#but i’ve got 2 bags to unpack and i have to rearrange my room. AND i have work to do

[let-it-raines]

Okay, now I know you're accepting prompts for the CMIYC verse, expect a whole lot of them coming from me 😂I'd LOVE to see Emma finding out she's pregnant, and her telling Killian, and just their whole journey through her pregnancy!

This isn’t going to cover everything you asked for @dorisquinn but I’ve got 2/3. You can send me all of the prompts you want. Honestly, seeing your enthusiasm as well as the enthusiasm of others to still want parts of this universe makes me so happy! You guys should see the timeline I just mapped out to make sure everything stays cohesive because I’ve got some more extras to write for you guys 🙈

found on ao3 | here |

-/-

March 2022.

“These boxes are never going to get unpacked.”

“We could have hired someone, you know.”

“I’m not even working full-time right now. There’s no need for us to have hired someone when all I’m doing is sitting at home.”

“You go to meetings…on occasion.”

“I have a meeting tomorrow. Stop making that look on your face, twenty-nine.”

“There’s not a look on my face, besides a handsome one.”

Emma huffs and falls back against the wall, sinking down onto the ground and pulling her knees to her chest. They should have moved as soon as last season ended. It would have given them more time to unpack the ridiculous amount of stuff they somehow accumulated over the past three years, but there was a problem with the closing and then the plumbing, and they officially signed for this place two weeks into spring training. Killian had to fly back from Florida for the paperwork, spent one night in the house with her where all they had was their bed set up, and then he went straight back to the hell that is Florida humidity.

At least they’re not there for months at a time in the summer. Everyone would die. It’s bad enough when they’re in Tampa for a few days at a time.

(Then again, humidity in New York in the summer is no joke.)

She could have flown down and stayed with him, already has for a few days here and there, but they need to get settled before the season starts and things get insane. Things are really never not insane, but there are definitely periods where there is a little more peace.

Off-season is undoubtedly her favorite season.

She loves baseball and the game and working almost every day, but having Killian home for months at a time and being able to sleep in their own bed instead of a hotel bed is so much better than anything else.

Emma definitely wants the off-season back.

And this house to be unpacked.

One of those things is more likely to happen than the other, and it’s not the house getting unpacked.

“I miss you,” Emma whispers into the phone.

“I miss you, love. You know you can fly down anytime, right? There’s nothing keeping you there. It’s been less than a week, but I miss you terribly.”

She flips the camera around to all of the boxes. “I don’t want to be living in chaos. I want, like, some kind of organization. I told myself that when I left my room key with you that I would not be flying back to Florida. I have to get this place functional.”“I know we’ve been married for nearly a year, love, but I don’t think you should be turning into me quite this quickly with all of that talk of organization.”“Technically, as far as everyone else knows, we’re only nine months into this whole marriage thing, so that’s not quite a year.”

“Specifics.”“Ruby was over here yesterday helping me unpack and found the pictures from the clerk’s office. I’m pretty sure she figured us out.”“I think David has known for awhile now.”“Why do you think that?”

“Just a hunch.”Emma groans and scoots further down on the floor. “If David knew, he would have said something.”“Aye, you’re likely right.” Killian smiles, his face slightly pixilated. “Come see me this weekend, Swan. I know you said no more flights, but maybe just the one more. I’ll take you to dinner. Wine and dine you and all that.”“I think there’s a third part of that proposition.”

Killian gasps and holds his hand to his chest. “Dirty.”

“You know it, twenty-nine.”

“I think you mean sixty-nine.”

“Oh my God.”

Killian chuckles and pushes his hair back. It’s too long again. He hasn’t gotten it cut in months, and as handsome as he looks, she’s desperately waiting for him to get it cut. Suggesting it hasn’t really worked out well for her, but if he likes it long, he likes it long. It’s not like she’d appreciate it if he told her to shave her legs or something like that.

“I’ve got to go to workouts, but I’ll call you again tonight, yeah?”

“I look forward to it. I love you.”“And I you, my love.”

The video lingers for a moment, and then it disconnects, only the memory of Killian’s smile there.

She misses him like crazy. It’s ridiculous and stupid and kind of annoying. Maybe she should go down and see him this weekend. It’s not like she has this weekend. Spring training is almost over, and she could wait it out. She really could. That’s what she’s told herself she’ll do, but should she if she doesn’t have to? Maybe if she gets enough boxes unpacked.

Hell, maybe she should just cave and hire people to do it for her, but she put up such a dumb fight when Killian suggested it that she doesn’t want to admit to failure now. Not that he’d ever truly judge her for it.

Okay. He’d judge her a little bit.

Her phone buzzes in her hand.

Elsa: You planning on letting me in?

Shit. The doorbell didn’t sound, and Emma didn’t hear a knock at the door. Quickly, she stands from the ground and kicks a box to the side before hurrying down two sets of stairs to get to the front door. She loves having more space than the apartment, but she doesn’t love all of the stairs. At least, right now. Soon she’ll hopefully kick ass at being able to walk up and down them quickly.

Hopefully her ass will look fantastic because of it too.

Damn Manhattan and its lack of space.

“Hey,” Emma greets after unlocking the front door. “Did you ring the doorbell?”

“I did.”

“Well shit.” Emma leans forward and wraps her arms around Elsa. “I guess our doorbell is broken too. Do you know anything about electrical work?”

“I know how to hook up our cable, but that’s about it.”

“Then what good are you to me?”

“I bring you donuts.”

“Bless you.”

“I know.” Elsa steps inside, closing the door behind her, and immediately walks toward the kitchen where she puts down the bag of donuts she’s carrying and then immediately starts looking around the room. “Have you unpacked any of the kitchen?”

“A few things. Mostly things I use. It’s all Killian’s, and he hasn’t really been here to tell me where to put anything. I don’t know his system as well as I should.”

“Do you have silverware out? Plates and bowls?”

“I have a few things but not all of it.”

Elsa sighs and pulls her shorts up and then adjusts her t-shirt. She took the day off to help Emma unpack, and, really, she should be lounging around watching TV or something. “I don’t mean to go all mom on you, but grab a donut. We’re about to unpack your kitchen. Then we move to your bedroom and your closet so you can at least function. Everything else will come later.”

“As long as I get a donut, this all sounds good to me.”

“You can have another if you finish this room.”

“I’m good with a bribe.”

“Incentive. It makes it sound less dirty.”

Emma laughs. “Deal.”

Elsa is some kind of unpacking machine. It’s actually ridiculous. She knows exactly how to store everything in their cabinets and the pantry, and while Emma is sure Killian will rearrange it all when he realizes it’s not to his specifications, after three hours, they have all of the kitchen boxes emptied. It’s practically a miracle, and Emma didn’t even need an extra donut to make her do the work.

(An extra donut is sounding really good right now, though. Elsa got the good kind.)

All she really needed was Elsa. If they had Anna here, though, Emma imagines the entire house would be finished by now. Well, if Anna wasn’t eight months pregnant. Mary Margaret would probably be the better choice, but she’s got a class full of third-graders to attend to. Ruby, however, would bring everything to a halt because she’d get distracted by the things she was unpacking.

They move upstairs and back to the bedroom after they’re finished in kitchen, and Elsa sticks to the bedroom while Emma works in the closet. She’s got some of her clothes up, mostly her workout stuff, and even though their stuff is boxed in a way that should make it easy to hang up several things at once, Emma keeps getting distracted trying to organize it in a way that’s not something she’s going to sustain.

Seriously. Who is organized enough to keep things sorted by color?

Killian. Killian is. He organizes his freaking t-shirts by how old they are.

The weirdo.

Emma finally decides to just do it by type of clothing, and after she’s gotten all of her dresses on the racks, she decides that she needs some kind of break. She did not sleep last night, and no amount of coffee could wake her up.

Has she even had coffee today?

Or maybe she’s simply bored by having to unpack. That’s a lot of the same thing over and over again, and all Emma really wants to be doing is watching Netflix.

Slowly, she slides back down to the ground and pulls out her phone again, answering her texts and then clicking on Instagram to move away the notifications. It’s all stuff Killian has tagged her in, and she quickly moves through the videos and memes before clicking on his page. It’s been mostly baseball lately, pictures of him, Will, and Robin, but if she scrolls a little further back, there are pictures of Liam and Elsa or Addy and Lucy. And then there are pictures of her. She mostly uses social media for work, but she does like to get on and see what Killian has posted. It’s usually something she’s never seen, and there are at least ten pictures on here that she had no idea were taken.

There’s one in particular that she likes the most. It’s from last November. They were in Portland for Thanksgiving sitting on the swing in Ruth’s backyard, and Killian snapped a photo of her drinking coffee, the sun glinting off of her skin in just the right way so that she looked tanner than she actually was.

My love forever, the caption reads.

That day had been…hard. It had been fucking awful, actually, but Killian had wrapped his arms around her and held her until it wasn’t so awful.

That’s what he does. He makes awful days feel that little bit better simply by being there.

She likes that, likes that she has that forever now.

My love forever.

She has had that love for awhile with David and Ruth, with her friends too, and while she doesn’t like to put some relationships over others, Killian does get the slightest elevation.

It’s good to have all that love. It’s healthy, and if someone asked her twenty years ago if she’d ever have any of this, she would have laughed in their face.

She can’t stop staring at the photo and all of the memories behind it. She had been so sure that morning, and it wasn’t…she wasn’t.

“Hey, Emma, do you have – woah, what’s wrong?”

“What?” Emma sniffles, wiping below her eyes. “What makes you think something is wrong?”

“You’re sitting on the floor sniffling and wiping your eyes. Those are pretty big clues.”

Emma scoffs. “I’m fine.”“You’re a liar.”“Els, I’m fine.”

“I believe you about as much as I believe Killian when he says that.” Elsa walks over to her to and slides down onto the floor next to her, kicking away a shoe and grabbing onto Emma’s forearm. “You want to talk about whatever it is? You know you don’t have to, but I’m a good listener. I couldn’t be married to Liam if I wasn’t.”

“Liam does talk a lot.”

“I think it’s a Jones family trait.”

“I think I might be pregnant.”

She might have that trait too for the way she just blurted that out.

Elsa gasps, and Emma braces herself for it just like she braces herself for it every time this conversation comes up. She’s the one who brought it up this time, but it was kind of inevitable when this is honestly all she’s been thinking about for two days now.

For a little more than two days if she’s totally honest.

“I didn’t…I’m not,” Emma stutters, trying to continue talking before she shuts herself up, “I never thought I would be someone who wanted a baby. I thought I was going to be alone for so much of my life, so when Killian and I decided to try and kept having these negative tests, I don’t know. I, well, it sucks, and it’s been really damn hard. It hasn’t even been a long time, and we’re still so young. I probably shouldn’t even complain because I know it’s harder for other people. It’s just that a part of me feels like I’ve gotten so much good in my life I was never supposed to get. What if this is the thing I don’t get? What if I have this feeling in my gut now because it’s some kind of sign that I should give up before my hopes get too high?”

“Oh, darling,” Elsa sighs as she wraps her arm around Emma’s back and pulls her toward her, rubbing her hand up and down her arm, “you can’t think like that. The world doesn’t give you a certain amount of good and then just stop. You can have more good than you think you deserve. I do. And that feeling of helplessness when it comes to getting pregnant and it not working as fast as you want? I’ve had that too. It’s what happened with Lucy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe Addison was going to be it for us, and we were like you two. We hadn’t been trying for a long time, but it could still feel hopeless when Addison was so easy. Getting pregnant is hard, and unless you talk to others like this, there’s no way you’d know. All you’d see is the happy announcements and the smiles.”

Emma turns her head into Elsa’s shoulder. It’s a good thing she’s not wearing mascara because she’d totally ruin Elsa’s t-shirt.

“So I’m not some kind of freak show for sitting in my closet freaking out about this?”

“Emma, having a baby, or even the possibility of it, is the most terrifying thing in the world. If you weren’t having meltdowns, I’d be concerned about you.”

“This is so not in my wheelhouse,” Emma mumbles. “I talk for a living, talking about this is…different.”

“Baseballs and babies aren’t exactly in the same category.”

“They are on Family Day.”“Yeah, well, you know what I mean.”

Emma huffs and pulls away from Elsa, leaning her head back against the wall. “This closet is still such a mess. My shoes are everywhere.”

“Oh, I know. I think I’m going to need to borrow those wedges that are caught up underneath the pile of Killian’s jerseys.”

“They are yours to borrow.”

“Not to keep?”

“Nah, I like them too much for that.”

Elsa laughs and twists on the ground until she’s facing Emma, small smile on her face. “You’re going to be okay. You and Killian both. And if you ever need to talk, Liam and I are always here. Anna too.”

“Anna is eight months pregnant with twins. All she does is warn people against getting pregnant. I don’t think she’s ever going to have sex again.”

“Can you blame her?”

“Absolutely not.”

Elsa claps her hands together. “Okay, let’s conquer this closet, and then I’m taking you home with me for dinner so you’re not left in this house stalking your husband’s Instagram.”

“I was not doing that.”

“You totally were. I could see it on your screen when I walked in.”

“I’m taking away your shoe privileges.”

Elsa quickly gets up and runs over to the wedges, picking them up. “Nope. They’re mine now.”

-/-

She’s pregnant.

Or, at least, that’s what the three tests she took this morning said.

Emma had gone over to Liam and Elsa’s last night for dinner, and she’d forgotten about everything. She really had, and it had been nice not to think about it and to be able to know that her life was going to go on no matter what. She knew that. Logically, she did. Her life is not defined by what a pregnancy test says, but when it’s what you want…

When it’s what she and Killian want.

And they might get now.

Oh shit. She is not ready to give birth.

That’s not even happening right now, or in the near future, but it’s going to happen. Emma’s pretty sure it’s some kind of torture device designed to make being a woman even more difficult, but she’s got to stop thinking of that right now.

What she’s got to start thinking about is the fact that she’s in New York while Killian is in Florida.

Florida.

Shit. She’s got to book a flight to Florida.

She said she wasn’t going to do it, but that was before she knew for sure.

That was before.

Where the hell is her neck pillow?

Emma gets off the rim of the tub and walks into the bedroom, grabbing her laptop off the charger and stretching out on the bed while trying to find the next flight. There are a few this afternoon, but she’s got meetings she can’t cancel. There’s one she might be able to make around seven, though, and she quickly enters her information and books a one-way ticket.

She’s never been so excited to go to Florida.

-/-

“Can I get an extra key to room 835?”

“And your name is?”

“Emma Jones.”

The receptionist starts typing on her keyboard, looking up at Emma and then looking back at her computer, her brows furrowed. “I’m sorry. There’s not an Emma Jones in that room.”

“I know. It’s my husband’s room. It’s under his name. Killian Jones. It should be under the block of rooms for the Yankees.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a key to that room. It’s our policy, especially when it comes to our VIP guests in our suites. It’s for their safety.”

Emma has to fight the urge to roll her eyes. She’s exhausted. It’s been a long ass day, she sat next to someone who snored the entire flight down here, and all she wants to do is see Killian. Why the hell did she leave her key with Killian last week?

