#but ive spent like 2 hours in this One small area at this point. and half the times im dying arent even my fault | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pepperpills · 3 years ago

Text

The Harvest - RE8 Fanfic

The Harvest

A Resident Evil 8 fan fiction by Joana

Karl Heisenberg x Female Reader

Notes: heey guys, The Harvest is coming closer to its end, i hope you enjoy this chapter and new things might be coming ahead, thank you all for reading it >.<

Warning: NSFW content

Part I - Destiny (1) Part I - Destiny (2) Part II - The Lord Part III - The Hunt

Part IV �� Soft Torture

In the next days, you finished the new wing and brough him to see it. He was grateful, he took a while analysing your sketches, strumming the shelves covered with books and the metallic tool boxes. When he was done, he impulsively took your head in his hands and kissed you in the forehead. You blushed, but by that time he already crossed the door and was calling you to help.

Then, you spent hours helping him move his stuff to that wing, especially the non-metallic ones, which he had no power over. Your hands touched while doing it and every time it happened, an electric discharged flowed through you – and him.

After you were done, you left him to explore his new set up as excited as he was with it. You still had your cleaning stuff when coming back to the main area and there was time, plenty of free time. Thus, you stopped on level B3 to take care of a dusty stroller that was pissing you off with its dirt.

You were minding your own business, singing your favourite childhood song while wiping the dust off the power box when you heard a drill. You instantly froze, imagining what caused it.

The area was poorly lite, but you saw that red brightness in the pitch dark, you wouldn’t confound it as it was part of the nightmares you had at your first days at the factory. It was, indeed, a lost Soldat.

You held a scream, your hand quickly covered your open mouth, but it was too late, it paid attention to you, way before you saw it, then it started walking towards your direction with that drill making a death sound.

The world around you didn’t make sense. You looked for exits, but it was about to sprint and you were in a corner, unable to run anywhere. A single tear rolled down your face and you closed your eyes not willing to see it.

“NO.” Heisenberg screamed, showing up at the right moment. “STOP!” He demanded, but the thing was now coming to him. “Stupid shit.” He cursed, violently throwing his cigar on the ground, putting it out with his boot.

With that said, the reactor on the Soldat’s chest exploded, casting hundreds of small parts all over the place, one hit you in the cheek. No one moved, it simply disintegrated and the creature fell to its knees, deactivated, exploding right away, sending more trash to the air.

Heisenberg walked rapidly to you and held your shoulders. When he noticed your cheek, he cleaned it and licked your blood out of his finger. You were way too shaken by the Soldat, but his grip slowly brought you to the real world.

“You okay?” He whispered, his expression lines showing how worried he was.

He got so scared of losing you for that malfunctioning son of a bitch that his heart sunk when he saw you. It was too late for him to continue pretending he didn’t care that much for you.

“Yeah, it didn’t get me at all. Thank you.” You were utterly grateful he tamed that thing, otherwise… Otherwise you probably would be one of the bodies in the stretchers.

Heisenberg then buried his face in your neck, sighing. He sounded relieved.

“Thought I was gonna lose you there, buttercup.” He told your neck, his voice stuffy.

“I thought so too.” You confessed, also feeling relieved. “Do you care?” You had to ask, simply had to know if he cared even though he just saved you.

“Of course I do.” He answered immediately, but not rushing.

Knowing that was reassuring. You felt safe. You felt home. He felt scared for the possibility of your death and couldn’t stop holding you. You thought he was going to bite you like a zombie would, instead, he rubbed his lips on your skin.

You moaned with the touch. It was involuntary, but you felt that you made a mistake. First you tried to be his friend when both of you felt alone, then you would give anything for him to order you to take off your clothes like in that first day, but wouldn’t dare say that, you were getting too mushy.

“S-sorry…” You started apologizing, he let your neck go, but then his face was millimetres from yours.

“Don’t be sorry.” Karl firmly took your waist and put you up on the now clean stroller, your butt sitting on a wood box.

He had to have you. There was this urgent feeling on his stomach he couldn’t resist, it was being silenced for too long, since you arrived. That hunger took control of him and he griped your hair.

He is too strong, but you didn’t want to resist, at that moment, you were about to do whatever he desired, you had simply given up to it as you yourself were thirst for his touch.

The adrenaline was still running crazily through you, like you had been shocked, you thought it was even stronger than before, growing, driving you to hallucinate as you saw coloured lights dancing in your vision. Coloured, festive lights.

“Fuck, buttercup, you have a way to get to me.” He cursed, kissing you chin, making you moan again. “Oh, you are so hopeless like this.” Heisenberg laughed; his chuckles made your entire body resonate.

“Please, let me have you, Karl.” You found yourself begging, you would be on your knees if he wasn’t so close, taming you.

He stepped back, a tiny step so he could look at you. He was smiling, his eyes seemed to have fallen upon a prey, one he would treat with good manners. His hand reached your neck, pressing it, not too hard, but not softly, so you could feel his scars and you moaned to that.

He spread your legs with his knee, not gentle, not brutal, but demanding. You let him do it, feeling the blood down there. You felt a chilled object between your thighs, it touched your clit over your tight pants. It started rubbing as Heisenberg kissed every centimetre of your face and his hands wandered around your body, owing it.

You were soaked, your panties were completely wet at that point, maybe even more than the rain made before, and that metal thing kept rubbing your bud driving you insane. You moaned loudly, moaned like an animal and he joined you with husky groans.

You closed your legs around his waist and forced him to come closer. He cried out in pleasure, even though fully clothed. You felt him hard, so damn hard you thought you couldn’t take it.

His pace was getting faster controlling the metal stimulating you, it was feeling too intense, all your feelings mixing up with his sudden touch, the adrenaline running through out your body, his beard tingling your neck as he groaned, making your eyes roll in pleasure. You came the first time like that, your water wetting him.

You took his face in your hands and glued your lips to one another. The kiss was intense, you completely forgot to breath as his tongue met yours, playing rough games in your mouth. You had to scratch his skin under his clothes, to this, he arched his back, a warm sensation flooding his body as it felt held after so long, so glad to finally take you, so hungry to devour you, he couldn’t help but to feel he was close, not done with these games, but close to his first time in a while anyway. That was the time for him to cum. He held you tightly, burring his face on your shoulder, moaning like crazy and came in his pants. You came again, with him.

“God damn it.” That was all he could say, panting.

“For fuck’s sake.” You joined him, leaning your back on the stroller to rest.

The dancing lights were still there, lullabying you now that you both orgasmed. You were calm, calmer than you had never been, completely distant from the Soldat’s treat, the Village, anything. Nothing could reach you at the factory, nothing besides his scarred hands.

You thought it was over, but you still felt drunk with pleasure, willing to taste more of it, more of him. Karl had an idea. One that you would like. He took you in his arms, so easily you felt little while pressing your face to his collarbone, the electricity in your body giving you delightful goosebumps. You hugged his neck and your legs hugged his waist. He started walking.

At first, you didn’t know where he was taking you, then you recognized the path among all those look alike corridors. You two were heading to the soft torture room. It didn’t make you anxious, though. You were curious.

He actually walked there, not surfing any metal plaque. It didn’t take long to get to your destination. He made the door open with his powers, never letting you go even for a second like you were too precious to trust the floor to support you.

That room was the most organized room of the factory. You could see he started using that as a storeroom due to several cardboard boxes leaning against the walls. The gears and toys were as new. You doubted someone had ever used them.

The room was painted black, decorated with real swords, axes and chains, the last ones maybe could be of use. There was a whip rack with different whips that made you excited, willing to test them all, also, some toys and instruments were suspended on a metal board close to a Berkley horse. Heisenberg didn’t guide you to any of those, though.

“Do you think you can take it, kitten?” He whispered affably in your ear.

“I want to take anything.” You told him, sanguinely.

He chuckled and lead you to another piece of furniture. That one you had seen on history books. It was the wrist stocks. Usually, it would be made of wood, but his were metallic and would move as he desired, so you could alternate positions.

Karl let you go, gently, you stepped barefoot on the ground having lost your shoes at the stroller and he made you sit on a chair next to the stocks. You kissed for what seemed to be eternity, every single one of your senses being stimulated at once. He gruffly took his overcoat off, without untouching your lips and started massaging your nipples. You cried out in pleasure, feeling it drain on your thighs.

You drove him crazy. He was doing his best to be at least moderate to you, but you weren’t helping at all. Your groans made him be harsh, it was your doing, he kept thinking. He ripped your shirt off effortlessly, giving you a shock. Your boobs came out swinging, making him howl and burry his face on them. He felt welcomed by your warmth, consoled by your soft skin. He didn’t want to rise his nose from them, but he did in order to rend your pants.

It was a real relief to be finally free from your clothes. In that manner, you took his shirt off, laying your hand on his chest for a silent while. It was entrancing to be able to touch him like that, to feel his heavy breathing, strolling your fingers on his belly. But when you reached his pants and started unbuttoning it, he snorted and pushed you back.

“Not now, sugar.” He denied, smiling at your disconsolate face. “First things first.” Heisenberg added as he lifted you, placing you lastly at the stocks.

You saw how hard he was under those pants. His cock was begging to be tamed, to be treated, to be tasted. You could drool if your kept thinking these things, but you couldn’t help, it was centimetres from your face now and was certainly calling you. You inclined a little, he didn’t perceive, and gave a long, naughty lick on his cock, tasting the humidity there, trying the flavour of his cum. It tasted like “I want more”.

He groaned loudly, hopelessly. Heisenberg got a little annoyed by your disobedience and decided he could be a bit harder on you.

“Bad kitten.” He called you.

Your wrists were now retained, you were sitting completely naked on a massage bed and he still had his pants on which meant a little more play. Out of nowhere, nipple clamps flew to you and bite your nipples. You screamed in pleasure. It hurt a little, pressing your delicate skin.

Heisenberg was enjoying himself, maliciously smiling. At that sight, he had to touch himself. His hand reached his cock over the fabric and cuddled it for some time as he tightened the grip on your nipples.

After a while like this, he decided it was about time and his pants fell off, revealing a big, pulsating, needy rod on that made you moan on its homage.

“Now, kitten, show me you can take it all.” He said, approaching you, taking advantage of your opened mouth.

You finally had it, an explosion of flavours and sensation took command of you. His cum was sweet, now your favourite candy, his cock was almost too much for your mouth, but you proudly took it all on you salivating tongue, leading it deep down your throat, making a mess of saliva. A mess he loved. Heisenberg was simply howling in pleasure, his husky voice dominated by voluptuousness, he was roaring over the machinery noises.

If you kept going longer, he was going to cum on your precious mouth, would fill it with his god’s milk. But he wasn’t done with you. Oh no. He took his cock out of your mouth and you felt the bed leaning backwards.

“Lay.” Heisenberg ordered as he climbed your body, positioned between your legs.

You laid. He roughly rubbed his smouldering boner on your clit. You both groaned intensely. He played you a little more, then he started entering. Your pussy wasn’t used to it, to big things coming in and out of it like that, but it sure loved the sensation.

His thighs were pressed to yours, rubbing his hair body on your skin as he moved forward into you. You thought you were dead, nothing that good could be possible. But it was, you had him inside your pussy, reaching so deep as the bed inclination helped to get as far as he could.

At first, he tried to go steady, not willing to hurt you more, but as you moaned, he couldn’t help but burying his cock on you. You made it feel welcomed, hot and squeezed by your walls.

Heisenberg was losing it. You were losing it. You both moved in synchrony, the nipple clamps awakening every pleasure sensor on your body, feeling him entirely.

He invested inside you for what felt like hours of pure pleasure. You two sang the lust song together. Karl knew he couldn’t hold on longer.

“Now, kitten, you gonna have it.” He whispered between his teeth, griping your hair.

You hugged his waist with your legs, forcing him to stay deep down. He groaned, thunders in your vision. He was coming hot, plentiful, absolutely satisfied. Heisenberg came inside you and when he found the courage to step out and you let go your legs, cum drained from your pussy.

“Karl…” You could only mumble, panting.

“Kitten.” He answered, releasing your wrists and laying by your side.

He pushed you to his chest where you gladly laid your sleepy head. He cuddled your hair as your draw circles on his belly.

“It was the best thing I ever felt.” You said, at last.

“You had me there, kitten.” Heisenberg confessed, his heart racing. “You fucked me good.” He added, smiling. You smiled too.

Both of you were tired, sleepy. His cuddles made your eyes shut and your hug embraced him. You fell asleep in the soft torture room, on the massage bed. Naked and together, at last.

#resident evil #re8 #karl heisenberg #re village #karl heisenberg x reader #resident evil 8 village #heisenberg #heisendaddy #heisenberg resident evil #resident evil viii #resident evil 8 fanfic #original post #resident evil village #re8 karl heisenberg #resident evil heisenberg #fanfic #re fanfic #the harvest

29 notes · View notes

fydream · 5 years ago

Text

✰ how to be a heartbreaker

↳ so what happens when park jisung, the school’s infamous fuckboy runs into the new girl at school? out of boredom he decides it’ll be fun to have someone new to play with, but little does he know, she’s learning how to be a heartbreaker.

a/n: hi! an authors note before this chapter begins! 1. yes i know the formatting is different but that’s only because this chapter is 5.9k words long!! (yes you heard me!! 5.9k!! that’s the most ive written for anything published on this blog!!) so there will be a cut bc i know it’s annoying to scroll past long posts haha. 2. i know i didn’t mention it in this chapter but i just wanted to say that if you did want to listen to music while reading this, during y/n and jisung’s scene you should definitely listen to euphoria by bts and that jeno and donghyuck’s song is i.l.y. by the rose. i hope u guys enjoy!

An hour or so later you're running out your front door to meet Jisung, who already regrets saying he'll wait.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry-" You apologize. "I didn't mean to take that long you must've been bored out of your mind!"

"It's okay." Jisung reassures. "We won't be there that long, we might be a little late to hoco if that's okay with you."

"That's fine!! Just let me text Donghyuck that I'm with you then."

"Okay."

The ride to where Jisung is taking you is quiet, nothing but his various hums to the music he plays as as he drives. It's nice, it reminds you of the first time he gave you a ride home. Quiet, but comfortable.

Instead of looking at your phone you look out the window, then take a second to look at Jisung before looking back out the window again.

You so weren't slick about it either because he notices how you quick you look away and how eager you are to sneak another glance.

"What?" He asks. "Why'd you look at me like that?"

"It's nothing.." You mumble, trying best to hide the smile that's slowly creeping up on your face.

"C'mon." He insists. "Tell me!!" He tries to make it sound like he doesn't care about the topic that much, but his vocal chords work against him as it comes out as a whine.

"Nothing.. It's just.. You look like that, and I look like this.."

"What, you mean beautiful like always?"

Jisung makes note of how quickly your cheeks turn pink at the comment he made.

"You can't just say that!" You argue.

"Yes I can, you're my date tonight after all. What kind of person would I be to not compliment their date?"

You open your mouth, about to speak before he cuts you off from your thought. "And don't worry y/n. I'll take that look as a compliment itself." He snickers.

"Hey!" You shout, earning another laugh from him.

"Hey Jisung?" You ask once the giggles die down.

"Hm?"

"Don't tell anyone I've said this but um.." You start, trailing off at the last part. "Donghyuck has uh, told me things.. about you." You notice how he looks at you, how the expression on his face quickly changes from happy and carefree, to concerned and worried. "I know you probably know what I'm talking about.. I uh- I can kinda.. tell.."

"Yeah." He whispers, trying to block out what you just told him.

"But y'know. I think he's got you all wrong."

"You do?" He asks, a bit too eagerly.

"I do." You say. "From the past how many weeks? Of knowing you, we've gotten close. And I don't think you're anything like that, at least, not anymore.. I've seen the difference between how you act in class and when you're with Jeno and Jaemin, than how you are when we're together and I'd like to hope it isn't just an act. I'm not stupid, y'know."

"I never said you were, I never thought you were either."

"I know. You're not too hard to read, y'know."

For once, Jisung is left speechless. This is the first time anyone has really brought this up on him and he has no idea how to respond. Questions begin to flood his thoughts as he begins to wonder what do you know. Do you know the real reason why he asked you out? How long have you known? What if you never want to talk to him again?

"I-" He tries to speak, but nothing comes out.

"It's okay. I don't know everything about you." You scoff, watching as the boy next to you lets out an exhale. "I don't know that much, but I know enough."

"Enough?" He asks.

"Enough to know that if you are going to break my heart, you should do it right now. Because this is the part where I'm about to tell you how much I like you, and I don't want you getting that satisfaction."

Once you're done talking, you give him a smile. It's a small, innocent, bittersweet smile. It's one of the smiles you would give out to other girls who were ever mean to you, it's subtle, but it gets the point across.

