#and now it's 12 years later and getting divorced was the best thing that ever happened to me

[lindstromm]

The OTHER worry for tradwives is that it will work just fine. You stay married. You stay home. Your whole life. Your entire life revolves around your kids, who resent you for it (jeez, mom, get a life and leave me alone). Your husband criticizes your parenting and how you spend his money. You not only take care of your husband and children, but you'll be expected to take care of your parents as they age. Your other siblings have jobs, you see. You haven't worked in 25 years and have zero self-confidence about finding a job. He'll never file for divorce. You'll never file for divorce. Losing yourself in service to others is high and noble, until you realize you're entirely lost.

[fordlee]

Being around his brothers made Sherman feel a bit nervous. Just a bit. He tried hard not to let it show, of course, but he couldn’t help but fear he was more transparent than he’d like to be. He liked to think no one could really blame him. Filbrick had spent Sherman’s entire childhood reinforcing the idea that Stanley was the child that had ruined the future of their family. It had warped Sherman's impression of him for quite some time. Later, Filbrick turned his slanderous words onto Stanford, as well, furious with his eldest son for never getting their family rich, even with all of his intelligence and promise. For a long time, Sherman felt obligated to be betrayed, to hate them. He had believed his father more than Sherman would dare to admit, not even thinking to accompany their mother to Stanley’s funeral. Looking back now, it broke Sherman's heart. He could only imagine what it had done to Stanley.

He'd only reached out decades later, long after he had brought shame to the family name himself, getting his high school sweetheart pregnant while still in high school. When he finally had the nerves to reach out to what he thought was his remaining older brother, “Stanford” was nothing like what his parents described. Sherman never loved him any less, but he could tell Stan was holding him at arm’s length. Understandably so, considering, well, everything.

At the time, though, it frustrated Sherman - especially when he had tried asking “Stanford” about their so-called deceased brother. Sherman had only ever known Stanley through secondhand, biased sources. He might as well hear it from the guy who’d known Stanley better than anyone. But, the answers he’d gotten were evasive and noncommittal. At the time, he imagined his brother was still bitter about what had happened so many decades ago. Now, though, Sherman wondered: Was it because he didn’t know what Ford would have said? Was he afraid of saying something positive about himself? Was it that, despite all the people he’s swindled and lied to, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to Sherman like that?

It wasn’t until years later, after the Summer his grandkids went to visit, that his older brothers - yes, older brothers, plural - let him in on what was going on. And, being honest, Shermie was pissed. He was so mad that Stanley didn't tell him the truth, had left him in the dark, when he could’ve helped! The knucklehead… Well, maybe he wouldn’t have been the best help. Shermie knew he didn’t exactly have the brains to work out something like a portal to another world. Not to mention their already fraught relationship. Still, he liked to believe he would have helped Stanley get their brother back, even if only to offer emotional support.

But, the anger quickly faded and morphed into this overjoyed, awestruck feeling around his older brothers. Stanford was an universe-hopping outlaw with 12 PhDs and Stanley, despite everything their father said, had the heart, smarts, and determination to learn quantum physics and engineering and all kinds of things Shermie couldn’t understand in order to rebuild a portal to bring their brother home and killed a dream demon from another dimension to save their family and their universe. And for some reason that Shermie couldn't understand, neither of them seemed resentful or mad at him. Not even Stanley. They welcomed him in with open arms. And they were incredible! They were incredible and wonderful and intelligent and amazing, and Shermie was so, so ready for the chance to finally be brothers with them, for them to finally go from related strangers to family.

But, then again, they were them, and Shermie was, well, Shermie. He had a stable job, had been divorced for some time now and lived comfortably by himself, visited his son's family for dinner on weekdays and made time just for his grandkids on the weekends. Shermie Pines considered himself as normal and mild-mannered as they come. Compared to his brothers, he felt… Boring. He couldn't believe Ford and Lee still took such an interest in him. Not that he wasn't grateful, of course, but Shermie felt he didn’t deserve it. Did he deserve the chance to be close with them? Did he deserve to be out on the open sea with them? Did he even deserve to set foot on the Stan O’ War II? And what if he screwed this all up?

A shoulder bumped against Sherman, jolting him to the present. His eyes darted about, eventually falling on the cooler at their feet. He’d been lost in thought for a majority of the afternoon as he and Stan fished - as such, Stanley had claimed the majority of their catches. It likely would have happened regardless; Sherman was never the best fisherman. His eyes roamed from the cooler and up his brother’s body, settling on Stan’s face. It could’ve just been the waves rocking the boat that caused Stanley to bump into him, but the smirk on his big brother’s face told him otherwise.

“C'mon, Sherm, how about a kiss for your big brother?” Stanley asked, looking back at Shermie with a grin.

Shermie blinked. He furrowed his brows, an amused smile on his lips. “A kiss?” he repeated.

“I caught dinner, didn't I?” Stan gestured down to the cooler beside him, where the dispatched fish had been laid out to cool amongst the ice.

Shermie breathed out a laugh, crossing his arms. “I'm not impressed,” he lied.

“You're impressed,” Stan insisted. He leaned closer to his younger brother, tilting his head so as to give Shermie better access. Stan poked at his own cheek with a finger. “C'mon, just a little cheek kiss ‘cause I did such a good job.”

Sherman rolled his eyes, putting on a show of being inconvenienced. In reality, he was more than happy to show Stanley some love. Goodness knows he really needed it. He was tired of being a stranger in his brothers’ worlds. He was tired of what his father had told him about his brothers holding him back and keeping him too scared to get close.

Sherman leaned forward, pursing his lips and aiming for Stan's cheek.

“Laying it on a little thick, are we, Stanley?” Ford's voice suddenly piped up.

Everything seemed to slow down for Shermie. He registered Stan turning to look in the direction Ford's voice had come from, but Sherman couldn't change course. His lips met Stanley's in a soft kiss. Stan’s lips were so much softer than he would have guessed - not that he had, of course. Shermie felt his face flush and his stomach do something weird, something he hadn't felt since his ex-wife. God, what was he, a schoolboy with a crush?

Maybe it was from the surprise or the absurdity of the situation, but both of them stayed like that, lips pressed together, for a couple seconds longer than they really should have. And when Shermie had the sense to step back, he swore he's seeing things because there's no way Stanley leaned forward just a touch, as if chasing after the kiss.

Praying that his face didn't look nearly as red as it felt, Sherman turned to address Stanford. The eldest of the three stood with his back to the door that led to the stairway below deck.

“It isn't what it looks like,” Shermie insisted.

Ford shrugged his shoulders. “Didn't look like anything to me. Just a display of brotherly love.”

“Yeah,” One of Stanley's large hands clasped Sherman's shoulder. “Me and Sixer do it all the time.”

“Oh.”

Right. Right, of course. Of course it was normal, Shermie was just overthinking things and making it weird. And of course he’d be the one to read something deeper into something clearly normal. Why would he jump to the conclusions that what they were doing was weird, that others would think it weird? It wasn’t weird. But, what was weird was how he kept re-imagining how it felt to kiss Stanley, wondering absentmindedly if Ford's lips were just as soft. He was so thankful his brothers hadn't made or obtained some sort of mind-reading contraption, he could only imagine how weirded out they'd be by him, if only they knew. Maybe their father had gotten it more wrong than he originally thought. Maybe his brothers were actually the normal ones out of the three of them, and Shermie was the secret freak. The twins would regret ever inviting him onto the Stan O’ War II, surely.

How long had Ford been standing there, anyway?

“I caught dinner!” Stan announced suddenly, startling Sherman from his thoughts once more.

Stan grabbed a dead fish from their cooler, waving it around for Ford to see. Shermie had to duck away from getting slapped with a face full of fish.

“I helped!” Shermie laughed.

“Standin’ there and lookin’ pretty ain’t helpin’.”

“The only reason you caught so many is because of me. I’m you guyses’ good luck charm.”

Stan snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” he quickly discarded the fish back into the cooler before reaching out with the same hand and ruffling it through Sherman’s graying hair.

“Don’t touch me with your fish-hand! Ford, help!”

“Well, it’s about time you knuckleheads caught something,” Ford’s voice was dismissive, but his smile betrayed him. “Now, are you gonna help me cook the darn things or what?”

“We catch, you cook. That’s the deal, Pointdexter!” Stan said, disentangling his fingers from Shermie’s hair. He hefted the cooler into his arms, and Shermie suddenly noticed how strong his brother was.

“Maybe when it’s just us, but two of you means that less energy was expended doing a single task together than you would doing so alone.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Stan mocked, rolling his eyes as he lugged the cooler across the deck. “Just get Shermie to help you.”

“I thought you loved me,” Shermie’s face formed into an exaggerated pout.

Stan craned his neck to send a wink back Shermie’s way. As Stan brushed past Ford, Shermie could swear he saw his brother’s briefly locked eyes, a look passing between the two of them. And then, as if he had only been seeing things, Stan lumbered down the stairs without another word or glance behind him. Shermie’s eyes then moved to lock onto Ford.

“Well, what are you waiting for? A kiss on the cheek?” The eldest brother teased.

Sherman would have sworn his eyebrows nearly leaped from his head, surely unable to handle how suddenly hot his face had become. Embarrassed, Sherman quickly crossed the deck to follow Stanley down the stairs. As he brushed by his eldest brother, Ford met his gaze with a good-natured smile. Sherman felt Ford follow him close behind, a six-fingered hand pressing against his lower back, gently guiding him down below.

[lokisprettygirl]

Close Ties (Daemon Targaryen x Female Reader) (Modern AU) (Non canon) (18+)

Read Chapter 12 // Series Masterlist

Chapter 13

Summary : You help Daemon with his insecurities. Truth comes out in the open.

Warning: 18+, smutty smut, dad's best friend trope, canon (we don't know her..don't like don't read), feeling of hopelessness, uncle Daemon kink (you don't have to squint), familial uncle niece sort of relationship but he's not really her uncle, there will be more smut later, masturbation, significant age gap but reader is in her mid twenties, mention of infidelity, divorce, smoking and alcohol drinking, physical violence implied

“Can I ask you a personal question?” You mumbled softly in his ear so he hummed in response.

You were currently lying down in his arms on his bed, feeling the warmth of his touch and the comfort of his embrace. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the two of you had the mansion to yourselves since your parents were out of town again and your aunt Polly took the family to her mother's. He had a dark gray full sleeves t-shirt on with a matching pair of trousers and as soon as you saw him in the set you knew you wanted to snuggle into his arms and lay there for as long as he'd allow you to.

Daemon wasn't dating you, he was courting you and you wanted to take things slow but you couldn't stop yourself from wanting to entice him now and then, that's why you had a flimsy tank top on with a pair of shorts.

His fingers were tracing circular patterns on your bare shoulders while he used his other hand to do the same with your thigh..

“What made you want to let go finally? What was the breaking point in your marriage?” You asked him softly and he sighed, he was quiet for a moment as to figure out how he wanted to answer that heavy question.

To be honest there were several breaking points in his marriage, he should have gotten out of that relationship a long time ago, a decade ago but he continued to set himself up for failure.

“It was her wanting to keep our marriage open for other people..basically our bed ”

You looked at him a bit shocked and frankly disgusted by Stella's behavior as he said that, she spent years with him so she must have known what kind of man Daemon was. A man like him could have never allowed that to happen, he was too possessive of his girl, you knew that now very well.

“That negates the whole sanctity of marriage..she didn't deserve the countless chances you gave her" you caressed his chest with your fingers so he hummed again

"I could never ever share you with anyone, it would honestly destroy me”

He held you tighter as you said that, a smile appeared on his face as he felt your possessiveness towards him but then his insecurities kicked in for a moment.

“Mmmm really? I'm nothing special that you'd want to keep me all to yourself ”

You looked at him sharply as he said that before you got out of his arms and climbed on top of him.

“Do you want me to show you how special you are to me?” You asked him in a seductive manner as you pushed your hair behind your shoulders and his eyes flickered as he gazed at your strained nipples and your breasts threatening to spill out of your tank top but then he controlled himself. He won't fuck you until your parents had learned of this thing between you two, keeping them in dark was starting to make him feel extremely guilty.

He couldn't do this to your father, he knew it didn't make much sense but he still wanted to hold on until the truth was out in the open.

He grabbed you by the waist and pulled you closer to him, your sweet scent immediately engulfed him,

“Would you feel the same way when I'm older and unattractive and you'd have the attention of every other man out there?” He asked you softly and your eyes filled with several different emotions, in that moment not only did you want to adore him but you wanted to protect him as well, protect him from all the insecurities he had about himself.

“Why don't you get old with me and find out for yourself?” you smiled as you spoke but his eyes teared even more up so you immediately scooted closer to him and hugged him tightly, lips pressed soft kisses on his neck, he hardly ever showed his emotions like this so you knew he was always genuine with them.

Your birthday arrived a week later, and as usual, your father had arranged a celebration for you. However, this year, things were a bit more grand compared to previous years. He had thought of everything and made sure every detail was taken care of, from the food to the music, to the decorations. And unlike all those years when he had been too busy with work to be there with you, this year, he made sure he was right by your side, not caring about anything else. And you had the best present you could have gotten from him, he brought back Daemon into your life, you'd have traded everything for him.

The corner of the living room was filled with presents you had received. From expensive jewellery to imported perfumes, your father had gone all out. He even gifted you a brand new car, and those who attended the party also brought with them their own lavish gifts, making you feel like a queen.

However, Daemon couldn't' help but feel a pang of guilt because he didn't have anything nearly as valuable to give you for your birthday. He was still paying off alimony since he didn't file for infidelity claim and he was saving up for his own place, making it impossible for him to spend an extravagant amount on a present for you.

As Daemon watched you being doused in expensive gifts, he couldn't help but feel inferior with the simple necklace he had gotten made for you. He shoved it back into his pocket and tried to ignore the feeling of regret that crept over him. He didn't want to spoil the night for you by bringing up his own issues, so he just kept quiet and then while you were busy with other guests he quietly left for his room.

However, when you sneaked away from the party and came to his room, he knew he couldn't keep up the facade any longer. He had intended to give you the necklace, but now felt embarrassed by its simple nature in the face of all your other luxuries.

“It's your birthday sweetheart…go get drunk” he told you nonchalantly so you pushed past him and entered his room.

“Where's my gift?” You asked him as you stood in the middle of the room with your arms behind your back elegantly, you looked drop dead gorgeous tonight in the red dress and face full of makeup. All he could think about was wanting to ruin and smear that deep red lipstick all over your face or more like his face.

“I got nothing for you pixie…sorry” he looked away as he leaned against the door so you walked towards him and kissed him softly, your hands were still behind your back and when you finally brought them forward you had a small Rose in your hand which you tucked in the pocket of his leather jacket.

“I brought one for you since you love roses” his eyes teared up at the simplicity of the gesture and he immediately wrapped his arms around you to hug you. Hiding his face between the crook of your neck he held onto to you for a while before he pulled away from you, you didn't enjoy watching him sullen like this but you did cherish these moments of vulnerability that he chose to share with you especially because you knew he wasn't like that with anyone else.

“I do have a present for you babygirl” he muttered softly and it made you smile.

“I know”

“I just didn't think you'd like it”

“And that's stupid you know that right?”