Oh, yeah, because she wasn’t supposed to come back.

“If I was some kind of stalker, how would I know his room number?”

“You would be surprised what people know.”

She sighs and pulls out her phone, clicking on Ariel’s name.

“Emma?”

“Ariel, can you get me an extra key to Killian’s room?”

“Are you here?” Ariel squeals before quieting. “Wait.” There’s a mumble and then the sound of a chair squeaking before Ariel’s voice comes back into focus. “Sorry. We’re out at dinner, and I had to move away from the table. This is a surprise, right?”

“Mhm.”

“That is literally the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You need to hear more things.”

“Oh, hush. I’ll call the front desk. We’ve got to be back soon anyways because I have to relieve the babysitter for Morgan, so it won’t be too long.”

“That sounds perfect. I’ll probably see you tomorrow, okay?”

“I can’t wait, and I promise that my lips are sealed.”

They hang up, and the front desk’s phone immediately rings. The receptionist nods and smiles and is completely and totally nice to Ariel, typing in a few things on her computer as she avoids eye contact with Emma. Then the conversation is over and Emma is being handed a card.

“This works for both the elevator and the room. Have a nice night, Mrs. Jones.”

“Thanks,” Emma says, forcing a smile. She knows the woman was just doing her job, but it doesn’t keep her from being annoyed. She’s not about to be pissy with her though. “Have a good night.”

Grabbing her luggage, she maneuvers out of the lobby and to the elevator. She knows this hotel better than any other hotel in the country from how much she’s stayed here, and she easily makes her way up to Killian’s room, sliding the card in the door and sighing in relief that the clerk actually gave her a key that worked. She was worried that she wouldn’t.

Killian’s suite is clean, and Emma knows it’s not just because of housekeeping. The man is so damn particular about everything, and even though all she wants to do is curl up in bed and go to sleep, she opens up her suitcase and starts putting her few clothes away, making sure not to mess with any of Killian’s stuff. It’s what he would end up doing later anyways, and if she does it now, it’ll be one less thing he’ll have to focus on.

How the hell is she supposed to tell him that she’s pregnant?

That’s something she should have focused on for the flight down here, but all she could think about was how much she wanted to murder the man who was snoring next to her.

She’s going to be great at the whole getting no sleep thing.

Did she really want this? Did they? Are they crazy? What drives someone to want to have a baby? Yeah, they’re cute, but then they grow up and yell at you for telling them not to eat straight sugar for dinner. And she didn’t have parents. Well, she has Ruth, but she didn’t have Ruth for fifteen years. Killian’s mom died, and his dad is a piece of shit. What do either of them know about babies and being parents?

What do either of them know about kids in general?

Well, they do have nieces and nephews and friends with kids. Hell, their friends have had so many kids. It’s like in the past two years all anyone has done is pop a kid out and –

The door to the suite beeps, and Emma doesn’t even realize she’s been pacing for a long time until Killian’s standing right in front of her blinking with his mouth wide open.

“Hi,” Emma squeaks out.

It’s official. She is not herself today.

“Fucking hell,” Killian mumbles.

“Well, that’s always the greeting a girl – ”

Killian strides forward and cups her cheeks before pulling her to him with his mouth, sucking on her bottom lip before he starts moving and can’t seem to stop. It’s been less than a week. That’s all. It hasn’t even been that long since they’ve been apart. They make it a point to never go more than nine days, but she’s missed him more than she ever has.

Melodramatic and all that.

“What,” he starts, still kissing her, “are,” he continues as his lips move to her jaw, “you,” he sighs against her cheek, “doing,” he whispers against her eyelid, “here?” he finishes as his lips find hers once more while their foreheads rest against each other.

“I really missed Scarlet.”

Killian tilts his head back and barks out a laugh as his hands move from her cheeks to her biceps, squeezing them. Her stomach is absolutely swirling.

“God, I love you. You’re – ” He shakes his head, and his eyes crinkle. He’s gotten darker during training, and there’s the slightest tan line from where he’ll wear his hat backwards during pitching drills outside.

“I’m what?”

“Well, if I were to list all of the things you are, I imagine we’d be standing here forever.”

Emma scoffs and pushes at his chest before moving closer once more so she can wrap her arms around his neck. “Why are you the way that you are?”

“Charming? I believe I was born this way.”

It’s Emma’s turn to shake her head at him. She presses up on her toes and lingers until her breath is ghosting over his mouth. “I love you, twenty-nine.”

“Good. I love you, Swan.”

She finally kisses him then, and Killian slowly backs her up to the bed until she’s falling down on top of it. All thoughts leave her mind as his lips and his hands move over her, and they truly disappear when his mouth is between her thighs and all she can think is how damn good that feels. It almost always does, like some kind of magic that’s bottled between the two of them, and even when it’s not good, Emma knows that there’s no one she’d rather get lockjaw or really unfortunate cramps with.

And weirdly, as Killian swivels his hips and hits just the right rhythm, she knows that no matter how much she’s freaking out about everything, the two of them have got this.

“Did you know the front-desk clerk thought I was a stalker?” Emma asks later. They haven’t changed back into any clothes, and Emma can’t seem to stop twirling Killian’s chest hair around her fingers while his hand dances across her back, tracing familiar words there.

“Really now?”

“Mhm. I tried to get a room key, and she refused to give me one.”

“Ah, well, I have been having an influx of stalkers lately. It must be my devilishly good looks.”

“You’re never lacking in confidence, are you? Even when it comes to joking about something that’s not funny.”

“You would know more than anyone how that isn’t true.”

Emma leans down to kiss his chest before resting her chin there. The air conditioner clicks on, and a cold rush of air runs over Emma’s bare skin. Killian tugs the comforter up over a little more of her back, and they sit in silence as Emma starts counting how fast her heart is beating. If she doesn’t tell him tonight, she won’t sleep. It’ll eat at her until the morning, and with how exhausted she is from not sleeping two nights in a row, she really can’t afford another night without sleep.

She also hasn’t had coffee in days. That has sucked.

“Killian, I – ”

She stops when his finger traces her name into her back. “What is it, love?”

“Nothing,” Emma begins, even if she knows it’s everything. “It’s just…Killian, I’m pregnant.”

For the rest of her life she’ll remember that Killian stopped blinking for a few seconds too long. She’ll remember that his eyes are slightly red-rimmed from his own lack of sleep, and she’ll remember the way that slowly but surely his lips curl from a small smile to one of the brightest she’s ever seen from him.

“Are you? For real? I’m not imagining this conversation?”

Emma inhales and nods. “I think so. I wouldn’t be far along. Like, at all, so anything could happen. But my period is late, and I took, like, three tests this morning that were positive. Peeing on a stick never feels normal.”

Killian chuckles as his free hand comes around to tuck her hair behind her ear. He’s so gentle like that, and she doesn’t know what she did to deserve him. He can be hot-headed and impatient and ready to act on his anger instead of thinking it through, but at his core, Killian Jones is a good man.

“Aye, I imagine not.”

He leans down to glide his lips over hers, and even if Emma had imagined what it would be like to tell Killian they better start reading all of those books so they have some clue what they’re doing, she knows none of it would be better than this.

Calm and content and like they were always supposed to end up here.

“I love you, Swan,” Killian whispers as his hand shifts from her back to her stomach. “I don’t – thank you for being by my side for all of this.”“Always, twenty-nine. Always.”

-/-

-/-

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[lettuce-seize-the-day]

Found ch. 2

Yeah I’m posting chapter 2 here, it seemed to do a lot better when I did that! The AO3 link is here. As always, feedback is desired, encouraged, and greatly appreciated!! :)

TW: there’s allusions to Jack’s self-harm and mention of a razor blade. He doesn’t do anything with it, but I wanna be careful!! 

“So this is your room,” said Medda. “It ain’t much, but it’s yours, for as long as you’d like it.”

Jack looked around the room. There was a big window with a view of the city. On the opposite side of the room, there was a twin XL mattress sitting on a bedframe. The bedframe was a pleasant surprise- that was a hit or miss in the foster homes he had been in. More often than not, the mattress and boxsprings were directly on the floor. Between the bed and the window, an old-looking wooden desk was against the wall with a wheely office chair. Across the room from the desk was a closet next to a dresser with more drawers than Jack could possibly fill with what was in his one bag, not that that was saying much.

As he took in the room, Medda started talking again. “You can rearrange or decorate any way you want. This is your space now. If you’ve got any pictures or posters, feel free to hang them up. We could get them framed, if it’d make you feel more at home. Or if you don’t have any, we can get you some. What are you interested in?”

“I like art,” Jack said quietly as he set his bag down on the ground. What he didn’t tell her was that he never hung things up in places that he went because he didn’t want to get attached to anything. Or feel settled in any place. And the only things in his bag were some old clothes and his sketchbook. Well, those weren’t the only things.

“Oh good! I think I’ve got some art supplies around here somewhere. Just let me know whatever you need and we can get it, alright?”

“Sure. Thank you, Miss Medda,” said Jack.

“Oh sweetie, you can just call me Medda. If we’re gonna be family, I’d prefer to be on a first-name basis.”

“Whatever you say, Medda.”

There was a beat of silence. “Well, Jack, why don’t you uh, make yourself at home. There’s some sheets and blankets in the closet if you’d like to make your bed. I’m gonna go get started on dinner, but I’m right down the hall if you need anything, alright?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said.

She paused for a moment as though she was going to say something more, then seemed to change her mind and retreat.

As Jack began to make his bed, he thought back to how many times he had done this already. It was strange to think this would be the last time. He’d have to go to a new school. Again. It was August, and he was still a minor. At least it was just one more year to get through, and he’d never have to do it again. Thank God, he thought. School had been a nightmare for him. He was more artistically inclined than academically, and with that in addition to never having a stable environment, he did not exactly impress any of his teachers. Plus, with never sticking around in one place for very long and not being able to afford new things very often, he wasn’t very popular amongst the students either. Best case scenario so far was at schools where he didn’t get noticed at all. The attention he got from students did not tend to be of the positive variety. Not by a long shot.

Honestly, Jack was surprised he had made it this far, not that he had ever told anyone that. Thinking about his future in any regard gave him severe anxiety, so he did his best not to. He knew he wanted to get out of New York. That much was certain. There was nothing for him here. He worried often that there wasn’t anything for him anywhere. But that was something else he tried not to think about.

Jack looked at his bag sitting on the floor. He had no desire to unpack it. Unpacking tended to imply settling in. He always avoided it as long as he could, and while Medda was probably the kindest foster parent he had encountered thus far, it didn’t change his nature.

With a sigh, he sat down on the bed and pulled his bag up and into his lap to take inventory. Clothes. Sketchbook. Pencil case holding his art supplies. He opened up the case- wood pencils, colored pencils, watercolor palette, a couple of paintbrushes that had definitely seen better days. And at the bottom, two pencil sharpeners. One with the blade still attached. Jack opened up the second one just to make sure. The blade was right where he left it, loosely resting in the slot where the pencil was meant to go. Always reliable. He didn’t need to do it now, he just needed to be assured it was still there.

It wasn’t terribly often that it happened. And never terribly bad. Sometimes, he just needed to blow off some steam. Usually, it happened when he started thinking about the things he tried so hard not to think about.

After putting everything back into his bag, he zipped it up and set it on top of the dresser. He jumped as he heard someone knock on his door. “Come in?” he called out. The door opened and a tall, lanky blond boy stepped in. Behind him, there was a shorter boy who walked with a crutch.

“You must be Jack,” he said. “I’m Race, and this is Crutchie. Medda told us to tell ya dinner’ll be ready in a bit and it’s time to wash up.”

“Thanks,” he said. “How long youz guys been here?”

“With Medda, ya mean?” asked Race as he jumped onto Jack’s desk and sat down. “Almost a year, I think. Crutchie’s been here longest.”

“Long as I can remember, almost. Medda was my godmother, and my folks were in a bad accident when I was a kid. She took me in right away,” Crutchie said as he sat in the wheely chair.

“So you ain’t neva been in the system, huh?” asked Jack.

“Guess I lucked out. I ain’t heard many good things about it from the otha fellas that been through here. I neva woulda made it with this bum leg. I got sick when I was real young, and it neva recovered.”

“Lotta fellas been through here?” asked Jack.

“Oh, yeah. Medda loves takin’ care’a kids. Keeps in touch widdem, too, afta they get outta here,” said Race. “Once ya become one’a hers, ya got family for life, no matta where ya go. Thanksgiving gets real messy, but it's kinda fun.”

“What’s the catch?” asked Jack, half-sarcastic.

“Catch?” asked Crutchie.

“Ain’t no catch,” said Race. “I been here almost a year and I been through a lotta places. Far as I can tell, the worst part’a bein here is how much Medda cares.”

“Whaddaya mean?” asked Crutchie.

Race and Jack shared a look, and Jack understood exactly what he meant. When someone cares, it means they’re invested. Meaning, when you inevitably fuck up or do anything self-destructive, it hurts them too.

“Nothin,” said Race. “Fuggettaboutit.”

“How old are ya, Jack?” asked Crutchie.

“Seventeen. You?”

“I’m fourteen. Race is sixteen. Just had his birthday last week.”

Jack looked at Race. “You guys actually celebrate birthdays here?”

“Oh, yeah. Medda goes all out. Makes a cake, sings the song, candles and everything. Even gets ya a gift. She got me new dance shoes,” said Race.

“You’re a dancer?” asked Jack.

“Only ‘cuzza Medda. I always wanted to but neva got ta have lessons. Now I have ‘em three times a week. And she took out the carpet in my room so’s I can practice.”

“What kinda lessons?” asked Jack.

“Ballet, tap, and jazz. Tap’s my favorite.”

Jack was surprised. Most foster families he had been through couldn’t afford extracurriculars at all, let alone multiple dance lessons.

“Boys, come on, supper’s ready,” Medda called from down the hall.

"C'mon, let's go. Medda's a great cook. You'll love it here," said Crutchie.

Jack wasn't so sure, but he followed anyway.

[thereisnobearonthisisland-arc]

buoy

this is my first chaptered fic and i miiiiight need a little help staying motivated to keep writing it, but i’m aiming for one chapter a week if i can :)

Summary: Dan is a first-year student at the University of Manchester. Jack is his RA. And Phil is Jack's best friend, another RA, and quite possibly about to be the love of Dan's life. Dan and Phil just have a long road of keeping secrets from Jack before they fall in love.

read on ao3

2.2k words

warnings: anxiety, mild sexual innuendos, swearing

chapter one

Dan was tired.  Tired because he’d been staying up until three o’clock in the morning every night for the past two weeks.  Tired because there’s only so much you can read before your brain liquefies and your eyelids start to feel like they’re made of lead.  Most of all, though, he was just tired of uni in general.  Everything was so…monotonous.  Waking up to go to work for a few hours.  Going to classes all day just for the attendance points, but never actually listening to a word that was said all class.  Coming home with every intention of Doing The Thing™, only to fall asleep within five minutes of stepping through the door.  All of this was wearing him thin, ripping apart his motivation one thread at a time.