"So what'll be? Park Jisung." You ask, awaiting a response.

Jisung has many things to think about right now, the most important one being driving. He still has yet to process everything you just told him, let alone figure out what to say.

"I.. don't know what to tell you, y/n." He sighs. "I don't want to hurt you.. Can you give me a few minutes?"

"You can have all the time in the world, sweetheart."

When Jisung finally decides to talk to you once you've reached your destination. If you're going to be honest, it was the most awkward car ride you've been in.

"Okay." He starts, closing his car door. "I know that was way more than a few minutes but I just wanted to tell you this here."

The spot that he had taken you to was a little hill area, on the other side of town. From the top of it you could see the sun set as it's golden rays covered the place you called home. You weren't going to lie, it was beautiful indeed but you didn't care for it at the moment. What you wanted to know was what he was going to say.

"I was.. gonna tell you this here no matter what happened so uh.. Here goes nothing?" There's hesitation, and you can already tell that whatever he was going to tell you was something big. "I'm not here to break your heart, y/n. I know, that's what you thought and probably what everyone else thought too but.. you're different. I know this."

Your brain wants you to call bullshit on that statement but your heart prevents you from doing so. The logical part of you believes that it's probably all a lie, an act just to get you to fall for him. You know this. You know the stories, you've seen the receipts of what he's done to people before you, and you can only assume the things he'll do just to make you fall for him. But if you knew this, then why does it still work?

"Am I really different?" You ask, looking up at him with shaky eyes.

He chuckles.

"Well, yeah. For starters, you're the first girl to ever call me out on my bullshit like that so.." He jokes. "I know.. you're scared. But you shouldn't be." He whispers. "You really are different. I promise."

"Listen, Jisung." You start. "I really want to believe you. It's just hard, because you haven't really given me a reason on why I should."

"That's okay. I understand." He says softly. "I didn't expect you to."

For a second, your heart breaks. It would've continued if he didn't continue talking right then and there.

"But what if I told you all the reasons why you should?" He asks, giving you a shy smile.

"What are they?"

"Well first of all. You're smart. You're smarter than I'll ever be. You've figured me out in what? The span of three months? You don't give yourself enough credit than you deserve. Second of all, you're really passionate about a lot of things. Like that time we argued in the library over the best Stranger Things season? Even though you were wrong, you kept arguing against me."

"Hey!" You exclaim, while Jisung gives you a smile in response.

"Third of all, you're really cute. Don't think I don't notice how your nose scrunches whenever I make a comment you don't like, or how easily you get excited over the simplest things. Remember when we walked to the cafe across the street from school? You got excited because the place had good boba, out of all things. Do you know how ridiculous you sounded?"

"Well- yeah! That's because it was a cafe! And not a boba shop!" You defend.

"I'm kidding." He chuckles. "Also, did you know that whenever you get embarrassed over something not only your cheeks turn pink, but your nose does too."

"You can stop now.. y'know.." You mumble.

"These are just a few things that I like about you, y/n. Do I need to tell you all of them for you to believe me?" He asks, looking at you innocently, as if he didn't just give you the biggest ego boost of all time.

"I believe you." You giggle as he pulls you in for a tight hug.

"Thanks, love." He whispers, placing a light kiss on the top of your head. "Now it's your turn. What were you going to tell me in the car?"

The next hour or so is spent with you two talking about each other, both of you giving out compliments as if there were no tomorrow. If it weren't for the sun being completely gone then you two probably wouldn't have noticed how long you've been alone together.

"Oh my god." Jisung exclaims. "What time is it?"

"Uhm.. Seven fifteen?" You respond, quite confused on why he was suddenly freaking out.

"We have to go, now. They're going to close the doors in like ten minutes."

"Oh. Okay!" You smile, eagerly skipping back to Jisung's car with his hand intertwined with yours. "We better get going then, huh?"

"Y/n said that she might be late because she's with Jisung already." Donghyuck tells Renjun and Chenle once pull up in front of his house.

Renjun had driven both of them together due to them only being a block away from each other. Donghyuck on the other hand was going to drive you, but when you texted him that you were already with Jisung he decided to ask Renjun for a ride. "Sorry for the inconvenience.. by the way." He mumbles, buckling his seat belt.

"It's alright. Where do you think they went?" Renjun asks.

"Hell if I know. This is the most I've seen Jisung do for anyone." Donghyuck retorts, clearly bitter about being ditched by his best friend.

"Should we be worried?" Chenle asks.

"I don't think so." Donghyuck responds. "Y/n is her own person and she can handle herself, plus what the fuck is Jisung even gonna do? They probably went to take pictures or something."

Chenle shrugs. "I guess so. How are you doing then?"

"What do you mean?"

Chenle shrugs again. "You know what I mean. During the time you two fought you barely said anything to each other, it was just her hanging out with Jisung. Then, even after you made up she ditched us to hang out with him and even now they're probably on a date before the dance or something. How are you dealing with it?"

Once Chenle is done talking, Renjun shoots him a glare before hitting him lightly on the back of his head.

"Ouchie.. That hurt!" Chenle whines. "Aren't you supposed to be driving Junnie.~~" He teases.

"Yeah but I'm also trying to make sure no one fucking cries tonight." He hisses. "Why would you even ask that?"

"I dunno. Was curious I guess?"

"Haven't you heard the phrase curiosity killed the cat?"

"It's been alright." Donghyuck says to prevent Renjun from harming Chenle any more. "I haven't really thought about it I guess? I mean.. I was the one who assigned her to Jisung after all so.."

"Do you think she y'know? Likes him?" He asks.

"Chenle!"

"Whaaaat?? I'm just asking."

"Zhong Chenle you will drop this topic before I stop this car and make you walk to homecoming alone."

"You wouldn't do that. You love me too much."

"Don't try me." Renjun threatens, turning on his blinker.

"Okay okay.. god.."

"Are you two done arguing now?" Donghyuck asks, rolling his eyes. "And no, Chenle. I don't think she does. If she did she would've told me by now."

"Alright Hyuck.. Whatever you say."

Sooner than later the three arrive at school where Renjun drops off Chenle and Donghyuck to hop in the line already forming before leaving to park his car.

"Ask any more questions Lele, and you're walking home." Renjun threatens before Chenle slams the car door on him.

"I mean it this time!" Renjun yells as he watches the two boys walk away from him.

"So." Chenle starts as Renjun drives off. "What's your answer?"

Donghyuck gives him a confused look. "Answer?"

"To y'know.. the question."

"I already told you."

"No silly, I meant your real answer."

Donghyuck is silent for a second before he decides to answer.

"How did you know?" He asks, and Chenle giggles.

"You just told me." He laughs. "I didn't think you'd walk into that one, Hyuck."

"Oh shut up." Donghyuck teases. "It's not like it would matter or anything."

"I supposed you're right." Chenle hums. "But if it did.. Then what?"

"Then I'd tell her to get out of there." Donghyuck whispers to himself.

"Hm?"

"Oh- uh, nothing. I dunno." Donghyuck responds. He knows he has no chance in fooling Chenle but even after that response you'd know not to bother him about the topic anymore.

Once Renjun is done parking he meets up with the two boys and they discuss about how their night will go. While the line slowly moves Renjun argues with Chenle that they should take photos first. Chenle argues back saying that he wants snacks and that all the good ones will be gone if they wait too long. While this goes on Donghyuck has been sending you frequent texts.

[hyuck: hey! we're in line now! see you in a bit?]

[hyuck: are you on your way soon?]

[hyuck: pls hurry.. renle fighting.. dk what to do..]

Needless to say, you haven't responded to any one of them, leaving Donghyuck wonder what you were even doing.

After successfully waiting in line and making it through their schools quick security check, Chenle, Renjun, and Donghyuck had finally made it inside the gymnasium where the dance was being held.

Once inside they move to an quieter place, where they could talk without having to yell over the already loud music that's being played.

"What about you Hyuck?" Renjun asks. "What do you want to do first?"

"Hmm? What? Sorry." Donghyuck responds, checking his phone once more before pocketing it. "What's happening?"

Renjun frowns. "You weren't listening, huh?"

"No, sorry." He apologizes. "Y/n hasn't texted me back yet and I don't want to do anything until she gets here y'know?"

"Don't worry Hyuck, it's possible they're still outside or something. They just opened the doors y'know."

"Yeah I know.. I'm just.. yeah."

Ten minutes later, you still haven't responded and the music is loud, but it's not loud enough to drown out Donghyuck's heartbeat as he frantically awaits your arrival. As each second passes by he begins to regret letting you go with Jisung, because you're never late, but the second that he lets Jisung control how your night starts you're ten minutes late and they're be closing the doors to the dance soon.

Renjun begins to notice that you aren't here either and decides walk over to Donghyuck to ask if he knew where you were.

"Hyuck, is Y/n here yet?" He asks, tapping his shoulder lightly.

Donghyuck gives no verbal response, instead he shakes his head while he fiddles with his phone checking back if you happened to text him. "I don't know where she is Junnie.."

"Hey, it's okay." He reassures. "It's not like she's in danger or anything, I know you don't trust Jisung that much but I doubt he'd do anything to hurt her. She'll be here soon, okay? I promise."

"Junnie~~" Chenle whines, popping up from behind them. "I'm boredddd. Can't we just do something already?"

"Lele, not now." Renjun shoos. "We're talking here."

"It's okay." Donghyuck says. "You guys can go do something, it's fine. I don't want to keep you from having fun tonight."

"Are you sure?" Renjun asks, he knows not to believe Donghyuck but he's getting quite annoyed at the fact that Chenle keeps pulling at his arm.

"Yeah. It's fine, if anything happens I'll text one of you."

"You heard him!! Let's go!!" Chenle exclaims before grabbing Renjun by the arm to drag him to god knows where.

"Chenle!" Renjun yelps. "I-I'll text you Hyuck! We won't be gone for long. I swear!" He yells back at him.

And then the two were gone. Leaving Donghyuck alone, by himself.

One of the worst feelings in the world is feeling alone, in a place full of people.

He doesn't know why he let them go off without him, maybe it's because he wanted to be alone, or maybe it's because he didn't know any better. But standing alone on the sides of a school dance, with no one to talk to really shows how lonely you are. He knows none of you meant to do it to him on purpose, it's just him overthinking things after all. But if he was okay with them leaving, then why did it hurt?

Deciding it was awkward enough to just stand there and people watch, Donghyuck decides to go back on his phone. He checks your text messages only to see no response. "Great." He thinks to himself. "You said you would be here, but you're not. I guess you did spend a lot of time with them after all."

Donghyuck feels himself about to cry when someone taps his shoulder. He closes his eyes trying to fight back the few tears that threaten to spill before having to talk to whoever was with him. He didn't want to answer any questions on why he was crying, only knowing that if someone asked him if he was okay he wouldn't be able to control them.

When Donghyuck looks up from his phone, the last person he expected to see is standing in front of him.

"Hi." Jeno greets. It's short, and airy. But it's just enough to get his heart racing. Is it from fear? Worry? Or is it from the fact that his ex, just so happened to catch him at the wrong place and wrong time.

"Hi." Donghyuck responds. It doesn't mean much because he didn't put any emotion into it, instead he decides to focus his attention elsewhere. He looks past Jeno towards the entrance of the gymnasium in hopes of seeing you walk in, spoiler alert, you didn't. "Chenle and Renjun picked the worst time to leave.." He thinks to himself. "I can't blame them though, after all I did tell them it was okay."

"You um- You look beautiful." Jeno compliments, giving Donghyuck a half-hearted smile. "So I've been told.." Donghyuck murmurs before attempting to push past the boy standing in front of him. "Listen. I don't have any time for this right now. Y/n said she would be here and she's not so-"

"Hyuck- Donghyuck, wait." Jeno starts, grabbing Donghyuck's wrist to prevent him from going any further.

"What the fuck? Let go of me!" He yells. It's loud enough to get the attention of a few people around him, but the music the DJ is playing is way to loud for them to have heard what he said.

"Hyuckie, I- Will you please let me explain?" Jeno practically begs, this is the first time that he and Donghyuck have interacted in person since the break up and he can already tell that he's blowing it.

"Don't- Don't call me that." Donghyuck states, hesitant to answer. "You've already explained yourself enough."

"Hyuckie.. Please. We haven't talked in months, you haven't let me say anything."

Of course, Jeno had to find Donghyuck in one of these moments, where one of their songs was being played by the DJ. It was one of the songs that Jeno had showed him, meaning it left such a big impact on his heart. He doesn't know what to do, does he accept Jeno's offer and let him explain? Or does he continue the rest of his high school career pretending that Jeno doesn't exist, leaving many questions unanswered.

Panic starts to fill Donghyuck as he looks around to see if anyone had noticed him and Jeno together. It would cause a bunch of talk, considering that fact that they were both pretty popular and that teenagers loved to start rumors.

He notices Jaemin as he spots Jeno from across the room, by the way Jaemin is walking towards them he can tell that he was looking for Jeno himself, clearly unhappy and very confused where he found him. He glances back at the entrance for a split second before looking towards the direction that his two friends had gone off in, only to see them walking back towards him, just as confused as Jaemin is. He can see the concern rise in Renjun once he sees who Donghyuck is with, as he grabs Chenle's arm to drag him across the makeshift dance floor that their school has created, where Chenle had decided to stop to talk to a few friends.

He looks back towards the entrance and to his luck he sees you and Jisung walk in. Thankful, he lets out a sigh of relief because he sees that you're here and that you're safe. He notices the smile that you have on your face and though he was a bit far away he can tell it's a genuine smile, like one of the one's you would show him when it was just you two hanging out. "I guess I worried for nothing." He thinks to himself, as he watches you two skip in, hands intertwined.

And amongst all this commotion happening at once, his ex, out of all people had to come up to him and ask him a question he knew he wouldn't be able to answer. So what does he do? He panics, of course.

"Oh my fucking god.." Donghyuck mumbles to no one in particular. Jeno seems to hear it but he doesn't process it because he's too busy being dragged by Donghyuck who was attempting to blend in with the big group of people who happened to pass by.

When Renjun, Chenle, and Jaemin end up where Donghyuck and Jeno were previously standing they're left more confused on where the two went. Though it's loud, Donghyuck manages to pick out Renjun's voice yell "What the fuck?" over a crowd of teenagers.

Donghyuck smiles to himself, knowing that he successfully got away. He didn't think it'd work, he'd only seen it in movies before and you know what people say, it's just movie magic after all.

"Where are we going?" Jeno asks innocently.

"Outside." Donghyuck responds, leading their way towards the "exit" sign on the other side of the gymnasium.

"Why?" Jeno asks once more, and Donghyuck turns around just to shoot him a glare.

"So no one. fucking. sees us." He grits through his teeth.

Needless to say, Jeno doesn't ask any more questions after that.

"Where is everyone?" You ask Jisung through the fit of giggles you let out.

"I dunno. Jeno isn't answering his phone so I'll call Jaemin, yeah?" He responds, just as giddy as you are.

"Oh, I was talking about Renjun, Chenle, and Hyuck."

"You can hang with us for a bit!" Jisung insists.

"I know but I haven't seen them all day." You pout. "I'll hang out with you after!! Besides, they're my best friends after all. How would you feel if I took you away from Jeno and Jaemin?"

"My dear you're allowed to do that any day of the week. I like you better than them anyways." He teases.

"Oh shut up. You know what I meant." You snort. "Can we just go find them please?"

"Yeah, hold on- Hi Jaemin!" Jisung says through his phone. "What? Sorry.. I can't really hear you. Is that Renjun? Why is he yelling at you?"

Your ears perk up hearing the name of your friend leave Jisung's mouth. "Renjun?" You ask, looking at him curious. "Are they okay?"

Jisung nods at you while trying to hear what Jaemin has to say, it's hard considering the fact that there's not only loud music coming from his phone speakers but the voice of an angry boy as well, and to add onto that, the same music being played just a couple feet away from you.

Pouting, you look at him. Jisung can tell you're worried about your friends by the way that your pupils shake as he pulls you into another tight hug, hoping to ease a bit of the worry.

From then you can kind of make out the conversation on the phone, it's something about Jeno and Donghyuck being together then suddenly disappearing out of thin air, like a magic trick.

"Where are you?" Jisung asks.

"We're in one of the back corners." Jaemin yells through his phone. "The uhh.. One on the right, your left."

"Okay. We're on our way." Jisung says before hanging up.

"I guess our night of fun had to end somewhere." He tells you before you two head further into the gymnasium to meet up with your friends.

Once you meet up with the three boys you're greeted with a hug from Chenle while you watch as Renjun and Jaemin argue.

"So they were right here?" You ask tapping Renjun's shoulder.