He nodded as you said that,

“You're my favorite present, you came back and I have prayed for that to happen since you left, my prayers were finally answered this year. You can give me a bag of dust if that's all you can afford and I'd rub it all over myself as if it's an offering from God, because that's what it is, that's how much I value you”

As you finished speaking you watched the tears roll down his eyes and he cupped your cheeks to kiss you passionately. He hadn't gotten the chance to do so all day long so he really needed to douse you in his sweet sweet love that he felt for you but wasn't able to show most of the time.

“Close your eyes” you smiled and closed your eyes as per his request and then you felt a necklace wrapping around your neck, you didn't even have to look at it, you just knew you'd never want to take it off ever again.

Your fingers curled around his neck as you kissed him again, you didn't have much time, you knew you'd have to go back downstairs before somebody will come looking for you so you wanted to make the most of the time.

He turned you around and pressed you against the door, fingers worked your zipper down slowly as he pressed kisses on your bare back

“Uncle?” You moaned the forbidden name and he knew he wanted to please you right then, treat you to a good release for your birthday, the way you just melted in his arms made him believe that you had never been taken care of this way and he wanted to change that, he wanted to make you feel like a treasure, make you feel pleased and valued..

“Mmm baby what do you want?” his voice was a husky whisper in your ear and it sent shivers down your spine,

“Want to show you how I look in your present”

“I can see baby..you're the most beautiful girl I swear on my dead mother, you're so precious my love”

Your eyes teared up but there was also a sweet smile on your face as his words raced your heartbeat.

“Mmmm..want to show you how i look in just your present uncle, i want to wear just that”

He gasped as you said that and as he reeled in the look on your face he just wanted to oblige and give you everything you'd ever need, a sweet, caring loyal woman like you deserved every bit of affection in return.

He lowered the straps from your shoulders slowly until the dress fell down on the floor and you were left in a red glittering lingerie that matched the dress you had on.

He turned you around swiftly and grabbed you by the hips to pick you up in his arms as if you weighed nothing, your lips stayed on his as he laid you down on the bed, the dim lighting in his room made the atmosphere even more sensuous.

As you took your bra off slowly his eyes were stuck on your almost naked form and as you slid the panties down he could see the arousal dripping from between your legs.

“How do I look?” You asked him nervously, you had never been so bold in your life before, especially in bed but the way he cared for you made you feel confident enough about yourself.

“Gorgeous babygirl, so fucking beautiful” he licked his lips subconsciously as he looked at you from head to toe.

You knew he wasn't going to fuck you so soon but you were all prepared to show him what you wanted to give him when he'd finally give it to you.

He took the rose out from the pocket of his jacket and leaned right over you to caress your face with it gently, your chest was heaving up and down as your breathing fastened from his action. The contrast of him being fully clothed and you being all naked with just his necklace on you was tantalizing.

He dragged the flower from one nipple to another very slowly before he traced it over your stomach and he took his own sweet time before he reached your mound, the delicate petals of rose then swiped between your legs for barely a moment and it was drenched with your arousal.

He brought the flower closer to his mouth and then clasped the soaked petals between his teeth. You couldn't help but moan loudly just at the sight of him being so primal at the moment, all of a sudden he had your legs pushed apart and his mouth between your legs, he kissed and licked your freshly waxed and sensitive mound before he wrapped his lips around your dripping lips, tongue played with your clit tenderly before he sucked on the swollen nubs.

Your fingers curled around his hair and you couldn't help but pull on it as the sensation between your legs reached the pit of your stomach. Back arched as his tongue slid inside you and you couldn't stop yourself from crushing him between your thighs and gods he wanted you to suffocate him like this, he could have spent hours between your legs this way..

You have had dreams like this before and a part of you still felt hazy, all of this felt like a dream come true. A dream that you knew would end someday.

“Oh god…daemon”

His pace only intensified as you moaned his name so sweetly, his hands slid up to grab your bosom and he pinched the soft flesh between his palms.

As you managed to look down he had his eyes on you, he was watching every little movement of yours, drinking in every little gasp and moans that you emitted for him, as a whiny cry escaped your throat he knew he had you right at the brink of your release..

“Cum my sweet little girl, let go in my mouth, i know you want to let go for your uncle don't you?”

The vibrations you felt from his words and his constant stimulation was enough to push you over the edge. Your thighs squeezed around his head and body convulsed like a fish out of water as you rode your high and chanted his name over and over again.

The kink was mutual and it didn't feel perverted no more, he was slowly and definitely learning to accept that his feelings for you wasn't a sin, it was a blessing, at least for him it was. He had no hope or will to find love again, he didn't think he'd ever be ready for that but you had changed it for him so quickly.

He kissed up from between your legs, leaving a trail of your wetness on your skin and as he reached closer to your mouth you kissed him back filthily.

There was no going back now, you knew things would never go back to the way they used to be before you two walked down this path. He'd always think about how you crumbled beneath him whenever he goes to bed alone at night and you? Well you didn't think you'd ever get over the way he made you feel, not just in sexual ways but emotionally and spiritually.

As you breathing leveled and you came back to your senses you found him sucking on your nipples softly and the gesture was enough to turn you on again. As he realized that he pressed his head up to kiss you one more time before he made his way to the bathroom to clean his face and then he returned to do the same with you, however you weren't just done with him. He was standing at the edge of your bed so you sat up and cupped the bulge in your palm, his eyes squeezed as a wave of pleasure shot through his spine.

“Darling.. I'd cum like this, I'm an old man now” you smiled as he said that, his voice came out all breathy.

“Then cum uncle, it's my birthday, you can give me what I want”

“Ohh sweet girl..i..” words died mid sentence in his throat as you unbuttoned his pants and rubbed your hands over his briefs and as soon as you had placed your mouth on his clothed cock to leave wet kisses his fingers clutched into your hair and you knew he had let go like he had said he would.

And you didn't judge him for that, nothing could have made you feel more desirable than a man like him cumming in his pants just from your touch.

He had to make another trip to the bathroom and when he came back this time you were already dressed so he hugged you from behind.

“I can do better than that i promise”

“Mmmm I don't care, as long as I get to have you in my bed..i don't care how long it would take me to make you cum”

You turned around and kissed him softly, there was a sweet smile on his face, all those insecurities he had somehow felt so foolish right now.

“Happy birthday my sweet puppy”

You giggled as he rubbed his nose against yours and kissed you again and then again. And then one more time.

When you went downstairs again, Rhaenyra gave you a smirk and you knew that she knew, there was no hiding it from her either.

And you wished she was the only one to find out your secret so soon but she wasn't.

Daemon was in your dad's office a week later and you went to see him there to wish him goodnight, since your father wasn't there you leaned into him to give him a quick kiss but as you turned around your dad was standing right at the door with a look of anger, disappointment and betrayal plastered all over his face.

His fists were clenched at his sides, and he was taking deep, angry breaths as he stormed towards Daemon.

And Daemon knew right then that there was no point of return from here onwards, this day had to come sooner or later. So he didn't even flinch when your father’s fist connected with his face, he just took it and perhaps he deserved that, he would have felt the same if his old best friend was caught kissing his daughter.

“Dad..” your voice choked on your tears but your dad just glared at you, the way he looked at you in the moment was heartbreaking for you. You had never been a cause of anguish for him, you were always the good girl.

“You shut up, you stay out of this y/n” he said to you so you shook your head in response and you wanted to break the fight and calm his anger but Daemon gestured you to stay quiet.

“And you..you bastard, this is what you came for isn't it? A petty revenge, after all these years you lied to me that you had forgiven me but this was your plan all along wasn't it? Using my daughter for a payback, I never thought you'd stoop so low” Your dad grabbed Daemon by the collar and punched him again but Daemon didn't say a word, he just took it as if he deserved it so that's when you intervened because you had to. You had to stick up for him even though he didn't want you to do that.

“Dad ..stop…please..it's not his fault” you pleaded with him as you stood in front of daemon but your father was so enraged that he didn't even care at the moment, he grabbed your shoulders and shoved you aside forcefully which made you trip and fall and that's when Daemon stepped out of the self loathing and pushed your father against the desk to calm him down and take control of him.

“Enough mate..i know you're cross but you're not going to hurt her” his voice was firm but still respectful, he didn't blame your father for being so erratic, any loving father would have reacted the same way.

“She's my daughter..i have loved her more than anything, you don't get to teach me how to respect my daughter when you have been fooling around with her ..you should be ashamed of yourself” as your father took another swing at him Daemon grabbed his hand, by this time your mom had joined the commotion too and she was standing at the door shell shocked, this felt like a deja vu to her, the last time they argued like this was a decade ago..

“I'm not fooling around with her, i love her…I love your daughter”

Daemon said fiercely, his voice had plenty of emotions and you didn't know how to react, you just stared between him and your dad, his confession had warmed your heart but the situation you were in was making you so anxious you didn't know what to do. You had disappointed your parents, that's all you knew.

“Love? Oh you love her now do you? You don't love her Daemon..if you loved her you wouldn't be putting your hands on her like this..good lord I'm disgusted by your perversion, you're no different than your wife”

Daemon stayed quiet as your father accused him like that, he didn't want to blow this argument out of proportion because he was afraid your father would say things he shouldn't say in front of you or your mother for that matter but it was too late now, things were about to take a turn for the worse.

“I invited you into my home again, and made you a part of my family”

"Calm down--" Daemon tried to intervene but your father didn't even listen to him

"Now I know that you came here just so you could take revenge for that one fucking mistake I had made by fucking your whore of a wife”

Your eyes widened in shock as you heard your dad's words but you didn't even have time to process what he had said because your mum heard him as well and the truth was so heartbreaking for her that she had collapsed right away.

In the fit of his anger your father had revealed the secret he had been hiding for years. You rushed to your mother's side and so did Daemon but your father stood there in his spot, not moving, not saying anything.

And you wished this awful truth was the end of it all but it wasn't, what you were about to discover next was going to change your whole life and a part of you knew you'd have to lose Daemon again.

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

Taglist

@serving-targaryen-realness @annoyingsweetsstranger @anukulee @mcufan72 @insertsomethingsillyhereple-blog @silentf @ajthefujoshi @stupidthoughtsinwriting @ammo23 @shuichiakainx @daddylokisqueen @ipostwhtifeel @anehkael @madlyinlovewmattmurd0ck @dixie-elocin @urmomsgirlfriend1

[becasbelt]

the beca + cooking character study that ATTACKED my brain that nobody asked for

* * *

Beca Mitchell hated cooking.

At least, that’s what she would like to be put on the official record.

Not all children of divorce are forced to grow up fast. Beca knows this, in a very tangible way. She had friends growing up whose parents were also divorced, and life continued much in the same way for them as it did before their parents separated. Sometimes they’d even joke that life was better now since they got double the gifts on holidays, double the parties for their birthday.

Beca always let them have their moment, didn’t feel the need to shut down what optimism they could find in whatever turbulent custody schedule their parents’ lawyers had worked out. Didn’t feel like shoving her own thoughts about her divorced parents in their faces.

By the time she was 12 years old, Beca could make a few pretty decent casseroles. They weren’t all that complex, mostly just cheese, noodles, and different sauces mixed together in a glass pan. But after about 6 months of living off of PB&Js, Lunchables, and Spaghettios, waiting for her mom to snap out of whatever work-induced daze she’d been in since her dad walked out on them, Beca decided that they needed actual food.

So, she’d rolled up her sleeves and designated herself the man of the household.

Grocery shopping took a while for her to figure out. Beca would walk to the nearest Walmart and stare wide-eyed at all the different aisles, foods, and brands available. Overwhelmed and out of her league.

At first she’d just grab whatever she vaguely recognized and buy it, avoiding eye contact with the cashier and handing over her mom’s credit card before hightailing it out of the store as fast as she could. But eventually she found she actually liked grocery shopping. She’d slip her headphones over her ears and peruse the aisles, wondering what different vegetables and seasonings would taste like in a stir fry or pasta.

By 14, Beca had a pretty solid routine. Saturdays were shopping and laundry days. She’d make a list of all the stuff they needed, ask her mom if she had any meal suggestions (which she didn’t), walk the two miles to Walmart, then haul all the bags she could carry back.

It got easier when she was 16 and could drive. Faster, for one, and she could actually bring home more than four bags at a time.

Every day after school she’d come home, make dinner, wait around until 7:00 to see if her mom would be home to eat with her, and when she inevitably didn’t show, put the food away and go work on her her music until she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

If her mom ever noticed Beca’s efforts in keeping them both fed, she never let on.

Beca kept up that routine until she was 18, until the decision to go to college was made for her by a father who was suddenly interested in being a part of her life again.

The day before leaving for Barden, Beca put together a week’s worth of freezer meals - which, for one person who often forgot to eat, would last more like a month, really. The next morning a taxi picked her up and took her to the airport.

Her mom was already at work by the time she left.

When Beca stepped foot inside her dorm room for the first time, the first thing she noticed was the strangely hostile energy coming off in waves from her roommate. The second thing she noticed was that there was no kitchen. She would be getting all her meals from the cafeteria on the main floor.

The first meal Beca ate from the cafeteria was chicken parmesan. It was bland at best, probably frozen chicken that could be prepared and served en masse.

Beca didn’t lift a finger to make it.

It was perfect.

When Beca moved into the Bella house a year later, with all the rest of the Bellas piling in behind her, her heart sunk at the sight of the large, fancy kitchen just off the living room. She’d spent the last year living off of cafeteria food, energy drinks, and chips, and the thought of meal prepping and grocery shopping again was enough to make her sick.

That sickness lasted all of two seconds before Chloe loudly started to explain to everyone how their kitchen and cooking duties worked. How they would all rotate through who went shopping for food, but for the most part they’d fend for themselves unless someone felt the urge to cook for everyone.

They were adults, after all. They were old enough to look after themselves.

That was enough for Beca to breathe again.

Beca sort of stuck to how things were the year before, eating out often for meals, but mostly just snacking a lot. It was hell on her digestive system, sure, but she had more important things to worry about. Like school and her music and the Bellas.

The rest of the Bellas liked to tease her about it. They would joke that she probably couldn’t even boil water and that’s why she didn’t cook very much. Amy liked to say she was forever trapped in a 12 year old boy’s body; her stomach a bottomless pit that only craved Cheetos and Red Bull.

Beca didn’t mind the teasing, really. She’d just laugh it off and shove more chips in her mouth.

When the other girls cooked for everyone, Beca would thank them politely and enjoy her food, feeling no pressure to return the favor. The most common group cook was Chloe, who always served her Bellas with a smile. Which was awesome, really, except-

Chloe Beale, for all her charm and beauty, was not a great cook.

Her food was fine, for the most part. No worse than the cafeteria food Beca lived off of for a year. Chloe just wasn’t... particularly gifted in the kitchen. Most of the time her noodles were ever so slightly undercooked, her cookies a little overdone, and the girl didn’t know how to use any seasonings besides salt to save her life.

And yet Chloe loved to cook. Not out of necessity or obligation, just out of a genuine enjoyment for hearing things sizzle in a pan, or watching bread rise in the oven. She’d turn on some music and waltz around the kitchen like she was Rachel Ray, not even realizing her sauce was thickening to a worrying degree.

It was, Beca had to admit, one of her favorite sights in the world.

Sometimes Beca would just sit at the counter and watch Chloe prance around, joking and laughing with her, and sometimes she would lend a... secretive hand. If Chloe was distracted with a picture of a dog on her phone, Beca would stir the meat cooking on the stove. When Chloe would get caught up talking with Stacie about a guy in her class, Beca would add a pinch of garlic powder onto the veggies.