He was tired, and regardless of whether or not it was a good idea for his GPA, he was ready for some relaxation.  Jack, his RA, had given him the perfect opportunity, too.  As Dan lay cocooned under his blankets, eyes drifting shut to some old-ass document written by John Locke, his school email pinged with a new notification.  He shifted a bit, sitting straighter and wiggling his shoulders to try to wake himself up.  He slid his cursor over to the tab with his email and opened it.  From Jack Swanson, yada yada yada, watching Planet Earth II in the lounge.  Dan’s eyes shot open.  He could be watching Planet Earth II instead of reading for class?  Sign him the fuck up.

He threw the covers off of himself and sprung out of bed.  Were pyjama pants appropriate for watching Netflix in the communal lounge?  Oh, who was he kidding. ��It would be dark.  No one would actually give a fuck what he was wearing.  He slipped on a grey t-shirt and a pair of slippers before heading out of his room, not even bothering to lock the door behind him.  

The lounge was in the center of the whole floor, a focal point, the hub for everyone to get together and socialize.  Not that people did very often.  Dan made his way past the elevators and into the lounge.  The horrendous, thirty-year-old blue couches and chairs had been rearranged into a u-shape in front of the TV.  Jack looked up from where he was fiddling with a cord he’d hooked from his laptop to the TV.  He was the only other person in the lounge.  

Dan’s stomach swooped.  What if he was the only one to show up tonight?  What if he had to carry conversation all by himself?  He liked Jack.  Jack was easy to get along with.  But Dan had no idea how he was meant to hold a steady conversation all night without anyone to interject or change the subject.  He was an awful conversationalist.  

“Dan!”  Jack grinned from where he was kneeling on the floor, trying to project the show onto the widescreen TV embedded in the wall.  “Glad you could make it!”  

Dan let out a long breath.  Netflix.  They were watching Netflix.  Surely, some other people would be joining them.  And even if they didn’t, Dan wouldn’t have to worry about conversation.  He’d be too busy staring at the screen.

He shook his head, remembering that Jack had just said something.  He grinned crookedly, fixing his eyes just to the left of Jack’s face.  “Heh, yeah, I just really love penguins, ya know?”

Jack nodded vigorously.  “Oh yeah, penguins are definitely one of the coolest animals out there.”  He frowned, pulling his phone out of his pocket.  “Sorry, I left my friend Phil in charge of snacks for tonight.  He appears to have gotten lost,” he said after a minute.

Dan grinned.  “Ha, yeah I’m late to almost everything, so I feel for him.”

“Oh, no.  I mean he actually got lost.  The guy doesn’t know his left from his right.  He took one wrong turn and wound up eight blocks opposite from Tesco’s.”

“Oh.”  Dan bit back a grin.

“He’s on his way back now though.  Hopefully we can still start on time.  I was kind of hoping he’d make it back earlier though.  I’m not really sure if I have this hooked up properly.”  Jack gestured to the set-up he’d made with his laptop and the TV.

Dan scratched the back of his neck.  “I mean, I could take a look at it for you if you want?”

“Yeah, sure!  I’m honestly so technologically incompetent.  I always need help.  I think my mom could figure this out in about two minutes, but it just doesn’t click for me.”

Tittering, Dan knelt as Jack stood up from beside his laptop.  “You’re just trying to project your laptop screen onto the TV screen?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that’s simple enough.”  He checked the HDMI cord and its input and then played with a few buttons on the side of the TV to switch the input from HDMI 2 to 3.  Jack’s computer screen popped up onto the TV.

“Huh.  That was quick.  Well, thanks Dan!”

Dan ducked his head.  “Erm, yeah, no problem.”  He made his way over to the couch facing the door and sat down, pulling his feet up onto the seat and wrapping his arms around his legs.  He stared at the screen, eyes glazing over and zoning out as Jack brought up Planet Earth on Netflix.  

He snapped back to attention when a giant bumbling figure stumbled through the open door, spindly limbs wobbling with the weight of plastic bags full of popcorn and suspiciously vibrant packaging. The guy was tall, probably taller than Dan himself and definitely taller than Jack.  He was hot.  Pools of saliva were beginning to form in Dan’s mouth, and he was almost afraid that he’d wind up hocking a loogie at this Phil guy before they even got the chance to get to know one another.  He needed to get ahold of himself.

Phil—or at least Dan was assuming this was Phil—dropped his bags on the round table in the corner of the room and let out a few wheezing breaths.  Dan smirked to himself.  Relatable.  Jack said something off to his left, but it just sounded like something from inside a fishbowl.

“Dan?”  Dan shook his head, tearing his gaze away from the tall, handsome stranger and blinking rapidly as if that could make the fog billowing up in his head clear any faster.  Jack was looking at him, head cocked to the side and eyebrows scrunched together.

“Hmm?”

“I said that I’m gonna go grab some plates, but you can feel free to sneak anything you’d like before other people start to show up.  I won’t tell.”

“Oh, yeah.  Cool.  Thanks!”  Dan clasped his hands together and stood up awkwardly.  As Jack ducked out of the room, he crept over to the table with the snacks.

The guy was even prettier up close.  His eyes looked like summer, and they made Dan nostalgic for old family hols when his parents were still together.  He forced himself to look away from them and toward the small mountain of food.

“I’m always the weirdo who winds up in the corner with the food,” the guy said, and Dan started, a surprised laugh tumbling out of his lips.

“Honestly?  Same.”

The guy grinned a thousand-watt smile.  “You’re Dan, right?”  He stuck out his hand.  “I’m Phil.  I’m the RA on the second floor.”

Dan grabbed it for a quick shake, ignoring the way his palm tingled when their hands came together.  “Nice to meet you.  Jack was actually just telling me a bit about you.  Said you don’t know your left from your right.”

Phil groaned, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth.  “He’s right!  I got lost on the way to pick up all of these snacks.  I told him it would go much smoother if I had someone else to go with me, but he said he had to be back here.  It’s really all his fault.”

Dan laughed.  “I’d offer to go with you next time, but I actually have no idea where anything is in this city.”

“You don’t know your way around Manchester?  I mean, I guess I can’t talk.  I got lost on the way to Tesco’s.  But you should at least know all the places to go to if your family comes to town or something.”

Dan scratched the back of his neck, unable to shake the broad grin that had planted itself on his face.  He was sure he must look like a maniac.  “I’m sure I’ll get around to learning the city eventually.”

Phil nodded, shifting back and forth between his feet for a minute.  “I mean, I could try to show you around sometime, maybe.  If you want, that is.  I’m not the best at finding my way around.  Obviously.  But at least if you get lost you won’t be alone.”

Dan felt his face grow warm with a flush straight from hell itself.  He opened his mouth to answer, but Jack walked back through the door, and all the words in Dan’s head morphed into a squeak.  Holy fuck.  Dan had just squeaked.  In front of a hot guy.  Shit.

“I’ve got plates!”  Jack wandered over to them, seemingly oblivious to Dan’s growing embarrassment.  He set a stack of plates on the table and then turned around, frowning at the door.  “I thought we might get more people than this.  Maybe I should send one more email.”

He pulled out his phone and ambled over to one of the chairs.  Phil nudged Dan, and Dan tried to will away the blush dusting his cheeks as he looked back at him.  Dan’s eyes were drawn to his lips as he put a single finger up to them.  They were pretty lips, bow-shaped, plump, and pink.  He barely noticed the way Phil gestured secretively to his own phone.  Phil typed something quickly, fingers flying across the screen for a minute before he locked it and slipped it back into his pocket.

Dan’s spine was wracked with the tingle of shivers as Phil leaned in close to whisper to him.  “I just invited my residents to join in if they want.  Don’t tell Jack.”

Dan nodded, holding his breath as he desperately tried to keep his body from shaking too much at the feeling of Phil’s breath fanning out over his ear.  He took one step away from Phil, letting out a slow breath and trying to calm his nerves before he could squeak again.  Phil made Dan nervous.  He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to unpack the reason behind that for that right now, but he could at least acknowledge it.  Still slightly jittery, he gestured wildly to the table.  “So, what would you recommend?”

Phil studied the food for a moment.  “I guess that depends on what you prefer.  Savory or sweet?  I’m partial to sweet things, myself.”

“I guess I like a bit of both?”

“Hmm, then I’m gonna say...try some of this salted popcorn.”  He gestured to one of the plastic bags.  “And maybe some jelly babies?  Or Maltesers?”

Dan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.  “Wait, you have Maltesers?”

Phil chuckled and dug around in a bag until he pulled out familiar shiny red packaging.  “I only bought one pack, so you can have them on one condition.  You have to share a few with me.”

Dan grabbed the pack.  “Deal!  God, one of my favorite pastimes is choking on those balls.”

Phil snorted, turning away from him.  He shifted on his feet again a few times before turning back towards Dan.  

Dan had to be imagining the tinge of pink to his cheeks, right?  His eyes glazed over as he watched Phil run his fingers through his hair, pushing it back into a quiff.  It was a good look.  Dan’s fingers itched to take a picture of him, but that would be weird.  They’d only just met.  In another universe, maybe he could.  But in this one?  In this one, Phil was clearing his throat, and Dan was snapping back to attention.

“Do you, uh, do you choke on those balls often?”

Dan laughed, bringing his hand up to rub at the warm spot blooming on his jaw.  Were they still talking about Maltesers?  “No, uh, only when I take in too much at once.  I nearly died when I was fifteen because I tried to swallow twenty at the same time without even chewing.  My grandma had to give me the Heimlich.”

“That sounds traumatizing.”

“It was.”  Maybe he was biased, but Dan thought that Phil’s eyes were even prettier when he was smiling.  His smile was contagious.  Dan found himself grinning like a fool as he piled a plate with popcorn and Maltesers.  

Phil piled his own plate with a variety of sweets and bumped their shoulders together when he was finished.  “Will you sit by me for this thing?  My residents are lovely, but I’m kind of sick of them at this point.”

Dan’s breath caught in his throat.  He could feel his heartbeat pulsing erratically in his fingertips.  He’d only known this man for a matter of fifteen minutes, but there was already something vaguely familiar about the way he made all the blood rush to Dan’s ears.  He bit his lip.  

“Yeah, alright.”

[thebcadventuresdiary-blog]

DAY 1 - 6

(Thu, 19 Sept - Tue, 24 Sept)

After a long day of travelling (14 hours!!!), I finally made it to Vancouver at 09:45 pm - yay, 15 minutes early! I had a layover in Calgary so I already did Immigration there which was actually quite nice. I’ve been stressing out about actually getting my visa approved basically for the whole flight to Calgary and long before that but in the end, everything went down smoothly. Of course - in hindsight, I don’t know what bad thing should have happened. The time my flight got in probably played a big role in me getting through Immigration quickly. I was with the Border Control Officer for maybe 15 minutes if at all and he didn’t even want to see any proof of insurance or anything, just my POE Letter.

So after that, it was so much more stress-free to take the 1 and a half hour flight to Vancouver. And since it was a domestic flight and I was through Immigration already, I could just go to pick up my luggage. And I finally saw my boyfriend again. God, that was the best sight ever after such a long time. We were separated by a wall that we technically could have crossed but officially weren’t allowed to until I had my luggage and got out of that area. But we got to hug already and hold hands and I just really fucking missed him.

It’s really crazy how every time we’re reunited, it feels like no time has passed at all even though the actual time we were apart when we were going through it felt so horribly long. But now that we were reunited again, it felt just like it had to be exactly that way. After six months, it was so so good to be able to hug him and kiss him again, and to see all the changes that are a lot more apparent when I’m not looking at him through a screen. Of course, as promised, we headed to A&W immediately so I could have my beloved Beyond Meat Burger again (it was as good as I remembered!) Then we headed back to his place, I got to see and pet his cat again (damn, I missed that fluff ball so much) and after lots of cuddling, we went to bed.

Now, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t start my year abroad with a bang. Literally. My boyfriend had to go to uni so I accompanied him and as we were heading up the escalators at the train station, I somehow tripped (don’t ask me how, I’m still trying to figure it out myself) and fell. Fucking hell, I don’t think my knees have ever hurt this much. My boyfriend was laughing of course - he also did when I fell down the stairs in Oslo lmao - and I was too but mainly so I wasn’t crying instead. It really fucking hurt and I quickly realised I couldn’t really move my right leg properly. Unfortunately, it took a little while until I got an ice pack for my knee and by that time my legs were already black and blue all over - spoiler alert: it just got worse in the following days but at least I could move normally again the next day. So basically, I spent my first full day in Canada in agony. Honestly, I’m not too surprised.

I actually have to fight quite a bit with jetlag. I’m awake pretty early and then could fall asleep (and did fall asleep) at around 6 or 7 pm. Hopefully, that will be over soon.

Saturday, my boyfriend and I didn’t really do much. We mostly just hung out at home before we went to ICBC Driver Licensing in the afternoon to inquire about how I could get a BC licence. Turns out that was pretty easy luckily - honestly, I’ll probably have more troubles getting my German one back when I return. And we also went to A&W again! (Am I obsessed? Most definitely.)

And then Sunday was the day I finally met my host family. It was actually so nice to pack my bags at my boyfriend’s place but not feel sad because I was leaving indefinitely. Living just about half an hour away from each other is honestly the best thing ever. My boyfriend dropped me off at my new home - my host mum made a comment about how he could have helped me with the suitcases and how there were no gentlemen left these days, it was hilarious tbh. So I met my host mum and the family dog (little cutie!!) first while my host kid was still napping. I immediately felt welcome in the family, sitting down to chat a bit with my host mum while the kid was slowly waking up. He was a bit shy with me at first and putting on quite the show which quickly escalated and got a bit too much for everyone involved. I then had some time to unpack while my host mum rested and that was also when my host kid slowly warmed up to me and started talking to me. He helped me with unpacking (even though I later had to rearrange my drawers lmao because he does not know how to put clothes into drawers efficiently). For dinner, we went to a place I thought was quite fancy but very nice. Awesome view of the mountains and river - which, I was told, would have been even better if the weather had been nice. I also met a woman who is much like a grandma to my host kid and she was also very friendly and made me feel welcome. Even though at that point I was so exhausted from all the new impressions and travelling still that socialising was a bit much for me.

Monday was my first official day of work. But it started out easy enough. I came to pre school with my host mum and kid so I could be introduced to the teachers and see where the school was and everything and after that my host mum and I ran some errands. Most importantly, actually getting my German drivers licence exchanged for a BC one. After that we did some grocery shopping and then it was already time again to pick up my host child. When we returned home, he and I had some time alone together because the mother had an appointment. Naturally, I had a crying child on my hands right on my first day. At least, it wasn’t my fault. He got a little too excited playing that he hit himself in the back with a hard object. Interestingly enough, I felt less overwhelmed with the situation than when I had a crying child on my first day during my first aupair experience. Of course, I’m six years older now and back then, I had my two host children plus two of their friends on the first day. It’s much more easy going this time around - in all aspects. Besides that little incident, the first day went pretty good and I was just really exhausted by the end of it.