"Yeah. And then all of a sudden they disappeared." He says, quite frantically.

"Y'know worrying isn't going to do anything." Jaemin taunts.

"Yeah! And you making snarky comments doesn't help either!" Renjun shoots back.

"Can you two stop bickering a second?" Chenle snaps, surprising all of you. "We have no idea where the fuck they went and for the past five minutes all you two have done is argue? Why haven't we checked anywhere yet?"

"Because, Lele. They could be anywhere. We're in a room full of teenagers." Renjun states.

"For once, I agree with this one." Jaemin adds on, earning a glare from Renjun and a facepalm from Jisung.

"Okay? And? Have you ever thought about the fact that they could y'know, be outside?" Chenle asks.

"Why would they be outside?" You ask.

"Because it's loud in here, and it looked like they wanted to talk."

"So.." Jeno says, swinging his legs back and forth. He was currently seated on top of one of the picnic tables your school had, while Donghyuck was standing across from him, leaning against the corner of a wall.

"You said you would explain, so explain." Donghyuck states.

Jeno takes a deep breath as he stops swinging his legs, he looks at the ground before looking up towards Donghyuck who was already looking at him, clearly annoyed at the fact that Jeno was stalling.

"It was a dare." He starts, before Donghyuck cuts him off.

"Yes I know. We all know." He spits.

"But theres more." Jeno says once again. "As you know, Jisung dared me to ask you out and me, being the asshole I was back then, I agreed and decided to do so.." He pauses for a second. Trying to think of what to say next.

"Listen are you gonna keep stopping or are you going to tell the story?" Donghyuck comments, it's only been two minutes and he's already fed up with Jeno's bullshit.

"I am. I'm just trying to think about the right words to say."

"Why? So that I can fall back in love with you?"

"No, Hyuckie-"

"I said, don't call me that."

"Why?"

"Because Jeno!" Donghyuck yells, voice cracking as he tries to control the same tears from earlier from falling. "I am still in love with you! Each time I hear you say that stupid nickname my heart does leaps and I can't fucking stop it!"

His voice is loud enough for you to figure out where he is, and while the other students outside look around trying to find out what's going on, both you and Renjun take off running towards the sound of Donghyuck's voice.

Arriving in time to hear Donghyuck finish the last words of his sentence he can't tell if he's hurt or if he's relieved to see you. A sense of relief washes over him once he spots you, Renjun, and Chenle running in his direction. But then he sees Jisung and Jaemin, not that far behind you three, and he feels hurt, betrayed to say the most.

"So this is why you asked me, huh?" He scoffs, looking at Jeno with glossy eyes. "So you and your friends can get a little more enjoyment of my misery."

"Hyuckie- I-" Jeno starts.

"Save it. I don't ever want to hear from you again, Jeno. I can't believe I even believed you would tell me the truth."

Nothing more is said as Donghyuck walks away from all of you, and Jaemin and Jisung run towards Jeno. It's quiet, despite there being the sounds of the muffled music that's only being played from a hallway away, it feels like a horror movie with the unsettling silence between all of you.

Renjun is the first one to talk. His voice not only startles you, but grabs the attention of Jeno, Jisung, and Jaemin who happened to be a few feet in front of you.

"What the fuck happened?" He asks, looking at Jeno in the eye.

"I wanted to tell him that I'm sorry.. and that I missed things the way they were.." Jeno says, voice barely above a whisper.

Both you and Chenle can tell that Renjun is about to start yelling and if someone doesn't stop him now then fists will be thrown. Renjun is about to start talking again when Chenle interupts him.

"Junnie." He says softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's not worth it. Let's just go find Hyuck, okay?" He eases.

Renjun takes a second to sigh and relaxes before deciding to head off with Chenle, he know's it'll only make things worse but he really wants to tell the three boys off and possibly throw a punch or two. "It's okay.." Chenle coos at him.

"Y/n, are you coming?" He asks, looking back at you.

"Uhh.. Yeah. Just give me a second. I'll meet up with you in a bit, okay? Just text me where you are." You say quickly before glancing over at Jeno and his crew.

Chenle looks at you, confused on why you were looking at Jeno. It only takes him a second to realize what you were doing before he walks off with a hesitant nod. "Um.. Okay.. Just uh, don't be long. I know Hyuck wanted to see you."

"Thanks Lele. You're the best." You say, before talking off towards Jeno.

"Lee Jeno." You state, standing where Donghyuck previously was. You earn a few glances from Jisung and Jaemin, ask if they were asking each other why you were here and how long you've been there. It's not because they were doing anything bad or wrong, it's because of the fact that they were caught being nice and genuine to one of their friends, something that barely anyone has seen before.

"Y/n." Jeno sniffs, trying his best to wipe away the tears that had managed to leak out. "What are- What are you doing here?"

"Save it." You say, walking towards him. You push Jaemin away as you take a seat on top of the table next to him. It earns you a glare from Jaemin, but you shrug it off and ignore him once he start's complaining that you stole his spot.

"Just- Just tell me everything." You sigh, awaiting a response from the boy next to you.

Jaemin shoots you another look before Jisung walks away with him, knowing this should be a private conversation. They don't go far though, just out of earshot.

"This is my fault." He starts. "If I just continued letting him hate me, then I wouldn't have hurt him like that.."

"It's not your fault, you just wanted to explain things. Do you want to tell me what you were going to tell him? Or is that too personal?" You ask.

Jeno is hesitant to answer. His first initial thought is no, but as the seconds go by his answer changes to yes.

"Start from the top. What happened?" You ask.

You're gentle, and being patient with him. It's something that he's thankful for. It's also something that reminds him of Donghyuck, because whenever the two of them had disagreements Donghyuck would always wait for Jeno to explain, this was the first time he hadn't.

"Okay well.." Jeno sniffs. "If you didn't already know.. Donghyuck and I used to date. Our relationship started off from a dare but as our months together passed by I began to enjoy his company a little bit more. I don't know what it was, and if you asked me I wouldn't be able to tell you but there was just something about him that I ended up liking. Maybe it's the way that his hair flopped on his face each time he ran up to me, or maybe it's because of how tightly he hugged me and how gentle his kisses were, but it was something." He pauses for a second, reliving through a few memories. "I ended up catching feelings.. and as soon as I figured out that I did, he found out how we got together."

"Oh." You sigh, not looking at him.

"I was going to tell him that I meant everything I told him.. All the 'I love you's' and the 'You look beautiful's' but he just wouldn't let me talk.. And then you guys came and that just- that only made things worse.. and now- god.. now he's gone. He said he never wants to see me again."

"I'm sorry, Jeno. It's my fault." You say softly, taking all the blame. "I'm the one who brought everyone here, if it weren't for me then you probably would be talking to him right now."

"It's okay." He reassures. "It's not your fault.. You just wanted to help your friend. I'm sure it would've gone poorly even if you weren't here."

"I doubt that's true."

"Are you kidding me y/n? He hates me! And he the worst part of it is that he has every right to do so.."

"I didn't know people who hated each other confess to each other about still liking one another." You joke, hoping to earn a laugh from Jeno. "Besides, it's not like you won't see each other again. You still have time to make things better, plus you have me on your side."

"My side?" Jeno asks.

"Well yeah. You still like him don't you?"

Jeno sighs, he's lucky you aren't paying that much attention to him because if you did you would've noticed the way he looked at Jisung and how it hurt him more to let you keep going on like this. Nonetheless he lets it happen and he wonders if he really does deserve your help.

"You're too good, y/n."

192 notes · View notes

taylorroger-s · 5 years ago

Text

the great pretender [2] // billy/four x reader

a/n hi!!! here’s the second part of “the great pretender” and the third 6u fic ive posted. i have so many wips right now (because i have no self control and keep on starting stories i dont have the time to finish). i sat down like 4 hours ago and this is what came out of it. i’m kind of vibing with this story ngl. sooo here's part one, please reblog, etc.

masterlist!

warnings: none!

enjoy :)

⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱

the address the blond man had given you led to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. you tentatively stepped out of your car, eyes scanning back and forth across the area. it suddenly occurred to you that you could have been led there to be murdered. you could walk back to your car, drive back home, and forget you ever met the british man. but you didn’t, and continued to walk towards a set of steel double doors.

it was unusually warm for that time of year with not a cloud in the sky as the sun beat down. you drew closer, searching the surrounding lot for some sign of other people. nada. the building stood about twenty feet high, a few small windows placed at even intervals on the concrete walls. definitely felt like a prime murder location. aren’t i here to “die”? you mused, hand closing around the door handle. you breathed in, out, then pulled the door open and stepped inside the dark warehouse.

it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and you flinched when the heavy door shut behind you. taking another deep breath, you started walking around the room, eyes tracking the catwalks hanging overhead. the only light streamed through the small square windows, dust drifting through the air. the light all joined in the center of the room, one spot free of shadows.

“hello?” you called out, hands clenched into fists by your side. for a moment, there was only silence, and your anxiety was steadily mounting by the second. your heart nearly stopped when you heard a set of footsteps from the other side of the room. then another. someone sounded like they jumped from one of the catwalks. another set of footsteps. and another, until you could tell that there were six people in the room besides yourself. you were frozen, waiting for the mysterious group to make the next move. your eyes were glued to the circle of light as a tall man stepped into view.

“well well, looks like four was right. you did show.” his voice was relatively neutral, and he spoke fast. he had close-cropped, light brown hair, and a short beard; a few gray hairs sprinkled throughout. he gave off heavy egomaniac vibes. you automatically were suspicious. some part of you was struggling with vague recognition of his frustratingly handsome face. had he been on the news at some point? but you couldn’t put your finger on it and let the question slide.

“i did. might i ask why you wanted me to come here in the first place?” he tilted his head to the side, crossing his arms over his chest. you could just barely make out the outlines and shadows of more people lingering behind him. you unconsciously readjusted your stance to feel more confident, lifting your chin to look him in the eye.

“in the simplest of terms, you’re an asset,” he spoke without letting through a whisper of emotion, a small, cold smile on his lips. his light tone was mildly irritating, and you were eager to get to the chase as to why you were there. but you already knew the answer, of course. piles of money and classified statistics would make you useful to any illegal operation. yet you decided to play dumb. letting out a breath through your nose, you placed a hand on your left hip.

“oh? to what?” you did your very best to fill your words with a mocking lilt, though it wasn’t necessarily convincing, as his eye roll betrayed. the flicker of a scowl crossed your lips before you slid back into a poker face. you heard a faint snicker from behind the man, and then a subsequent hush. they were listening.

“our crew. we’re just like you. tired of the bullshit. and we decided to do something about it,” the dangerous vibe you found on the group on a first impression seemed to be confirmed. it made you wonder what made each of them an ‘asset’ to this group, and if it was a bigger operation than just an agreement between the people in that room.

“and we know you do too.” they certainly remember my outburst last night, you thought, cringing at the memory. once you stepped into the cab, it was impossible to think of anything else but what you did and what you were thinking of doing. the rest of the night was spent on the couch in your apartment, analyzing the piece of paper the british man gave you, even dipping into the fbi database with your account to dig up any other information. you were surprised to find there was nothing you came up with except for the location and ownership of the place he wanted you to find. apparently, it had been owned by some big tech company but was later abandoned and left to fall into disrepair. besides that, your hands came up empty of all information and you ended up falling asleep while watching tv, still holding tightly to the note.

“what exactly am i in for if i say yes?” curiosity from the night before still simmered in the back of your mind, and you were becoming more and more willing to take the leap you spent the last twelve hours considering. ‘death’ in exchange for a life of freedom. it dawned on you that this man must have faked his death to avoid the very government you were employed by.

“well, this is less of a request and more of an opportunity. you can take it or leave it.” now it was your turn to roll your eyes. your original assumption that the man was egotistical came to mind again. he certainly sounded like some boys you had known in college: rich from daddy’s trust fund, filled with unearned confidence, and owner of a severe superiority complex.

“wow, you really know how to make a lady feel special.” a louder laugh sounded from the shadows behind the man, and you instinctively flicked your gaze to where it came from. an annoyed, whispered curse (in… french?) followed the laugh, which only made the person laugh harder.

“ooh, she’s got a mouth on her. nice choice quattro.” the man’s voice was rich and warm with a slight accent to his words. quattro meant four. was that a name? nickname?

“ANYWAY, you’re gonna be dead in every way, except physical. without the law to hold us, we can do anything.” the man sunk back into a slightly patronizing, dreamy tone, trying to paint a picture of the future you left your boyfriend for. freedom from your earthly responsibilities. but the cynical analyst within you won over.

“as someone who works for the government, that is highly irresponsible.” you felt almost like a mom scolding her children for cooking up a dangerous activity. the man’s smile looked sharp enough to draw blood, brown eyes growing a shade darker. you had to stop yourself from taking a step back.

“didn’t bring you here to lecture me about my poor life choices, i hear enough of that from seven. this is your chance to make the mark you have been dreaming of. now, what do you say?” another number. you had to admit, he was highly convincing. he had such sheer charisma it was hard to resist, but you drew together the best argument you could think of and forced it past your lips.

“i’m not sure… it seems like you are up to some questionable vigilante justice,” you were about to continue your motherly scolding when you felt a person move to stand behind you. their body heat sent a startling chill across your skin. they leaned in closer, mere inches from your ear.

“love, this is what you have been looking for, right? i promise you won’t regret it.” your breath hitched at the british man’s voice. he didn’t sound as confident as he had the night before, somehow seeming younger without his gorgeous features clouding your thoughts. you tried to fight back against the part of you completely convinced by the two men, but it grew stronger by the second. oh god… am i really going to do this? you took a deep breath in, out. there was no more debate. you knew exactly what you wanted, needed.

“what do you need me to do?” you breathed out, pressing your lips into a thin line as soon as the words left your mouth. the blond man behind you relaxed, and you could almost see the smile he was most likely sporting. the man in front of you nodded approvingly, rubbing his beard with his left hand.

“excellent. first step, your name is now eight. i’m one. take a wild guess as to what everyone else’s names are. second, fake your death…” eight? what? the two numbers mentioned before made sense. they were names. your name was now eight, something that you had not expected in the slightest. but you didn’t had time to argue. you listened carefully as one explained how you were going to fake your death, along with finer points about your new fellow ‘ghosts’. a few minutes later, you were caught up. you turned around to greet the others, forgetting that the blond man was standing right behind you. you stumbled, the man’s strong arms keeping you from falling. you could feel the embarrassment rise as he looked down at you.

“glad you joined up… eight.” your cheeks grew hot with every passing second he had a hand on you. clearing your throat, you reluctantly stepped out of his arms.

“that’s gonna get some getting used to.” you laughed nervously, inwardly cringing at the obvious worry in your voice. he just smiled, raising the ambient temperature by 2 degrees celsius. his gorgeous green eyes were locked with yours, and you couldn’t help but offer him a shy smile in return. you were usually much stonier when it came to complete strangers, but the man’s casual confidence was annoyingly attractive.

“you’ll catch on quick. you’re family now.” you softened a little at the care in his voice. you broke eye contact and glanced down at your shoes. a beat later, you looked back up, smirk on your lips.

“then what’s your name, casanova?”

“four,” he matched your smile, reaching out a hand for you to shake. you took it, praying he wouldn’t notice the sweat on your palm. his hands were rough with callouses, skin hot to the touch.

“pleased to meet you, four.” you responded, doing a mock curtsy once you let go of his hand. he smiled, winking at you playfully.

“likewise.”

⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱

yayayydufaysudf it’s done! hope ya liked it

100 notes · View notes

cocktail-party-in-an-abattoir · 4 years ago

Text

In Memoriam Herschel (2005-2021)

It was the late summer/early autumn of 2005. I was 16 years old. I went to a friend’s house for a get-together with other friends. She lived in a more rural area, so stray cats were not uncommon. One of these strays had recently birthed a litter of kittens. They were corralled into a blocked-off area in my friend’s den. Naturally, we all gravitated towards the kittens. We spent a good while petting them, playing with them, holding them, and watching them with their mother. A particular kitten was a gray and white tabby. This kitten had made its way towards me and tried to crawl up one of my jean legs. I was wearing bootcut jeans, so it actually managed it. I was immediately drawn to this kitten, the idea of asking my parents if we could keep it already forming.

While my friends and I were playing with them, we decided to give them all smartass, noncommittal names. None of us could sex kittens, so that was reflected in the names we chose. I named the gray and white tabby (of which there were two, but I zeroed in on the jean leg kitten) “Herschel.” Why? Well, when I was eight or nine, I used to play House with friends. I had heard the name “Herschel” on some sitcom, and I liked the sound of it. So, I often named my fake son “Herschel.” This became an inside joke between my best friend and me.

