everyday, and today was her turn to drive.  If I wanted to sleep in or not carpool that day, I would have mentioned it early in the morning or the night before.  But I never mentioned any of that to her.   I stupidly put my cell phone on silent and forgot to change the setting, so I did not hear my alarm.   She didn’t even bother to wake me up or say something about it.  She just left.

This frustration was just a new experience I faced compared to living in the dorms.  In the dorms, there is the unspoken rule that you don't really share and everything you have is yours and set within your boundaries of the room.    Whereas in an apartment, some things you will have to share, and are both there is a more difficult responsibility because you have more area to maintain.

I understand that people were raised differently (obviously) and they may have different mannerisms and customs.  Still just fucking still I feel like that shouldn’t be an excuse.  I just wish that people would wake up from their ignorance and actually offer to do something generous on their own without being asked to do it.  My parents tell me to not really complain much to her because we don't want to put any strain on how we live together (aka try to prevent her from wanting moving out because she is saving us more money).  Sure, sure. I can deal with that.  I suppose I will take the trash out on my own, vacuum the carpet, clean the countertops and bathroom, sharing my mom's cooked food with her.  I am fine with doing that.  Is it selfish of me to wish that someone would try to be nice to me too?  It probably is.  While I am not verbally requesting much of her to do things/change her behavior, I may appear tolerable and nice.  But inside, I sometimes don’t feel satisfied for myself holding back like that.  I know I am a pushover a lot.  Sometimes, I feel like I am going to snap one day though.

After coming to this newfound realization of coping to live with someone , I can honestly say that I am proud of how I can be independent of myself at times as far as learning how to do things on my own and think critically.  I am actually thankful for my parents and how they help prepare me.  If they weren’t so supportive of me and helpful, I am not sure how I would be.  I would at least hope that I would try to work harder/think for myself and not be dependable on others so much.

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The cake is a lie. Sooo This past week I experienced like some kind of uh freakout episode.  I dunnno how to describe it.   I went to occc to take a test that I needed to take for my PTA application.  It pisses me off how schools and business have this damn triage system making people wait and wait, and do things/go to a certain department before you can actually get the shit done in the department you need to do.  They would not consider me having a bachelors this may as one of the preference points (rankings that will make your application have a better status for acceptance but they aren’t necessarily required).  in the application, I was a little disappointed, though they were nice enough to tell me about how I can get an associate’s from them and include that in my application.   After I took the test, I didn’t score high enough in this one section to make me able to get a preference point for that subject.  They allowed me to take it again though. So,  I made a schedule to take it again that day.  As I was turning in my application file and requesting to have them make copies of shit and transfer stuff, it was after those 10 minutes what I realized what I did.  I turned in my application officially already and I still haven’t retaken that test and sent my scores in that application to update it. Oh shiiit >.<  I asked if I could have it back for a bit, but they said  I couldn’t have it back when I turned it in.  I was pissed off, was on the verge of crying.   I hated myself for losing an opportunity to make my application look better. I am worried if I will get accepted or not.

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That evening at wford, I decided to cheer myself up and try to make a pound cake for the first time.  That did not go too well, because it turned out shitty. Then I got mad and frustrated even more.   The next day, I decided I would try again to make the pound cake using a different technique.  As I was going through my cooking utensils, I noticed that I was missing a tablespoon that I had.  I was mother fucking pissed and frustrated as hell.  I frantically looked for it, but still could not find it.  My presumption was that it was accidentally thrown away.  I know that  I could still use my teaspoon three times to achieve one tablespoon but that wasn’t the point. The point is that I was lost something that belong to a set. And now my set looks incomplet..  So yeah, I literally cried and laid on the floor crying in frustration.  An hour later, I was annoyed enough to the point where I went to walmart to buy another whole measuring spoon set just to ease my mind.  I know it was extremely unnecessary .>.> I even bought a more expensive and different set compared to my original one

Bottomline : I never realized how emotional I could be from something like all.   After the spoon incident, I vowed not to try to attempt baking/cooking something new when I am emotionally unstable.  When I realized how much I failed at baking,  it made me feel like I could not succeed in anything.  I don’t know how to bake ;_; , when I mess up I get mad because I lost ingredients and my time.    ____________________________________

Schoolbleh: >My roommate and I made a lent thing where we would make a study log book.  We made it so that we had to achieve a certain amount of time of studying per subject or else we would have to be punished. Punishment would be waking up at 6 am to go jogging around our complex.  Another part of our to do stuff was to work out at a minimum of 3 times a week.   So far, this idea and goal has been helpful for us.

Working on applications is a bitch.  My parents tell me I need to apply for more schools, but most of the other school (out of state) applications already had a deadline like in fall 2009 >.> furthermore, it is not easy to just apply.  Because they may require different courses, exam scores, letters of recommendation etcetceetc.  I have enough trouble trying to work on 1-3applications as it is.

As far as classes, I have been trying to work harder on them.  I set the curve in one of my classes and got booted up to a 100 for that test grade. I want to try to be one of the highest grades in that class now... I just need to study moar =_=.   I also am enrolled in this “sailing/hiking/canoeing etc parks and recreation class”.  It is really fun.