Today (Tuesday), my host kid and I spent even more time alone together. In the morning, we took a short trip to the park and when we returned back home, we were playing for a bit before I made lunch for him and then tried to get him to take a nap. It was quite the challenge! I think it took about an hour until he settled down enough to even attempt to fall asleep. But he eventually did. It was a little weird for me to have a sleeping child on the couch while I had no idea what to do because I was scared if I made the tiniest movement or noise, he’d wake up. Which of course wasn’t the case and I could easily just leave the room. Well, he’s not the only one who needs some getting used to to the new situation. But I think we’ll both handle it very well. My host mum bought a new car today since the old one that I was supposed to drive died shortly before I arrived. I haven’t driven the car yet (and I’m a little, let’s say intimidated by the prospect of doing so) but it’s a cool car and not too big so I should be okay. We’ll see how that goes tomorrow.

Burger Count: 2

[fan-fic-fix]

I love you, each of you with all my heart, always. (Poly!Hamilsquad x Reader)

Pairing: Hamilsquad x reader

Word Count: 2975

Warnings: Poly relationship, a few cuss words (like 2), some google translation (sorry, I took Spanish in hs, not French), 

Summary: You and the boys take a trip, but leaves you broken hearted. 

Author’s Notes: I wrote with more for the plot than the cuddly relationship stuff, next time I will try to add more of that stuff. 

You and your boys were sitting around the dinner table discussing dates. Days all of you had off or could take off so you could go and visit your family in Mississippi. You were nervous as hell because YOUR FAMILY IS FROM MISSISSIPPI. That means they are super conservative and you being in a relationship with 4 guys was going to be a total shock. You never really told your parents that you were in a relationship, they just thought that you dated them separately and at different times.

 “Okay, what about Junes 9-16?” Alexander asked.

 “I can do that,” Laf said.

 “Me too,” you said.

 “Me three,” Herc agreed.

 “Yep, perfect!” John said.

 “That gives us a month to prepare. I am going to call them and tell them that me and a couple of friends are going to come stay for a week.” you said a bit nervous.

 “Friends?” they all questioned.

 “Okay, look, I haven’t really told them I am dating all of you. I’m from Mississippi it’s not exactly welcomed. I have decided it was time to tell them,” you say as you look down at your fidgeting hands.

 They all surrounded you in an embrace and kissed your head.

 “I am sorry, mon cheri,” Laf said sympathetically.

 “I’m sure it will all work out, I mean you are their daughter after all,” John reassured.

 “I guess you’re right,” you gave him a half smile.

 “Come on, let’s get to bed and we can start planning tomorrow,” Herc said yawning and putting you over his shoulder.

 You loved how they each carried you in their own way. Herc put you over his shoulder, Laf let you wrap your arms and legs around you while he carried you on his front, Alex carried you like a bride and John piggybacked you. This was also one way you knew who was carrying you to bed if you fell asleep on the couch.

 You were all in the bed, and started to give goodnight kisses when Alexander wouldn’t let you pull away. There others got jealous and started joining him by kissing other parts of your body. You loved the nights when they each had their way with you and each other. Everyone always fell asleep satisfied on those nights, your favorite part was everyone’s skin as you laid twisted with each other. You slept naked anyway, but loved when all your boys did too.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before you knew it the say y’all were going to your hometown was here. You felt Herc slam the trunk of the car to get it to close and stared towards the airport. You gazed out the window deep in thought about this coming week. You are snapped back to reality with one of the boys moving your hair to the side and kissing your neck.

  “Ready?” John asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” you huffed.

  After a four and a half hour flight from NYC to Gulfport you pull up to your house in the rental car. You could feel your heart pounding and check your heart rate on your watch. 131. You haven’t seen that since your high school graduation. You turned the car off and opened the door.

  “Let’s do this,” you said with a shaky voice.

  “Hey,” Alex said as he pulled you to him, “Everything is going to be just fine,” he kissed you and let you go. All of the others planted a kiss on your lips also and they y’all proceeded to the door.

  Your house was right across from the beach and it had a wrap around porch on the first floor and each room on the second floor had a balcony. You were so happy to see your home again.

  “We are here!” you shouted as you opened the door.

  “Oh (Y/Nick Name)!” you mother came rushing in, hand in the air.

  “Sis!” your sister said as she followed your mother.

  “Hey! I’ve missed y’all so much!” you beamed, “Where is Mr. Steve?”

  “He is still at the office dear, we are going to dinner when he gets home,” your mother explained, “That gives all y’all a little bit of time to unpack.”

  “Oh right, these are my, uh, friends,” you said sheepishly, “Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Hercules Mulligan, and Marquis de Lafayette.”

  “I wasn’t aware that all of your friends were going to be males,” your mother said with a strange look on her face, “I will have to rearrange the sleeping.”

  “Why?” you asked.

  “Well, I thought it was going to be all girls so I put air mattresses in your room so y’all could all sleep in the same room.” your mother said.

  “We still can all share a room, I mean we do back home anyway.” As soon as you said this you knew you were screwed. You could feel all of the guys looking at you with wide eyes and heard them all shift with nervousness.

 “You. What.” your mother sounded mortified.

 “I mean we share a house, not a room, silly me.” you tried so hard to save yourself, but you knew you were past the point of return.

 “Okay, mother, I need to tell you something,” you started.

 “Non, Madame, we need to tell you something,” Laf interrupted.

 “We, as in all of us,” Herc admitted.

 John just stood there with red cheeks and shook his head.

 “Mother, um, you know how I have mentioned dating them? Well we are all kind of dating each other.” you stuttered out.

 “My. God. (Y/F/N). I cannot believe this. I will not allow this. This is absurd. So you know what your stepfather will say when he finds out?” your mother was furious.

 “Mother it’s not that big of a deal. Why are you freaking out?” you protested.

 “Look, in New York this may be ‘acceptable’ but here it is not.” your mother said trying not to yell, or cry.

 “Why not? You and everyone else here need to grow up and stop judging everybody on how they choose to live their lives.” you said slightly raising your tone.

 You turn around and walk towards the stairs. You grab Alexander’s and John’s wrists and pulled them with you. Laf and Herc followed. You reach your bedroom door and open it dramatically throw yourself on the bed. It still had your simple gray bedspread on it. Laf was the first one to come to you.

 “Amoureux, do not stress. We shall figure something out.” he said trying to comfort you as you sat in his lap with your face in his chest.

 “Yes, my love, we will. She is just shocked is all,” Alexander agreed.

“Look, just give her time to cool off,” John suggested.

 “Maybe I can talk to her. I am kind of intimidating,” Herc said trying to get you to smile.

 It worked. You looked at him with a half smile and even a small giggle. By then all of the boys were on the bed with you and snuggled together. You didn’t realize that your sister was standing there until she cleared her throat.

 “Oh, hey Amelia. I didn’t know you were standing there.” you commented.

 “It’s okay. I just came to check on you, well all of y’all,” she corrected.

 “Thanks, we appreciate it. We didn’t mean to cause a scene.”

 “I also came to say that I support your relationship. You are incredibly lucky to have found 4 people who love you. I know I just met them but just seeing them comfort you I can see they love you so much.” she said.

 “She is right,” Herc said and the rest nodded their heads in agreement.

 “Also, Mr. Steve will be home soon. Just thought I would warn you so y’all weren’t like this when he got here and mom told him the news.” she said.

 “Thanks again, sis.”

 “No problem.”

 You watched your sister leave and then looked up at Laf then the rest of your lovers. He stood up with you in his arms and placed your feet on the ground. You walked back downstairs and sat at the counter with the guys following you. Soon after that your stepdad walked in.

 “Hello (Y/N)!” he said excitedly, “Are these your friends?”

 “Um, yes,” you replied.

 “No, they are her boyfriends,” your mother claimed.

 “All of them?” he questioned.

 “Yes we are all dating each other.” you admitted again.

  “Um, wow, okay. I will call Callie to clean the spare rooms then.” he suggested.

“Why can’t we stay in the same room? We do at home, we all share a bed.”

  “I said that was not an option, did you forget that?” you mother butted in.

  “Please, we are grown adults we know how to behave, if that’s what you are scared of,” you sassed.

  “Our house, our rules,” she proclaimed.

  “Sweetie, please don’t do this in front of our guests,” Steve said taking your mother’s hand.

“Fine, but what I said stands. Call Callie, we are eating in tonight.”

  Your mother and stepdad walked off to their room leaving you in the kitchen with the boys and your sister. Y’all could hear your mother, but not your step dad. He cared a lot about what people thought of him and often kept his opinions to himself so he didn’t offend anyone and have his name be bashed in the press. Your mother always overreacted so you should have seen this coming. They came out of their room, your mother still looked upset but forced a smile on her face.

  “Did either of you call Callie?” she asked.

“No,” you and your sister both answered.

  “Okay, I guess we can still go out.” she sighed, “Everyone go freshen up. (Y/N), use your sister’s bathroom.”

  You huffed and rolled your eyes when you turned around and headed for the stairs. As soon as you heard your parent’s door close you went to your bathroom with the rest of the boys.

  “Your step dad, he reminds me of Burr,” Alexander said as soon as you entered.

  “Yeah…” you said.

  “I think we will be able to sleep in the same room, just not the same bed,” he started to explain, “He doesn’t want us to hate him, but wants us to get an idea of where he stands without saying it.”

  “I am going to start getting the bags out of the car,” Herc said.

  “Okay, I want to change out of these clothes anyway,” you answered.

  “We will all go. (Y/N), stay here and relax a minute while be bring everything in,” John said kissing your forehead then walking out the door. The rest followed. Herc kissed your cheek, Laf placed one on your lips, and Alex gave you a nice smack on the ass. God you loved them.

  They all came back in lugging the luggage.

  “Thank you my loves!” you said giving them each a kiss on their sweet lips as they dropped the bags.

  Went all 5 of you were changed and ready y’all walked to the kitchen where everyone else waited. Steve offered to drive everyone, but you said that y’all would follow. You and your 4 boyfriends piled up in the Beamer.

  “How are you doing, mon cheri?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Everything will be just fine. I promise,” Hercules said in his soothing voice as he rubbed your leg.

  You looked at him for a quick second and gave him a loving smile. Minutes later you pulled into a parking spot and walked into the restaurant. It was called Halfshell. You had been here countless times when you were growing up, so you didn’t even look at the menu before you ordered.

  When you left you all walked out hand-in-hand not caring about the looks. You noticed that your mother and stepdad held back and calling to your sister to wait with them. You reached the car, but before you got in the car you found your family by the door.

“We will see y’all at the house, I am taking my boyfriends the the beach for a nice romantic walk!” you shouted in a mocking tone.

  You knew your mother was steaming. As you passed you could also see the smoke coming out of her ears. As you pulled into the parking bay at Court House Pier your phone rang. You connected it to the car via bluetooth and answered.

  “Have you lost your mind!?” you knew you were in deep shit now.

  “I was just trying to prove a point. We don’t care about all the stares and weird looks, so why should you? I am your daughter, you should just be happy that I am happy. That I have 4 wonderful, amazing, caring, perfect boys that all love me and each other. I love each one of them with all my heart and if you can’t handle it we will come get our stuff and find somewhere to stay. I am perfectly okay with that, and I am sure ALL OF MY BOYFRIENDS are too.” you were sure to emphasize the all of my boyfriends part to let her know that you weren’t changing your mind about anything.

  “Don’t bother coming in, Callie is already putting everything on the porch.”

  You just stared, mouth gaped as the phone call ended. You felt tears start to fall over your eyelids and down your face. They all just looked at you.

  “Honey, let me drive to the house,” John spoke up.

  Hercules got out of the passenger seat and came around to the driver’s side and lifted you out if the car and placed you in the back seat. Lafayette placed you in the middle seat and wiped your tears away. He and Alex both cuddled you and Herc was turned around rubbing your leg. As John pulled into the driveway your sister came running out. She opened one of the doors.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Non, j'ai peur de ne pas.”

  “What?”

  “No, she isn’t,” Alexander loosely translated while he was still looking at you.

  You knew the boys were mad, Laf was speaking French, John’s nose was crinkled, Herc’s breath was deep and loud, and Alexander would not stop mumbling insults under his breath. Callie started carrying bags to the car and John and Herc started loading them in. Laf and Alexander did not move because you were still sitting in the same spot and still staring off with tears running down your face. Amelia kissed the top of your forehead said goodbye and apologized. Hercules got on his phone and found a place to stay. He put the location into the GPS since you were being a statue.

  It felt like you were in the car for hours. John finally pulled into a parking garage. The purple lighting you saw out of the corner of your eye told you you were at the Hard Rock in Biloxi, so you were only in the car for 20 minutes. Once John found a parking spot everyone piled out of the car, except for you and Laf. He stayed with you while the others went inside to get a room. When they got one Alex texted Laf the room number. He opened the door and carried you up to the room. You were so thankful that none of them tried to talk to you. You knew all you would be able to do was cry. Your mother kicked you out of your childhood home. Sure you had already moved away all the way to NYC, but she just rejected you for being you.

  In the room the boys were readying the room for you. They pulled back the blankets on the bed and put your favorite movie on the tv. They even stopped at Ben & Jerry’s in the lobby and brought up your favorite ice cream. Hercules pulled out your nightgown you wore around the house before bed, John dug out his stuffed turtle for you to hold, and Alexander was calling room service to bring your favorite midnight snack.

  Laf knocked on the door and you heard them all run to the door. He carried you inside and sat you on the bed. Alexander began to take off your shirt and bra, and John peeled away your jeans. Hercules put you in your nightgown while Laf changed into his pajamas and John and Alex put away your clothes. Hercules placed you in the middle of the bed and they all climbed into the bed as well, sitting around you.

  “Are you ready to talk Sweetness?” Hercules asked in his deep voice.

  “Why does she have to be like this? My own mother doesn���t support my decision to be with all the people I love. To share a bed in my bed at my house where I grew up. Share something that was apart of most of my life with the loves of my life. To care more about what people will say about her because I am with all of you who not only love me, but each other. Why does she care more about what the public thinks than about my happiness.” you paused to blow your nose and regain yourself. “If she doesn’t care, then neither do I. If she wants me out then so be it. I refuse to let what she thinks hold me back any longer. All of y’all is all I need.”

  You took off your nightgown and handed it to Hercules. Everyone gave each other their goodnight kisses and cuddled under the covers.

  “I love you, each of you, with all my heart. No matter what. No matter the looks we get or the comments that are said. I love you, each of you with all my heart, always.”

[katbird787]

Don’t Hide From Me (Pt 1 of 2?)

Pairing: Tony x Reader

Word Count: ~2100

Request: From  @thevanishedillusion​

Summary:  Friends with Tony for years, with him in Afghanistan, you couldn’t bear to see him take on the “suicide mission” that was Iron Man. However, fate has a way of bringing you back.