Back at home, I asked my mom if we could adopt the kitten. She had veto power. She was kind of hesitant at first but eventually relented. A few weeks later my friend and her mom brought the kitten over to my house. By that point I was already seriously referring to it as “Herschel.” We all just kind of assumed it was male. The first thing Herschel did after getting out of the carrying case was hide behind one of our bookcases and stayed there.

We took Herschel to the vet. Upon examination the vet tech proclaimed he was, in fact, she. Her exact words were “You have a little girl!” For better or for worse, I was committed to “Herschel” (much to my mom’s chagrin), so from then on, I had a girl cat with a boy name. This led to years of various people (mostly veterinary staff) getting her sex wrong. I don’t know that I ever bothered correcting them because, well, they were going to find out the truth soon enough.

Between 2005 and 2010, Herschel grew from a kitten with what my mom described as “Yoda ears” into a gorgeous young lady. She had the most beautiful green eyes. People always had nice things to say about her looks. She had an adorable bow-legged gait from the beginning. She grew into an affectionate little cuddle-bug once she adjusted to us. She was wary of strangers, which was probably for the best. She did not like to go outside as much as our older cat, Simba (RIP)—especially after being treed once—but she was a very skilled huntress. She even managed to get two hummingbirds. Obviously, I’m not a fan of such “presents,” but I couldn’t help but be impressed by her prowess.

In 2007, we adopted 2 labs named Olive and Penny (RIP x2). 2010, we adopted two fluffy black kittens from our vet’s office. We named them Buttercup and Licorice (RIP x2). Herschel respected Simba because of his seniority, but she absolutely despised the other pets. She would growl and hiss at them on sight. Because of this, the dogs had to stay downstairs while the cats had free rein upstairs. By 2012, Buttercup had gone missing, and we had adopted two more animals: a cat named Kid Twist (“Twist” for short) and a blue heeler named Bleu. Herschel did not care for them either. That same year my parents moved one state over, and I moved to a nearby city to stay with a family friend. The Menagerie went with my parents.

One day in 2013 or 2014 my mom commented about how Herschel hid under a guest room bed much of the time. She would only come out to do her business or eat. Since the dogs had free rein over the entire house, this meant there was no real “safe space” for Herschel. Thus, her reclusiveness. Mom was worried about her well-being. I offered to take Herschel under my wing. Mom agreed. Now, my housemate already had a few cats, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement over a house with dogs. Herschel had been under my care since.

In 2015 Herschel moved with me into the apartment I currently live in. Despite my apartment’s smallness, she was finally the one cat in a one-cat home. I had stopped letting her out because a) my apartment complex is positively labyrinthine b) the complex is next to a busy highway, and c) I wanted her to live longer and not harm any wildlife (although her hunting days were behind her). She didn’t seem to mind. For the next few years, she was my kitty comrade. Aside from some dental issues and a heart murmur, she always had a clean bill of health. I honestly thought she was going to live as long as Simba had (18, almost 19) because he was also a spry geriatric cat.

In late 2020, Herschel was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. She had been growing thinner and vomiting before I found out. I had to start giving her medication twice per day, but there was otherwise no change. She was still the empress I knew and loved, if a little slower. I thought that was going to be it. Then, earlier this year, the vet ran some more tests. While I had managed to lower her thyroid levels, the vet found another problem: chronic kidney disease. My blood ran cold upon hearing this because one of our pet labs, Olive, had died from kidney failure a few years prior. The vet told me while there was no cure, CKD could be managed with diet changes and medication. He was right, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Herschel. She quickly went from stage 3 to stage 4 (4 being the end stage). I still kick myself about this because I feel like I could’ve found out sooner. Anyway, the vet suggested I should have Herschel hospitalized for a couple of days with IV fluids. The idea was to basically rehydrate her and then start a regimen of a new diet, supplements, and medication.

So, I waited outside for three hours until a hospital staff member came to collect Herschel. It would’ve been longer, but my very kind vet called ahead. A couple of days later my mom and I returned to the hospital to wait for Herschel. It was March 25th, my birthday. One of the vets called me and stated despite the diuresis, Herschel’s stats remained the same. She stated I had probably 2 weeks left with her. I knew she was right, but I was still determined to try. I gave her daily cocktails of medication. I learned how to give her subcutaneous injections to hydrate her. I got the prescription wet food. At first, she had more okay days than bad, but it eventually became clear she was circling the drain. Treatment transformed into hospice care. I was going to do everything possible to keep her comfortable. By the end she was incontinent and no longer eating or drinking. Then she stopped being able to walk. I knew I had to make the final appointment. After a long crying session, I did.

My mom came to help yesterday. Herschel was mostly immobile and out of it. Not even her favorite prosciutto roused her. I swaddled her in a changing pad and a blanket and slept with her next to me for one more night. She was still alive this morning if barely. Before we were set to go to her final appointment, I played her Sugarloaf’s “Green-Eyed Lady” (which will always remind me of her) and Audrey Hepburn’s version of “Moon River.” As my mom and I went to prepare her for the appointment, we realized how still she was. She did not appear to be breathing, and she did not react to anything we did. I took a flashlight to her pupils and… she was gone. She had died peacefully on my couch, which was one of her favorite spots to lounge. Honestly, I was relieved because the thought of taking her to a strange place to be euthanized frankly distressed me. I cuddled her ragdoll body from then until we were sitting in the vet office’s parking lot. Mom got a chance to hold her, too. A vet tech came out, used her stethoscope, and confirmed what we already knew. After a few more minutes with her we said our last goodbyes. I filled out paperwork confirming I wanted her ashes returned to me with a clay pawprint.

I want Herschel’s ashes buried on my parents’ property with the others. Maybe a little farther away since she did not like most of them. I’m also looking into urn jewelry so I can carry her with me. This cat saw me at some of my lowest points, including when I was furloughed from my job last year. This cat was sweet and affectionate but also a pesky little shit. This cat was the first living being I was fully responsible for. She somehow managed to be regal while shoving her butthole into your face. If she liked you, she came and sat with you. If she didn’t, she hid behind the washing machine. I’m convinced she was part slug because even at her largest she was able to fit into confined spaces. I will miss her trilling meows. She was beautiful to the end, and I will always love her and miss her. I don’t know if there is an afterlife or not, but if there is, I hope she has endless king crab and prosciutto to snack on.

#personalcocktail #pet death cw

1 note · View note

kingofthewilderwest · 6 years ago

Note

it kinda bugs me how they cant make httyd3 longer just so they can emphasize the story in a deeper meaning, like your post abt it being disproportionate. httyd3 had a LOT more plot than httyd2 and we can already see how it has to cramp so much and why that makes D2's pace felt pretty fast. the structure of the story is actually well planned.. perfect, to be exact! but the execution like putting pauses, necessary humor, longer dialogue, is whats needed to make it um, understandable? im not sure..

this isnt meant to judge the movie as bad though! but its a question ive been asking why they cant do it longer, for that sake. is it the budget? was Dean really certain the script is okay? or is it meant to be like this so people can interpret the movie their way? (oof that one is confusing).. i dont know, i want to ask about your thoughts on that >

From this.

It’s an interesting conversation for sure! I believe that THW doesn’t have to be longer to be extremely successful in the ideas it needs to convey! The core ideas being:

Toothless cannot be a wild dragon and strong alpha leader with humans. Other dragons probably deserve the respect of needing wild dragon needs, too.

Humans like Grimmel are extremely dangerous to dragons and will continue to arise, so dragons need to go to an area separate from humans to live in optimal peace.

Hiccup and Toothless’ powerful friendship will separate (insofar as physical location) due to the first two points

I know you’re not the only person I’ve talked to who wanted a longer time because you feel like certain elements were cramped, needed more breathing room, or that dangerous plot points didn’t get enough sense of weight. More time would presumably give that flow and sense of scale and danger. Now, it’s true that more time would give us more content to develop these things. That said, I believe solutions aren’t always “add more.” Creating good art isn’t about adding new things; it’s about knowing when to take away or alter, and how to make every second of your creation count optimally.

I remember when I was doing my music composition degree, my instructors hammered into me what would make a good final piece: the editing process of deleting measures - even measures that were really good! - because they didn’t fit what the final product needed. It’s painful to delete, but ultimately, it’s freeing; instead of making a music piece more cluttered to put all possible good ideas in, I can make it less cluttered, more manageable, more beautiful, more meaningful, and more effective to audiences. A better overall piece isn’t putting in every good idea I have; it’s leaving the piece with the beautiful ideas it needs.

I suggest The Hidden World doesn’t need added materials so much as it needs refining what’s already there.

Budget, production green lighting, and carefulness to the script all seem to have been done. HTTYD 3 was given a longer production time than originally planned. They pushed back the date exactly so they could make their best product. Interviews with people like DeBlois and Spielberg (who read several definitions of the script) talk about how much the script was transformed and bettered through its drafts. They did enough tweaking and care to rework the script. As for budget, the movie was 129 million USD, which sure was the cheapest of the HTTYD trilogy to create, but it’s about on par with what DreamWorks has spent on other movies like Home and Trolls - it’s not like there was skimping - and it’s all about making your money count, which I think this glorious, top notch animation quality film effectively did. So from what I’ve heard, I think production ran fine and we can’t question THW there.

I think most of THW’s problems can be solved simply by tweaking how scenes go down, taking a few small elements out, and adding a few small elements in. It doesn’t need time changes; it needs internal modifications to what’s already there. What I propose wouldn’t change much of the movie’s length - though maybe I we could add 5-8 minutes for things like a longer climax.

1. To Feel Less “Cluttered” or “Rushed”

The movie didn’t feel rushed to me or too cluttered, but it’s cluttered. You’re right. In addition to creating less clutter, my suggested tweaks will clear up time THW can spend elsewhere, streamline THW into fewer palatable essential ideas, and give a slight tone makeover that will add more sense of danger and conflict that THW needs.

Fewer humor side gags with minor characters (and less time spent on them). The gang’s antics are fun additions, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re central to what the plot needs. Spending too much time with them adds clutter and takes away from plot-central, tone-central material. There’s a huge gaggle of gags in THW, more than any movie needs in a less-than-two-hour-long run time. Do we need all these to give THW its comic relief? Don’t get me wrong - I loved the humor - but time needs to be prioritized, and the movie will be improved once “less is more.”

Less time with Tuffnut’s pep talks. This goes with my first point. This comedic gag was lengthy in particular. It’s in part because it connects to the idea of Hiccstrid marrying, which THW does make more central in its themes. However, I also propose:

Spend less time (or delete) the will-they won’t-they marry Hiccstrid plot. THW intends to parallel Hiccup and Toothless maturing into adulthood, including their romantic connections. However, a will-they won’t-they marry subplot in Hiccstrid isn’t needed to create that parallel. Not to mention: it can be uncomfortable to have this undertone of romance as “required” adulthood maturation, and the fact that Hiccstrid are so close and intimate makes it feel “off” that they’re so uncomfortable talking about marriage. Spend less time here, simply make fans aware they’re going to marry in the future but not today, and return to the main relationships THW needs to pay attention to: that of Hicctooth and Nightlight.

2. To Make Grimmel a Greater Sense of Threat

One of the central points is that Grimmel is extremely dangerous and represents one of many humans that’ll continue to be a threat to dragons. While Grimmel can be overcome, Hiccup will need to interact with Grimmel in such a way he can understand that dragons and humans cannot coexist in today’s civilization without continuing to risk danger, and that it’s best for everyone to live happily in two separate civilizations. It’s not being defeated by the enemy’s oppression, but taking a brilliant countermeasure to give humans and dragons both a better existence.

Making Grimmel feel like a greater sense of threat, and helping audience members understand what Grimmel represents overarchingly of humanity’s current antagonistic state, will help us and Hiccup process why a separation is best. This can be done by:

Show Grimmel’s impact on human society. All we’d have to do is change what his base looks like: it could be located in an area taken over from another human civilization, showing his army’s power and place in this world over humans.

Greater weight placed on Berk’s exodus. The Hooligans lost their home, but it’s played too lightly. It’s not written optimally as an emotionally impacting or destabilizing moment, which decreases the sense of threat Grimmel has. Instead of having the Hooligans excited to find New Berk, show them grieving. They can butt against Hiccup’s ideas of finding the Hidden World, but instead in a way where they’re frustrated at his naive solution and hurt at what they left behind. This isn’t adding time to THW; this is tweaking phraseology and presenting an event differently.

Change how Berk is abandoned. To make the attack feel more dire, threatening, either: 1. Have the Hooligans more reluctant and grumpy to leave in the town meeting, and not play the leaving scene so lightly, or 2. Have Grimmel chase them out of Berk so they have to flee then and there. This might even reduce time!

Show Grimmel’s power over dragons. We could have a few-second-long flashback of him standing over a field of dead Night Fury bodies, or have his place cloaked in dragon skins or skulls.

Show Grimmel’s power as a warlord. Grimmel acts in almost a solo fashion, despite cooperating with warlords and having an army. It doesn’t give us a good sense of scale. Show his interactions better with the whole of his forces to make him feel more dangerous, and for humanity as a whole to feel more like a threat against dragons. For example, in the scenes where he’s trying to trap the dragon riders, show him commanding more people.

Show Grimmel’s impact on the dragon (and/or human worlds) through landscape. What if, as the Hairy Hooligans try to find a new place to stay, they fly over several islands that have been destroyed by Grimmel’s forces? Either human civilizations, or homes once havens to dragons, with characters making comment they “hope” people got away. And what if, when Grimmel takes their dragons near the end of THW, it’s again through more violence and a raid and fire and destruction?

Conversations more clearly talk about Grimmel’s dangers over dragons and humans, and how he’s one of many people that’ll arise. This idea is embedded in THW dialogue, but not clearly enough to fully grasp its weight, especially not in the sense we see characters grasp this. Have Hiccup and Astrid and Valka or something talk about how widely destructive Grimmel is, how even once he’s gone another man like him will take his place, and that while they may continue to fight and win for human and dragonkind, it’s ultimately not the right move to make for everyone to live safest and alive. A conversation laying this out makes a world of difference in our understanding of what dangers are going down and why we need to come to the solution THW concludes with. Again, this isn’t adding time; it’s changing phraseology.

Add a few minutes to the climax. Make the final fight with Grimmel obviously the final fight, the threat bigger, the action more intense.

Perhaps show that Berk’s done good work changing the world by their choices. Even though Berk ultimately decides to let the dragons go, they are meant to be the voice of peace that changes their world. The good guys can’t resign to letting themselves live under the thumb of bad guys’ choices. Show that they’ve made a difference - Grimmel and his armies are gone and the world is regrowing (no more torched landscape, if we add that element in) - but that it’s still going to help their world by letting dragons go, too… for this generation, at least.

3. To Make Hiccup and Toothless’ Parting Jive Better

Hiccup and Toothless separate out of need - they can’t live in the same place for the better of both their kinds. However, since the movie spends so much time on Toothless chasing after the Light Fury, we don’t get that full sense of need. I propose:

Open THW with a clear Hicctooth sappy bonding moment. We need things like “Forbidden Friendship” and “Where No One Goes” to feel the power of Hicctooth’s love. Give us that starting sense in THW of how close they are before adding in the complications. It can even be done by tweaking how the opening fight scene goes down.

Show dragons profiting by living with humans, but it also being Complicated with their wild side. We need to acknowledge that the relationship between humans and dragons has done the dragons good, too! Otherwise it might feel incongruous with the rest of the franchise.

Show dragons being unfit in the urban area through their own restlessness. The movie tries to show this with Moosie Boi being too big for Berk, and Berk being so crowded with dragons Gobber finds the soup unsanitary. But if we see Stormfly restless and want to leave for the Hidden World, too, wouldn’t this say something more about where dragons are pulled to and belong?

Less time spent on Toothless investigating the Night Fury. You can’t cut this down too much or we’ll feel like rushing, but since THW focuses so much on just Toothless and the Light Fury’s connection rather than an overarching problem for dragons, it’s hard to feel the full-scale issues of the problem. Making it just him and her feels more like a hook up love story than “dragons and humans are incompatible for their needs.”

Change Toothless’ body language. Show more emotional division in Toothless about his conflicting options. Show him hesitant to leave Hiccup and the two interact over that. Show him lonely away from his kind when with Hooligans. Show him feeling that loneliness met - that deep emotional need of being with his own species - when he’d thought was lost to him (rather than focusing on it being a romantic hookup interest). This doesn’t take more time; it tweaks what was already given on screen.

Change Toothless’ emotions with the Light Fury to feel more like loneliness being met than horny boi practicing kissing with a rock. This does a better job of showing that Toothless has a deep need that needs to be met as a wild animal and as a social draconic species.