No one ever noticed Beca doing it, and the look on Chloe’s face when she discovered how good her food had turned out always made Beca want to do it again.

It wasn’t until they’d all graduated and went their separate ways that Chloe figured out Beca could cook.

The NYC apartment that Chloe, Beca, and Amy called home was about the size of Beca’s bedroom back in her mom’s house. The shower was in the kitchen, the kitchen was in the living room, and the living room doubled as Chloe and Beca’s bedroom.

Their refrigerator oscillated between too cold and too warm, their oven worked seemingly only when the moon was in certain phases, and their microwave took twice as long to heat food up as it should. Most of their food cooked unevenly or had the inexplicable taste of cigarette smoke to it, and if they had anything on the stovetop for more than two minutes the fire alarm would go off.  

It was something close to hell, if Beca was being honest, but Chloe thought their tiny studio apartment was just about the most charming place on earth, which made Beca hate it just a little less.

“You would not believe the day I’ve had.”

Beca smirks from her place by the stove. “I’m sure I won’t,” she drawls, prodding at the chicken cooking in its pan. “Tell me all about it.”

Chloe launches into the chaos that was her day at the animal shelter, and the longer the story goes on, the more Beca starts to understand why she’s home so late. Normally Chloe would get home before Beca and start on dinner, finishing up around when Beca got home so that they could eat together. When Beca had gotten home today, expecting the same, she was instead greeted by an empty apartment and a text from Chloe simply telling her she’d be home late.

Beca had considered going out and getting McDonald’s for all of two seconds before shrugging and starting on dinner herself.

As Chloe finishes up her story, Beca plates food for both of them and settles at the table. Chloe digs in right away, still talking a mile a minute, and pauses after one bite with wide eyes.

“Beca, this is really good,” she says, mouth full of food.

Beca spears a piece of chicken. “It’s just chicken and rice,” she says with a shrug. “Not too complicated.”

“No, but this is, like, really good,” Chloe repeats emphatically. “Like, the chicken isn’t dry and the rice isn’t crunchy and-” she smacks Beca on the arm and Beca yelps. “You’re telling me I’ve lived with you for five years and I never knew you could cook? I thought you were incompetent!”

Beca stifles a laugh. “I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought you did,” she says with a grin.

Chloe laughs delightedly. “Yeah, I’ll say,” she agrees, leaning back in her chair to appraise Beca in a new light. Beca ducks her head at the attention and pushes her food around her plate.

After dinner when Beca is washing dishes, Chloe slides her arms around Beca’s middle from behind and buries her face in Beca’s neck. This is also part of their routine, at the end of each day when Chloe is feeling a little sleepy and affectionate, but today has the added bonus of Chloe murmuring her thanks for dinner into Beca’s skin, warmth and gratitude oozing from the words.

Beca closes her eyes and remembers countless nights waiting around for someone who didn’t care enough to make it home in time for meals, let alone thank Beca for preparing them. She sinks back into Chloe’s embrace and allows herself a moment to enjoy the affection.

She tells Chloe “anytime,” and means it.

And maybe starts to hate cooking a little less.

[michellebyee]

My First Taste of the Dream

All characters and corporations or establishments appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

his content is intended for mature audiences only (18+). By choosing to proceed, you acknowledge and understand that you may encounter explicit adult material.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Let Us Play Family

Dressing Up for Tim

Heading Out as a Couple

Going To Bed Together

Something I Have Never Felt Before

More and More Times

Introduction

This is a story that happened to me when I was about 12 or 13 years old. There is no way that this person will ever find this blog but I am going to change the names here for their own security. If the real person reads this, I really hope that they get in touch with me because we haven’t talked in over 30+ years.

While growing up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the 70’s and 80’s, I had my best friends that lived on the same street, Darren, Craig and Tim. Tim used to live down the street but his parents sold that home and bought the house across the street from my house. I thought it was great. We would hang out all of the Time, playing boy stuff like street hockey, football, basketball. Everyone loved to come over to our house. We had a big finished basement that we could hang out and play.

So we would play in the basement and make up all of these games. Games with play money (we would use Monopoly or another board game money), Lots of stuff building with Lego. Basic kid stuff.

Let Us Play Family

Well we were just playing just the both of the two of us and he wanted to play a game called "family". He said that we would be a couple. We would figure out later who would be who but he said he would like to be the father and asked if I could be the mother. I guess I was a little submissive back then or I really didn't think about it and said that can be the mother.

Instead of calling me by my real first name, Tim thought it was weird, as did I, and said that he would like to call me Michelle. 

BTW, I have stuck with the name of Michelle since those days. I have always liked the name and I especially like it when I hear other people call me by that name.

So he would pretend to go away (just like he was gone for work) while I stayed home. He would come back into the basement after only a few minutes. That would signal that would be the end of the day. 

A couple of times he would come downstairs and say, “Hello Michelle. I am home. How are you?” Other times he would call me “Honey” and/or “Sweetie”. I really liked it when he called me by new name.

After he would “get home”, we would sit down, relax, have some pretend dinner (chips, pop, etc.) and then maybe play some pool. It was nice that we had a pool table in our basement. I think that’s also why lots of people liked to come over to our house. LOL Other times we would play a board game.

When I think about it now, Tim did grow up in a broken family. His parents were divorced (one of the few divorced parents that anyone really knew). Tim lived with his 2 other siblings. He has an older brother and a younger sister so, if it is true, things are different for the “middle child”. Some people think that is true and others brush it off. I can only assume he was doing this so that he could be part of a family.

We would keep on playing this game often when it was just the two of us only. 

He said to me once, “I think it would be weird to play this game with more people. So why don’t we just keep this as a game between the two of us.” Without any hesitation, I definitely agreed with him.

Dressing up for Tim

Personally, I grew up with two older sisters. I remember when I was younger, they used to practice putting make-up on me and dressing me up in some of their clothes. I’ll be honest, it did feel weird to start but it didn’t bother me. To me, it was something to do with my sisters when my parents went out for the evening. I don’t even know if my parents found out. Even if they did, I don’t think they would think much about it.

So one afternoon, when I had the house to myself, I quickly ran upstairs to my closest sister’s closet to see if I could find something to wear because I knew that Tim was coming over. I remember my sister putting on this cute dress on me a couple of days ago and she saying, “Hey. That looks pretty good on you. Too bad it is my dress.” We all laughed but I remembered that comment and that’s what I wanted to wear for Tim.

So, I've never been one to turn down a dare, especially when it came from one of my best friends, Tim. We've been inseparable since we were kids, always getting into mischief and pushing each other's limits. But this dare was different. It wasn't about jumping off cliffs or sneaking into abandoned buildings; it was about stepping into someone else's shoes, quite literally.

It all started one lazy summer afternoon, just last year, when Tim and I were flipping through old magazines in my basement. We stumbled upon an article about gender-bending fashion, showcasing models sporting outfits traditionally meant for the opposite sex. Tim chuckled and nudged me.

"Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if you dressed up as a girl for a day?"

I laughed, thinking he was joking. But the mischievous glint in his eyes told me otherwise. Tim was dead serious.

"I don't know, man. That's kinda... out there," I stuttered, unsure of how to respond.

"Come on, it'll be fun! We can pretend you're my wife for a day. You know, play house or something," Tim grinned, his enthusiasm infectious.

I hesitated, but the thought of spending a day goofing around with Tim was too tempting to resist. So, against my better judgement, I agreed. “I promise one of these days, I will do it.” He said, “OK” and we really didn’t think much more about it. I was waiting for him to bring it up again but I guess he had forgotten about it.

Well now it was time to keep up about that promise/dare.

My parents and sisters were going to be out for the whole day and no one would be home until later in the evening. My parents even left me some money for me to pick up some dinner later. They left me enough to feed at least a couple of people and told me to go and pick up a pizza and, if I wanted to, I could invite one of my friends over for dinner. They just said, “Try not to get in too much trouble.” They trusted me and I have been very responsible when I have been left alone before.

I searched through my sister’s closet, looking for that dress and also not to disturb much. I didn’t want her to find out about me borrowing that dress. Finally, I found it. “There you are!” I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, “I look good but I need some boobs.” I looked around her room and found her bra drawer and picked out the nicest bra. I put it on and then grabbed some socks and tissue paper and proceeded to stuff the bra. When I thought I had enough, I put the dress back on and looked at myself in the mirror again and I was really shocked at what I was looking at. I really looked good. 

I grabbed a pair of her shoes. I was lucky that at that time in my life, I was in the same size shoes as she was. I really didn’t “sprout” until I was close to 17/18 years old so I was very short at that age.

I headed downstairs, picked up the phone and called Tim. I told him, “Come on over at any time and I have a surprise for you when you get here.” It felt like hours but I think it was only 15-20 minutes when I heard the back door open. 

As I anxiously awaited Tim's arrival, my heart raced with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. It had been Tim's idea for us to go shopping together today, something we hadn't done in ages. I couldn't help but feel a flutter of anticipation in my chest, knowing that today was going to be different.

When I heard the back door open, I practically jumped out of my seat. I was so eager to greet my best friend. I yelled out, “Come on up. I am in the Family room. No one else is here. My parents and sisters are out all day.”

And there he stood, with his signature grin plastered across his face, his eyes lighting up at the sight of me.

"Hey, Michelle!" Tim exclaimed, giving me a quick once-over before pulling me into a tight hug. "You look great!"

I couldn't help but blush at his compliment, feeling a surge of happiness at his reaction. Little did he know that the outfit I wore was carefully chosen from my sister’s closet, something I had never dared to wear outside the confines of my bedroom.

But today was different. Today, Tim was going to help me step out of my comfort zone.

As we settled into the family room, I couldn't contain my nerves. Would Tim think I was crazy for wanting to dress up as Michelle, even just for fun? But as I tentatively broached the subject, his eyes sparkled with excitement.

"Are you serious? That sounds like so much fun!" Tim exclaimed, his enthusiasm contagious.

“OK! Let’s do it. I need your help! My sisters always did my makeup and I want to put some on.” Tim looked at me shocked. “Yes, I have allowed my sisters to put makeup on me. Where do you think I found this dress?”

Tim looked at me, “Michelle, I learn new things about you every day.”

“And that is a good or bad thing?”

“Definitely a good thing. Now let me see if I can help you with your makeup.” We both got up, laughed a little and headed up to my sister’s room to see what makeup we could find.

With Tim's encouragement, I carefully applied makeup, transforming my face into Michelle's. It felt surreal seeing myself in the mirror, a different version of me staring back. But with Tim's guidance and support, I began to feel more confident, more comfortable in my own skin.

Once we were both ready, we exchanged glances, a silent agreement passing between us. Today, we weren't just two teenage boys going out for a shopping spree. Today, we were going out as a couple, albeit a slightly unconventional one.

Heading Out as a Couple

As we walked hand in hand down the street, I couldn't help but feel a sense of freedom, a sense of joy bubbling up inside me. With Tim by my side, I felt invincible, unafraid to be who I truly was.

And as we passed by curious onlookers, I held my head high, a smile playing at my lips. Because today, I wasn't afraid to show the world the real me, thanks to the unwavering support of my best friend, Tim.

As we stepped into the first store, filled with trendy clothes for young men, I couldn't help but feel a surge of excitement. Tim and I sifted through racks of colourful shirts and stylish jeans, laughing and joking as I watched Tim try on different outfits. I would give my open and honest opinion. It felt liberating to be able to browse without any self-imposed restrictions, to simply enjoy the experience with my best friend by my side. Tim picked up a couple of shirts and a pair of really cool jeans.

Next, we ventured into the young women's clothing boutique, a haven of lace and sequins that seemed to sparkle under the fluorescent lights. With Tim's guidance, I explored aisles of flowing dresses and delicate accessories. Tim and I picked out a couple of outfits and I went into the dressing room to try them on. Trying on all of these outfits made me feel like a whole new person. As I would come out of the change room, Tim would look at me differently. Sometimes a huge smile and then just a frown because he didn’t like how it looked on me.

As we left the boutique, our arms laden with shopping bags, our stomachs rumbled with hunger. We decided to grab a quick bite to eat, choosing a cosy café where we could unwind and recharge.

Over plates of steaming pasta and glasses of ice-cold lemonade, we chatted and laughed, relishing in the simple pleasure of each other's company. It felt like we were in our own little bubble, away from the judgmental stares and expectations of the outside world.

After lunch, we made our way to the final store on our list: an electronics store. Here, we lost ourselves in a sea of gadgets and gizmos, marveling at the latest stereos and “boomboxes”. I really wanted to pick up this amazing JVC boombox but Tim was smart enough to help persuade me to change my mind.

With our shopping adventure complete and our bags bulging with purchases, we headed back home. On our way home, we stopped off at our local pizza joint and picked up a pizza and some pop. With the warm aroma of pizza guiding us back to my place. As we settled in for the night, munching on slices of cheesy goodness, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the day we had shared.

Thanks to Tim, I had stepped out of my comfort zone and embraced a side of myself I had kept hidden for far too long and something that really felt natural to me. I knew, at this point in time of my life, as I looked at him, smiling across the table, I knew that with him by my side, there was nothing we couldn't conquer together and I could explore more of being Michelle.

Going To Bed Together

Over the next couple of weeks and months, Tim and I would venture out as a couple and over some time, I accumulated myself a small wardrobe of women’s clothing. Some blouses and skirts, some dresses and even some lingerie. I found a very good hiding place for all of it in the basement so none of my family would find it. Ever since that day that we went out, if I knew it was just Tim and I, I would dress up as Michelle. 

Well one afternoon, while we were playing, usually when we thought it was late in the day, we would just pick up the game as if we just woke up in the morning and it was a brand new day. But this time Tim said, “Instead of ending the day like we usually do, why don't we go to bed together?”

Submissive? Naïve? or just curious? I think, back then, maybe I was a little of all of them. So, I agreed. 

In the basement of my house, it was broken up into a couple of different small and big rooms. You had the furnace room but that was always too warm and loud. Laundry room was too small with all of the appliances. Beside that room was a very nice sized room. Not much inside of it and it was mostly for storage along one wall. Tim and I agreed that this would be the bedroom. 

I was thinking that if we were going to be going to bed together, I should probably wear something appropriate so I slipped into our room, went over to my secret stash of clothes and found this very silky nightie with the matching panty.

So we went into the “bedroom”, pulled out a couple of sleeping bags and opened them up. We made pillows out of other sleeping bags. We even found an old mattress that we could put on the very hard concrete floor. We promised each other that we would bring it out and put it back such that no one would ask why it was there.

With the bedroom all set up, I told Tim that I will be right back. I was thinking that if we were going to be going to bed together, I should probably wear something appropriate so I stepped out of our “bedroom” and went into another room, went over to my secret stash of clothes and found this very silky nightie with the matching panty. As I was changing into these very sexy clothing, I remember thinking to myself, “Is this really what you want to do?” Then, promptly answering, “Yes. I don’t know why but Yes.”

All changed, I headed back into the bedroom and Tim looked at me and smiled. 

“I remember buying that for you about a week ago. That was really fun in that store, watching you try on different pieces. I remember that this is the one that stood out and now I know why because you look amazing.”

With those very kind words, I think I started to blush a little and I sat down on the bed and we lay down together. Immediately, Tim put his arm around me and pulled me a little closer. 