Masterlist

You feel small, having forgotten how large the city actually was.  But, standing here in front of Stark Tower is a sharp reminder.  It’s been many years since you stood in the shadow of this imposing building.  The last time, you were walking away.

You stood in the back of the now infamous press conference

“I know it’s confusing. It’s one thing to question the official story and another thing to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I’m a superhero” Tony snarks at the reporter.

Rolling her eyes, the reporter replies, “I never said Superhero”

Clearly taken aback he continues, “Well, good, because that would be outlandish, and fantastic.” He mumbles the last few words and sighs as he continues. “I’m just not the hero type, with this…laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I’ve made; largely public.” At this, Rhodey leans in whispering something.

“The truth is” he trails off, before his confidence returns, “I am Iron Man.”

The reports are scrambling over themselves to try to get more out of him, but you couldn’t wait to get further away. You returned to your room, packed your bags, walked out, and didn't look back. You couldn't bear to stand by and watch as he threw himself into a suicide mission; despite the feelings you might harbor for the billionaire.

And so you left, moved across the country, got a prestigious job at a tech company in Seattle, and tried not to think about the man, and life, you left behind.

But life has a way of coming full circle. You spent several years moving up the ladder at your new company when Tony called you and offered you a job; with benefits that you really couldn't refuse.  Between the incredible raise, a room at the tower, and the opportunity to work on seemingly impossible projects alongside him, and assisting the Avengers, you would be an idiot to turn it down.  

So here you are, gathering up your courage to once again walk through those doors.  

Steeling yourself, taking a deep breath, grasping the worn leather of your bag in your hand, you take the first step forward. Followed by a second, and third, and soon you find yourself opening the door.  

Looking up you are still in awe of the architecture and décor; Tony has nothing, if not impeccable tastes.  Your legs carry you to the reception desk.  A pretty girl with long wavy black hair greets you with a 1000-watt smile, “Welcome to Stark Tower. How may I help?”

“I’m Ms. Y/l/n. I have an appointment with Mr. Stark.” You offer to the woman.

Brows creasing slightly, she taps away at her keyboard.  “Ah, yes, I see it now,” but with that she trails off, looking slightly uncomfortable.  You know what she is going to say, before she even formulates the response.

But a voice sounds from behind you, and you smile to yourself at the relief that flashes across her face. “Ms. Y/l/n?”

Turning on your heels, you see none other than Captain America walking toward you.  “Yes, but please, call me Y/n, Captain,” offering your hand.

His large hand envelops yours, “Alright, but it’s not Captain here. Just Steve will do.”

“All right ‘Just Steve’” you say with a sly smirk.

Tilting his head back and releasing a laugh, he places his hand on your back and leads you to the elevator. “Tony had to step out for a minute, so I figured I’d come down to meet you and help you get settled.”

Humming in response, “He forgot,” more a statement, than a question.

At this Steve was clearly uncomfortable, shifting slightly on his feet as we wait to for the elevator.

“You might not know, Steve, but Tony and I have a long history. I know him; he gets so consumed in his current project that everything else falls to the wayside,” you state matter-of-factly, if somewhat sadly.

You miss the way Steve looks at you, but he still ushers you into the lift.  “Tony has your apartment all set up.  You things arrived yesterday,” he offers quietly.

Looking up at him, you smile and offer a genuine thanks.  

Seeming to relax a little, you both make small talk about your trip, the weather, and other menial things.

You were surprised at how down to earth the super soldier was; it was nice; easy. As the elevator arrived to your floor, Steve was giving you the run down of the tower, not that you really needed it, but some things had changed, and the update was nice.  You exit the lift on the floor that you and Tony would share, and walk to your apartment door, Steve stops you, “I’m really glad you’re here.”

You look at him quizzically, so he continues, “Tony has been happier than I’ve seen him in a long time, and I have a hunch that it’s because you agreed to come back,” he states as he rubs the back of his neck.  “We have our differences, but he deserves to be happy; so thank you.”

You started at him, eyes wide, and mouth open. It never crossed your mind that your return would have that effect on him.  Finally collecting yourself you nodded, feeling a blush heating your cheeks.

Entering your apartment you can feel the nostalgia start to creep in. The layout is almost identical to your old place. However, it’s updated with your new furniture, pictures, and décor. Looking around you can’t help the laugh that bubbles up from your chest, as Steve looks panicked at your reaction.

“I’m sorry,” you wheeze, “but this is exactly how Tony would set up the furniture.”  As you glance at Steve you can’t help but feel sorry for your reaction,  “I’m sorry, it’s perfect; and the apartment is wonderful. I think I’m just exhausted and slap-happy from my flight.”  You try to allay his worries.  

He isn’t completely convinced, but relaxes a little as he informs you of the time that dinner is arriving, urging you to join them and meet the rest of the team.

“Of course, it would be a pleasure; as long as you sure they won’t mind me intruding,” you respond.  

“Not at all, Tony has spoken highly of you since you accepted his offer, so everyone is anxious to meet you,” he assures you.

“Ok, I’ll see you then,” you say as he walks out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Taking in your new apartment, you can’t believe that after all these years you are back, you never thought it would happen.  You walk into the bedroom; unpack some of your clothes before hopping in the shower to rinse off the airplane feeling.  

The shower did wonders on your energy level, so you spent the rest of the afternoon rearranging the furniture so your favorite chair was just so. When that was done, a female voice comes over the speakers announcing dinner was ready.  “Jarvis?” you ask, confused.

“No, Ms. Y/l/n, I’m FRIDAY, Mr. Stark’s new AI,” she answered.

“Ah, Ok.  And please call me Y/n, FRIDAY,” you said as you walked to the door to meet the rest of The Avengers.

When the elevator arrived to the floor, you took a deep breath and stepped out to the chaos that is dinner with the team.  

When Steve saw you, he called everyone’s attention, and introduced you.  You returned their greetings with a small wave and a nervous “Hello.”  Your nerves quickly dissipated as they were incredibly welcoming and easy to get along with.; nothing like how you imagined they would be.  

Dinner passed in easy conversation and lots of laughs.  As evening turned to night, you bid them a good night, and went back to your room, disappointment heavy within your chest. Disappointed that Tony hadn’t even come back for dinner.  But you shook it off, knowing that you would see him in the morning when you started your first day in the lab.  

Your exhaustion quickly caught up with you and you fell to sleep nearly as soon as your head hit the pillow.  

Pain.

“NO!” A scream rips out of your throat, as you struggle against your restraints.

“Why were we hired to kidnap Tony Stark?” a deep voice demands.

“I don’t know,” you beg in a weak whisper.

The answer wasn’t good enough, it never was.  Something solid hit your cheek, snapping your face to the side, another blow lands against your ribs.

“Lets try this again,” he says, waiting for a different answer, one you will never be able to answer.

You hear the crackling of the fire behind you before you feel the searing metal harsh against your back.

Another screams tears out of your chest.

Shooting up in bed, you pray that you didn’t wake anyone with your nightmare.  You rush out of bed, stumbling on the sheets tangled around your legs, on your way to the bathroom.  Looking in the mirror you see the telltale signs of nightmares.  Sweat soaked clothes clung to your body as your chest heaved while you tried to calm your breathing and slow your racing heart. Hair plastered to your face and neck, eyes wide and filled with unshed tears.  Glancing at the clock, you see barely two hours had passed since you got back from dinner.  Your nightmares had been few and far between, but you had a feeling that with your return to the tower, you would be seeing more of them.  Sighing in resignation, you strip your sweaty clothes and turned the shower on.  Catching a glance in the mirror, you see the, now well-healed, scars from your time captured in Afghanistan with Tony.

You step under the hot spray, allowing the soothing sounds of the water on the tiles to calm you and steady your breathing.  Closing your eyes, and leaning your head against the cool tile, you think back to that trip.

Riding in the Humvee with Tony and the soldiers, he was all jokes and smart remarks.

“I feel like you are driving me to court martial, this is crazy, what did I do. I feel like you are going to pull over and snuff me. What? You aren’t allowed to talk? Hey Forrest!” Tony said, making you roll your eyes, and poorly suppress a chuckle

“We can talk sir” one soldier replied

“So it’s personal”

“No, you intimidate them,” the driver said.

“Good god, you’re a woman. I honestly couldn’t have called that. I mean I’d apologize but isn’t that what were going for here. I thought of you as a soldier first.”

“I’m actually an airman,” she replied

“You have excellent bone structure there. I’m actually having a hard time not looking at you now. Is that weird? Come on, It’s ok. Laugh!” Tony said, finally loosening up the tension in the vehicle.

A few moments later everything was on fire, it all happened so fast, you didn’t have time to do anything but find Tony and get cover.

The water began to cool down, so you turned it off, dried and dressed in clean clothes, and straightened up the bed.  Walking into the kitchen, you poured a drink and started to go out on the balcony, when a soft knock at your door caused you to pause.  As you go to answer the door, you wonder who would be coming to see you at this hour, but you should have known.

“Tony Stark as I live and breathe,” you say, a smile gracing your face, as he pulls you into a hug.  

“Hey Y/n, it’s been a long time,” he mumbles into your hair, refusing to let you go.  

You relax into his arms, taking a deep breath.  No matter the expensive cologne he wears, or the cigars he enjoys, Tony always had a hint of oil and grease as an undertone from all of his time spent in the lab.  

You didn’t realize how much you had missed him, until the tears start pricking at your eyes.  He hears you sniffle, and pulls you away, “Hey, no tears!  This is good,” he says softly.

“It is.  It is,” you reply, stepping aside so he can come in the apartment.

Pouring him a drink, you both sit on the couch, talking for hours, until eventually a poorly suppressed yawn convinces you both to go to bed, with promises of breakfast before starting work in the morning.