Change conversations Hiccup has with humans about Toothless’ struggle. Maybe have Hiccup processing less with people and more by himself or with Toothless. Don’t write the conversations with people be about “Toothless has a girlfriend” and “of course he left.” Discuss instead how Night Furies are social creatures and Toothless hasn’t been with his kind in six years - that’s a huge hole in his heart being filled. Validate the deep connection Hiccup and Toothless have, while simultaneously acknowledging the struggle of this moment now. The movie shows that the Light Fury can never be domesticated, so I think that’s fine, but maybe one line from Astrid saying, “I don’t think she’ll come to live with us,” would be enough to help other audience members pick that up too.

More time spent on all dragons being in danger, and Toothless as an alpha unable to protect them with Hairy Hooligans. The story doesn’t show Toothless being much of an alpha - intentional - until he reaches the Hidden World and it clicks. But I suggest it’d be more effective to pull this out more than having an issue with Moose Boi taking up too much space in Berk, and Berk being so crowded Gobber has a dragon in his soup.

Put more of a deal on Toothless being an alpha. You can say that Toothless didn’t understand or use his role as alpha when with humans, but I think showing more sense of conflict, and of an alpha needing to be wild to protect his own, would be useful. Make this an issue for all dragons. The alpha status being used as a blackmail device against Toothless to keep the Light Fury alive could be replaced with us seeing the full species of dragonkind being unable to be protected by an alpha apart from his own people. More needs to be done than dragons bowing to him in one scene to understand what the alpha does for his society.

Show Toothless with more Light Furies. The Light Fury being his singular focus is great. But what about, in the Hidden World, Hiccup and Astrid watch Toothless interacting with a whole group of Night Furies, and he’s clearly in a situation that was Made For Him?

THW already has great content in there - Toothless and the Light Fury interacting, Hiccup crying when he realizes Toothless is fit in the Hidden World, Hiccup freaking out and Astrid comforting him when he feels a low, and Hiccup and Toothless parting ways touchingly at the end.

With these proposed tweaks, we get Toothless and Hiccup’s relationship being addressed deeply from the angle of both friends. We understand what both Toothless and Hiccup emotionally feel, and palatably sense how both love the other. We get a sense that Toothless is attracted to the Light Fury and might want to mate, but that she’s also calling him into a wild life and reminding him that he’s been alone, separated from his kind. We get a sense that it’s not just Toothless, but all dragons who might be called back to the Hidden World. We get a sense that it’s not just Toothless, but his whole role as alpha affecting the entirety of dragonkind.

And once we add in a greater sense of Grimmel being dangerous, and that more humans like him will continue to rise up, we can understand why Berk would release all their dragons. It’s not that dragons hate living with humans - THW can make that clear - and it’s not that dragons haven’t been profited by living with humans. But in the current call, the current situation, it’s best to go to the Hidden World.

I’m mostly tweaking how scenes go down, changing lines and reactions rather than adding material. Feel free to propose a longer movie! For me, THW already has enough space to share its message. Maybe it needed to be a few minutes longer, but I suppose my own sense is that they had enough time to budget in this material, make a smooth-flowing movie with all the material they needed to present, and come away with an astounding storyline.

Like you, this isn’t meant to judge the movie as bad! It isn’t bad! It’s downright wonderful in many aspects. I’m so happy I’ve seen it and can scream over it! Simply, if I were in charge of tweaking the script, these are the first alterations I’d make, and I think it would make THW even better.

#long post #httyd 3 spoilers #httyd 3 criticism #httyd3 #httyd 3 #How to Train Your Dragon 3 #THW #The Hidden World #analysis #my analysis #Hiccup #Toothless #Hiccup and Toothless #Light Fury #Grimmel #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #faq

184 notes · View notes

celiacandsalty · 5 years ago

Text

Kal Penn’s Nuts

Warning: the following blog includes strong language, references to gluten, and excessive whining.

When my brother Jeff got diagnosed with Celiac disease in 2014 (at age 34) I distinctly remember my first thought being something along the lines of, “oh god, that poor bastard.” Not only because many most of the best foods contain gluten, but because I was already imagining the inevitable day when he goes to some business dinner or something and the server mistakes him for one of THOSE people. You know, the people we all roll our eyes at because they claim to have a gluten “sensitivity” or “intolerance,” but we suspect they’re full of shit and make a mental note to mock them at a later date. It’s hard to say why I cared so much about what hypothetical Cheesecake Factory employees in Ohio might think about my brother’s diet but I DID.

(I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but on TV shows now if they want to quickly convey that a character is an annoying douchebag, usually all they have to do is throw in a line where that person orders a gluten free whatever and a vegan something or other. It’s been a “joke” (for lack of a better word) for at least a decade now and for some reason shows no signs of stopping, despite the fact that it is completely unoriginal, unfunny, and hacky. What I’m saying is, gluten free is the new Nickleback.)

Okay, now cut to 2018 when I, following in my brother’s stupid footsteps, also get diagnosed with Celiac disease1 and all those pitying thoughts I never would have verbalized to my poor bastard brother come flooding back, only now they apply to me too and I can hear them all because they’re in my head. I did not take the news well.

Now, it almost goes without saying that it is easier now than ever before to find decent gluten-free food, especially in Portland, Oregon (where I fortunately already happened to live), but I gotta say, it’s a colossal pain in the ass and it still sucks. It sucks that I have to spend so much of my free-time moonlighting as a gluten detective, looking at menus for places I might possibly be invited to eat at someday and reading every word on every food label and trying to get to the bottom of whether miso paste or Werther’s Originals are safe for me to eat.2 It sucks that I don’t even really WANT to go out to eat much anymore because it’s such a stressful experience that I barely enjoy it anways. It sucks that I once enjoyed traveling and now I’ve pretty much written off at least a couple of entire continents (and they were good ones too.) It sucks that I have frequent anxiety dreams about accidentally poisoning myself. It sucks that I only just discovered Shake Shack 6 months before getting diagnosed and now I’ll never again know the joy of a squishy hamburger bun. It sucks that I no longer get to be the easygoing person in a group or at the office who, when asked about dietary restrictions, could proudly say “Nope! I’m fine with whatever (aka I am a very cool and chill person).” I could go on and on, but I’d have to say the thing that actually sucks the most is the whole gluten-as-a-punchline thing because for me it is so terribly unfunny.

A couple of months ago3 I was at the gym, listening to one of my podcasts in which the guests, usually comedians, get a chance to rant for a few minutes on any topic of their choosing. That week, Kal Penn (of Harold & Kumar fame4) was one of the guests and he made the bold choice to rant about GLUTEN. My blood went straight to a solid simmer before he said another word. I considered shutting it off, but I thought to myself, “Easy does it, Jeanne! Maybe it’s not going to be what you think it is.”

Narrator: It was.

Kal Penn went on to say that as a person living with a severe allergy to tree nuts, it makes him very angry that people who claim to have GLUTEN allergies or intolerances are diluting the seriousness of his legitimate food allergy. The main takeaway being that GLUTEN allergies are FAKE and a FAD and they’re a PREFERENCE, unlike Kal Penn’s very real allergy to nuts.

Of course, Kal Penn included the caveat that there is a VERY small percentage of people for whom gluten issues are real, but I feel like that finer point may have been lost in the message of screaming FAKE FAKE FAKE for 3 minutes.5

The annoying thing though, is that Kal Penn is right. It IS a fad. (Especially in LA.) And I HATE that it is. One particularly annoying thing about this is that restaurants are catching on and more and more GF items items are popping up on menus everywhere. Unfortunately, they are often actually GF, unless you have Celiac disease, which makes my gluten detective job much harder.6

Now I don’t doubt that living with a nut allergy is hard. And I imagine that Kal Penn and I actually have a lot in common when it comes to anxieties and frustrations around food and eating out. I know that I shouldn’t say that I’m jealous of Kal Penn and his nut allergy, but in a way I am. Yes, I’m sure it is terrifying to go into anaphylactic shock and have to be rushed to the hospital, but on the bright side, at least people don’t think you’re a douchebag liar!

Speaking of being rushed to the hospital, here’s the funny story about how I found out that I can’t eat gluten. A little over a year ago, I ended up in the emergency room after dramatically collapsing in my apartment and completely losing all feeling in the entire left side of my body. After getting an MRI (and some other very expensive tests), I was informed that there were several areas of stroke in my 34-year-old brain.7

I spent 3 days in the neurology unit with puzzled doctors coming in every hour to scratch their heads and look at me with great concern. I didn’t find out for another full week that all of this was a result of undiagnosed Celiac disease. Apparently though I was asymptomatic in terms of gastrointestinal issues (very common in adults), I had become so severely anemic8 that I literally almost died. Malnutrition and malabsorption are common symptoms of Celiac, and at this point my hemoglobin was so critically low that I required a blood transfusion and 2 IV iron infusions.

Ok, so cool story, I know, but is stroke and near-death a common effect of eating gluten? Nope! I don’t think so!

So what’s my point? Fuck, I don’t even remember now. But I guess what I’m saying is...we all know the people Kal Penn is talking about. And I spend way too much of my mental energy worrying that when I tell someone I can’t have gluten9, they might, for example, still serve me a salad that they accidentally put the croutons on and then tried to pick them off but missed a few because they probably assume I’m just another asshole doing the Whole 30.10

So, Kal Penn, believe me when I say that I am with you on the issue of THOSE people. But continuing to rail against them and their possibly exaggerated gluten sensitivities does nothing to stop them. (I suspect it might even make them stronger and more annoying.) It does however, continue to reinforce the already widespread belief that gluten is a made-up problem invented in the 2000s, by I don’t know, naturopaths and George Soros probably? And it’s this belief that is actually very dangerous to people like myself and my brother and the millions of other poor bastards with REAL incurable conditions, and, for what it’s worth, one that seems unlikely to change the way we treat someone with a nut allergy. And, last but not least, it is also a belief that occasionally ruins my workout/enjoyment of podcasts.

Anyways, thanks for letting me vent.

Oh, but sorry about your nuts, Kal Penn.

----

Cool family, right?? (Also my maternal grandmother had it too and was diagnosed in the 1980s.)

Still unclear

I meant to write this sooner. Fortunately, my New Year’s Resolution was to hold on longer to more grudges.

Among other things, like Obama’s White House?

I was also going to go back and listen to the podcast again to more accurately transcribe his rant, but just thinking about it made my heart hurt. If you want to hear for yourself, it was the November 9, 2019 episode of Lovett Or Leave It.)

Plus the pay sucks.

I think it could still pass for 28.

My blood’s solution to this problem was to produce WAY too many platelets, which I didn’t know and perhaps my blood didn’t know, are what make blood clot.

“Just tell them you have CELIAC.” Well guess what–some of THOSE people are co-opting our magic word too now!

Sorry if you’re doing the Whole 30 and not an asshole.

#celiac disease #kal penn #jon lovett

1 note · View note

gwennhadu-bug · 6 years ago

Text

Bon Route (part...3ish?)

@alyanette-april 4: Travel

Remember that Alyanette college road trip AU I have in the freezer? I pulled out a chunk of it again! This doesn’t directly follow the first posted installment, but it makes for good, long, dialogue and plotless reading on its own. And honestly, you can start to see why I keep this in the freezer, but how could I not post it for the theme of “travel”...??

“Road trip!” Marinette chirped , following Alya’s rough tug out to their waiting van.

The T&S Boulangerie van was an old white Renault van with their logo emblazoned on the side. Tom had splurged for an automatic van, deciding that it would be less likely to jostle any catered goods on the inside. Alya and Marinette had filled the back with the materials for Rome, of course, as well as their own suitcases. The front seats were ready for a long trip with a blanket and pillow for the passenger, bin of snacks, and plenty of music. Alya had done her research and was as ready for this as she figured she could be.

Marinette’s parents had flown out the night before and it wasn’t hard for their daughter to sneak home, explain the secret plan to their cover shift manager, get the van, and drive it to Alya and Marinette’s apartment early that morning. They still had a few fresh croissants aromatizing the van when the two girls left Adrien and Nino’s place. Marinette jumped into the driver’s seat and Alya buckled in next to her. “Alright, Mari. Recapping our plan… Day one, we’re driving to Chloe’s in Geneva. It’s about a 6 hour drive, but since we need to stop every 2 hours for safety, we’re stopping in...Auxerre, and Saint-Albain. So accounting for the time it takes to stop, we’ll probably be there around...15 or 16 o’clock. An entire evening with Chloé, like you wanted.” She rolled her eyes and added, “For some reason.”

Marinette started the van and didn’t immediately reply. She drove down the street, rolling over the old stone roads and into the busy traffic. With expert confidence, Marinette weaved in and out of the slow or stopped cars, through the old, small side streets. “We owe it to her. She moved away two years ago, Geneva’s only 3 hours by train, and no one but Adrien has visited her once!”

“Because we’re broke university students and she’s a salope,” Alya responded. “This is your right turn.” Marinette turned on to Boulevard Saint-Germain with a pleased sigh. This was a main road, not a side-street, and the van wasn’t as terrifyingly large here. “Take Pont de Sully, then we’re taking a sharp right to Quai Henri IV.”

“She’s not a salope. She’s gotten so much better. She got so much better through all of lycée, you know that!”

“She just learned how to use underhanded compliments instead of outright insults. And don’t you remember all that shit she pulled in lycée? Especially when you first got together with Adrien? No, she was still a salope then.” The car loudly rolled over Pont de Sully and Alya took the opportunity to look out at the Seine. Early morning light reflected over the river, lighting up their city that she wouldn’t see for almost two weeks. Marinette took her sharp right onto the next street. “Okay, we just follow this road until the A4 ramp towards Orly Airport and merge onto Périphérique.”

“Got it,” Marinette answered. Their road took them parallel along the Seine and with early morning Paris traffic, they had plenty of time to admire the city and chew on breakfast. Cars impatiently honked, like they always did on this road, so Marinette dutifully ignored her fellow Parisians’ complaints. “She wasn’t ever nice, I’ll agree. But Alya, you saw her at her worst; before you moved in, she was a pretty sweet girl in Primary school. She just got worse as we got older and closer to college. Maybe that’s why I actually believe she’s improved...I know what she used to be.”

“You sound like Adrien,” Alya complained.

“Is that a bad thing?”

Maybe not to Marinette it wasn’t. Maybe not to the girl who still loved him madly and deeply despite her claims otherwise. Alya sighed, not wanting to answer that. But their conversation didn’t feel finished. “When it comes to Chloé, I think it’s bad. He coddles her too much.”

“Adrien has never once coddled Chloé! He is always trying to make her a better person.”

“Marinette, Chloé has spent the majority of every year since I’ve met her trying to make my very best friend, which is YOU, by the way, miserable. I won’t apologize for not trusting her.” She turned away from Marinette, looking out her own window at the city instead. Eventually, she spoke up again. “Here’s your exit. Okay, follow this for 2 kilometers, then take the A6B exit.”

Marinette seemed a little visibly stressed at this point. She had told Alya many times as they prepared that she had never driven outside of Paris...beyond quick catering errands for her parents within tight, slow-speed city driving, Marinette didn’t drive much at all. But neither of them wanted Alya as the first driver at 7 am in an unfamiliar vehicle. Picking up on that, Alya kept quiet except for instructions. “Keep going here….yes, just keep on A6B. 8 kilometers here.”

“Eight kilometers?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a while…” Marinette agreed, her voice cautious. She seemed distracted by all the graffitti to the point that Marinette chirped in surprise when the van zoomed into a tunnel. But soon enough they were back in a small, one-lane road, speeding through the suburbs of Paris. Buildings were suddenly newer, smaller, and farther apart. Trees began to appear. “Okay, I think I’ve got this,” she finally said, a little more confident.

“Good, because our next exit is coming up in about a kilometer. Just stay to the left- follow the signs towards Lyon.”

Marinette leaned forward to read their approaching exit sign more clearly. “A6?”

“That’s it!” Alya looked back at Marinette and smiled, seeing her friend with a proud smile on her face.

“This is officially the farthest I’ve ever driven,” Marinette announced.

“Then I need to document this,” Alya said. She opened up her camera and panned the outside ‘scenery’ of graffitied highway walls and scrubby brushes. “We have just left Paris and are about to get onto highway A6. Marinette just announced...mind saying it again, Mari?”

“This is officially the farthest from Paris that I’ve ever driven!” Marinette turned to Alya and grinned, then dramatically flipped her blinker to the left and veered towards their exit.

“That’s amazing! But it was only thirty minutes!”

Marinette laughed. “I didn’t say the longest. I said the farthest.”

Alya grinned at Marinette’s wide smile. “Well, buckle up sugar, because our next turn isn’t for another 158 kilometers. Road trip!”

“Road trip!” Marinette screamed out. She laughed in delight. Next to her, Alya closed the recorder app. She could get more footage later on. “What about you, Alya? What’s the farthest you’ve ever driven?”