I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, and I stole some glances at Tim, as I noticed the slight tremble in his hands.

"Hey," Tim said softly, breaking the silence that had settled between us. "Are you okay?"

I slowly turned to him, my eyes wide with apprehension. "I'm just... nervous, I guess. Don’t you think this is a little weird?"

Tim nodded, his expression soft with empathy. "There's nothing to be nervous about. We're just lying here together. It's not a big deal."

I felt a wave of gratitude wash over me at his words, the tension in my body beginning to loosen. "Yeah, you're right. I'm just overthinking things, as usual."

We fell into a comfortable silence, the weight of our shared apprehension gradually lifting. I felt myself relaxing, the rhythmic rise and fall of Tim's breath soothing my frazzled nerves. And then, in a moment of bravery, he turned to me, his eyes searching mine with a newfound intensity.

"Michelle," he whispered, his voice barely audible in the quiet room.

I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribcage as I met his gaze. And then, without hesitation, he leaned in, his lips brushing against mine in a tender, hesitant kiss.

It was like a sigh of relief, the nervousness melting away as we melted into each other. In that fleeting moment, there was only the warmth of Tim's touch, the softness of his lips against mine. We kissed with a tenderness that spoke volumes, our fears and uncertainties fading into the background.

"Wow," I breathed when we finally pulled away, my cheeks flushed with colour.

Tim's grin mirrored my own, his eyes sparkling with newfound confidence. "Yeah, wow."

Something I Have Never Felt Before

We were nestled under the warmth of the covers, our bodies close but not touching. The air was filled with a quiet intimacy, a feeling I had never experienced before with anyone else.

As I lay there, my heart fluttered with anticipation. Tim shifted slightly, his hand brushing against mine. It was a simple gesture, yet it sent a jolt of electricity through me, igniting sensations I had never known. His touch was different, tender yet electrifying, like a spark dancing across my skin.

I turned to look at him, our eyes meeting in the dim light. His gaze was soft, filled with an unspoken understanding. Without a word, he reached out and traced a feather-light path along my arm, sending shivers down my spine. It was as if his touch awakened something deep within me, stirring feelings I had kept hidden away for so long.

I closed my eyes, losing myself in the sensation of his fingers against my skin. Each caress felt like a revelation, unlocking a newfound desire that I never knew existed. In that moment, lying there with Tim, I felt truly alive, as if I had finally found the missing piece of myself.

Time seemed to stand still as we lay there, lost in the intimacy of the moment. And as his touch lingered, I knew that this was just the beginning of something beautiful. With Tim by my side, I was ready to explore this newfound connection and the inevitable passion that awaited us.

Tim’s hand slides under my nightie as I feel his soft hands on my skin. As I lie there, he gives me small kisses as his hand explores my chest. Playing a little with my erect nipples his hand slides down my chest towards my stomach. 

His hand slides down a little more to the edge of my panty. His fingers slide under as hind hand moves down. Then I feel his hand on my very erect cock. Hi whispers, “Oh my! Someone is enjoying themselves.” I whisper back, “Very much so!”

Tim’s kisses are much more passionate now as his hand slides up and down and around my cock. He whispers again, “Oh, you are so hard. I want to play with your pussy!” 

“Before that, I want to do something for you! Lie down on your back for me!”

“For sure!”

Tim lays down on the bed on his back. He isn’t wearing a shirt and I can see his beautiful chest. Below his chest, hiding under some underwear, is a quite large and beautiful mound. I give him a kiss on the lips and then start to kiss down his body. As I am kissing him, my body and hands rub against his wonderful mound. As I move down his chest to his stomach, I pull his underwear down to reveal quite a large cock. 

As a reference, I think his cock is significantly larger than my own. I guess he started early in his development in that area of his body. 

You can feel my breath against your now very hard cock. I open my mouth a little until you feel the tip against my lips. My mouth opens a little as the tip slides inside. I flick the tip a little as I open my mouth a little wider such that Tim’s hard cock can slide in. Sliding in deeper and deeper, my mouth consumes his throbbing cock all the way. I can’t believe how amazing and filling his cock feels in my mouth.

I slowly start to pull up as I start to suck a little harder. I suck on the tip and then slide his throbbing hard cock back inside your mouth. I can’t believe but I can feel his cock getting even harder. I can hear him moaning very loudly as I know that what I am doing is pleasing him very much. This turns me on even more as my sucking of his cock slowly becomes a little faster, a little harder sucking and then the occasional full thrust deep in my mouth. It gags me a little as I pull it out quickly but then I slide it back inside my mouth as fast as it came out. 

I continue as his moaning becomes deeper and heavier. Tim starts to lift his hips as he tries to thrust his cock deeper into my mouth.

As I am sucking your cock, your hand has found my “pussy” as you slide your finger around in circles. You pull back to drip saliva on your fingers and then your hand heads back to my “pussy”. You slide your fingers around and then you gently push your finger inside of me. I moan gently; I yelp,  “Oh my fucking god that feels good!”

This triggers my mouth to suck a little harder. You reach down more and then start to really finger fuck my “pussy”. “Your pussy feels so good! I want to fuck you so badly.”

“Oh I want you to do that too but first I want you to cum deep down my throat!” As you are about to cum, you push your finger as deep as you can inside of me. The words I gave you trigger your explosion of your cum as it shoots deep inside my mouth. I suck on your cock deeply trying to drink every drop of your juice.

I take your cock out of my mouth, wipe it clean off your hot, tasty cum, slide up your chest, give you a kiss on the cheek.

“OMG. That was incredible. You have to have done that to another guy. Right?”

“Nope!” as I chuckle. “You were my first and, after that experience, I hope not my last with you or with someone else.”

“Oh you can do that any time you want” Tim exclaims. 

“Do you want anything to eat or drink? We have to get your energy back up because your finger in my “ass”... Tim quickly interrupts me. “Don’t call it that. Please call it your pussy, cunt, anything but ass.” 

“Sorry. As I was saying, your finger in my pussy felt “soooooo” good. Never felt that before and that was amazing. After feeling that, I want to feel your cock inside of me.”

“Why don’t you lie down on your stomach. Let me pamper you a little.”

I roll over and lie on my stomach. “I’ll be right back. I need to go to the washroom.” Tim gets up from the bed and heads out of the bedroom. 

Tim climbs onto the bed, and I hear a bottle open. Then I feel a warm oil dripping on my back. I feel hands start to rub the oil all over my back as he goes ahead and starts to give me a wonderful massage. As he massages my back, his hands move lower towards my mid-section and towards my bum. I feel some more drops of oil drip onto my upper thighs and ass. Both of his hands slowly massage my legs and creep up and start to massage my butt. I can feel your fingers teasing my asshole. 

A couple more drops of oil but this time directly between the crack of my ass. I can feel your fingers making circles around my wanting hole and then I feel a finger push and slide in. This sends amazing, euphoric shivers throughout my body as I naturally lift my butt a little into the air and spread my legs a little to give you better access.

As you slide your finger in and out of my ass, you pull it out and then I feel the tip of what feels like a cock. I ask you, “Is that your cock? Because when you fuck me, I want to be on my back because I want to see your eyes as you slide your cock inside of me?”

“No, sweetie. It is just a small dildo.” 

“Where did you get that from?” 

“No worries about that. I stole it from my house. I found it and wanted to bring it over. Your ass looked so tight, I didn’t want to hurt you with my cock so I thought a little fun with a small toy will open you up a little.”

“Oh, thank you! But please, just a little because I want to feel your cock inside of me more than anything now.”

As Tim pushes the small dildo inside of me, I try to relax as much as I can to let my hole open up. As I relax, the toy slides in quite easily and he gasps, “Oh my that went in quite easily. I am surprised at the great control over your muscles.”

“All I have to do is just relax and think of your cock either deep inside of me or in my mouth.”

Tim pulled out the toy and then asked me to flip over onto my back. I quickly oblige as I grab a pillow to put under my ass. I spread my legs as wide as I can and pull them back. Even though I am completely exposed to you, I feel very comfortable. 

He kneels on the floor as his face comes up to my wide open legs. Then I feel the most incredible feeling as he starts to rim my ass with his tongue and start to lick it. I moan loudly as he picks up that I am enjoying this very much. He licks my balls a little and then moves back down to my lovely hole.

He starts to kiss up my legs as your body starts to come closer to mine. The anticipation is just killing me. And then I feel your cock against my ass. He gets out the oil and gives a couple of drops around my asshole and also on his lovely cock. I can’t see it, but I can feel that it is already very hard.

You stroke your cock a little to spread the oil and then press the tip against my hole. Just at that time, Tim looks up and can see me staring into his eyes. I really hope they are saying, “FUCK ME Tim! FUCK ME NOW!”

You take your hand and start to guide your cock as you start to push the tip inside of me. I look into your eyes and do a very slow exhale to relax my muscles and the tip slides in smoothly. 

I yelp out, “Oh my GOD! Does that ever feel good!”

You push in a little more as I feel your very hard cock fill me. You go very slowly but I can feel your cock slide deeper and deeper inside of me. I can feel his cock filling my pussy with every inch. I am in complete Euphoria right at this moment. I let out a loud moan as you push your cock deeper and deeper inside of me. How much more is there? I want to feel every inch of his cock deep inside of me.

Finally, I feel your stomach slap against my body as Tim slides his hard cock in and out of my “pussy”. I look into your eyes and tell him, “That feels absolutely amazing! Please fuck me, sweetie!”

“I can’t believe how nice it feels. I thought you were going to be very tight, but you have opened up nicely.”

With those words, I squeeze my muscles as he feels my pussy start to squeeze his cock. “Holy crap you really do have some amazing muscle control down there.” For the next couple of thrusts, I squeeze and relax my muscles to give Tim’s cock a lovely feeling. 

Your thrusts are now getting longer and stronger as I can see in his eyes that he really wants to pound my “pussy” and I am not stopping you. With everything thrust, both of us moan loudly. Tim even yells out, “Take all of my cock!” and I quickly respond, “Oh yes, all of it.”

After what felt like an eternity, Tim looks into my eyes and tells me, “I am getting close to cumming.” With those words, I concentrate on squeezing my muscles as tight as I can. With the thrusts and the squeezing, an incredible sensation comes over me. It feels like my ass could explode. 

I beg and yell out, “PLEASE cum deep inside of me!”

It is like the words had some type of an effect on the both of us but at that moment, I could feel your cum filling my ass. Once I felt that inside of me, I had this amazing feeling rush through my body. After further looking into it, there is a very good chance that I had an amazing anal orgasm. Using all of my muscles, I squeezed Tim’s cock even tighter as I yelled out. Tim yelled out at the same time as we had an incredible unanimous orgasm together. As we were having this amazing orgasm, the incredible thing was that our eyes were locked on each other. Also, as we came, I will never forget the very warm feeling of his cum filling my ass. 

Right after, Tim falls forward gently into my arms as I hold him tightly and whisper in his ear, “Thank you! That was absolutely incredible.” 

“Oh, thank you!” 

Time starts to get up a little and then he starts to pull his cock slowly out of my ass. As he pulls it out, he can see drops of cum seep out of my hole. I am trying to control my muscles because I want to feel the warmth of your cum deep inside of me, but it is very hard, and I can even feel your cum dripping out. 

“Oh my god! You really filled me up! It feels amazing!”

“I don’t think I have cummed that much! Ever!”

You lie down on the bed beside me as I snuggle up against you. 

More and More Times

Whenever Tim would come over and it was just the both of us, I would be all dressed up for him. I would gladly give him a lovely Blow Job. We would be watching some TV and I would be snuggled up against his chest and my hands would wander. I would know when he was excited because he would be very fidgety and then I would see that wonderful mound grow. I would tease him as much as I could. He loved being teased because it seemed to make his cock get bigger and bigger. 

He would absolutely hate me when I teased him when his cock was in my mouth and I knew he was about to “blow his load” deep down my throat. I could taste his pre-cum and then I would start to tease him by not sucking so hard or pulling it out of my mouth and start to lick his hard shaft. I had him in my control and I loved it. The incredible thing is that he loved it too. 

He would beg me to help him cum. He would try to grab his shaft to stroke it but I would not allow him. 

When it was time, I would let him know and then I would go to town on his cock with my mouth and lips until he shot his full load down my throat.

I would try to resist him fucking me but I couldn’t give put up much resistance. His cock felt so good inside of me. I wanted to see if I waited a day or two, if it would feel any different. Instead, it felt amazing every time! 

It felt so good, I wanted more of it. So, one day, when I knew that I was going to be alone all day and Tim wasn’t coming over, I searched my sisters’ and parent’s bedrooms for any sex toys. I’ll be honest, we lived in an old house with very thin walls and I could hear what was going on in both of my sisters’ bedrooms. Both of them were over 18 so I knew that they could go to a sex shop. 

I found a very nice 8” realistic dildo in one of my sisters’ rooms. It looked so realistic. It tasted a little weird when I tried to lick it but I tried to think that it was Tim’s cock and not a dildo. I would practice different techniques and try to remember them to see if that worked with Tim. And yes, I fucked myself with it too and that felt so amazing but not as amazing as feeling Tim deep inside of me.

Ever since then, I have always owned some dildos and I would dress up as Michelle and fuck myself.

But I will never forget those times with Tim.

[denimbex1986]

'When Andrew Haigh was shooting his new film, All of Us Strangers, in his parents’ old house in Croydon, something strange began to happen. “I started getting eczema again, and I’d not had eczema since I was a kid,” says the director, who is now 50. “It was coming up in the exact same places. I thought, ‘What the fuck is happening to me?’ I feel there is a sense that your body remembers trauma. Somehow things get almost embedded in your DNA, and they find ways to leak out.”

In All of Us Strangers, this leakage happens to Adam, a 46-year-old gay man exquisitely played by Andrew Scott. He’s a blocked, depressed screenwriter whose parents died in a car crash when he was 12, and who lives in a mysteriously empty tower block in London. One night after a fire alarm, a younger man called Harry, played by Paul Mescal, drunkenly comes to his door. Although Adam initially rejects him, the pair later embark on the love affair he has always yearned for – and Mescal and Scott are explosively convincing as a couple. “Casting is like running a dating agency,” says Haigh. “I have to be careful to pick the people who will be good together.” When Adam decides to return to the house he grew up in, he discovers that his mum and dad – played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy – are still living there, the same age they were when they died, in a perpetual 1987.

The film – which won best film and best director at the British Independent Film awards in December – somehow blends a love story, a ghost story, and a time-flipped coming-of-age narrative. The result is a masterful exploration of loneliness and grief, the relationship between children and their parents, and a demonstration of the fact that time, far from healing, can bring childhood trauma rearing up stronger than ever in middle age. But it’s also a tender, aching expression of the insatiable human need for love and connection, which Haigh depicts as being so powerful that it can annihilate the border between life and death. “All the people in the film are longing for something – to be understood, to be known,” Haigh says.