Part 2

~~~~

Tags are open, let me know! :-)

@bucky-bear-barnes @mytasterpeculiar  @topthis808 @feelmyroarrrr @mitra-k-w   @blacwings-and-bucky-barnes @hellomissmabel @justareader @volklana @avengerofyourheart @bovaria @thevanishedillusion

[devildrinksvodka]

This is the final- and possibly the most important rule yet.   When you know you are doing your best, there is no room for questioning yourself and instead of feelings of guilt and shame, there’s a feeling of peace in the heart.

The teacher who teaches next to me is exemplary.  She is a phenomenal teacher and is great even with our most difficult students and families.  She advocates for us as a staff when she asks our principal tough and uncomfortable questions during professional development.  She advocates for our families by attending the many committee meetings that she is involved in.  She is someone who I always strive to be more like– truly a remarkable woman.  Her teaching badassness is not even her best asset.  She is also the mom of 3 (now adult) boys and a cancer survivor.

One day last year the gossip mill was running overtime at work.  This teacher, Karen, was part of the drama.  Her grade level team had our most difficult grade last year.  Out of the 60 something kids in that grade level, many are not native English speakers, 14 have Individual Education Plans for reading, writing or math difficulties and probably around 15 who have attention difficulties or behavior problems.  Her grade was at an end of the year data meeting where administration and teachers examine student growth. Last year, the students did not seem to be split equally.  The male teacher seemed to get the best deal, with only one student who has an IEP and no major behavior problem students– while the other two teachers had several students with strong behavior needs as well as several students with intense learning needs.  Incidentally, the male teacher had the best growth of the three teachers.

An argument over student growth occurred during that meeting.  I wasn’t there, so I only heard the information secondhand.  But, as my closest work pals and I talked about the audacity our principal had, as he basically shamed the 2 teachers with less growth we wondered why Karen continues to take on way more roles than is expected.  Even though my principal can be a bit of a snake, Karen will always step up to help.  It hit me later that night, Karen lives her life “Always doing her best.”  I’m sure that’s it–  after all, she is the one who recommended The Four Agreements in the first place.

Your best will look different day to day.

When you do your best, you don’t give the judge the opportunity to find you guilty or to blame you.  If you have done your best and the Judge tries to judge you according to your Book of Law, you’ve got the answer: “I did my best.”  There are no regrets.  That is why we always do our best.  It is not an easy agreement to keep, but this agreement is really going to set you free. 

When you do your best you learn to accept yourself.  But you have to be aware and learn from your mistakes. Learning from your mistakes means you practice, look honestly at the results, and keep practicing.  This increases your awareness.

Doing your bes really doesn’t feel like work because you enjoy whatever you are doing.  You know you are doing your best when you are enjoy whatever you are doing.  You know you’re doing your best when you are enjoying the action or doing itin a way that will not have negative repercussions for you.  You do your best because you want to do it, not because you have to do it, not because you are trying to please the Judge, and not because you are trying to please other people. 

If you take action because you have to, then there is no way you are going to do your best.  Then it is better not to do it.  No, you do your best because doing your best all the time makes you so happy.  When you are doing your best just for the pleasure of doing it, you are taking action because you enjoy the action. 

Action is about living fully.  Inaction is the way that we deny life.  Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are.  Expressing what you are is taking action.   You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action.  Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward. 

A good example comes from the story about Forrest Gump.  he didn’t have great ideas, but he took action.  He was happy because he always did his best at whatever he did.  He was richly awarded without expecting any reward at all.  Taking action is being alive.  It’s taking the risk to go out and express your dream. This is different than imposing your dream on someone else, because everyone has the right to express his or her dream.   

We’ve lived at our current house for almost 5 years now.  Up until this summer, my home projects were stagnant.  I’ve had the past 5 summers off, with minimal tasks getting accomplished.  For years I couldn’t figure out what my problem is.  I LOVE our house– I really do– after all a very significant epiphany urged me to talk my husband into buying it (it was his parents).  Especially the outside, it is so peaceful and serene.  Despite my love for our home, the beautiful gardens that his parents used to keep so pristine were constantly overflowing with weeds.  Our serene pond was surrounded by a jungle, as was the front of our home. So the outside was a constant source of feelings of being overwhelmed.

(read about my ephiphany here:  https://thedevildrinksvodka.com/2018/06/01/the-epiphany/)

The inside wasn’t much better– a typical year would include cleaning out only one to two closets, and that’s about it.  I just couldn’t get the focus and motivation needed to get anything done.  I would talk to my mother in law about keeping up the house and she had great suggestions.  She was a teacher back in her day, so she lived at this very same house raising her family and catching up on home projects during summer vacation.  She suggested just filling a small grocery bag a day with weeds and filling just one box per day of things to get rid of when unpacking the basement.  That never worked for me, any project I did had to be done in its entirety (and as you can guess that never happened).  Looking at my own parents made me even more confused.  My dad is retired and keeps busy everyday.  He is constantly doing work around his house to make it nicer.  My mom is no longer here, but she was the home QUEEN.  At any given time she was repainting a room or rearranging our furniture.  The inside and outside of our house was immaculate.  She was always busy cleaning walls or floors, raking, weeding, painting, etc.  I always wondered what my problem is.  Hubby would come home on Friday and spend the evening mowing, edging and other yard maintenance while I did the minimal on the inside.  Minimal being making dinner and loading the dishwasher. I’m going to blame lack of both focus and motivation, and as you can guess being so idle did not make me feel fulfilled.

Here’s a newsflash, reader:  If something is prohibiting you from accomplishing something in life, you may want to consider looking into it instead of passively accepting it.  In other words, you’re broken and need to be fixed.

I was so broken and I so desperately wanted this summer to be different.  I didn’t want to start drinking and I wanted to accomplish things.  I didn’t expect to get a ton of motivation to work around the house but I at least thought that I could catch up on my spiritual readings and work the steps.  After my sister went back to Florida and all our trips were done, I knew it was time to get to work, and I did.

Amazingly, as I cleaned out my negativity and intentionally filled up on love, loads of focus and motivation came to me.  Suddenly all of these overwhelming projects were simplified into small and manageable tasks.  It’s been just a couple weeks, but I redid the landscaping around our pond, cleaned up the front beds and cleaned up our patio area that has been filled with blow up pool toys since last summer.  After my PT appointment I’m going to go shop for some clearance furniture/decorations to spruce it up a bit.  This is what I have in mind:

I’ve done more these past 3 weeks than I’ve done the past 5 years.  Wanna know the best part?  It hasn’t been stressful– or exhausting.  It’s been phenomenal.   I’ve found a strength and creativity that I didn’t know I even had.  It’s been FUN, and so rewarding.  Long gone are the feelings of being so overwhelmed- as nothing HAS to get done and everything really only is the sum of small tasks lumped together.  I only attribute this positive change to getting my soul healthy– which largely includes living the by the rules of The Four Agreements.

  The Four Agreements: Agreement 4 – Always Do Your Best This is the final- and possibly the most important rule yet.   When you know you are doing your best, there is no room for questioning yourself and instead of feelings of guilt and shame, there's a feeling of peace in the heart.

[lhight1-mtsac-eng1a-645to50]

HOMEWORK (DUE 9/27):

Please read “Notes to My Biographer” by Adam Haslett (posted below), and answer the questions on the study guide (also posted below).

NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER

A short story by Adam Haslett

          Two things to get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, I’m not about to change. The mental-health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hilltop in the rain before I touch their snake oil or listen to the visionless chatter of men half my age. I have shot Germans in the fields of Normandy, filed twenty-six patents, married three women, survived them all, and am currently the subject of an investigation by the IRS, which has about as much chance of collecting from me as Shylock did of getting his pound of flesh. Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly. I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid.

            Note, for instance, the way I obtained the Saab I am presently driving into the Los Angeles basin: a niece in Scottsdale lent it to me. Do you think she’ll ever see it again? Unlikely. Of course, when I borrowed it from her I had every intention of returning it, and in a few days or weeks I may feel that way again, but for now forget her and her husband and three children who looked at me over the kitchen table like I was a museum piece sent to bore them. I could run circles around those kids. They’re spoon-fed Ritalin and private schools and have eyes that say, Give me things I don’t have. I wanted to read them a book on the history of the world, its immigrations, plagues, and wars, but the shelves of their outsized condominium were full of ceramics and biographies of the stars. The whole thing depressed the hell out of me and I’m glad to be gone.

            A week ago I left Baltimore with the idea of seeing my son Graham. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently, days we spent together in the barn at the old house, how with him as my audience ideas came quickly, and I don’t know when I’ll get to see him again. I thought I might as well catch up with some of the other relatives along the way. I planned to start at my daughter Linda’s in Atlanta, but when I arrived it turned out she’d moved. I called Graham, and when he got over the shock of hearing my voice, he said Linda didn’t want to see me. By the time my younger brother Ernie refused to do anything more than have lunch with me after I had taken a bus all the way to Houston, I began to get the idea that this episodic reunion thing might be more trouble than it was worth. Scottsdale did nothing to alter my opinion. These people seem to think they’ll have another chance, that I’ll be coming around again. The fact is I’ve completed my will, made bequests of my patent rights, and am now just composing a few notes to my biographer, who, in a few decades, when the true influence of my work becomes apparent, may need them to clarify certain issues.

Franklin Caldwell Singer, b. 1924, Baltimore, Maryland.

Child of a German machinist and a banker’s daughter.

My psych discharge following “desertion” in Paris was trumped up by an army intern resentful of my superior knowledge of the diagnostic manual. The nude-dancing incident at the Louvre in a room full of Rubenses had occurred weeks earlier and was of a piece with other celebrations at the time.

B.A., Ph.D., Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University.

1952. First and last electroshock treatment, for which I will never, never, never forgive my parents.

Researcher, Eastman Kodak Laboratories. As with so many institutions in this country, talent was resented. I was fired as soon as I began to point out flaws in the management structure. Two years later I filed a patent on a shutter mechanism that Kodak eventually broke down and purchased (then?Vice President for Product Development Arch Vendellini was having an affair with his daughter’s best friend, contrary to what he will tell you. Notice the way his left shoulder twitches when he is lying).

All subsequent diagnoses—and let me tell you, there have been a number—are the result of two forces, both in their way pernicious. 1) The attempt by the psychiatric establishment over the last century to redefine eccentricity as illness, and 2) the desire of members of my various families to render me docile and if possible immobile.

The electric-bread-slicer concept was stolen from me by a man in a diner in Chevy Chase dressed as a reindeer whom I could not possibly have known was an employee of Westinghouse.

That I have no memories of the years 1988?90 and believed until very recently that Ed Meese was still the attorney general is not owing to my purported paranoid blackout but, on the contrary, the fact that my third wife took it upon herself to lace my coffee with tranquilizers. Believe nothing you hear about the divorce settlement.

          When I ring the buzzer at Graham’s place in Venice, a Jew in his late twenties with some fancy-looking musculature answers the door. He appears nervous and says, “We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow,” and I ask him who they are and he says, “Me and Graham,” adding hurriedly, “We’re friends, you know, only friends. I don’t live here, I’m just over to use the computer.”

          All I can think is I hope this guy isn’t out here trying to get acting jobs, because it’s obvious to me right away that my son is gay and is screwing this character with the expensive-looking glasses. There was a lot of that in the military and I learned early on that it comes in all shapes and sizes, not just the fairy types everyone expects. Nonetheless, I am briefly shocked by the idea that my twenty-nine-year-old boy has never seen fit to share with me the fact that he is a fruitcake—no malice intended—and I resolve right away to talk to him about it when I see him. Marlon Brando overcomes his stupor and lifting my suitcase from the car he leads me through the back garden past a lemon tree in bloom to a one-room cottage with a sink and plenty of light to which I take an instant liking.

            “This will do nicely,” I say, and then I ask him, “How long have you been sleeping with my son?” It’s obvious he thinks I’m some brand of geriatric homophobe getting ready to come on in a religiously heavy manner, and seeing that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in his eye I take pity and disabuse him. I’ve seen women run down by tanks. I’m not about to get worked up about the prospect of fewer grandchildren. When I start explaining to him that social prejudice of all stripes runs counter to my Enlightenment ideals—ideals tainted by centuries of partial application—it becomes clear to me that Graham has given him the family line. His face grows patient and his smile begins to leak the sympathy of the ignorant: poor old guy suffering from mental troubles his whole life, up one month, down the next, spewing grandiose notions that slip like sand through his fingers to which I always say, you just look up Frank Singer at the U.S. Patent Office. In any case, this turkey probably thinks the Enlightenment is a marketing scheme for General Electric; I spare him the seminar I could easily conduct and say, “Look, if the two of you share a bed, it’s fine with me.”

            “That drive must have worn you out,” he says hopefully. “Do you want to lie down for a bit?”

            I tell him I could hook a chain to my niece’s Saab and drag it through a marathon. This leaves him nonplussed. We walk back across the yard together into the kitchen of the bungalow. I ask him for pen, paper, and calculator and begin sketching an idea that came to me just a moment ago—I can feel the presence of Graham already—for a bicycle capable of storing the energy generated on the downward slope in a small battery and releasing it through a handlebar control when needed on the uphill, a potential gold mine when you consider the aging population and the increase in leisure time created by early retirement. I have four pages of specs and the estimated cost of a prototype done by the time Graham arrives two hours later. He walks into the kitchen wearing a blue linen suit with a briefcase held to his chest and seeing me at the table goes stiff as a board. I haven’t seen him in five years and the first thing I notice is that he’s got bags under his eyes and he looks exhausted. When I open my arms to embrace him he takes a step backward.

            “What’s the matter?” I ask. Here is my child wary of me in a strange kitchen in California, his mother’s ashes spread long ago over the Potomac, the objects of our lives together stored in boxes or sold.

          “You actually came,” he says.

            “I’ve invented a new bicycle,” I say, but this seems to reach him like news of some fresh death. Ben hugs Graham there in front of me. I watch my son rest his head against this fellow’s shoulder like a tired soldier on a train. “It’s going to have a self-charging battery,” I say, sitting again at the table to review my sketches.

~

With Graham here my idea is picking up speed, and while he’s in the shower I unpack my bags, rearrange the furniture in the cottage, and tack my specs to the wall. Returning to the house, I ask Ben if I can use the phone and he says that’s fine, and then he tells me, “Graham hasn’t been sleeping so great lately, but I know he really does want to see you.”

            “Sure, no hard feelings, fine.”

           "He’s been dealing with a lot recently . . . maybe some things you could talk to him about … and I think you might—"

            “Sure, sure, no hard feelings,” and then I call my lawyer, my engineer, my model builder, three advertising firms whose numbers I find in the yellow pages, the American Association of Retired Persons—that market will be key—an old college friend who I remember once told me he’d competed in the Tour de France, figuring he’ll know the bicycle-industry angle, my bank manager to discuss financing, the Patent Office, the Cal Tech physics lab, the woman I took to dinner the week before I left Baltimore, and three local liquor stores before I find one that will deliver a case of Dom Pérignon.

            “That’ll be for me!” I call out to Graham as he emerges from the bedroom to answer the door what seems only minutes later. He moves slowly and seems sapped of life.

            “What’s this?”

            “We’re celebrating! There’s a new project in the pipeline!”

            Graham stares at the bill as though he’s having trouble reading it. Finally, he says, “This is twelve hundred dollars. We’re not buying it.”

            I tell him Schwinn will drop that on donuts for the sales reps when I’m done with this bike, that Oprah Winfrey’s going to ride it through the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

            “My dad made a mistake,” he says to the delivery guy.

            I end up having to go outside and pay for it through the window of the truck with a credit card the man is naïve enough to accept and I carry it back to the house myself.

            “What am I going to do?” I hear Graham whisper.

            I round the corner into the kitchen and they fall silent. The two of them make a handsome couple standing there in the gauzy, expiring light of evening. When I was born you could have arrested them for kissing. There ensues an argument that I only half bother to participate in concerning the champagne and my enthusiasm, a recording he learned from his mother; he presses play and the fraction of his ancestry that suffered from conventionalism speaks through his mouth like a ventriloquist: your-idea-is-fantasy-calm-down-it-will- be-the-ruin-of-you-medication-medication-medication. He has a good mind, my son, always has, and somewhere the temerity to use it, to spear mediocrity in the eye, but in a world that encourages nothing of the sort the curious boy becomes the anxious man. He must suffer his people’s regard for appearances. Sad. I begin to articulate this with Socratic lucidity, which seems only to exacerbate the situation.