“Rouen. Two hours away, just past Giverny, with Alix. But I’ve gone on a lot of road trips with my family before I was 18. My longest was...When I was Ella and Etta’s age, my family took us from Rennes to Provence. God, they were both babies at the time. Do not drive twelve hours with toddlers, Marinette.” Alya’s eyes were wide and she shook her head. “I don’t remember much about that trip, but I remember that. Nora and I were basically babysitting the whole drive. Well, she was. I probably just complained about it.”

“So the real lesson is don’t take toddlers and you on a twelve hour road trip,”

“Excuse me,” Alya laughed, “I was ten! Give me a break, young lady!”

“Are you sure you won’t be complaining the entire time on our road trip?” Marinette teased, raising an eyebrow.

Alya couldn’t hold back her smile. “I’m sure,” she answered. “You are much better company than twin toddlers, Mari,” Alya added, reaching out to rub Marinette’s forearm.

Marinette’s smile in reply was wide and comfortable. “That’s not a very high bar, but I’ll take the compliment anyway. We don’t go on vacation very often. Maman and Papa hate leaving the boulangerie...I can only imagine how much Mami had to fight them to leave for this week,” Marinette said with a heavy shake of her head. “When we would go places, it was by train or plane. To visit family, usually...Flew to China, took a train to Central-Pays...I’ve been to Italy once before; it’s a lot faster by train. But this way we have all our stuff.” She turned to look at Alya for a moment. “And I have you!” Marinette added in a squeaky voice of delight before looking back at the road.

“You could go on a train with me too, Marinette,” Alya laughed.

“Sure, but this is much more cinematic. We get to look at all the scenery!” The two of them were still on the edges of the Paris Metropolitan area, passing signs for communes like Evry. “Like Disneyland!” Marinette explained, waving her hand at the brightly colored exit signs that they promptly drove right past. “Have you been to Disneyland?!”

“Of course I have; I’m not an animal,” Alya scoffed. “It’s been a second, though.”

“We should go together some time!”

Alya smiled, looking out at the Disneyland signs. She could imagine Marinette skipping and singing along to the music in Disneyland, wearing mouse ears, holding her hand, watching fireworks with Alya…”We should,” Alya agreed, feeling like she was digging her own grave with every romantic fantasy.

“But that one we’ll take the train for. After all, we’re not animals,” Marinette laughed.

“This isn’t exactly scenery, by the way,” Alya told Marinette with a giggle. “It’s ugly stores and graffitti and crummy houses.”

“It’s different than Paris,” Marinette defended. “Look! There’s...nature and stuff out that window!”

“Nature and stuff?” Alya repeated with a laugh. “Oh, my god, Girl. You know we’re going to be driving to the literal Alps today, right?”

“Exactly!” Marinette replied, hopping up and down in her chair. “Nature and stuff!”

“We’re not at at the alps yet. We’re just getting into the rural part.” Alya looked over at Marinette with a gentle, loving smile. “This part is going to be boring.”

“Please, Alya. It won’t be boring. You’re in the car.”

Alya felt her throat tighten and Marinette looked straight ahead. “I should record more for montage-ing.” She pulled out her phone, recording the fields and farms that they now drove through in silence. “Let’s, uh...put on some music,” Alya decided. She had made a playlist for their road trip, but suddenly got a wicked idea. “I know exactly what to listen to until we get to Auxerre.” She opened up her music app, flipping past the dozens of playlists Nino had made for her or sent her, finally deciding to use the search function again. “Weeee are going to listen to Clara Nightingale’s Miraculous album.”

“Yes!” Marinette gasped in amazement. “Oh, god, I don’t think I’ve listened to that since college!”

“Marinette, I live with you. That is a bald-faced lie. You mean no one else has listened to that since college.”

“It’s not like I know the words anymore, though. It’s such a- YES!!!!”

Alya laughed in delight. The moment the first note of the first song trilled out in peppy, poppy major key, Marinette was singing along to the instrumentals and drumming on the steering wheel. And that adorable liar knew every word.

The two girls sang along to the pop anthems of their teenage years, crooning our to one another dramatically, drumming the dashboard and steering wheel, even rolling the windows down to sing at passing cars. At least until they passed pastures of cows: the windows rolled up real fast right then.

When the titular song, “Miraculous”, played, Alya screamed in delight. “Marinette! It’s your song!”

“Oh, god,” Marinette laughed. “That was an insane day. I’m glad it just ended up being Everyone's song.”

“Don’t lie, Mari. You would have loved to have a song with Adrien back then. The Ladybug to his Chat Noir,” Alya fluttered her eyelashes, adding, “they did get together, after all. For a little bit.”

Marinette squinted as she drove forward. “Was that ever really official though? I mean, you never reported on it.”

Right, because Ladybug and Chat Noir had both specifically asked Alya not to. “Do you mean the relationship or the breakup? Because they were caught kissing like, a lot.”

“People kiss!” Marinette sputtered.

“I don’t know many people who kiss their friends like that,” Alya laughed. If she kissed her friends like that, Marinette would absolutely know. “And That DID end up on the Ladyblog. I know because you nearly had a conniption.”

“I just want to make sure you’re reporting factual, hard-hitting news! Not… gossip!”

“Yeah, I know, we had this exact argument two and a half years ago,” Alya laughed. “There’s nothing there for me to report on anymore. Hardly anyone sees the Miraculous heroes out together.”

Marinette was quiet for a moment, letting Clara Nightingale sing her sad song and fill the car with music. Then she said, “would you report on it? If some of them got together? Romantically?”

“I’d secure an exclusive interview and do it that way.” For some reason, Alya’s answer amused Marinette. “That’s what I always try and do,” she continued. “The Ladyblog functions the way it does because the Heroes trust me, so I need to keep that trust. It’s more important to maintain a trusting, professional relationship than to run a gossip piece.”

“That’s very mature of you, Alya.”

“It’s cause I’m a fuckin adult now,” she said, putting her feet up on the dashboard and grinning wildly at Marinette. “Adults are mature and shit.”

“You’re usually more of the ‘and shit’,” Marinette giggled.

“Hey! Pétasse!” Alya yelled, throwing a crumpled croissant napkin at her best friend.

Marinette squealed in giggles. The song continued in the background and Marinette exclaimed, “This is your part!”

On cue, Alya performed the tiny segment of the dance where she had been filmed...at least the part that involved her arms. “It was pretty cool. But I still think you would have been amazing as Ladybug.”

Marinette blinked in surprise. “Really? You weren’t just saying that?”

“No, girl. You totally have the Ladybug spirit and look down.”

“That’s high praise, coming from you...wasn’t she your celebrity crush?”

“Putain, she still is!” Alya laughed easily. She wasn’t dumb; she knew she was just as likely to land someone like Ladybug as she was to land a straight girl like Marinette. Even if Ladybug saw her as Rena fairly often...that was too big of a fish to try and catch for real. Ladybug wasn’t exactly the warm and cozy, ‘talk about our feelings’ type and still demanded no one tell each other their identities. It was largely why she didn’t let her feelings for Ladybug deepen. But that didn’t mean her attraction hadn’t. “Have you seen her new outfit? And the way she’s grown into it?” Alya whistled low.

She looked over at Marinette and saw her friend’s face was quickly turning scarlet...probably embarrassed by Alya’s gay talk. So she upped the ante, staring right at Marinette. “I mean, damn. She looks mature now, not an innocent little girl. Someone who can consent and downright control. Those little black spanx she got now? Over that ass?” Marinette turned even redder. Alya grinned. “And her fucking legs. Ladybug is strong as hell, but her legs...she redefines thick. She could crush a watermelon between those thighs. And let me tell you, I would love to be that watermelon crushed betwee-”

“Look, our exit sign!” Marinette squeaked, her voice several octaves higher than it normally was.

Alya grinned, pleased that she won their unofficial game of chicken. “Coq a l’ane,” she muttered at the abrupt subject change, smiling as she noticed the sign for Auxerre. She turned her recording back on and pointed it out the window. “Take a look at that! We’re only 5 kilometers from the exit to Auxerre! It’s 9:30 am, and we are making great time. What do you have to say, Marinette?”

Marinette grinned at the camera, her face slowly returning to its normal coloration. “I am ready to get up and stretch; that’s what I have to say!”

“And see the town?”

“Yes, and see the town. It’s supposed to be very pretty, right?”

“Sure is!” She could have kept filming Marinette- god knows she was prettier than the scrubby brush and trees around them. But she turned the camera frontwards anyway, hoping to catch more of the signs as they went. The music played on in the background, Alya and Marinette singing along again as Marinette took the exits into town.

Past a round-a-bout, trees hung over the street (Marinette squealed in delight) and the scenery quickly changed to include more buildings of varying ages. Alya recorded the sights of the town as they drove through, as well as a few shots of her very excited friend. She took a third exit at a roundabout, following the road until they drove next to the Yonne river. Marinette looked from the river to the other side and gasped. “Marinette, the car! You took your foot off the gas. There are people behind us...the car!”

“Oh...oh, shit. Right!” She gassed the car again and quickly found a parking place, then bounded out of her seat before Alya could even narrate what was going on. Marinette bounced up and down.

“She is so cute,” Alya laughed. She got out of her own seat and took a nice, slow pan of where they were. On one side of the girls, the beautiful, narrow Yonne river glittered with boats moored along the edges. Across the river were charming white houses with red-brick roofs and trees, trees, and trees as the horizon line. Blue skies and puffy clouds soared overhead, not tall buildings or intimidating history. On the other side though, it was a sight to behold. The buildings stood side-by-side, only visibly unique from one another by their white stone French coin corners. They were all topped in gorgeous tudor woods of bright colors- reds, yellows, and browns. A cathedral towered just above that view. Gothic, like the cathedral the girls grew up with, but so unfamiliar and so unique and so, so much larger and more impressive in this relatively small town. “And this is Auxerre! What a pretty medieval town!” Alya narrated.

Just on time, Marinette came bounding back into the camera’s view. “Auxerre!” she cheered. “Look at the cathedral! And the river! And the tiny, tiny buildings! Let’s explore, Alya! How do we park?”

“Marinette, we already parked.”

“No, I mean...where do we register to park here?”

Alya giggled. “Mari, we don’t. It’s free. We just leave the car and walk.”

“Oh. That seems...wrong.”

“Welcome to literally anywhere but Paris!”

“Okay, then. Let’s go!” Marinette rushed forward and grabbed Alya’s hand, pulling her towards the bridge over the Yonne river. She was giggling the entire time as if this poor girl hadn’t gotten out of the city for years.

Once Marinette pulled Alya to the center of the bridge, they both turned to face the city and gasped. Alya put up her phone, recording the view. Just across the river and reflected into it stood a wall of two-story medieval buildings. Stone, tudor, and charming. The cathedral and nearby clocktower stood above them, providing a beautiful postcard view...and one that could fit on said postcard. Yes, the city sprawled to the sides, but not in any overwhelming fashion. It was all Right There.

Alya dictated to her camera a little bit of information about Auxerre, then turned to film Marinette. But her friend was sitting cross-legged on the bridge, sketchbook in hand and tongue partially out of her mouth as she sketched the skyline. She smiled softly and turned off the video. It might be awhile.

Alya sat herself down next to Marinette and looked over at the city across the Yonne. It wasn’t a small city by any means; one of the largest in the area. But compared to their home, it was a hamlet. And Marinette was truly inspired. Alya loved to watch Marinette work. Their work ethic had always been one of their earliest connections; few other girls in college would spend hours working on their professional dreams. And as they got older, Marinette was the good influence Alya needed and vice-versa. Even now on vacation, Marinette couldn’t stop her mind from creating and taking inspiration.

They sat together as dozens of people crossed the bridge around them for almost twenty minutes; Marinette drawing under the morning sun, Alya watching the city, the water, and reviewing her videos so far. Finally, Marinette sighed in satisfaction and shut her sketchbook. “Let’s keep exploring.”

“Excellent. And we’re not leaving here without buying a good Burgundy wine!” Alya stood up and offered a hand to help up her friend.

“Fine with me, Alya!” Marinette cheered. “To the clocktower?”

“Absolutely. It’s calling to you, isn’t it?”

Marinette turned to Alya and smiled the way she did when she was in love with an idea. “I’ve not seen anything like it before. I can’t wait to meet it!” She squeezed Alya’s hand and turned to the city, tugging her friend along.

They wove in between people, down alleys, past old shutters and painted doors, around cafes, and up to the clocktower. Alya filmed the entire time, recording all the details of their exploration and the girls’ comments on the old town. She filmed the clock tower, then eventually their visit to the cathedral, Marinette’s scathing commentary on the outside of one of the local boulangeries (as well as her apology after seeing the interior and buying a baguette), their experience buying some fresh, local Morbier cheese and sliced meat, and finally handed the camera over to Marinette so Alya could pick out the Burgundy wine.

Exploring Auxerre, Alya felt like she and Marinette were free for the first time in a long time. They had no home to take care of, no careful relationships to dance around, no schoolwork to feel guilty over. And everything was new. Every building they saw, it was the first time for both girls, and every shared experience was taken while hand-in-hand. It ended up being nearly two hours later before the girls finally realized they ought to eat their lunch and get back on the road. Still, they meandered their way back to the van, pointing out tiny details in the city and the old stones beneath them.

Having parked near a patch of grass, they did not have to go far to eat their picnic lunch. Marinette carried the fresh purchases over to the grassy knoll while Alya rummaged in the back for their cooler.

Trixx poked her head out, taking a look at their new city while finally away from Marinette. “Wow, pretty place! Did you like it here, Alya?”

“You know, I did. Marinette got a real kick out of how trusting all the citizens are. She fits right in with that part...And the streets are really fun to explore.”

“Didja get me ice cream?”

“No, not this time,” Alya laughed. She bent over and picked up their cooler and shut the van back doors. Turning back around, she could see Marinette fussing with their fresh food and talking to herself. “Let me get you some cream before we go over, though.” She kept her eyes on Marinette as Aya bent into the cooler, pulled out a small pop-top jug of cream fraiche, and handed it to her hungry kwami. Trixx took it in both hands, knocking the drink back as she floated in the air as guzzled. Soon enough, she handed the remaining half back to Alya with only a semi-satisfied pout.

“It’s not ice cream.”

“I told you it wasn’t! Just...trick yourself.”

“I can’t trick myself, Rena. It doesn’t work like that. Pah. You’ll just have to make it up to me with some really great ice cream in your next stop.”

“Hey! You don’t even get ice cream every day in Paris. Don’t get greedy, ya little punk!” She took a single finger and pushed Trixx back into her shirt, making Trixx giggle in fake protest. Then, Alya looked back up at Marinette. She had finished laying out their fresh food, only waiting on the fruit, butter, cutlery, cookies, and drinks in Alya’s cooler. Marinette’s back was turned to Alya, the sun directly overhead, as she looked at the shimmering river.

Alya carried over the cooler quietly, not wanting to disturb Marinette. But still, when she was closer, Marinette looked over her shoulder, readjusting her cascading raven hair, and smiled softly at Alya. “This was a great place to stop,” Marinette cooed. She patted the grass next to her.

And Alya absolutely did not want to continue her vlog. She wanted a moment alone with Marinette, to enjoy their picnic, their quiet moment away from the town and all the Auxerre people who had been so kind. But regardless, she pulled out her camera, recording with great animation all the fresh Burgundy region delicacies they bought for their sandwiches. At Marinette’s absolute insistence, the wine remained corked, since they planned to drive.

Lunch consumed half their baguette, most of their Morbier, all of their meat, and only about fifteen minutes of their time. And then they packed all their leftovers into the cooler and headed back to the van.

“I’ll take the next leg,” Alya promised. She filmed their approach to the van but nearly dropped the camera when Marinette tossed her the keys. “Auxerre to….Saint Albain, two hours away. It’s 12:30 now, so if all goes well, we should pull in about 2:30.”

“Wait, we need gas,” Marinette corrected, “so don’t pull onto the highway just yet.”

Alya handed her the camera. “We’re supposed to film the road trip side to this all, so make sure you get as many hilarious shots of me as possible.” And so, the start of the second leg began with Alya lurching forward in the van and pulling through a local gas station.

Marinette dutifully recorded the monotony of Alya putting the nozzle of gas in the van, also catching her amused smile when she saw the camera turned on her. “You’re recording this, Mari?”

“It’s a crucial part of the road trip experience! It isn’t all Clara Nightingale sing alongs and climbing clocktowers,” Marinette explained.

Alya smiled and leaned against the car. “I guess you’re right. I’m not sure if I should be proud you’ve learned to be so thorough in recording from me, or a little embarrassed.”