All of Us Strangers is a “very free” adaptation of a Japanese novel called Strangers by Taichi Yamada (who died last month aged 89), which the film-maker wrote during the pandemic while living in Los Angeles. “There’s a pandemic emotion at the heart of it,” he says. “We all spent a lot of time staring out of the window, didn’t we?” Sitting in a Soho hotel suite, Haigh – whose previous films include Weekend and 45 Years, and who also made the TV series Looking and The North Water – was keen to make the film “as personal as I could. It’s about someone having a reunion with their own past so it made sense that I had to do the same thing. As I was writing about the home Adam goes back to, I started thinking about my own childhood home, and when we were talking about where to shoot I thought, ‘I’ll just go down and see if it’s still there.’ I couldn’t remember where it was on the street because I left there when I was nine or 10” – when his parents divorced �� “but I had the photo that Adam lifts up in the film, with Claire Foy put in instead of my mum.”

Haigh found the house and the owner agreed to let him film there. “It was a strange choice, emotionally, because I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest place to be. But I wanted the film to have a certain honesty and vulnerability, to feel grounded in some kind of reality. The only way was to make it my own reality, as a way to make it specific in the hope that it would speak to all those details of life that end up feeling universal.”

The reality he’s talking about is that of a middle-aged gay man who was a young teenager at the end of the 80s, when the Aids crisis unleashed a wave of savage homophobia (a survey in 1987 discovered that 75% of the UK thought homosexuality was “always” or “mostly” wrong). “I wanted it to be very specific about a certain generation of gay person, which was our generation,” Haigh says when I tell him I’m also gay, and a year younger than him. “It wasn’t an easy time. Growing up, I felt, ‘If I’m going to become a gay person I’m not going to have a future, and the only other alternative is not to be gay’ – which of course you can’t not be. So I wanted to tell that story.”

All of Us Strangers depicts someone struggling with the lasting effects of a childhood disfigured not only by bereavement, but also by prejudice and hatred. “There’s a generation of queer people grieving for the childhood they never had,” Haigh says. “I think there’s a sense of nostalgia for something we never got, because we were so tormented. It feels close to grief. It dissipates, but it’s always there. It’s like a knot in your stomach.”

Much of All of Us Strangers’ emotional power comes from the brutally repressed Adam attempting to dispel his feelings of shame and isolation in order to be seen and loved for the person he truly is. To this end, he takes the opportunity, denied to him by their death, to come out to his mum and dad, separately. His mum is shocked – “Isn’t it a very lonely life?” – and worried about Aids. His dad, not unkindly, says: “We always knew you were a bit tutti-frutti.” Says Haigh: “The coming-out scenes are about the importance of being known. It’s very hard to move through life if you feel you’re not understood. And if you’re not understood, you feel you’re alone.”

Adam asks his father why he would never come into his room to comfort him when he was crying after being bullied at school – something else Haigh suffered. “I was about nine, and the kids around me knew something was different about me before I really did,” he says. “So you’re like, ‘I don’t understand why you’re calling me these names.’ But they could feel it somehow. When my mum saw the film, she was like, ‘Is this what happened to you?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’ If you’re a queer kid, you don’t want to tell your parents you’re being bullied, because they’re going to think you’re different, and that’s the last thing you want. It’s the hardest thing, sometimes, about being queer within a family – you’re not like your parents and you have a secret.”

Haigh came out to his parents in his mid-20s. His father now has dementia, and went into a care home during the making of All of Us Strangers. Visiting him one weekend, the film-maker discovered his dad no longer remembered his son was gay. “He was like, ‘Are you married? Have you got a wife?’ I’ve been out to my dad for a very long time and he’s been beautifully accepting, and it had completely gone from his mind. I found myself suddenly having the same fear I had when I was in my 20s, of having to come out to him again. And I realised I couldn’t do it because I didn’t want to upset him. But in the end he was quiet for a while and then he said, ‘Well, as long as you have found love.’ It felt like such a beautiful thing for my dad to say. He just understood what was the important thing, and in so many ways it spoke so much to what the film is about. And then I had to come down again and shoot that scene with Jamie and Andrew in my old lounge, so it was emotionally complicated.”

The film also draws on Haigh’s relationship with his own children, who are 10 and 12. “They don’t live with me full-time, but when I’m with them and I’m their parent, I’m always worried. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? Am I helping them? As I’ve got older I’ve realised you don’t need a parent to give advice, necessarily. You don’t need them to solve things because sometimes you can only solve it yourself.”

Beyond fulfilling the needs of a child, there is something about being a queer parent that makes one wonder how you and your children will fit into broader society. “It’s like, ‘Are we different?” Haigh asks. “Do we have a new way of being? Do we have a different way that our families can exist, because we don’t have a model? I know a lot of queer people who have kids and they’re all trying to navigate that. Are we trying to be like our parents were to us, or are we trying to be something else?”

All of Us Strangers is particularly acute in its use of 80s hits such as The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Johnny Come Home by Fine Young Cannibals and Build by the Housemartins, all of which Adam listens to while mulling over his childhood, and which then becomes part of the supernatural world he visits (he and his parents joyfully put up festive decorations to Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind, Christmas No 1 in 1987). To young gay boys denied role models – especially when section 28 made it illegal for schools and local authorities to offer positive representations of homosexuality – and who were too terrified to disclose our queerness to our dads, gay pop stars like Neil Tennant and Holly Johnson, and also gentle straight frontmen such as Roland Gift and Paul Heaton, were the only people who seemed to point the way to how we might be able to live as grown men.

“Paul Heaton and Roland Gift aren’t queer artists, but they so spoke to me,” Haigh agrees. “I’m sure my political viewpoints are based on listening to the Housemartins” – who were avowedly socialist at the time of the Thatcher government. “Pop music was so important – it gave me hope as a kid. I used to sing The Power of Love to myself in my bedroom, not really understanding anything about myself at that point, but knowing that it was longing for something, and believing that something could be possible. When I put this song in the film, I was thinking that my childhood self would have been so amazed that I’m doing what I’m doing now – able to tell a story about queerness for other people to see, and not be terrified.”

“I never dreamed that I would get to be / The creature that I always meant to be,” as Pet Shop Boys put it in Being Boring? “Don’t!” Haigh says, who is a diehard fan. “I can’t even listen to that line – it makes me want to burst into tears.”

As he comes out to her, Adam explains to his mother that things are much better for gay people now, and his relationship with Harry, a northerner in his 20s, allows Haigh to explore the personal effects of those changes – and whether they have really gone as far as one might think. For instance, Harry identifies as queer, and when Adam says he uses the term gay, Harry tells him the word was a ubiquitous insult when he was at school: “Your haircut’s gay. Your schoolbag’s gay.” Harry says his family are relaxed about his sexuality, but their focus is on his heterosexual siblings and their children, not the tache-wearing, whisky-swigging black sheep of the family.

Is Haigh saying that to be gay is to be alienated? “I don’t think so,” he says. “I know a lot of young gay people who do not feel alienation. I imagine some of them will watch this film and be like, ‘Why are they all complaining? There’s nothing to moan about, life is absolutely fine.’ But I also know people close to me, younger than me, who’ve found it very difficult. So I don’t want to pretend that everything is all great either. But also, it’s important to me that both characters are not lonely because they’re gay – they are lonely because the world has made them feel different. Harry has moved to London, which can be a very alienating place. There are lots of reasons why you can slip gently into aloneness and if you cannot find something to get you out of that, you can stop caring about yourself, which is Harry’s problem.”

Like Weekend, All of Us Strangers is frank about drug use. In a moment of gay inter-generational misunderstanding, Harry gives Adam white powder on a key, which Adam lustily sniffs thinking it’s cocaine – but it’s ketamine. “To pretend that drug use isn’t part of the gay scene is just an absolute lie,” Haigh says. “I think I’ve always tried not to glorify drug-taking, but to be honest – drugs can feel wonderful and also make you feel paranoid and afraid and alone. You can slip away, you can lose your grounding. I’m certainly not saying that everyone should go out and take drugs!”

As its narcotic, dreamlike feel sets in, All of Us Strangers increasingly wrongfoots the audience. “I saw the film as a spiral, and it kept getting woozier and stranger,” Haigh says. Adam starts to get feverish, which is unexplained in the film, though Haigh points out that it happens after his mother mentions Aids. “I think all of us gay men of that generation know that every time we had a bit of a sweat if we were having sex with other people, we were suddenly terrified that we were going to have HIV,” Haigh says. “A swollen gland was not just a swollen gland. I wanted to have that trickling under the surface, that Aids is another fear that Adam has buried. I’m telling a ghost story – what are the things that haunt him?”

The film’s more surreal moments include a trippy, time-warping scene set to Blur’s Death of a Party and filmed at gay pub the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London, where Haigh used to go to the club night Duckie; and a setpiece in which the adult Adam, wearing his childhood pyjamas, gets in bed between his parents. “However old you are, you feel like a kid,” Haigh believes. “You can’t escape that feeling of wanting to be with your parents again and have them look after you. I loved the idea that these pyjamas didn’t fit, because we want to go back to our childhood, but of course it doesn’t fit.”

Towards the end of the film, Adam’s parents take him to a deserted diner in the Whitgift shopping centre in Croydon, Haigh’s childhood haunt (“at Fairfield Hall next door I saw Bucks Fizz, which was the first concert I went to, which may be the gayest thing anybody’s ever done”). In this tacky, mundane setting, something painfully bittersweet occurs. Then there’s the film’s conclusion, which can either be read as romantic and hopeful, or a vision of overwhelming sadness. “More than anything, I wanted you to leave the cinema and have the film continue on within you,” Haigh says. “45 Years was the same, and even Weekend.”

This month, the LA Times named All of Us Strangers as the best film of 2023; at the New York film festival, the critic Mark Harris said the cinema was awash. The consensus so far appears to be not only that it is a masterpiece, but a profoundly moving one. Haigh is relieved: “When you make something personal, you’re putting it out into the world, and if the world turns round and says, ‘I don’t like that and I don’t care about it’, you can’t help but think, ‘OK, you basically don’t care about me.’”

Although the film has a particular, queer point of view, he believes its universal themes make it accessible to everyone. “All of us are children, a lot of us are parents, a lot of us are in a relationship or not finding love. Look, I want 15-year-olds to see this movie, not just people our age. If I had seen this film when I was 15, it would probably have made a big difference to me.”'

[moreespressoformydepresso]

It's 4AM and I've finally decided to put to words that AU I teased a few days ago where Snow loses everyone and everything over the course of several years because he deserves to suffer.

I think it's safe to say Coriolanus is not the best person to the people around him, to put it mildly, and in this AU that's the very thing that ends up ruining his life. A notable change from canon is that none of the 10th Hunger Games tributes aside from Lucy Gray were reaped that year. Because Marcus wasn't Sejanus's tribute, he was a little less openly rebellious during the games (though still noticeably pissed off) which leads to changes that allow Coryo to accept the romantic tension underlying their friendship. When he's sent to 12 after cheating, he decides to convince Sejanus not to join the rebel group by telling him it's better to destroy the system from within. It only works once Gaul manages to get Coryo sent back to the Capitol as her apprentice gamemaker, as Sejanus now believes there to be a real chance for them to make a change.

Lucy Gray never runs because Coryo never lies to her about the third death (as there is no third death), but they mutually decide to break up when Coryo has to go back to the Capitol because the distance is too long and the stigma too great for them to keep up their relationship for now. A few years later, Coryo becomes president and has married Sejanus. When he refuses to stop the games despite having the power, he effectively kills all the love Sejanus once had for him, but Sej knows he can't just leave because he's seen what his husband does to perceived threats. He tries his best to stop Coryo's worst plans until, after five years of a loveless marriage, he finally has a solid escape plan and divorces Coriolanus. Despite having everything he's ever worked for, Coriolanus isn't happy, because in the end he lacks the emotional fulfilment Sejanus gave him, so he moves on to his next partner in an attempt to fill that hole.

Coriolanus brings Lucy Gray over from 12 and marries her the next year, and things look great for him. However, it doesn't take long for her to start showing resistance to his plans and opinions. She, too, fell out of love with him after seeing what kind of a monster he'd become and is trying to subtly nudge him back onto the path of good or kick him out of power somehow, whichever happens first. He is not happy with this, but Lucy Gray is too smart for him to be able to just get rid of her. He's got tricks up his sleeve, but she's seen all his cards and she knows how to play the game. She very nearly beats him too, which causes him to be more and more controlling. It escalates gradually, but since Lucy Gray's in the Capitol he's given her an opportunity to make influential friends, among which are his classmates from all those years ago who've grown disgusted with him over the years as he started showing his true colors. This allows Lucy Gray to not only secure a career for herself and the Covey in the Capitol, but also gives her the perfect out to divorce him without giving him room to get rid of her.

Two partners have left him now, and all his old friends from school like Lysistrata and Festus have long since turned their backs on him. They've all grown to care for Sejanus in a way they never did in their youths, and it causes Coriolanus to become more and more paranoid they're conspiring against him. If he'd had his way, he'd have the president's mansion be empty of everything but himself. No guests, no politicians or gamemakers or even guards, but the mansion's grown unbearably quiet without Lucy Gray's soft singing or the strum of her guitar as she continued to compose music in all the years she'd been with him. He'd grown accustomed to it, though he'd loathed that District music at first, and he can't get Lucy Gray back but he needs something to fill the silence. So he travels to the districts under the guise of a propaganda tour and has them all perform for him. With every district his hopes dim until one boy with curly hair from District 7 catches his eye. He's pretty enough, Coryo thinks, and his music reminds him of better days. IThe boy's young, barely 20, but Coriolanus knows the Capitol won't care. So he takes his new husband, Treech, back with him to the Capitol. Whether he wants to leave his home behind or not doesn't matter.

Treech attends all social functions, playing the role of charming yet meek husband perfectly. He takes on the hosting responsibilities and is tasked with keeping the decor of the mansion up to date, but other than that their marriage is... cold. Distant. Coriolanus controls every aspect of Treech's life, there isn't even the pretense of love between them. Coriolanus takes what he wants, and Treech is smart enough to do as he's told to survive. Except Treech is smarter than Coriolanus thought he was, far smarter. He plays his part as arm candy when his husband's around, but every second is well-spent. He takes care to analyse every elite he comes into contact with, and every moment he gets away from Snow he talks to those he thinks may have potential to gauge how open they'd be to helping him. He talks and talks and talks until he meets Vipsania. Finally someone sees through his facade, finally he finds a friend.

Vipsania and Snow's other ex classmates have all formed a secret group together, focused on taking him down after all the shit he's done. They know if they don't stop him soon, nothing short of a second war will stop the games. No one will come out of that unscathed. They have to do something, but how? Well, finally they have their solution. Snow may be paranoid, but he doesn't actively suspect Treech of anything yet. At first Vipsania isn't sure whether he'll try to help them, so she tries to get closer to him to see how he feels about his marriage. It doesn't take long for her to notice the bruises. Fingers printed around his arms and wrists, handprints on his neck, discoloration on his face just barely visible to the trained eye through the layers of makeup. It's all the proof she needs, inviting him to hang out with her group of ex-classmates and various victors of previous games they've met and befriended over the years. Treech, of course, agrees immediately.

Sejanus and Lucy Gray, who have started dating, are exactly what Treech needs. Snow's never been worse than he's been with Treech, no longer just manipulative but physically abusive, but they understand better than anyone else nonetheless. Treech slowly becomes part of their group, even finding a lover of his own, as they begin to plan how to take Snow down. Poison won't work, he's too cautious of it. But they don't need to kill him to beat him, they just need to make sure he loses his power. So Treech goes snooping for any incriminating evidence he can find. They don't release it outright, but instead start slowly spreading it around the city. They keep it quiet, out of the mainstream. It's all nothing but rumors, enough to keep people from publicizing for fear of their safety. Then Felix enters the running for the presidential election of next year. Slowly, they stoke the invisible flames burning under Snow's career as Felix gains more and more support. Treech sabotages every single assassination attempt Snow tries to make and lets Snow take out his frustrations on him, clinging to his newfound friends and lover to keep going until finally Felix wins the elections and begins the work of destroying every rotten thing Snow had ever worked on, starting with the Hunger Games.