            “Why don’t we just have some champagne,” Ben interjects. “You two can talk this over at dinner.”

            An admirable suggestion. I take three glasses from the cupboard, remove a bottle from the case, pop the cork, fill the glasses, and propose a toast to their health.

          My niece’s Saab does eighty-five without a shudder on the way to dinner. With the roof down, smog blowing through my hair, I barely hear Graham, who’s shouting something from the passenger’s seat. He’s probably worried about a ticket, which for the high of this ride I’d pay twice over and tip the officer to boot. Sailing down the freeway I envision a lane of bicycles quietly recycling power once lost to the simple act of pedaling. We’ll have to get the environmentalists involved, which could mean government money for research and a lobbying arm to navigate any legislative interference. Test marketing in L.A. will increase the chance of celebrity endorsements, and I’ll probably need to do a book on the germination of the idea for release with the first wave of product. I’m thinking early 2001. The advertising tag line hits me as we glide beneath an overpass: Making Every Revolution Count.

          There’s a line at the restaurant and when I try to slip the maître d’ a twenty, Graham holds me back.

          “Dad,” he says, “you can’t do that.”

            “Remember the time I took you to the Ritz in that Rolls-Royce with the right-hand drive and you told me the chicken in your sandwich was tough and I spoke to the manager and we got the meal for free? And you drew a diagram of the tree fort you wanted and it gave me an idea for storage containers.”

            He nods his head.

          “Come on, where’s your smile?”

          I walk up to the maître d’, but when I hand him the twenty he gives me a funny look and I tell him he’s a lousy shit for pretending he’s above that sort of thing. “You want a hundred?” I ask, and am about to give him an even larger piece of my mind when Graham turns me around and says, “Please don’t.”

          “What kind of work are you doing?” I ask him.

          “Dad,” he says, “just settle down.” His voice is so quiet, so meek.

          “I asked you what kind of work you do.”

            “I work at a brokerage.”

            A brokerage! What didn’t I teach this kid? “What do you do for them?”

            “Stocks. Listen, Dad, we need—”

            “Stocks!” I say. “Christ! Your mother would turn in her grave if she had one.”

             "Thanks,“ he says under his breath.

            "What was that?” I ask.

            “Forget it.”

            At this point, I notice everyone in the foyer is staring at us. They all look like they were in television fifteen years ago, the men wearing Robert Wagner turtlenecks and blazers. A woman in mauve hot pants with a shoulder bag the size of her torso appears particularly disapproving and self-satisfied, and I feel like asking her what it is she does to better the lot of humanity. “You’ll be riding my bicycle in three years,” I tell her. She draws back as though I had thrown a rat on the carpet.

            Once we’re seated it takes ten minutes to get bread and water on the table, and sensing a bout of poor service, I begin to jot on a napkin the time of each of our requests and the hour of its arrival. Also, as it occurs to me:

Hollow-core chrome frame with battery mounted over rear tire wired to rear-wheel engine housing wired to handlebar control/thumb-activated accelerator; warning to cyclist concerning increased speed of crankshaft during application of stored revolutions. Power break?

Biographer file: Graham as my muse, mystery thereof, see storage container, pancake press, flying teddy bear, renovations of barn for him to play in, power bike.

           Graham disagrees with me when I try to send back a second bottle of wine, apparently under the impression that one ought to accept spoiled goods in order not to hurt anybody’s feelings. This strikes me as maudlin, but I let it go for the sake of harmony. Something has changed in him. Appetizers take a startling nineteen minutes to appear.

            “You should start thinking about quitting your job,” I say. “I’ve decided I’m not going to stay on the sidelines with this one. The power bike’s a flagship product, the kind of thing that could support a whole company. We stand to make a fortune, Graham, and I can do it with you.” One of the Robert Wagners cranes his neck to look at me from a neighboring booth.

            “Yeah, I bet you want a piece of the action, buddy,” I say, which sends him back to his endive salad in a hurry. Graham listens as I elaborate the business plan: there’s start-up financing for which we’ll easily attract venture capital, the choice of location for the manufacturing plant—you have to be careful about state regulations—executives to hire, designers to work under me, a sales team, accountants, benefits, desks, telephones, workshops, paychecks, taxes, computers, copiers, decor, water coolers, doormats, parking spaces, electric bills. Maybe a humidifier. A lot to consider. As I speak, I notice that others in the restaurant are turning to listen as well. It’s usually out of the corner of my eye that I see it and the people disguise it well, returning to their conversations in what they probably think is convincing pantomime. The Westinghouse reindeer pops to mind. How ingenious they were to plant him there in the diner I ate at each Friday morning, knowing my affection for the Christmas myth, determined to steal my intellectual property.

Re: Chevy Chase incident, look also into whether or not I might have invented auto-reverse tape decks and also therefore did Sony or GE own property adjacent to my Baltimore residence—noise, distraction tactics, phony road construction, etc.—and also Schwinn, Raleigh, etc., presence during Los Angeles visit.

          “Could we talk about something else?” Graham asks.

             "Whatever you like,“ I say, and I inform the waiter our entrées were twenty-six minutes in transit. Turns out my fish is tougher than leather, and the waiter’s barely left when I have to begin snapping my fingers for his return.

             "Stop that!” Graham says. I’ve reached the end of my tether with his passivity and freely ignore him. He’s leaning over the table about to swat my arm down when the fellow returns.

            “Is there a problem?”

            “My halibut’s dry as sand.”

          The goateed young man eyes my dish suspiciously, as though I might have replaced the original plate with some duplicate entrée pulled from a bag beneath the table.

          “I’ll need a new one.”

            “No he won’t,” Graham says at once.

            The waiter pauses, considering on whose authority to proceed.

          “Do you have anything to do with bicycles?” I ask him.

            “What do you mean?” he asks.

            “Professionally.”

          The young man looks across the room to the maître d’, who offers a coded nod.

          “That’s it. We’re getting out of here,” I say, grabbing bread rolls.

            “Sit down,” Graham insists.

          But it’s too late; I know the restaurant’s lousy with mountain-bike executives. “You think I’m going to let a bunch of industry hustlers steal an idea that’s going to change the way every American and one day every person on the globe conceives of a bicycle? Do you realize what bicycles mean to people? They’re like ice cream or children’s books, they’re primal objects woven into the fabric of our earliest memories, not to mention our most intimate connection with the wheel itself, an invention that marks the commencement of the great ascent of human knowledge that brought us through printing presses, religious transformations, undreamt-of speed, the moon. When you ride a bicycle you participate in an unbroken chain of human endeavor stretching back to stone-carting Egyptian peasants, and I’m on the verge of revolutionizing that invention, making its almost mythical power a storable quantity. You have the chance to be there with me, ‘like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific—and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise—silent, upon a peak in Darien.’ The things we’ll see!”

            Because I’m standing as I say this a quorum of the restaurant seems to think I’m addressing them as well, and though I’ve slipped in giving them a research lead I can see in their awed expressions that they know as I do, not everyone can scale the high white peaks of real invention. Some—such as these—must sojourn in the lowlands where the air is thick with half measures and dreams die of inertia. Yes! It is true.

            “You’ll never catch up with me,” I say to the gawking industrial spies.

            This seems to convince Graham we indeed need to leave. He throws some cash on the table and steers me by the arm out of the restaurant. We walk slowly along the boulevard. There’s something sluggish about Graham, his rounded shoulders and bowed head.

           "Look, there’s a Japanese place right over there, we can get maki rolls and teriyaki, maybe some blowfish, I can hear all about the brokerage, we might even think about whether your company wants to do the initial public offering on the bike venture, there could be an advantage—"

            He shakes his head and keeps walking up the street, one of whose features is a truly remarkable plenitude of shapely women, and I am reminded of the pleasures of being single, glances and smiles being enjoyed without guilt and for that matter why not consummation? Maybe it’s unseemly for a seventy-three-year-old to talk about erections, but oh, do I get 'em! I’m thinking along these lines when we pass what appears to be the lobby of a luxury hotel convention-center kind of place, and of course I’m also thinking trade shows and how far ahead you have to book those things so I turn in and, after a small protest, Graham follows (I tell him I need to use the bathroom).

            “I’d like to talk to the special-events manager,” I say to the girl behind the desk.

            “I’m afraid he’s only here during the day, sir,” she replies with a blistering customer-service smile, as though she were telling me exactly what I wanted to hear.

            “Well, isn’t that just wonderful,” I say, and she seems to agree that yes, it is wonderful, wonderful that the special-events manager of the Royal Sonesta keeps such regular hours, as though it were the confirmation of some beneficent natural order.

          “I guess I’ll just have to take a suite anyway and see him in the morning. My son and I will have a little room-service dinner in privacy, where the sharks don’t circle!”

          Concern clouds the girl’s face as she taps her keyboard.

            “The Hoover Suite is available on nineteen. That’s $680 a night. Will that be all right?”

          “Perfect.”

          When I’ve secured the keys I cross to where Graham’s sitting on the couch. “Dinner is served,” I say with a bow.

          “What are you talking about?”

            “I got us a suite,” I say, rattling the keys.

          Graham rolls his eyes and clenches his fists.

            “Dad!”

          There’s something desperate in his voice.

            “What!”

            “Stop! Just stop! You’re out of control,” he says. He looks positively frantic. “Why do you think Linda and Ernie don’t want to see you, Dad, why do you think that is? Is it so surprising to you? They can’t handle this! Mom couldn’t handle this! Can’t you see that? It’s selfish of you not to see a doctor!” he shouts, pounding his fists on his thighs. “It’s selfish of you not to take the drugs! Selfish!”

            The lobby’s glare has drained his face of color and about his unblinking eyes I can see the outlines of what will one day be the marks of age, and then all of a sudden the corpse of my son lies prostrate in front of me, the years since we last saw one another tunneling out before me for some infinite distance, and I hear the whisper of a killing loneliness travel along its passage as though the sum total of every minute of his pain in every spare hour of every year was drawn in a single breath and held in this expiring moment. Tears well in my eyes. I am overcome.

          Graham stands up from the couch, shaken by the force of his own words.

          I rattle the keys. “We’re going to enjoy ourselves.”

            “You have to give those back to the desk.”

          By the shoulders I grab him, my greatest invention. “We can do so much better,” I say. I take him by the wrist and lead him to the elevator, hearing his mother’s voice behind us reminding me to keep him out of the rain. “I will,” I mutter. “I will.”

          Robert Wagner is on the elevator with Natalie Wood but they’ve aged badly and one doesn’t take to them anymore. She chews gum and appears uncomfortable in tight clothing. His turtlenecks have become worn. But I figure they know things, they’ve been here a long time. So I say to him, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t know where I might call for a girl or two, would you? Actually what we need is a girl and a young man, my son here’s gay.”

          “Dad!” Graham shouts. “I’m sorry,” he says to the couple, now backed against the wall as though I were a gangster in one of their lousy B movies. “He’s just had a lot to drink.”

          “The hell I have. You got a problem with my son being gay?” The elevator door opens and they scurry onto the carpet like bugs.

          For a man who watched thousands starve and did jack shit about it, the Hoover Suite is aptly named. There are baskets of fruit, a stocked refrigerator, a full bar, faux rococo paintings over the beds, overstuffed chairs, and rugs that demand bare feet for the sheer pleasure of the touch.

          “We can’t stay here,” Graham says, as I flip my shoes across the room.

          His voice is disconsolate; he seems to have lost his animation of a moment ago, something I don’t think I can afford to do right now: the eviction notices in Baltimore, the collection agencies, the smell of the apartment … “We’re just getting started,” I say quickly.

            Graham’s sitting in an armchair across the room, and when he bows his head, I imagine he’s praying that when he raises it again, things will be different. As a child he used to bring me presents in my study on the days I left for trips and he’d ask me not to go; they were books he’d found on the shelf and wrapped in Christmas paper.

           I pick up the phone on the bedside table and get the front desk. “This is the Hoover Suite calling. I want the number of an agency that will provide us with a young man, someone intelligent and attractive—”

          Graham rips the phone from my hand.

          “What is it?” I say. His mother was always encouraging me to ask him questions. “What’s it like to be gay, Graham? Why have you never told me?”

            He stares at me dumbfounded.

            “What? What?” I say.

             "How can you ask me that after all this time?“

            "I want to understand. Are you in love with this Ben fellow?”

            “I thought you were dead! Do you even begin to realize? I thought my own father was dead. You didn’t call for four years. But I couldn’t bear to find out, I couldn’t bear to go and find you dead. It was like I was a child again. I just hoped there was an excuse. Four years, Dad. Now you just appear and you want to know what it’s like to be gay?”

            I run to the refrigerator, where among other things there is a decent chardonnay, and with the help of a corkscrew I find by the sink I pour us two glasses. Graham doesn’t seem to want his, but I set it down beside him anyway.

            “Oh, Graham. The phone company in Baltimore’s awful.”

            He starts to cry. He looks so young as he weeps, as he did in the driveway of the old house on the afternoon I taught him to ride a bicycle, the dust from the drive settling on his wetted cheek and damp eyelashes, later to be rinsed in the warm water of the bath as dusk settled over the field and we listened together to the sound of his mother in the kitchen running water, the murmur of the radio, and the stillness of evening in the country, how he seemed to understand it as well as I.

            “You know, Graham, they’re constantly overcharging me and then once they take a line out it’s like getting the Red Sea to part to have it reinstalled but in a couple of weeks when the bicycle patent comes through that’ll be behind us, you and Linda and Ernie and I, we’ll all go to London and stay at the Connaught and I’ll show you Regent’s Park where your mother and I rowed a boat on our honeymoon circling the little island there where the ducks all congregate and which was actually a little dirty, come to think of it, though you don’t really think of ducks as dirty, they look so graceful on the water but in fact—” And all of a sudden I don’t believe it myself and I can hear my own voice in the room, hear its dry pitch, and I’ve lost my train of thought and I can’t stop picturing the yard where Graham used to play with his friends by the purple lilac and the apple tree whose knotted branches held the planks of the fort that I was so happy for him to enjoy never having had one myself. He knew me then even in my bravest moments when his mother and siblings were afraid of what they didn’t understand, he would sit on the stool in the crumbling barn watching me cover the chalkboard propped on the fender of the broken Studebaker, diagramming a world of possible objects, the solar vehicles and collapsible homes, our era distilled into its necessary devices, and in the evenings sprawled on the floor of his room he’d trace with delicate hands what he remembered of my design.

             I see those same hands now spread on his thighs, nails bitten down, cuticles torn.

            I don’t know how to say goodbye.

             In the village of St. Sever an old woman nursed my dying friend through the night. At dawn I kissed his cold forehead and kept marching.

          In the yard of the old house the apple tree still rustles in the evening breeze.

          “Graham.”

          “You want to know what it’s like?” he says. “I’ll tell you. It’s worrying all the time that one day he’s going to leave me. And you want to know why that is? It’s got nothing to do with being gay. It’s because I know Mom left you. I tell you it’s selfish not to take the pills because I know. Because I take them. You understand, Dad? It’s in me too. I don’t want Ben to find me in a parking lot in the middle of the night in my pajamas talking to a stranger like Mom found you. I don’t want him to find me hanged. I used to cast fire from the tips of my fingers some weeks and burn everything in my path and it was all progress and it was all incredibly, incredibly beautiful. And some weeks I couldn’t brush my hair. But I take the pills now, and I haven’t bankrupted us yet, and I don’t want to kill myself just now. I take them and I think of Ben. That’s what it’s like.”

            “But the fire Graham? What about the fire?”

            In his eyes, there is sadness enough to kill us both.

            “Do you remember how you used to watch me do my sketches in the barn?”

            Tears run down his cheeks and he nods his head.

            “Let me show you something,” I say. Across the room in the drawer of the desk I find a marker. It makes sense to me now, he can see what I see, he’s always been able to. Maybe it doesn’t have to end. I unhook a painting from the wall and set it on the floor. On the yellow wallpaper I draw the outline of a door, full-size, seven by three and a half.

          “You see, Graham, there’ll be four knobs. The lines between them will form a cross. And each knob will be connected to a set of wheels inside the door itself, and there will be four sets of hinges, one along each side but fixed only to the door, not to the frame.” I shade these in. Graham cries. “A person will use the knob that will allow them to open the door in the direction they want—left or right, at their feet or above their heads. When a knob is turned it’ll push the screws from the door into the frame. People can open doors near windows without blocking morning or evening light, they’ll carry furniture in and out with the door over their heads, never scraping its paint, and when they want to see the sky they can open it just a fraction at the top.” On the wall I draw smaller diagrams of the door’s different positions until the felt nib of the pen tatters. “It’s a present to you, this door. I’m sorry it’s not actual. You can imagine it, though, how people might enjoy deciding how to walk through it. Patterns would form, families would have their habits.”