“You should be proud! I couldn’t have a better teacher,” Marinette gushed. Alya looked down, hoping to hide her blush. Enough Buzzfeed watchers were already shipping Alya and Marinette and she didn’t want to give them any more ammo.

That was a lie. Alya was captain of that fan club and absolutely hoped this trip included as many moments between them as possible. But still. It carried a little weight of embarrassment back at the office.

“So you learn to record everything in your life from me and I learn to be a little more coordinated in my outfits from you. That seems symbiotic,” Alya decided aloud.

“And you’re lucky you have me, Alya. You do well dressing for yourself sometimes, but the level of sophistication…?”

“Is this a crack at my flannel plaid?” Alya asked, putting a saucy hand on her hip.

Marinette laughed. “It absolutely is! You look like a Canadian lumberjack!”

Alya shook her head. “You will pry my flannel out of my cold dead hands. It’s my mating display for fellow gays!”

“Oh, please. You don’t need to dress a certain way to attract girls,” Marinette disagreed.

The gas clanked with completion. Scoffing at Marinette, Alya unplugged the nozzle and hung it back up. “Like you know squat about that. I’m actually queer and need all the help I can get.”

“I just think you can get a girlfriend in any outfit, Alya,” Marinette explained, fussing with Alya’s collar with one hand, holding the camera loosely with the other. She returned to behind the camera, leaving her best friend breathless. Marinette returned to the passenger seat, camera still in hand, giving Alya just enough time to compose herself and return to the driver’s seat.

They pulled away from the gas pump and to the pay station, Alya rolling down her window as the young man gave them their price. He leaned a little farther out, looking at their van. As Alya fiddled around for the card with Mami Dupain’s stipend on it, he said, “So, you ladies are from Paris? Where are you two taking this big van?”

“Rome,” Alya replied, handing the attendant their credit card.

“Rome! Ahh, what do they say there? Belladonna. You’ll fit right in, my belladonna.” He ram the card and winked at Alya. She forced a smile and heard Marinette giggling behind her.

As she accepted the card back, she said, “Yes, I hear the eligible crowd is much more on our level there in Rome than you find in gas stations.”

“Uh...well, bonne route,” the attendant said, clearly a little shaken at Alya’s clap back.

Marinette was giggling even harder. But still, both girls chorused ‘thank you’ and the van eased back onto the main road, headed for the highway. “That poor boy did not know what he was doing when he hit on you. La pauvre! But he totally proved my point, before you killer him,” Marinette laughed, “you’re hot stuff! You can get it!”

“And that’s why I need the plaid!” Alya fired back. “I don’t want dudes like that to hit on me. I want girls to hit on me! I can get guys all I want. But a gay shirt says ‘you’re barking up the wrong tree’ and I like that.”

“Then why not something else, like...like an American undercut?”

Alya looked over at Marinette questioningly, then back to the road. They were approaching a roundabout with their exit towards the autoroute clearly marked, fields visible after their exit. “You think I could pull that off?”

“Well, I would never tell you to cut your hair, Alya. You have the most beautiful hair of anyone I know. Color, texture, softness...don’t cut it,” Marinette gushed. “But you could make any hair style look amazing.” Out of the corner of her eye, Alya could see Marinette panning the camera to show off her hair. “Now flip it, like a shampoo commercial.”

“Girl, you don’t need to ask twice.” Alya tossed her hair; the bounce was restricted by her headrest, but it made Marinette giggle, and that was more important than any video clip.

“What about me? Do you think I could pull off an undercut?”

Alya imagined it in her mind's eye. And as Marinette appeared before her with short hair, pushed to one side with that gorgeous fringe, the other side shaved, looking every centimeter as someone who wasn’t straight and every centimeter hot as hell, her throat tightened and legs squeezed together. Alya cleared her throat as casually as possible. “Yes. Yes, you could absolutely pull it off. You should. You should get one.”

“A few kids in my major have fun haircuts like that. I’ve had this length for years...maybe I should do something dramatic.”

“Yes. It will be amazing. Yes, girl, do it.”

Marinette sounded newly confident and she replied happily, “maybe I will!”

“Just be prepared to have to crawl through suitors because damn, you will look hot.”

“That’s the idea of a haircut, right? Attracting people?”

Alya laughed thickly. “Babe, you have never had a problem being attractive. You are the prettiest girl I know.”

“You’re my best friend. Unfair and biased.”

“Nuh-uh, girl. Gay’s honor; I’m saying that as someone very sexually attracted to the female gender. You are attractive as hell.”

Marinette flushed pink and Alya wished she wasn’t in the driver’s seat. She loved to watch how her face changed with a pleasant blush. “Well, Thanks, Alya.” She fiddled with the camera and Alya knew she’d have to edit that part out. The car was silent for a moment, neither girl exactly knowing how to follow that kind of remark. Usually when Alya said something like that, there was more than fields and empty sky around them. Here, all they had was the toll booth.

They pulled into the toll booth kiosk and Alya grabbed their ticket, ready to be punched when they got off the highway eventually. Taking the opportunity, Alya changed the subject. “Alright, back on the road for another two hours!” Alya cheered.

Marinette looked up from the map and shut the app. “Yep, and we just stay on A6 until we get to Saint Albain. No exits, even. Just….lots and lots of fields.”

“Aw, not all fields. There are some forests.” Alya grinned impishly.

Marinette didn’t reply, but shut off the camera and pulled out her sketchbook. She flipped a few pages and said conversationally, “I liked Auxerre. That was a cute little city.”

“Yeah, it was,” Alya agreed. “It reminded me of the small towns around Rennes.”

Marinette gasped lightly in recognition. “Oh, I bet it did. They’re both very medieval. The tudor, the small streets…” she flipped past her Auxerre drawings and to a new page. “I think I could live in a city that size.”

“Yeah? Wow, I can’t imagine you anywhere but Paris,” Alya admitted, eyes forward.

“I usually can’t either. Paris is my home. It’s my inspiration, it’s who I am, and it’s what I do. But sometimes those rent prices...you know? I wonder how much more comfortable it would be to live in a smaller town where you get to know more of it. Mainly with less tourists.”

“I thought you loved tourists! You’re like the only Parisian I know who doesn’t get mad at them!”

Marinette shrugged. “Everyone in Paris, almost everyone, is there because they love it. We have that in common, so...I can excuse some bad manners. I mean, most of those manners are just people not understanding our culture. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like having more people who know what they’re doing. But they still deserve to experience the city I love!”

Alya sighed. Was it even possible for Marinette to be so loving? So kind? To absolutely everyone?? “Damn. You are something else, girl. You are incredible. If you do leave Paris for a place like Auxerre, the entire city’s level of kindness is going to sink like a rock. Murder will sky rocket! People will fight in the street for no reason! Ladybug and crew will have to work overtime and the Fashion Headquarters of the world will move from Paris to whatever buttfuck city you’re in.”

Marinette giggled, hiding briefly behind her sketchbook. She opened a blank page and started sketching. “I don’t know if I’d ever really move, though. Especially since it really is Fashion Headquarters and no matter what you say, that isn’t changing. But traveling more like this would be nice. Would you ever move?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. My career isn’t tied to Paris or any city; it’s actually best if I get a wide variety of experiences for my writing. I’ve lived in Paris way longer than any other city, so it’s weird to imagine leaving. And I don’t think I could leave you. Or our other friends.” It was really just Marinette. No part of Alya could imagine living without Marinette. She didn’t even want to return to a world without her as a roommate...she wanted to spend the rest of her life bumping sleepy elbows as they brushed teeth, taking turns doing dishes and making dinner, and cuddling much too close on the couch for movie nights.

Fuck, she probably should move out of Paris one day.

“Where would you move?”

“New York City would be fun! Or Los Angeles!” Alya answered automatically. They had played this game before. But life as university students gave the girls different perspectives than they had in lycée and collège. “But definitely a bigger city if I can afford it. Although I can see the appeal of a smaller town, depending on who is with me.”

“Who is with you?”

“You know, if I get in a serious relationship.”

“What do you mean ‘if’? Gas station man and I both just proved you are totally going to find love.” Marinette leaned into Alya’s space, grinning as she crooned in a low, sexy voice, “Belladonna, Belladooooonnaaaaa,” And it was absolutely unfair that her breath on Alya’s cheek and that low voice could make Alya squirm and make her foot push down just a little bit more on the accelerator, but what part of life was ever fair?

“Weirdo,” Alya said, trying to laugh it off as she put her entire hand on Marinette’s face and pushed her away. Her favorite tinkling giggle replied. “I’m just saying, you’re my most stable, longest relationship and that isn’t exactly what I meant.”

“At least you have dated. You were with Victoria for awhile...seven months, wasn’t it?”

Ahh, yes. Victoria. The third Marinette clone in the two years since they started university. Her second longest relationship after Nino, and also one of the most hollow. “I’m not marrying Victoria,” Alya sassed back.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant. I just meant that you’ve actually had real, important relationships. I’ve dated Adrien and...oh yeah, that’s it. One lycée romance and nothing after that. Just some first and second dates.”

Nine first dates, to be exact, and five second dates. And if she was pressed, the stubborn part of Alya’s brain could probably recall every single one of those boys’ names. “Marinette, if there is one thing on Earth that I know, it’s that you’re going to be just fine in the romance department.”

“Alya, that’s so sweet, but you don’t really know that…”

Alya turned towards Marinette and looked at her seriously, just over the top of her glasses. “But I do know that, Mari. You are incredible, amazing, and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. You make the world a better place and you make every person you know a better person. Any b-boy,” Alya cleared her throat twice, determined to cough out all the emotion that was trying to betray her. “Any boy would be lucky to have you as a girlfriend.”

Alya was very glad that she could keep her eye on the road and avoid the intense look Marinette was giving her now. “Thank you, Alya,” she said softly. “You’re the best hypewoman a girl could have.”

Gripping the steering wheel a little too tight, Alya replied, “Yep, that’s me. The best damn hypewoman around. I’m printing business cards and everything.”

“I’ll design them for you!” Marinette offered, turning the page in her sketchbook and making the broad strokes Alya recognized as the start of a new design. “Alya Cesaire...Hypewoman. What other titles do you want? Journalist, obviously. Hmm...Ladyblog Editor in Chief… best friend in the world...wearer of amazing hair...Actually, we’ll run out of room on the card if I list all of your great qualities. That’s what the resume is for, right? We’ll just focus on the hypewoman part.”

“I expect 5,000 of these printed and embossed for all my future employers.”

“What, you don’t plan on a life-long career at Buzzfeed France?” Marinette asked, mirth in her voice. “But I was so looking forward to your article on ‘Which Character from Asterix am I Most Likely To Meet In A Shady Bar’!”

“You’re a shady bitch, Marinette. You know that?”

“I thought I was incredible and amazing! Alya, where is your consistency?”

“You’re all three things!” Alya laughed.

The girls continued to talk about cities, moving, and life and slowly, the conversation grew sillier and sillier. Topics flew by almost as fast as the fields and forests.

They had a long drive ahead of them and many, many more conversations to have.

#alyanette april #alyanette #fanfiction

17 notes · View notes

ashenious · 5 years ago

Text

Some Grand Affairs Amongst the Normality - Chapter 4 of ??? (Dante/Reader)

Overall Story Rating: Mature Overall Story Tags: Alcohol, Big Snake, (Like literally a big snake), Blood, Body Horror, Dead Body Mention, Fluff, Gore Mention, Depressive Thoughts, Drugging, IV Mention, Nausea, Nightmares, Reader is regular boring Human, Reader likes to clean, Reader is also a troublemaker, Slow Burn, Suicide Mention, There was only one bed,

For This Chapter: Rating: Teen and Up Warnings: None Additional: None Word Count: 5772

Part 1/Part 2/Part 3/Part 4/Part 5/Part 6/Part 7/Part 8/Part 9/ Part 10/Part 11/Part 12/Part 13/Part 14

AO3 Link: Part 1/Part 2/Part 3/Part 4/Part 5/Part 6/Part 7/Part 8/Part 9/Part 10/Part 11/Part 12/Part 13/Part 14

25 trash bags.

It took 25 trash bags full of garbage that had to be hauled outside before the store was free of everything. It took 25 trash bags completely full of empty pizza boxes, papers of unknown origin, and magazines that were so full of outdated information, but the floor was finally visible, the shelves were neatly stacked with necessary stuff, and Dante’s desk now only homed his phone, nothing else. Anything else he needed was placed in a drawer somewhere, or on the nearby shelf that hid below the stairs.

It had taken you longer than you thought it would to clean everything, the sun now completely below the horizon and the temperature outside had dropped down to almost freezing, but it was truly a sight to behold. You, however, didn’t get to celebrate too much as about an hour before you had finished cleaning, your head had started to throb, your hangover coming on with anger as you finally sobered up completely.

Instead of celebrating, you laid on the couch, your head resting flat on the cushion while your feet were up in the air being supported by the arm on the other end of the couch, your eyes watching as Dante walked around the shop while looking over each and everything thing on display.

“I didn’t even know I had half of this shit!” he said, picking up a book from the shelf behind the stairs and flipping through it. “Oh, this is from the library…?”

“You’d better put back in its place when you’re done with it.” You muttered, slowly feeling your eyes begin to close despite your best attempts to keep them open. Dante turned around, chuckling a bit at the sight of you laid out pathetically on the couch.

“Hey, you falling asleep there?” He asked, placing the book back on the shelf before making his way over to you, his hand resting on your head gently as he knelt down. “You should probably go home you know. You said you had a roommate, right? Aren’t they wondering where you are?”

“Prob’bly…” you muttered just before you yawned, enjoying the feeling of Dante’s hand on your head as your cheek pressed into the cool cushion below you. “But they’ll just yell at me if I come home now, which is not what I want to deal with right now.”

“I mean, you did disappear for a whole day, I’d be surprised if they didn’t yell at you.” Dante said, slowly sliding his hand off of your head and to your shoulder. You let out a displeased noise at the change of place, your eyes peeping open for a second to see the man before you. “Come on, let’s get you home before you completely fall asleep.” Yawning again, you carefully peeled yourself off of the couch, grabbing onto the back of it for support as you wobbled a bit.

“If I come back in a week, and you’ve gone and ruined this store, I’m going to be mad at you…” you said quietly as you slowly lifted yourself to your feet. Watching as Dante went and retrieved your bag, you slowly made your way to the front door, leaning on the wall next to it as you waited for Dante.

“I make no promises about cleanliness,” he said, opening the door to outside and letting you go first before he stepped out as well.

“Then I’ll be back to clean up again, so you best let me in when I come over…” you muttered, dragging your feet over the pavement as you began to walk home, barely aware of anything around you besides the footsteps to your side that belonged to Dante. He chuckled, mentioning something about having a personal maid as he adjusted the bag on his shoulder while he caught up to you.

The walk home was quiet, the people on the streets slowly putting their businesses away as the day ended, the sound of the nearby river flowing over the area as only a few cars drove down the road to disrupt the peace.

The closer you got to your house, the more tired you felt, your body expended of all energy from the day’s activities and lack of rest. It was just over the bridge, when you were about to round the corner of the gas station did you realize just how exhausted you were, your legs feeling like nothing more than hollow tubes made of horrible glued together pieces of cardboard, as each step you were taking caused you to wobble a bit.

“Almost there,” you heard Dante say nearby, one of his arms coming down and catching you under your arm as you wobbled about. “Here, hold this.” Listening to him, you held out your hands as he handed you your bag, and just as confusion hit you, you felt him slide one of his hands behind your back with the other going behind your knee. It took you a second to realize what he was doing, but you didn’t have the energy to fight right now, despite how much you usually hated to be carried around.

You leaned your head against his chest, sighing at the situation as Dante carried you around the corner, him walking a bit slower than before. Your eyes fell closed, this time you couldn’t fight it as it happened, and as you felt the heat coming off of the man, you focused on his heart beat which was loud and clear to you as it helped lull you deeper into sleep. As you listened, you waited for Dante to ask for your keys as you knew you’d be home very soon.

Instead, you heard a sudden bang on wood just after Dante stopped, and you jumped a bit, surprised that Dante wasn’t just setting you free into your apartment. You heard the door open, your eyes refusing to open now and so you just listened.

It was only when you heard voices speaking, completely unsure of what exactly they were saying, did you realize that your body had already fallen asleep, your consciousness slowly fading despite you trying to fight it for just a little bit longer.

You felt nothing happen after you heard Dante kick your front door, but at some point, you ended up in your bed, the softness under you startling you from its contrast to Dante’s leather jacket. Your hand felt around the area quickly, it running over your bag and a pillow in your search for the answer to what was happening.