Lucy Gray, Sejanus, and Treech all get their happy ever afters, finding love and happiness despite everything Snow had put them through. Lucy Gray and Sejanus stay in the Capitol, though Treech spends most of his time in 7 and keeps in contact via communicuff. Felix betters conditions in the districts and begins reforming Panem into a better country for all, and Coriolanus Snow's name is erased and forgotten, only his terrible actions left in the pages as nothing but a cautionary tale to learn from.

[seenthisepisode]

early 2021 spn destiel tumblr simulator

canondestiel reblogged castielscock follow

i did NOT have a "destiel goes explicitly romantically both sided canon BUT in spanish and THEN misha collins tries to set things straight while in a middle of a divorce on a thanksgiving day" on my bingo list but here we are i guess?!

#the cw sniper's aim was right between his eyes probably

27 896 notes

slickdean reblogged blowjobdean

WHY LA VERDAD????? NO DESPAIR???? #TheySilencedThem #CoWards

#tinfoil hat and clown shoes stay on honk honk

56 438 notes

endgamehandprint reblogged willowdestiel follow

know your herstory ;)

#he was always on our side!!!!!!

7 843 notes

deancascanon reblogged 11052020

hellerjensenackles

not jensen ackles talking about blue green flannel 😭 go off heller king 😞✊

deanswinchestres-deactivated091

come onn this was on accident and i love the guy but he is at best indifferent to the concept to destile

britneycastiel

he was literally asked for permission to film the confession scene. and he gave his blessing so shut up

castieltops

#destile 😭

#while i think he was maybe not into destiel at the beginning he was an enjoyer of it in the later seasons #because the concept of kissing misha or whatever wasn't scary anymore it was but an everyday routine for him <3 #cockles

6 508 notes

robertsingerhater follow

after years of hatecriming and queerbaiting i am done. i am so officially done. i will never watch another cw show. we shouldn't be giving them any money or recognition. in these few easy steps i will explain how it's best to boycott w*lker and what hashtags to use on twitter on the special time at the special date:

--------------------------Read More---------------------------

4 375 notes

lgbtcasdean reblogged impalasexx

dickstiel

"the original ending was something that i feel would be much better explored in fan fiction anyway" MISHA WHAT DID YOU FUCKING MEAN BY THAT

omegiansensibilities

he also talked about rainbow wings ;_; OH MY GOD what if they are iridescent?!?!?

swiftieenatural follow

IRIDESCENT CAS WINGS ARE NOW CANON TO ME CAN SOMEONE DRAW THIS OMG

12 703 notes

gabrielsamrowena follow

so first they say the bloody handprint was sp8's idea, then they say it was just something that came to them on the spot and then jensen admits it was his idea only to later contradict it and say it was misha's idea???? what is the fucking truth can someone write a tell-all memoir that turns into an hbo documentary already i NEED to know EVERYTHING

5 820 notes

cocklesdreams reblogged mishasjensens

help me and @cockkless were trying to figure it out and we listened to the scene 4647 times and analyzed it frame by fram WHAT DID HE SAY are we hearing things

3 786 notes

hellermishaswift

YOU'RE TELLING ME JENSEN HAS WHAT on his phone???????

#he filmed the scene. he filmed it. he fucking did that. the insane motherfucker did that because he knew. #right? #he had to know that this scene will get buthcered in the end. that the most important stuff won't be in teh final cut #apart from castiel's i love you of course but i guess he might have thought this might be cut too??? #what the absolute hell was going on that set that day

9 364 notes

angelstouch reblogged submissivedeans

there is another online con this weekend and i will be livestreaming it here <333

#but also if they mention the plane accident again i will kms and stop streaming <3 ask destiel questions or else 🔪🔪🔪

5 293 notes

whylamp reblogged milfrowena

samswig follow

do we think that the rogue translator and cw sniper ever explored each oth- [I AM BEING FORCIBLY DRAGGED OUTSIDE] [GUNSHOTS ARE HEARD]

twistanddshouut

no but i bet the no homo intern and the cw twitter intern did tho <3

#if you remember the no homo intern you might be entitled to financial compensation . few people know that :)

75 367 notes

[ninjasmart]

Hi I’m planning my wedding for 30/12/24 do cards see any problem with that date ? Thanks

I use astrology for wedding date planning. And the choice of a date shows a lot about the quality of the relationship.

Now, in December 2024 we have Mars and Jupiter retrograde. I mean - one never appreciates the planet of luck until they don't have it on their side.

Mars retrograde is also not ideal. See, Mars is about having energy, stamina, willpower to move ahead. A reversed one is lacking of energy. Adding a prone to accidents and misfortunes Jupiter and it will not be easy.

And my guess is that the relationship takes work to make it. It is highly possible that the bride or the groom has their entire energy elsewhere - like an ex or work or family issue. It is possible that one of the two is significantly older or has a medical condition that leaves them with a bit less energy - could be that someone is a bit overwheight or they are anemic or it could be something less obvious like genuinely enjoying to stay on the couch all day.

The next thing I look at is - the Moon void of Course and the moon sign and phase. The wedding, unless it is after 10pm, which is highly unlikely, will most likely be on a waning moon and in Sagg which further brings concerns about the lack of energy in the relationship.

See, never ever start anyting on moon void of course. This is not the case for Dec-30th next year. Next thing is - never ever marry on a waning moon, new moon, full moon or close to an eclipse. Or on Satuday (you will eventually want to divorce and it will be painfull and stressful).

It is very easy to check which dates are ok: Waxing Gibbous. Best to be closer to the full moon but sht of it with a day or two. Best days are Monday, Friday and Sunday. Best of them all is Sunday, but I personally like Monday best.

The Dec-30th as wedding date is showing that the emotions will run dry sooner or later. Sorry. Waxing Gibbons right before a new moon.

Saggitarious moon for a wedding date is - I mean, depends on what you are looking for. You both will need huge personal space and travels and distance will play a role in your married life. You can partially offset that with a destination wedding and going to exotic destinations together but it is still risky. The physical distance is one thing but if there is an emotion abyss between the two of you - what will you do?

It could also be - you live in one continent, your spouse in a different and this is not fun in the long run. Now, if your spouse is working on boats, that could explain it. Or if they are the type of job that requires long absense - maybe military, maybe trucker, maybe an astronaught. That could explain the Sag Moon for a wedding date. I would still recommend signing in the registry on a better date. Dec-30th will just cement the status quo of the relationship.

Ah, wait - I just remembered something I saw recently. A military guy works on deployments. Sends all his money to his wife. She builds a beach house for their family. He sees it. Gets deployed. A hurricane damages half of it. She builds it again, on her own. He sends all his money so that she buildd their family nest. A hurricane comes in again at takes away everything. <- That is a perfect example of a Sag Moon wedding day during Jupiter and Mars retrograde. At least the wife's life shouldn't be at risk but look at that.

A wedding day on Monday is a good choice. It is my personal favorite because the Moon or Luna as goddess is about intimacy, about being in sync with one another emotionally and personally for me this is very important. It is important for you too. So - good choice of a Day.

Another thing I look at is planetary aspects. For your chosen date there are none. So - it will be the two of you on your own, no planets to help you in your marriage, no planets to make a mess (except Mars and Jupiter).

I specifically look for the star of David or for a grand trine in planet watch on a chosen date.

And lastly I look at the auspicious wedding dates accorging to feng shui and vastu shastri. Your date is not auspicious according to both. It doesn't mean that it is inauspicious but it means that you will not have it easy. You will not have planets just help you out.

The feeling will be - us against the world and there is no one to help. Furthermore - you may end up long distance, with child bearing issues (retrograde Jupiter is definitely signalling an issue with successful pregnancies), financial issues, just overall unlucky.

Overwhelmed yet? Now, the numerology.

30th is a great date because it goes down to 3. You are loving and lovable, your partner is loving and lovable.

The date itself is adding up to 5. 5 is not ideal. It signifies quarrels, a bit too much fire in the relationship, one person depending on the other. Now, this truly cancels out with Mars retrograde. There will be quarells but they die up quickly because they lack the energy to fight each other over things. So it is ok. If one of you is the breadwinner and the other one is fully dealing with raising the kids - that can also mean a separation of responsibilities and agreement to not meddle in the other person's domain.

All in all I wouldn't recommend this date. If you really, really have to, your married life will not be easy and you'll stress a bit too much with the amount of back luck and lack of energy and money to fix things that will be thrown your way.

This date is a good one for an elopment celebration. Sign earlier, on a more auspicious date and do the whimsical celebration on the 30th. Do not do a marriage vowel renewals or a marriage ceremony in a different country or a religious wedding as well.

See, when it comes to signing that "I take you for better and worse" in the civil registry - make sure that you choose a date that is going to bring luck and fortune in your wedded life. Do not choose a date that is going to bring more of what you already have as troubles.

Elective astrology is huge, huge. I'm telling you. Make the best of it.

[samasaur]

I posted 3,384 times in 2022

That's 3,291 more posts than 2021!

38 posts created (1%)

3,346 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@never-forget-viva-la-pluto

@gaybugcentral

@withlotsof0regano

@jupietre

I tagged 482 of my posts in 2022

#goncharov - 218 posts

#unreality - 196 posts

#mario movie - 43 posts

#targeted reblog - 36 posts

#quickrefs - 33 posts

#prev tags - 15 posts

#lotr - 9 posts

#remember remember the 5th of november - 9 posts

#for later - 6 posts

#community - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#this is how i felt when i reblogged that enemies to lovers post and then like maybe an hour later anna started yelling at me about it

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

objectively the best thing I have ever used my CSS knowledge for: an AO3 site skin that turns this

into this

and it’s so simple! here’s the entire code:

.kudos_error { border-color: #090; background: #d1efd1; }

9 notes - Posted October 15, 2022

#4

I'm loving all the analysis of Goncharov (1973) that I'm seeing go around (it's long been one of my favorite films), but I think we need to remember that it wasn't made in a vacuum.

Martin Scorsese divorced his first wife in 1971. Now, obviously, I'm not claiming that entire film was based off the end of this relationship, but Scorsese directed Goncharov. Everything written and imagined for the film before his divorce was undoubtedly filtered through the lens of his divorce — specifically, his side of his divorce — before we see any of it.

Just look at the relationship between Goncharov and Katya. While we as today's audience are analyzing the betrayal critically, it's obvious that the film intended (at least in part) to frame Katya as the villain. Do you honestly think this wasn't a deliberate choice from Scorsese, on the heels of his first divorce, feeling betrayed by the one who swore to stand by him "till death do [them] part"? And do you think that Goncharov's eventual death doesn't reflect this as well?

12 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

#3

how funny would it be if rishi sunak resigned on November 5

19 notes - Posted November 2, 2022

#2

looks like the maximum number of checkmarks you can buy that will still remain visible is 71 (sets of 2). that's over $560

21 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

345 notes - Posted September 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[kamryn1963]

So Long, London- Chapter 12\30

I took a couple days off from this story, but here's the next chapter :)

I also figured out and planned the rest of the chapters for this story. Of course things might change, but right now this will have 30 chapters in total. Which is crazy to me that this supposed to be oneshot turned into this.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Al did get to figure out what Erin would say about the situation only a week and a half later. Erin was back to work now, after Jay’s kidnapping, Al knew that Erin and Hank had talked and that Erin was currently staying with Hank for the forceable future but she was back with the unit, and looked happier and healthier than Al had seen her in a while. 

Al knew the grief would stay with Erin forever but he was glad things seemed to be getting even a little better for her. 

That day Al somehow ended up on a stakeout with Erin and Hank. Which was an odd combination but Al had a feeling Hank had chosen him and Erin to go with him to check on them. 

Hank had been keeping a close eye on Erin since she got back to work which was understandable, though Al had really hoped Hank wouldn’t be worrying about him anymore after the Dennis Lee case. 

Al was doing better. His divorce was almost finalized, Al’s journaling was helping him cope with everything that had happened recently, he hadn’t self harmed since his original relapse, Lexi was doing good. The only worry on Al’s mind right now was Michelle. 

She had texted him a few times since he dropped her off with her cousin, and Al was thankful for that. He wasn’t going to force Michelle to spend time with him or even say more than a couple words to him as dad or not, they were complete strangers to each other but Al was happy she had at least let him know she was okay. 

Right now the three of them were sitting in silence in the van outside of the house they were at to see if their suspect was going to come back home. Right now it seemed he wasn’t. 

Eventually Erin broke the silence not seeming to mind that Hank was there and Al may have not updated Hank on everything that had been happening in his life recently. 

Which he hadn’t. 

“Did you ever find out what Linda Sovana wanted, O?” Erin asked as she looked at him. Hank’s head snapped up at the name recognizing it. 

“Yeah”. Al replied unsure how much to say right now. He knew Erin wouldn’t stop until she got the full truth and Al honestly was just glad to share this with someone else. 

“I have a daughter. Michelle. She’s fifteen”. Al said and silence instantly filled the van. Al knew what he was revealing. That he had cheated on Meredith. Though to be fair she had cheated on him too. 

“Congrationations, man”. Hank replied but his voice was hesitant and it was clear neither of them knew what to say. 

Al chuckled, a bit amused at the reaction as he looked out the window again. “I’m not sure if she’s mine yet. I’ll do a paternity test, just so I don’t get either of our hopes up but Linda’s going away for four years and Michelle’s a teenage girl alone, I’ll help either way”. 

“Where’s she staying right now?” Erin asked though her voice was a bit distant and Al knew she was thinking of her own childhood. 

“With a cousin. Not sure about him though. Michelle hasn’t said anything though. I gave her my number and have been checking in and she seems okay at the moment”. Al responded. He turned to Hank waiting for anything else. 

Al knew how Hank felt about cheating. Al didn’t think anybody necessarily supported cheating but Al knew Hank was very vocal about his opinion and what he thought of people who cheated. He didn’t want his best friend to think any different about him even though Al knew he deserved it. He deserved for Hank to hate him or think he is a horrible person. 

“You should’ve called me when you found out. I would’ve helped”. Hank said and Al didn’t expect that reaction at all. 

Hank sighed when he seemed to realize what Al was thinking. “Alvin, I don’t hate you, alright? It’s in the past and we both know a lot of things were happening back then. I don’t hate you. I could never hate you, Al”. Hank replied and Al had to look away as tears filled his eyes. 

He didn’t deserve Hank. Didn’t deserve him or Erin or Trudy and their support even after he fucked up time after time. Al didn’t know how they hadn’t gotten sick of him yet. He would’ve. 

“Thank you”. Al responded quietly. “Thank you”. 

The van went quiet after that but the air was definitely lighter. The past few months had been hell for all of them, the past year hard for the whole unit. Everybody had been through their fair share of trouble. 

Al was grateful for his friends. He would always be. Al owed them big time. 

Later he met up with Trudy and told her about Michelle. Her reaction had been just as supportive. Shocked of course, she'd known him for twenty five years so finding out he had another child was a surprise but right away she told Al to call her if he needed anything. 