          “I wanted a father.”

          “Don’t say that, Graham.” He’s crying still and I can’t bear it.

          “It’s true.”

          I turn back to the desk and, kneeling there, scrawl a note. The pen is nearly ruined and it’s hard to shape the letters. The writing takes time.

Though some may accuse me of neglect, I have been consistent with the advice I always gave my children: never finish anything that bores you. Unfortunately, some of my children bored me. Graham never did. Please confirm this with him. He is the only one that meant anything to me.

           "Graham,“ I say, crossing the room to show him the piece of paper, to show him the truth.

          He’s lying on the bed, and as I stand over him I see that he’s asleep. His tears have exhausted him. The skin about his closed eyes is puffy and red and from the corner of his mouth comes a rivulet of drool. I wipe it away with my thumb. I cup his gentle face in my hands and kiss him on the forehead.

          From the other bed I take a blanket and cover him, pulling it up over his shoulders, tucking it beneath his chin. His breath is calm now, even. I leave the note folded by his hands. I pat down his hair and turn off the lamp. It’s time for me to go.

          I take my glass and the wine out into the hall. I can feel the weight of every step, my body beginning to tire. I lean against the wall, waiting for the elevator to take me down. The doors slide open and I enter.

          From here in the descending glass cage I can see globes of orange light stretching along the boulevards of Santa Monica toward the beach where the shaded palms sway. I’ve always found the profusion of lights in American cities a cause for optimism, a sign of undiminished credulity, something to bear us along. In the distance the shimmering pier juts into the vast darkness of the ocean like a burning ship launched into the night

Work Cited

Haslett, Adam. “Notes to My Biographer.” Zoetrope All-Story, Fall 1999, https://www.all-story.com/issues/9

ENG 1A

Hight

STUDY GUIDE FOR “NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER”

          Please answer the questions as thoroughly as possible (on a separate piece of paper), and please keep in mind: I am really dumb, so I don’t understand short and vague answers.

1. The narrator of the story, Franklin Caldwell Singer, insists that there is nothing wrong with him, and that the “mental-health can go screw itself on a barren hilltop in the rain”.  Do you believe him? Why or why not?

2. Does Franklin have an interesting voice?  Is he witty, sarcastic, or annoying? Why?  How would you describe his personality?

3. Will Franklin ever make any money off of his bicycle idea?  Why or why not?

4. Why does Franklin want to re-connect with his estranged son, Graham?  Is it because cares about his son, or does Franklin have some ulterior motive?  What do you think and why?

5. What happens at the end?  Why does Franklin leave Graham?  Is this a noble gesture?  Why or why not?

6. Who do you sympathize with more: Graham or Franklin?  Whose side are you on: Graham or Franklin?  Why?

[artificialqueens]

girls like dollies ch.1 (trixya) - lale

A/N: I hope you liked the prologue! This chapter actually includes dialogue and other characters, yay!

Part of what had made Trixie so nervous about starting at RuPaul’s was that, thanks to the last minute nature of her application, she’d started almost two weeks into the semester. It was a Thursday afternoon by the time she arrived, and the rest of the students were still in class. Miss Charles, the principal, was busy, so Trixie got to skip her first introduction with her in favor of a tour with Mr Matthews, who was apparently one of the drama teachers. He didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she was alone, and once she’d put her bags down by the wide staircase in the entrance hall he lead her down a corridor lined with classrooms.

“Oh, you are just going to love it here!” he assured her, a bounce to his step as they passed rows of lockers. Trixie peeked into each room they passed, wondering if she might spot Kim. The classes seemed small, with no more than ten or twelve girls dressed in identical uniforms. Trixie had her own uniform packed neatly in her suitcase, and she felt a little self-conscious as glanced down at her pink dress. She hadn’t thought about her outfit when she’d dressed earlier that morning, and now she kind of wished she’d changed into her uniform before she’d arrived.

“Don’t worry about your clothes. Classes only have twenty minutes left and some of the girls get changed as soon as they can, anyway,” Mr Matthews said, apparently sensing her unease. “Classes last until 2:30 every day, and then afternoon activities begin at 3. Dinner is at 6:30. Now, you’re part of the drama program, is that right? Ms Visage has been raving about your audition for weeks!”

Trixie blushed, surprised that she’d made such an impression. “Yeah. Have I missed much?” she asked, eager to make sure she wasn’t at a disadvantage from starting later in the semester.

“No, no, you’ll be fine. When classes are over, I’ll find one of the girls to take you up to the dorms and get you settled. Then you can go to your first drama session today,” he promised. They rounded a corner, passing a wide doorway to what looked like a library. The school was huge and impressive; it was everything Trixie had imagined it would be. Mr Matthews showed her around the rest of the school, chatting the whole time. She paid little attention to the sports facilities or the classrooms, eager to get to the theatre she’d gotten a glimpse of at her audition.

“These are the art studios. Now, you might be part of our wonderful drama program, but a lot of the girls like to take advantage of the art classes here even if they’re more focused on other areas!” Mr Matthews said, stopping in the doorway to a large room with floor to ceiling windows lining one wall. There were a dozen canvases scattered around the room, all covered with gorgeous landscapes or detailed portraits. But Trixie’s eyes were immediately drawn to one canvas in the corner. It was a mess of colours, dark red swirled with greens and browns and blues; the more Trixie looked at it, the more it fascinated her as she tried to decipher its meaning.

“Oh, that must be Miss Katya’s work. Mr Rice mentioned she was working on something…abstract,” Mr Matthews said, his gaze following Trixie’s.

“It’s beautiful,” Trixie said honestly. Mr Matthews looked at her in surprise, then chuckled.

“Well, to each their own,” he said, herding her back through the corridor towards the entrance hall. There were girls emerging from the classrooms around them now, and Mr Matthews headed straight for a willowy blonde girl. “Pearl!” he called out. The girl looked around in surprise, trying to pocket a pack of cigarettes.

“I was just, uh…going outside,” she offered lamely. Mr Matthews rolled his eyes, pointedly looking in the other direction.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Pearl, this is Trixie, your new roommate. Can you show her where your room is and make sure she gets settled? I’ve told her she can go to drama class this afternoon,” he explained.

Pearl looked Trixie up and down. She was pretty, tall and slender with big eyes. Her expression came across as almost sleepy, though, and when she smiled it was endearingly goofy. “Alright,” she agreed. Her voice was low, with vocal fry off the chart. She was certainly interesting. Trixie put on her most winning smile.

“Thanks!” she said, dashing across the hall to gather her bags. Pearl followed her, and Trixie grabbed her guitar before Pearl could try to pick it up. She couldn’t handle it if it ended up getting dropped and damaged; god knows she could never afford to replace it. Pearl didn’t comment on her protectiveness, grabbing the handles of her suitcases instead and helping her to haul them up the stairs.

“The dorms are organized by class, so everyone in our grade is down this corridor. The bathrooms are down at the end – don’t try to shower between eight and nine unless you don’t mind cold water, that’s when everyone goes,” Pearl explained. Trixie nodded, looking at the doors around them. Each one had a whiteboard tacked onto it, some showing doodles and some simply telling her whose room it was. Most had two names scribbled across them, except for one which read, “Alaska, Detox and Roxxxy” in three distinct scrawls.

Pearl stopped outside a door halfway down the corridor, but before she could reach the handle it opened from the inside. There was a loud shrieking nose, and Trixie found herself being pulled into a fierce hug. “Kim!” she gasped, letting her duffel drop to the group and carefully putting her guitar by her feet before she wrapped her arms around Kim. Trixie was tall but Kim was still taller, as she had been the last time they’d seen each other; it was comforting that that small detail was still the same.

“I was just about to come find you! As soon as I got your letter I persuaded Ms Visage to let you room with us,” Kim told her excitedly, taking her hand and pulling her into the room.

“Wait, you’re my roommate?” Trixie said, feeling a huge smile spread across her face.

“Pearl helped me rearrange. There’s more than enough space for three in here,” Kim said. Sure enough, the room was bright and spacious, with large windows and a bed lined up against each remaining wall. Two were surrounded by posters and decorations, with bright, patterned bedspreads and blankets. The third was a blank slate, all for Trixie.

“This is amazing,” Trixie said in awe. She grabbed Kim for another hug, suddenly overwhelmed by everything. Kim laughed, squeezing her. Trixie pulled back when Pearl dropped her suitcases by her bed, dashing back to grab her duffel and guitar. “I don’t really have anything to decorate with,” she realized aloud, looking mournfully down at her suitcases. She had her brand new uniform and all of the toiletries she’d bought with the money her social worker had given her, but other than that she only had the contents of her hastily packed duffel.

“I have the perfect thing for you!” Kim said proudly, opening her wardrobe and producing a stack of pink fabric with a flourish. It was exactly what Trixie would have picked for herself: pastel pink bedsheets with white, heart-covered pillow cases. Trixie couldn’t help but let out a squeal of joy, stripping the plain white covers off her bed.

“It already feels more like home,” she said when she was done, stepping back and admiring her newly-pink corner of the room.

“I’m so glad you’re here! I thought your mom was against it,” Kim said. Trixie shifted uncomfortably. She’d been feeling so great about being here, and she didn’t want to bring the mood down by going into everything that had happened with Kim. Besides, Pearl seemed nice but she’d only just met her. Trixie wasn’t going to tell her her life story.

“I can be very persuasive,” she said, going to her suitcases so she could unpack her things. “Should I get changed before Drama?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, that dress doesn’t look too practical,” Kim replied. Pearl had curled up on the low seat by the windows, a cigarette dangling from one hand as she blew smoke out into the fresh air. “Pearl and I have art, but we’ll take you to dinner after,” Kim said. She’d stripped out of her sweater and blouse and was rummaging in her dresser for something to wear. Trixie was surprised – Kim had always been self-conscious when they were in school together, but apparently two years of boarding school had drummed that right out of her. Trixie quickly realized why when she looked around for any privacy to change and found none.

Trixie didn’t mind her body, but she was never going to be the wispy model that Pearl was. She was built more like Kim, tall and a little chubby. She had a nice waist and she liked her big boobs, but she sometimes felt self-conscious of her thick thighs and ass. She changed quickly, glancing into the small mirror hung above the desk next to her bed and silently thanking her make up setting spray for doing its job so well. 

Just as Trixie and Kim finished changing, there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Pearl drawled, tucking her cigarette behind her back as they waited to see who it was. A girl with pale, almost grey hair, poked her head around the door.

“We wanted to meet your new roommate!” she said, a smile crossing her face as she stepped inside, followed by a blonde girl with some of the most stunning makeup Trixie had ever seen.

“Trixie, this is Max and Fame. They’re in the room opposite,” Kim explained. Trixie found herself being swept into a hug by the second girl, who then leaned back and looked closely at Trixie’s face.

“Your makeup! I’ve never seen a contour like this, it’s wonderful” she said, voice full of admiration. Trixie blushed, surprised that someone with such a beautiful look would compliment her makeup. She loved painting her face in such a striking way, but she was always more likely to get curious questions than genuine praise.

“Fame, personal space,” the other girl, who had to be Max, chided gently, pulling Fame a step back with a hand to her upper arm.

“Are you joining the art program?” Fame pressed, still fixated on Trixie’s makeup.

“No, Drama,” she replied.

“Oh, wonderful! It’ll be nice to have someone new in the group,” Max said, sounding sincere. There was a slight affectation to her voice, but it wasn’t unpleasant. “I can take you to the theatre.”

Kim picked up her phone to check the time. “Trixie, we’ll meet you back here before dinner, okay?” she said. Trixie just nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed by the flurry of new people and new places. She carefully pushed the feeling down, determined to go with it and make a good first impression.

“Is this your first time at boarding school?” Max asked as they walked towards the theatre. Kim, Pearl and Fame had peeled off in a different direction towards the art studios.

“Yeah. It’s kind of…”

“Overwhelming?” Max suggested kindly. Trixie gave her a grateful smile, nodding. “Don’t worry, most of us felt like that when we got here. Some of the girls have been going away to school forever, but not many. You’ll settle in soon enough,” Max promised. She had a warm, soothing demeanor, and Trixie already felt a little more relaxed.

That relaxation slipped away when they entered the theatre. There were a dozen other girls there, gathered in small groups and chatting animatedly. Trixie immediately felt intimidated; these girls all seemed so confident. Trixie loved performing, and she’d always been the most talented in her drama classes back at home. Now she was surrounded by girls who were all, presumably, as passionate about performing as she was, and potentially more talented.

Max led her over to a group of three girls. “Girls, this is Trixie,” she said, while Trixie adopted a bright smile. “Trixie, this is Jinkx, Ginger and Alaska.”

“You’re Kim’s friend, right?” the girl with bright red hair said. She had a friendly face, and a slightly crooked smile.

“We went to high school together for a year back home,” Trixie replied.

“She’s crazy talented,” the tall girl with piles of blonde hair said. Her voice was low and she dragged out each word to the point that Trixie wondered if she did it on purpose. “You guys kind of do your makeup the same. I like it,” she told Trixie.

“Thanks,” Trixie said. She’d barely been at RuPaul’s for an hour and two people had already complimented her make up. Normally people didn’t know what to think of it, but it felt like a good omen that the other girls were nice about it. “Kim’s way better than I am, though. I mean, she looks like an actual person.” That drew a laugh out of all four girls, and Trixie laughed along a little giddily. She was doing okay so far, she thought. The girls seemed nice and she didn’t think she’d made a terrible first impression.

“Oh, I see why she likes you!”  the third girl said, her laugh a little wheezing. She was much shorter than the rest of them, with neatly styled ginger hair.

“Girls, simmer down,” a voice announced from behind them. The drama teacher swept into the room, and Trixie immediately recognized her from her audition. She was a striking woman with dark, almost black hair, dressed in a form fitting dress and stiletto heels. She glanced around the room, a smile crossing her face when she spotted Trixie. “Miss Mattel! I hope the girls are helping you settle in,” Ms Visage said, giving Max an approving nod as she took in the small group of girls surrounding Trixie.

“They are,” Trixie assured her.

“Good! Then let’s get to business,” she said, clapping her hands.

Trixie had been worried that her first drama class would be terrible, that everyone else would be so talented and polished. Everyone was talented, and a lot of them seemed a lot more polished than she was, but she loved every second of it. She’d never experienced a chance to perform with people who loved it as much as she did, and she already felt like it was pushing her to be better. It was exhilarating, and even though she felt exhausted by the end of the class she was beaming from ear to ear.

“Trixie,” Ms Visage said, calling her over. “You kept up really well today! I’m so glad you’ve joined us,” she told her warmly. “I see Max is looking after you. Did you get your schedule?”

“No,” Trixie said, quickly thinking back over her afternoon. “I don’t think anyone told me where to get it.”

“I imagine one of the girls has it. Perhaps one of your roommates?” Miss Visage suggested.

“Maybe,” Trixie said, nodding. “I’ll ask Kim when I get back up to my room.”

“Oh, I know who has it. Mr Kressley gave it to Katya, you guys have a bunch of classes together,” Alaska chimed in from where some of the girls were waiting for Trixie by the door.

“He gave it to Katya?” Ms Visage said, looking surprised and slightly horrified. “Well, you can get someone to print out a new version if you need to, don’t worry.”

“It’s fine, I’m sure Katya hasn’t eaten it,” Ginger said, before letting out a huff of laughter. Yet! Trixie, come on. Katya’s my roommate, we can go get it from her now.”

“See you tomorrow, girls,” Ms Visage said, gathering her things as Ginger led them out of the theatre.

“What did you think of your first class?” Jinkx asked. She’d surprised Trixie, coming across so quiet at first before proving herself to be an absolutely hysterical actress. There hadn’t been a single girl who was bad, which she supposed made sense. It was intimidating, but Trixie had always been driven. Now, with the thought in the back of her mind that she had nothing to go home to, she was even more determined to make something of herself.

“It was great! I can’t believe we get that much practice every day,” Trixie said.

“Just wait until we start getting ready for a show. Then we’re rehearsing all evening, and the weekend, it never ends,” Ginger pointed out. It sounded like heaven to Trixie. She couldn’t wait until they could start rehearsing something properly and she could sink her teeth into a part – she wanted to prove to herself, and to everyone else, that she deserved to be there.

They reached their corridor of the dorms, and Ginger led them right down to the end of the hallway. “I hope you’re not naked!” she called out as she grabbed the door handle.

“As if you’d be that lucky!” a voice with a strong accent replied. The door swung open, revealing a girl in the middle of a cluttered room. She was bent over backwards, hands on the floor. She grinned at Ginger, and even upside down Trixie could tell she had the most stunning smile of gleaming white teeth. Her tangled blonde hair formed a messy halo around her head, and Trixie could see firm, shapely thighs where her skirt had ridden up.

“Trixie, this is Katya. You’re unfortunate enough to be sharing most of your classes with her,” Ginger said. The girl pushed herself up, effortless flipping her legs over her head and landing lightly on her feet.

“Hello!” she said, that same big grin on her face as she looked Trixie up and down. Trixie could feel her whole face flush. She was easily the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen in her life, and Trixie was totally, utterly fucked.