Later Al headed home to a quiet apartment. He sent Michelle a second text asking if she was okay. It had been two days since she texted him back which didn’t worry Al that much but he still hoped she would at least let him know she was okay soon. 

Al had been making himself a sandwich for dinner knowing he was starting to skip meals again and would have his friends on his back about if he didn’t start eating properly soon. Al had just sat down when the front door opened and Lexi entered the apartment looking like she was in a rush. 

“Hey, dad”. Lexi called as she headed right by him and to her bedroom. 

“Hey, Lex”. Al called back. She had been staying with Meredith the last week and didn’t say she’d be back here for another three days. 

“I just needed to get my laptop”. Lexi responded as she came back with it in her hands. 

“Can’t stay?” Al asked as she headed back towards the door. He had missed her the last week, it was still hard for Al to get used to not seeing her everyday.  

“I’m sorry, mom was making dinner when I left and I don’t want to be late”. Lexi explained as she stopped to hug him. 

“No worries. I’ll see you on Friday?” Al replied, getting a nod and a smile as she pulled away. 

“Of course, dad”. Lexi saves another smile before leaving the door shutting behind her as her footsteps faded away. 

Only once Lexi was gone did Al realize he still had to tell her about Michelle. 

[greensparty]

This Month In History - October

Lots and lots of landmark anniversaries to celebrate this month:

Oct. 3, 2003: School of Rock opens

In Oct. 2003, Richard Linklater's biggest grossing film was released. It still holds up today and it was ahead of it's time in some ways. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 20th SOR!

Oct. 3, 2008: Rachel Getting Married opens

In Oct. 2008, Jonathan Demme's family drama was released. The big thing people talked about at the time was Anne Hathaway's performance, which was nominated for an Oscar. But the movie itself has actually gotten better each time I've returned to it. There's so many Demme trademarks in this (numerous previous collaborators have cameos, love and passion of music, handheld documentary-like camera work, etc) and it's worth re-visiting. It's a movie I saw with my now-wife just before we actually got married! Happy 15 RGM!

Oct. 4, 1968: Night of the Living Dead opens

In Oct. 1968, one of the greatest horror films ever was released. George A. Romero's zombie flick has stood the test of time. When I met him in 2015, he signed my DVD. Here my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 55 NOTLD!

Oct. 6, 1988: Dear John premieres

In Oct. 1988, one of the most underrated 80s sitcoms premiered. Taxi veteran Judd Hirsch played a newly divorced New Yorker, who joins a support group for divorced people. It was very much an ensemble show and the writing was quite good. Happy 35th DJ!

Oct. 10, 1988: Rattle and Hum released

In Oct. 1988, U2's companion piece album to their documentary film was released. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 35th R&H!

Oct. 10, 2003: Kill Bill Vol. 1 opens

In Oct. 2003, the first part of Quentin Tarantino's action epic was released. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 20th KBV1!

Oct. 11, 1968: Barbarella opens

In Oct. 1968, the futuristic sci-fi space funfest was released. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 55 Barbarella!

Oct. 12, 1993: Vs. and Aurora Gory Alice released

On the same day in 1993, two of my favorite alt-rock albums of that era were released. Pearl Jam's second album Vs. was released. After the massive success of Ten, I was starting to feel a little burned-out on PJ by the time Vs. came out. That had nothing to do with the band or their musical abilities, just that I played the hell out of the album and needed to decompress. But loads of friends were heavy into the Vs. album and I eventually was lead to buying it after hearing some of the songs on radio. It's easily one of their best albums! In 2013, I included the album in my Top 5 PJ Albums and while a lot has changed since that list, but if I had to re-do the list, Vs. would still make the cut. Boston alt-rockers Letters To Cleo brought an element of power pop and melodicism to the Alternative Nation. The debut album Aurora Gory Alice was first released on CherryDisc, but in 1994 it was re-issued on Giant around the same time "Here and Now" was featured on the Melrose Place soundtrack and critiqued by Beavis and Butt-Head. But it was singer Kay Hanley's voice and the entire band's songwriting that has made this one of my favorites of the 90s. Years later I got to interview Kay and guitarist Greg McKenna for my documentary Life on the V: The Story of V66 and here on this site. Happy 30th Vs. and AGA!

Oct. 13, 1993: Nightmare Before Christmas opens

In Oct. 1993, the stop-motion animation Halloween / Christmas classic was released. I saw it opening night in the movie theater and was blown away by it. I've seen it many times at both holidays over the years and now I watch it with my son. Happy 30th NBC!

Oct. 14, 1973: Mean Streets opens

In Oct. 1973, one of Martin Scorsese's early crime films was released. Kind of cool that 50 years later Scorsese and star Robert De Niro have a new movie in theaters with Killers of the Flower Moon. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 50th MS!

Oct. 15, 2003: Mystic River opens

In Oct. 2003, one of Clint Eastwood's best late career directorial efforts was released. Boy does he know how to tell a story! Such a great ensemble cast too. Happy 20th MR!

Oct. 16, 1968: Electric Ladyland released

In Oct. 1968, the 3rd album from Jimi Hendrix Experience was released. Here is my album review of the 50th anniversary deluxe edition from 2018. Happy 55th EL!

Oct. 21, 1988: Tapeheads opens

One of my favorite 80s cult comedies was released in Oct. 1988. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 35 Tapeheads!

Oct. 21, 2003: Streetcore released

In October 2003, the final album from Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros was released posthumously after Strummer's 2002 death. It's as if the Mescaleros saved the best for last: this was their best album and its just as good if not better than Strummer's work with The Clash. I named this my #1 Album of 2003. Happy 20th Streetcore!

Oct. 25, 1978: Halloween opens

In Oct. 1978, John Carpenter's low-budget horror slasher flick was released. Last year after the most recent sequel (hard to call it the last), I named it my #1 Halloween movie. Here is my piece I wrote in 2018. Happy 45th Halloween!

[aseaofcadence]

a painful memory

The time I was asked to pay rent.

I was 15 years old. I was the youngest lifeguard in my class and I studied harder for this test than I ever did actual school. The instructor (Romeo) singled me out because I was the youngest in the class and I got the highest score. This was after one season of swim team where I actually learned how to swim. From going to not even knowing what freestyle was, to always swimming in lane one (close to the wall), to being the best lifeguard graduate of our class of ... a whopping 10 people. I think I was a little high on myself to be completely honest.

I came back home from work one day and my dad was in the kitchen, wearing a white holy tshirt, he stoped me after I closed the front door. It was night time and I had no idea where my sister was and to be frank, I couldn't remember if she was still living with us. But my dad had told me he needed help paying the rent. That I needed to pay 200$ a month to him to help with the house and other costs. Of course in 2023.. 200$ is nothing but to a newly employed 15 year old who only made 8.25$ an hr, that was almost my whole months wages.

I was really angry. I was beyond angry. I don't think I've ever lashed out at my dad like that before. I always suffered in pain in my own room ever since they got divorced. But this was new low we had hit as a family of 2..maybe 3. I told him that I couldn't believe that he was asking me this. I told him how I NEVER ask him for anything anymore. That I got a boyfriend to buy me my first clunker car for 900$ and I paid for insurance myself. How I paid for gas to get myself to school. How I paid for food to eat, the clothes I wore, the things I did. How every time I wanted to got to a christian bible camp I paid for it myself, how I paid for my own volleyball shoes so I wouldn't stick out not matching the team, how I never asked for the school supplies I needed on top of the donated ones we got from a charity. But now he was asking me to help him with his responsibilities. I screamed at him saying that I shouldn't have to deal with this. That he should be able to at least keep a roof over my head and running water. (later I find out that for low income housing the rent changes proportionate to your income, its always just 30% of your monthly income, and that water... was free). I cried so hard telling him how he was inadequate as a father to provide for me and that as a kid I shouldn't have this on my shoulders. I already had so much on them already. He cried with me. He said he was so sorry that he didn't want his baby girl crying over this. He rubbed my shoulders because I was sobbing. But I still, in the end had to pay because I was scared to be homeless. So I worked harder. I worked every other day, sometimes 12 hours on Saturdays and more in the summer on top of school and all the sports I was in. He never asked me for anything again.

Looking back I think this was a very pivotal point in my life. It solidified the thought that I earned everything I wanted, needed or had. At the youngest age I could provide for myself, I did. This is where all of the pride steps in. Where pride rears its ugly head as a 31 year old. Somehow it's easier to compare because I had it real rough but I worked my way out. Where I feel like if I want something I must work hard to get it and that I don't need anyone to help me get there. All I need is myself.

Being married gave me good lighting to see better. Knowing Christ deeply gave me the glasses to see the situation sharper. I DID NOTHING. I was handed these opportunities. I couldn't have brought myself to this situation if my sister didn't drop me off at church every sunday and my dad pick me up afterwards. I couldn't have gotten that car to drive to work unless Simon bought it for me. I was chosen. I was given. I was blessed. God aligned everything so perfectly in my situation, all I realllly did was walk, or better, stumbled my way through all the adversity. All the while I was a whiny child.

I realize how hard it must have been being a father to ask your daughter this. (I'm sure he asked my sister as well, so i guess two daughters) How degrading to a mans pride it must have been to have to confess inadvertently that he couldn't provide for his family. That lay off after lay off he once again felt the sense of inadequacy. How he realized he was bad at money and finances. How he was a king back in his country and now here he was instead a beggar. To have fallen so far and to realize it must have been devastating. To top it all off, my mom never paid child support because she said my dad wouldn't use it for me specifically, that he would just use it for himself. The only way I could get the money from her was to come to her house and she would buy me anything I needed because she knew it was going to me. When she visited our home while my dad was at work, she downturned her nose and criticized the shithole we were living in. Never offering to make a difference.

God, I pray so fervently that Indie will never have to experience the pain I felt as a child. The pain where I knew that my own father could not provide or care for me. I hope she never has to feel the need to be less of a burden or feel guilty for asking for something. I hope she feels safe and cared for. I hope she never has to feel like she wishes she was never born because she's such a burden to her parent/parents. Because thats how I felt. Thats how I saw myself. An unworthy burden.

[havefaithindeni]

Trauma Built Me

My First suicidal ideation was at 6 years old. I recall me sitting in the cafeteria of the Ferryway school in Malden Massachusetts, I was in the after school program watching a movie. I remember dissociating into the tiles on the walls, thinking to myself “Why am I here…? Why do I exist…? Why do I matter?” And ever since then I would fantasize about disturbing things happening to me. I remember one day my father went into the KFC that was in Chelsea, Massachusetts. I was sitting there in the car, and had fantasized about being kidnapped, that’s just one example of the fantasies.

I grew up with parents that always fought. I remember my father pulling my mother by her hair. I also remember hearing screaming behind the door. One day there was a bang, so loud I was startled. There was a hole in the wall, my mother was sobbing holding her face. This was normal to me. If I misbehaved I would get pelted with a belt. I remember one day, I had asked my mother if I could take a bath, she told me to ask my father and he had said no. I went to go update her on his answer and had walked away. My father assumed I asked my mother against his back, and beat me. He later apologized but it was too late the damage was done. When I was 12 or just turned 13, in 7th grade my father had whipped me so hard I couldn’t sit down at my desk at school all because I had told a white lie. I was too scared to tell him the truth. That lie costed me a visit to the guidance counselors office. She told me I was being abused, and I just shrugged it off.

I started self harming at 13, when my father left my mother. My parents were fighting so bad they forced me to stay at a friends house for 2 weeks during the school year. My father came to pick me up and said we were gonna do all my favorite things. (We didn’t) He told me he was no longer going to be living with us, said him and my mom are getting a divorce. I started self harming so intensely that when I was forced to roll up my sleeves in the counselors office the school counselor saw the thousands of slices surrounding my entire arm, there was not one spec of un-sliced skin. You’d think I would of been hospitalized right? Wrong. Instead my family judged me, and was beyond disappointed in me. At least Ms. Murray cared.

My first suicide attempt was at 15… I was in my grandmothers house in malden, about to climb on the roof and jump off head first. My best friend, Mathew at the time, was able to talk me out of it.

I remember sitting in the bathroom, listening to music, mostly a band called Flyleaf, for at least 5 hours at a time every day, slicing my skin open, trying to not kill myself. I would even carve words into my thighs, mostly things like “I’m sorry.”

I was thrown out at 17. Forced to move in with Mathew. My own family didn’t want me.

Mathew abused me for years after moving in. I lived with him till I was 21.

I remember going to school with fat lips and black eyes. I had never been more suicidal in my life, I lost count with the number of attempts at this point.

I had a few good friends. Malik, Katie, Mat. These were the people I was closest too. Malik was the only male companion I was allowed to have. Mathew was too jealous of anyone else.

After we graduated, I got pregnant with Mathew at 19. I thought - or had hoped the abuse would stop when I got pregnant, and it did for a few months but then it got worse. I was forced to leave him when he beat the fuck out of me in front of our child, who was not even a year old, but old enough to be aware of what was happening, and it terrified her watching her mother get beaten. It destroyed me so much seeing the fear in her face, I was numb to every punch, kick, and didn’t feel when he through me down to the ground. I made a promise to myself to never expose her to that, ever again.

Within an 8 month span, Malik had died, I left Mathew and Katie over-dosed on the day we were going to celebrate Michelle’s first year around the sun.

Great now I have abandonment issues, or maybe I already developed them when my father left, or maybe when my family threw me away. Everyone I love either abuses me, abandons me, or just fucking drops dead.

So then I went back to my grandmothers in malden, with my mom, two brothers and grandma before I went to hospitalize myself. Which, spoiler alert, it was obvious my family was incredibly annoyed I was there.

I ended up choosing homelessness over staying with my family… would of rather stay in a 2005 Dodge Ram Caravan for a year while I found my own place then stay in that house.

I finally got my place, made a friend who was also homeless, who ended up just abusing me as well. Stole all my furniture and left me with absolutely nothing in my apartment.

Then, I met Eric. We dated for 3+ years. The first year it was a great relationship but then… when I moved in he started to drink heavy, and would beat me when he would. I quickly found myself starting to self harm again. All I have ever known my entire existence is abuse and trauma. He almost killed me, numerous times honestly… beat me till my eye was protruding or bulging out. To this day, I still have a black eye from that last night.

He would cry, screaming, apologizing for all the times he’d hurt me just to beat me not even 30 seconds later.

I moved back into my grandmothers house, and started playing the cinderella role I have played my entire life. Cleaning up after everyone, until I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I ended up moving back in with Mathew, yeah, I know how insane that sounds. He’s made corrective actions to be a better person and is now my best friend again, but I still have nightmares because of him. I don’t think they’ll ever stop. But… his brother recently died 07/31, and I moved in after everything to be closer to my child, to get away from Eric, and to help around the house.

I find myself always putting the needs and emotions of others before mine… I don’t want anyone to feel the way I constantly do.

I want the people I care about to know they are safe here, with me.

The thing about me, is… even though all I have ever known was abuse, and suffered from suicidal ideations my whole life my light still shines bright, I still smile, and all I ever want to do is make others smile. I have made countless efforts to better my life, my mindset, and to exchange laughs… and I owe it to myself to find happiness no matter how many times I was beaten, held down, or forced to drown. For as long as my heart keeps beating, I’ll never stop fighting.

[thisbelongsto-nohbodys]

Got any headcanons about Sashas mom and dad?

couldn’t sleep so I guess I’ll think of a few for this.

Sasha’s mom is a high class businesswoman for a major corporation and is  very ruthless (it’s where Sasha learned the “End of Discussion” thing), her dad is a celebrity lawyer and they met when a sponsorship deal was being renegotiated. They hit it off and liked how strong-headed the other was, this was also one of the reasons they later divorced.

Their arguments are legendary within their neighborhood and they go to extreme lengths to win, no one will ever bring up the Halibut Boat Incident of ‘12 for fear that it’ll continue.

Mr. Waybright hates golf, well he enjoys how peaceful it can be on the green but years of playing it for school, on a scholarship and for business deals has soured him on the sport. He dreads when a client asks for him to meet him for a game.

Mrs. Waybright is a good singer but Sasha has only heard her sing a handful of times. She’s heard her daughter’s band when they were in school and she’s attended a few of Sasha’s modern open-mic night shows and is proud of how good Sasha is...but just wishes the love songs weren’t so obvious about Anne/Marcy

Mr. Waybright never liked any of Sasha’s partners, he was scared that she’d either end up like her mom or like him. The only relationship he approved of was post-Amphibia Sasha, Anne and Marcy as he saw that not only was she a better person now but that they brought out the best in her.

On Sasha’s wedding day her parents had just one piece of advice for her “You saw what we did...so just avoid doing that”

When Sasha explained everything from Amphibia, they blamed Marcy for getting Sasha stuck there and Anne for the scars but saw how happy Sasha was with them and how much she changed and so they forgave them.

During Thanksgiving one year during Sasha’s relationship with Anne/Marcy, the Waybrights were beginning their usual petty arguments but Sasha took her swords and carved the turkey with a flourish, everyone else was impressed but her parents saw the death glare she was giving them without even looking at the turkey. They were so terrified that they remained silent for the rest of the dinner.

Once Mr. Waybright realized he wasn’t 100% straight after chaperoning Sasha and her friends to Pride events a few times he’s had a few “friends” stay the night which never lasted. The most awkward was one of Sasha’s college ex-boyfriends...that was a quick breakfast that morning.

Mrs. Waybright bonded with Sasha’s hairless cat (named Grimes) and takes care of him whenever Sash and her gfs/wives are on vacation.

Mrs. Waybright taught Sasha how to drive and gave her a car that a client gifted to her, Sasha traded it in a few years later for her current car.

During the Frog Invasion they made sure to find each other and make sure the other one was still safe. They attempted marriage counseling after that but it still didn’t work, they’ve admitted that they still care for each other but not enough to be around each other for longer than they need to be.

To add onto their arguments’ list, Mr. Waybright is a fan of Star Trek while Mrs. Waybright is a fan of Star Wars. Sasha doesn’t care about either and only watches either because of Marcy.

I think that should be enough for now. I’m still waiting on either fan-designs or Amphibi-Crew designs of Sasha/Marcy’s parents before I do any comics with them tho’

[denimbex1986]

'WHEN Andrew Haigh was shooting his new film, All of Us Strangers, in his parents’ old house in Croydon, something strange began to happen.

“I started getting eczema again, and I’d not had eczema since I was a kid,” says the director, who is now 50.

“It was coming up in the exact same places. I thought, ‘What the fuck is happening to me?’ I feel there is a sense that your body remembers trauma. Somehow things get almost embedded in your DNA, and they find ways to leak out.”

In All of Us Strangers, this leakage happens to Adam, a 46-year-old gay man exquisitely played by Andrew Scott. He’s a blocked, depressed screenwriter whose parents died in a car crash when he was 12, and who lives in a mysteriously empty tower block in London.

One night after a fire alarm, a younger man called Harry, played by Paul Mescal, drunkenly comes to his door. Although Adam initially rejects him, the pair later embark on the love affair he has always yearned for — and Mescal and Scott are explosively convincing as a couple.

“Casting is like running a dating agency,” says Haigh.

“I have to be careful to pick the people who will be good together.”

When Adam decides to return to the house he grew up in, he discovers that his mum and dad — played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy — are still living there, the same age they were when they died, in a perpetual 1987.

The film — which won Best Film and Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards in December — somehow blends a love story, a ghost story, and a time-flipped coming-of-age narrative.

Masterful exploration

The result is a masterful exploration of loneliness and grief, the relationship between children and their parents, and a demonstration of the fact that time, far from healing, can bring childhood trauma rearing up stronger than ever in middle age.

But it’s also a tender, aching expression of the insatiable human need for love and connection, which Haigh depicts as being so powerful that it can annihilate the border between life and death.

“All the people in the film are longing for something — to be understood, to be known,” Haigh says.

All of Us Strangers is a “very free” adaptation of the Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada (who died last month aged 89), which the film-maker wrote during the pandemic while living in Los Angeles. “There’s a pandemic emotion at the heart of it,” he says. “We all spent a lot of time staring out of the window, didn’t we?”

Sitting in a Soho hotel suite, Haigh — whose previous films include Weekend and 45 Years, and who also made the TV series Looking and The North Water — was keen to make the film “as personal as I could. It’s about someone having a reunion with their own past, so it made sense that I had to do the same thing.

"As I was writing about the home Adam goes back to, I started thinking about my own childhood home, and when we were talking about where to shoot I thought, ‘I’ll just go down and see if it’s still there.’ I couldn’t remember where it was on the street because I left there when I was nine or 10” — when his parents divorced — “but I had the photo that Adam lifts up in the film, with Claire Foy put in instead of my mum.”

Haigh found the house and the owner agreed to let him film there. “It was a strange choice, emotionally, because I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest place to be. But I wanted the film to have a certain honesty and vulnerability, to feel grounded in some kind of reality.

The only way was to make it my own reality, as a way to make it specific in the hope that it would speak to all those details of life that end up feeling universal.”

"The reality he’s talking about is that of a middle-aged gay man who was a young teenager at the end of the ‘80s, when the Aids crisis unleashed a wave of savage homophobia (a survey in 1987 discovered that 75% of the UK thought homosexuality was “always” or “mostly” wrong).

“I wanted it to be very specific about a certain generation of gay person, which was our generation,” Haigh says when I tell him I’m also gay, and a year younger than him.

“It wasn’t an easy time. Growing up, I felt, ‘If I’m going to become a gay person I’m not going to have a future, and the only other alternative is not to be gay’ — which of course you can’t not be. So I wanted to tell that story.”

Prejudice and hatred

All of Us Strangers depicts someone struggling with the lasting effects of a childhood disfigured not only by bereavement, but also by prejudice and hatred.

“There’s a generation of queer people grieving for the childhood they never had,” Haigh says. “I think there’s a sense of nostalgia for something we never got, because we were so tormented. It feels close to grief. It dissipates, but it’s always there. It’s like a knot in your stomach.”

Much of All of Us Strangers’ emotional power comes from the brutally repressed Adam attempting to dispel his feelings of shame and isolation in order to be seen and loved for the person he truly is. To this end, he takes the opportunity, denied to him by their death, to come out to his mum and dad, separately.

His mum is shocked — “Isn’t it a very lonely life?” — and worried about Aids. His dad, not unkindly, says: “We always knew you were a bit tutti-frutti.”

Says Haigh: “The coming-out scenes are about the importance of being known. It’s very hard to move through life if you feel you’re not understood. And if you’re not understood, you feel you’re alone.”

Adam asks his father why he would never come into his room to comfort him when he was crying after being bullied at school — something else Haigh suffered.

“I was about nine, and the kids around me knew something was different about me before I really did,” he says. “So you’re like, ‘I don’t understand why you’re calling me these names’. But they could feel it somehow. When my mum saw the film, she was like, ‘Is this what happened to you?’

"And I was like, ‘Yes’. If you’re a queer kid, you don’t want to tell your parents you’re being bullied, because they’re going to think you’re different, and that’s the last thing you want.

It’s the hardest thing, sometimes, about being queer within a family — you’re not like your parents and you have a secret.”

Haigh came out to his parents in his mid-20s. His father now has dementia, and went into a care home during the making of All of Us Strangers.

Visiting him one weekend, the film-maker discovered his dad no longer remembered his son was gay. “He was like, ‘Are you married? Have you got a wife?’ I’ve been out to my dad for a very long time and he’s been beautifully accepting, and it had completely gone from his mind.

"I found myself suddenly having the same fear I had when I was in my 20s, of having to come out to him again. And I realised I couldn’t do it because I didn’t want to upset him.

"But in the end, he was quiet for a while and then he said, ‘Well, as long as you have found love.’ It felt like such a beautiful thing for my dad to say. He just understood what was the important thing, and in so many ways it spoke so much to what the film is about.

"And then I had to come down again and shoot that scene with Jamie and Andrew in my old lounge, so it was emotionally complicated. My childhood self would have been amazed I’m telling a story about queerness, and not be terrified for others to see it.”

The film also draws on Haigh’s relationship with his own children, who are 10 and 12.

“They don’t live with me full time, but when I’m with them and I’m their parent, I’m always worried. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? Am I helping them? As I’ve got older I’ve realised you don’t need a parent to give advice, necessarily. You don’t need them to solve things because sometimes you can only solve it yourself.”

Being a queer parent

Beyond fulfilling the needs of a child, there is something about being a queer parent that makes one wonder how you and your children will fit into broader society.

“It’s like, ‘Are we different?” Haigh asks. “Do we have a new way of being? Do we have a different way that our families can exist, because we don’t have a model? I know a lot of queer people who have kids and they’re all trying to navigate that. Are we trying to be like our parents were to us, or are we trying to be something else?”

All of Us Strangers is particularly acute in its use of 80s hits such as ‘The Power of Love’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘Johnny Come Home’ by Fine Young Cannibals, and ‘Build’ by the Housemartins, all of which Adam listens to while mulling over his childhood, and which then becomes part of the supernatural world he visits (he and his parents joyfully put up festive decorations to Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Always on my Mind’, Christmas No 1 in 1987).

To young gay boys denied role models — especially when section 28 made it illegal for schools and local authorities to offer positive representations of homosexuality — and who were too terrified to disclose our queerness to our dads, gay pop stars like Neil Tennant and Holly Johnson, and also gentle straight frontmen such as Roland Gift and Paul Heaton, were the only people who seemed to point the way to how we might be able to live as grown men.

“Paul Heaton and Roland Gift aren’t queer artists, but they so spoke to me,” Haigh agrees. “I’m sure my political viewpoints are based on listening to the Housemartins” — who were avowedly socialist at the time of the Thatcher government.

“Pop music was so important — it gave me hope as a kid.

I used to sing ‘The Power of Love’ to myself in my bedroom, not really understanding anything about myself at that point, but knowing that it was longing for something, and believing that something could be possible.

"When I put this song in the film, I was thinking that my childhood self would have been so amazed that I’m doing what I’m doing now — able to tell a story about queerness for other people to see, and not be terrified.”

Both characters are not lonely because they’re gay. They are lonely because the world has made them feel different.

“I never dreamed that I would get to be / The creature that I always meant to be,” as Pet Shop Boys put it in ‘Being Boring’?

“Don’t!” Haigh says, who is a diehard fan. “I can’t even listen to that line — it makes me want to burst into tears.”

Coming out

As he comes out to her, Adam explains to his mother that things are much better for gay people now, and his relationship with Harry, a northerner in his 20s, allows Haigh to explore the personal effects of those changes — and whether they have really gone as far as one might think.

For instance, Harry identifies as queer, and when Adam says he uses the term “gay”, Harry tells him the word was a ubiquitous insult when he was at school: “Your haircut’s gay. Your schoolbag’s gay.”

Harry says his family are relaxed about his sexuality, but their focus is on his heterosexual siblings and their children, not the tache-wearing, whiskey-swigging black sheep of the family.

Is Haigh saying that to be gay is to be alienated? “I don’t think so,” he says.

“I know a lot of young gay people who do not feel alienation. I imagine some of them will watch this film and be like, ‘Why are they all complaining? There’s nothing to moan about, life is absolutely fine.’ But I also know people close to me, younger than me, who’ve found it very difficult.

"So I don’t want to pretend that everything is all great either. But also, it’s important to me that both characters are not lonely because they’re gay — they are lonely because the world has made them feel different. Harry has moved to London, which can be a very alienating place.

There are lots of reasons why you can slip gently into aloneness and if you cannot find something to get you out of that, you can stop caring about yourself, which is Harry’s problem.”

Like Weekend, All of Us Strangers is frank about drug use. In a moment of gay inter-generational misunderstanding, Harry gives Adam white powder on a key, which Adam lustily sniffs thinking it’s cocaine — but it’s ketamine.

“To pretend that drug use isn’t part of the gay scene is just an absolute lie,” Haigh says. “I think I’ve always tried not to glorify drug-taking, but to be honest — drugs can feel wonderful and also make you feel paranoid and afraid and alone. You can slip away, you can lose your grounding. I’m certainly not saying that everyone should go out and take drugs!”

As its narcotic, dreamlike feel sets in, All of Us Strangers increasingly wrongfoots the audience. “I saw the film as a spiral, and it kept getting woozier and stranger,” Haigh says. Adam starts to get feverish, which is unexplained in the film, though Haigh points out that it happens after his mother mentions Aids.

“I think all of us gay men of that generation know that every time we had a bit of a sweat if we were having sex with other people, we were suddenly terrified that we were going to have HIV,” Haigh says.

A ghost story

“A swollen gland was not just a swollen gland. I wanted to have that trickling under the surface, that Aids is another fear that Adam has buried. I’m telling a ghost story — what are the things that haunt him?”

The film’s more surreal moments include a trippy, time-warping scene set to Blur’s ‘Death of a Party’ and filmed at gay pub the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London, where Haigh used to go to the club night Duckie; and a setpiece in which the adult Adam, wearing his childhood pyjamas, gets in bed between his parents.

“However old you are, you feel like a kid,” Haigh believes. “You can’t escape that feeling of wanting to be with your parents again and have them look after you. I loved the idea that these pyjamas didn’t fit, because we want to go back to our childhood, but of course it doesn’t fit.”

Towards the end of the film, Adam’s parents take him to a deserted diner in the Whitgift shopping centre in Croydon, Haigh’s childhood haunt (“at Fairfield Hall next door I saw Bucks Fizz, which was the first concert I went to, which may be the gayest thing anybody’s ever done”).

In this tacky, mundane setting, something painfully bittersweet occurs. Then there’s the film’s conclusion, which can either be read as romantic and hopeful, or a vision of overwhelming sadness. “More than anything, I wanted you to leave the cinema and have the film continue on within you,” Haigh says. “ 45 Years was the same, and even Weekend.”

Last month month, the LA Times named All of Us Strangers as the best film of 2023; at the New York film festival, the critic Mark Harris said the cinema was awash. The consensus so far appears to be not only that it is a masterpiece, but a profoundly moving one. Haigh is relieved:

“When you make something personal, you’re putting it out into the world, and if the world turns round and says, ‘I don’t like that and I don’t care about it’, you can’t help but think, ‘OK, you basically don’t care about me’.” Although the film has a particular, queer point of view, he believes its universal themes make it accessible to everyone.

“All of us are children, a lot of us are parents, a lot of us are in a relationship or not finding love. Look, I want 15-year-olds to see this movie, not just people our age. If I had seen this film when I was 15, it would probably have made a big difference to me.”'