Another hand came down onto your own, pressing it gently into the bed before pushing it back toward your body. It lingered for a second as you moved yourself on your bed to get comfortable, only lifting itself off of your hand once you had settled.

You felt like garbage the next day, specifically like garbage that was set on fire by alcohol and left to burn itself out. Opening your eyes was the worst thing you had ever done, as your lids were heavy still and the rush of light into your eyes didn’t help the throbbing pain that was still present in your head.

Throwing off the covers of your bed, you noticed you were still wearing not your own clothes, but rather the borrowed clothes from Dante. As you stood up and stretched out every part of your body, some joints making popping sounds that were way louder than they usually were in the morning, you made sure to note that you’d need to wash and return the clothes soon.

Today wasn’t laundry day though, and you had to get through a few more days of your typical work week before you’d have a day off to do your chores. The only hope you had inside you was that you’d start feeling like a normal person again soon, because the headache you had was horrible and was definitely going to make it difficult to focus on what you needed to do today.

The first day back to typical life was awful, the headache you had remained all day, it was dull but annoying you in every way as you tried to appear like you hadn’t spent a whole day drinking and getting no sleep. The worst part of the day was feeding the animals, as Bagels’ yelling seemed to somehow be more annoying than normal, it causing your head to throb with each screech she let out until you fed her.

What was different, and very welcome, was Alecz not saying anything about the previous night. You had worried that they would be angry that you had been carried in by someone random that late at night, but as they poured themselves a cup of coffee and read a book they were holding, one you hadn’t seen them pick up before, you were glad they let you be. Especially since you were absolutely sure they were going to yell at you for being gone for a whole day without saying anything. You two weren’t close, but it wasn’t very like you to go out, let alone for a whole day, so it would only be normal to worry at least a little bit about someone if that happened suddenly.

Going to work was terrible, the walk there caused you to need to bundle up and keep a hood on your head, hoping to shield your eyes from the sun light that was beating down from above. But as cars passed by and the light shined off of their hoods and mirrors directly into your eyes, you cursed who ever designed cars and how inconsiderate they were toward hungover people.

Work itself was pleasant, your boss greeting you with a quieter than normal ‘Welcome in!’ as you slowly made your way to the back, your hood still on and your face furrowed in anger. You heard your boss laugh once you were out of sight, and a small smile peaked itself on your lips, imagining how terrible you must look right now in contrast to how collected and ready you were on any other day.

You put up your jacket, sighing as you did so as you’d much rather work with the hood on through your shift than have to deal with the bright lights above. Returning to the front of the library, you walked over to your boss who was still chuckling to himself a bit. Meeting his eye, he motioned his head to behind him, your gaze turning to see a cart full of books that needed to be shelved again.

“You want that or front desk?” your boss asked. Thinking on it for a second, walking around the library and using your brain to find where everything went sounded terrible, your head hurting at the idea.

“I’d prefer to stay at the desk,” you said, slowly grabbing the near by chair and climbing onto it, your feet resting on the crate below the desk. “I don’t want to think too much today, I’ll let the computer do that for me.” Hearing another laugh from your boss, you turned and watched him walk off, him grabbing the overly full cart before pushing it from the back area.

Logging into the system and checking yourself in on the schedule, you grabbed the file of reservations that sat near you, flipping through it to see the amount of books that would need to be pulled today. You noticed how few were in the file, noting that many of them were marked off by your boss. Closing the file, you smiled, now eternally grateful that your boss understood how terrible you felt today.

Hearing the door open, your head snapped up, catching sight of someone entering the library who looked a bit lost. Placing the file back in its home, you greeted them gently, waving at them a bit to get their attention.

As the person came over, you tried your best to ignore the headache that was plaguing you, it throbbing in the back off your head as the person asked where they could find a specific book. They talked about the research they were doing for their upcoming semester of class, and as they rambled on to you, you began to pull out the small filing box that told you the call number. Shuffling through the series of organization, you pulled out a card slowly, nothing the number on it before standing up, slowly making your way around the desk and motioning for the person to follow you.

Making your way upstairs, you scouted out the isle you needed to go to, turning down it and slowly following the call numbers on the sides of the shelves until you found the one you needed. Making sure the person was still behind you, you started to head down the aisle, your hand slowly sliding over the books on the shelves while you read the call numbers of the books. Finding your target, you pulled the book down from the top shelf, turning toward the person behind you.

“Was this the only book you needed? Oh, do you need to get a library card?” you asked as you handed them the book.

“I have one, I just don’t come here a lot,” the person said as they took the book from you, slowly flipping it open and paging through it. “I was going to keep looking around though. Thank you for your help.” Smiling a bit, the person turned around and made their way to another aisle, and as you watched them round the corner, you sighed silently, your head driving you mad.

Slowly stepping out of the aisle, you made your way to the stairs, slowly padding down it as you tried to keep the least amount of light out of your eyes. Stepping onto the first floor, you turned toward the front desk, your eyes jumping up when they saw a hint of red that wasn’t there before.

“Morning!” came a cheerful voice that was wearing the red. Rolling your eyes and waving a bit, you made your way around the desk, your eyes never leaving the man who had one hand placed on the top of it as he learned over it.

“Hey, mornin’,” you replied as you slowly slid up onto your chair. Turning and setting your feet on top of the under-desk crate, you pulled your reservations file out of its place again. “What brings you in, Dante?”

“Just making sure you didn’t slip into a coma last night.” Dante said, a grin plastered on his face. “Oh, brought you this too.” Watching as Dante’s other hand came up into view behind the desk, you couldn’t help but smile at the sight of a small coffee in his hand. “Thought you might need it. Based on how much you hated some of the drinks I gave you, I got a one with a shit-load of sugar in it.”

“You’re sweet,” you said, your hand slowly grabbing onto the cup and brining it toward you. “I don’t usually drink coffee, but today is definitely an exception.” Bringing the cup up and smelling the aroma coming from it, you sighed happily before slowly taking a sip. It was amazingly sweet, tasting like it was almost exclusively creamer, but you could tell there was a touch of coffee somewhere in it.

Placing the cup on a coaster that was nearby, you turned back to Dante, you flushing a bit as you caught sight of him just watching you. Your eyes looked over his face for a second before they snapped down to file in front of you.

“D-Did you just come to see my work and me or?” you sputtered out, your hand slowly pulling one page out of the file. Dropping the paper on the desk, you quickly reached for the fallen page, only to slide your finger against a page in the file still, causing a cut to appear. Cursing at the pain, your dropped the file off to the side dramatically as your brought your hand up to mouth.

“Yeah, basically,” replied the man, a small chuckle leaving him as he watched you place your finger in your mouth. Opening the drawer near you, you couldn’t help but smile a bit as you pulled out the first aid kit, placed it down in front of you and flipped open the lid. Crinkling your face at the lack of band aids inside, you remembered that you used the last one the week before and forgot to tell your boss about it. “I did have something to ask though.”

“What’s up?” sliding the first aid kid back into its place, you slowly closed the drawer, your cut finger hanging in front of you as you looked around for a napkin.

“What day should I expect you?”

“…huh?” pausing your search, your eyes turned back to Dante, your eyebrow raised a bit at the question.

“Last night, you said something along the lines of coming back in a week to clean,” Dante explained as he slowly lifted himself off of the desk. Furrowing your brow, you let your eyes fall down to the side for a second, your mind running through the events of the previous evening. It was a bit hard to remember, you were so tired that your memory was a bit patchy in places.

“Did I?” you asked turning back to face Dante. Seeing the nod from the man, you hummed lightly. “I don’t remember saying that…I don’t even remember getting home…” you admitted.

“Oh, that’s cause you fell asleep while I was carrying you.”

“While you were what?” Feeling your entire face turn red, you stared at the man who had a smirk on his face for a moment. Trying to sputter something out at him, you quickly turned your eyes away and tried to find a napkin again as you remembered your finger was still bleeding a bit

“Yeah, it was no big deal though. Your roommate showed me in, and I did enjoy your pets showing me where your room was. I’m surprised you still need stuff animals in your bed at you’re a—”

“Oh, look at the time! I’ve got so much work to do!!” you said quickly and a little too loudly. Pulling the file up and the paper you dropped before from the table, you felt your entire being turn red, and your face furrowed up as you buried your head behind the open file. Hearing a small laugh on the other side of the desk, you peaked over the paper for a second, your eyes catching sight of Dante trying to contain a louder laugh. “I-I’ll be there Thursday, how about that?” you whispered, refusing to move the file down more.

“Sounds good, I’ll try not to destroy the place in the meantime,” Dante replied, his laughing slowly dying down as he caught sight of an older woman glaring at him nearby. Staring at the woman for a second, his eyes turned back to you, a small still on his face. “I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah, Thursday…” you replied, your one hand opening up for a second to wave at the man. Watching the man turn and give you a backhanded wave, you waited for him to exit the building before you laid your head and elbows down on the desk, the file before you now becoming a cover as you placed it on your head to try to hide from the world.

Hearing some snickering nearby, you shot up and slammed down the file onto the desk, your eyes turning and glaring at the figure of your boss behind a bookshelf, his hand covering his mouth as he tried to contain a deep laughter that he wanted to release.

Glaring harder at the sight, you mouthed at him ‘I will end you’, your finger coming up to try to point at him menacingly, as his face turned red as he tried harder to not laugh out more. Seeing the blood now smeared on your finger, you snapped back to the file your other hand held, it now covered in patches of blood spots and smears all over. You groaned a bit and turned to the side as you opened another drawer in hopes of finding something to put over the cut until it stopped bleeding.

The remainder of your shift was normal, people coming and going as they found what they needed amongst all the walls of books, and as the day went on, so too did your headache slowly go as well, its throbbing slowly becoming nothing more than a pain only when the light was a little too bright in your eyes.

As you locked up the door for the library, your jacket held over your arm as you double checked that you had successfully won the battle with the finicky lock, you thought about how amazing it would be to sleep soon. You had been feeling tired all day, your hangover making you more tired than normal, and you had been imagining climbing into bed to sleep since the halfway mark of your shift. Thankfully your bed was less than 15 minutes away from being a reality.

Crossing the bridge as you neared your home, you paused a moment as you caught sight of the alleyway you normally went down to get home. Feeling a lingering fear inside you, you gulped, your legs slowly taking you to the corner of the alley.

Pressing your back against the wall, you clenched your jacket tightly as you slowly leaned your head around to peak down the alley, your eyes wide as you did so. You frantically looked over every part of the alley you could see in the darkness, the outlines of the trashcans and one dumpster very obvious in the dark.

Seeing nothing move, you waited a few more seconds before standing up straight and taking one step into the alley. Stopping as soon as your foot hit the ground, you stared down the alley, still seeing nothing moving but still you did not move.

“…Yeah, fuck this.” Taking off from your spot, you raced down the corridor, your fists holding onto your jacket as you did so. You passed by the trash cans and dumpster, barely registering anything else in the darkness that wasn’t immediately obvious. Even as you passed the spot where you remember the large snake being, you saw nothing that resembled blood or body in the unlit area.

You reached the end in record time, you stopping once you were out of the tight space and hunching over with your hands on your knees as you tried to catch your breath with your eyes peering down the alley as you did so. It was both odd and a delight to you that nothing remained in the aisle from that night, and as you thought about what could have happened after you slept, you thought about asking Dante what he did that day the next time you saw him.

Heading inside your apartment, you were surprised to see lights on, the entire place usually unlit except for 1 light in your room when you returned. Confused, you slowly walked to the living area where most of the lights were on, your eyebrow rising as you spotted Alecz awake and reading a book.

“Hey,” they said, head not turning as they acknowledged you.

“Good…Evening?” you said, voice full of obvious confusion. “You’re not normally awake now, is something wrong?” you asked, concern now in your voice. Watching as Alecz didn’t move, you waited, aware that they were probably in the middle of a paragraph. Slowly sliding your jacket over the arm chair that was nearby, you sat yourself down in the chair, your face scrunched as you continued to wait.

“Not…really.” Came Alecz suddenly as they slid their bookmark into their book before they closed it. “I just had a question for you. Kind of about last night?”

“Oh dear, okay,” you replied as you slowly brought your legs up and crossed them on your chair. “I don’t remember coming home though, so…”

“I was just going to ask about…who brought you home.” Alecz said, their eyes looking at the floor as they talked, their hands holding their closed book between their legs.

“Oh, Dante?” you asked, your head cocking a bit as you watched your roommate.

“Yeah…him. Er…” watching as Alecz’ hand went behind their head and they rubbed the back of their neck, a minute passed before they spoke again. “Is there… anyway to, I guess…not bring him here again?” they asked finally.

Pausing as Alecz looked up to you, you met their eyes, yours blinking a couple of times as they watched you. They were nervous, it was obvious, and it was something you weren’t used to as Alecz was usually calm and collected in every situation, even in a situation where something was on fire in the middle of the night because you had forgotten that your leftovers’ box had a fork in it.

You had only known them for a relatively short amount of time, having only met them through a coworker a few months after you moved to the area. You were looking for a new place to stay, your old apartment being torn down and turned into a shopping center, something that you were very verbally upset about at work. It was a sudden notice, with your building being bought and planned to be destroyed within 2 months of the purchase date.

A coworker had heard you complaining to your boss one day, and as your boss tried to calm you down for probably close to the hundredth time, they had approached you, asking you about your moving plans. It was embarrassing, but you admitted you had been too upset to figure out what to do yet, your schedule busy and hectic with having to pack and leave much sooner than you wanted to.

“You don’t have a plan? You said you had to be out in less than a month!” your boss said, his face a bit shocked.

“Yeah, well, I only just unpacked a few months ago, I wasn’t planning on packing again and it’s been a pain!” you said, your voice full of displeasure at the situation. That was when your coworker told you about Alecz, a friend of theirs that was looking for a roommate. Your eyes lit up, you quickly asking them numerous questions about cost and when you could move in.

Less than a week later, you found yourself at your new apartment, 3 bags on your shoulder and 1 box in your hands as your new roommate let you in the door. The apartment looked very plain, there wasn’t a lot of furniture around nor decorations on the wall, which was fine to you. You had commented on it originally, but Alecz didn’t really say much about the décor and just shrugged before they lead you to the bedroom that was going to be yours.

There wasn’t anything in your room besides a desk, one that looked way too heavy for you to carry by yourself. Setting your stuff down, you looked over the room, taking in all the bareness of the walls and emptiness of the space. It wouldn’t be empty for long as your own furniture was going to be delivered soon, stuff that you had bought for your old apartment that you weren’t going to just throw away after a few months of use.

Turning around to ask your new housemate about unpacking, you noticed that they had disappeared from the hallway, your eyebrow raising a bit when you peeked into the hallway to find them. They had left the hall after you entered your room and returned to the living room, a book in hand and a coffee nearby with them sitting in a rather uncomfortable position that you would later call their ‘natural position’.

Trying not to disturb them too much, you had asked if it was alright to have a few boxes around the house for a bit, you worrying that you wouldn’t be able to unpack everything neatly in your room that day. They said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that they expected a bit of mess with you moving in.

It only took a week for you to unpack everything, all the boxes of stuff you had brought with you finally empty and broken down by the front door as you filled the house with decorations. Alecz was terribly confused at the sudden appearance of so many new things, and as they went over all the little things, they asked a lot of questions about the origin of them.

You were more than okay to go over all your things, happily explaining to them where you got each and every single thing, but sometimes you did think it was a little odd that Alecz didn’t know anything about seemingly commonly known figures. Chalking it up to Alecz maybe not being from around here, or possibly earth in general with how lackluster their knowledge was, you decided to not bring it up with them.

The first week in your new apartment was quiet, with you and Alecz having very different schedules. They were often asleep by 8 pm, something you thought was very particular, and they would often wake up right as the sun rose.

You weren’t entirely sure what they did for a living, as they didn’t really talk about themselves a lot, but you often noticed that they just sat in their natural position for long periods of time through the day.

The living situation worked out well, because although Alecz wasn’t a terribly talkative person, they were happy to listen to you as you rambled on about nothing most days. And it made you glad that there was someone who was always home, it easing your fear of getting locked out of your apartment and then having no where to go again.

There was one thing you had noticed not long after you moved in, however. As the weeks went on, you found yourself still feeling odd toward Alecz, a feeling in your body not leaving despite how comfortable you felt around them. It bothered you, the feeling not leaving despite you being able to be open and talk to them about basically anything that came to your mind and left through your mouth.

And it was as you sat there, with your legs crossed in front of you and your head tilted to the side, that you realized something important about Alecz, and exactly why they were asking you not to bring Dante around anymore.

“Oh. Oh! Oh, oh, oh!! Oh, I didn’t even thi—I totally didn—Holy shit!” you exclaimed, your hands coming up quickly, smacking into your face to cover it. Alecz looked at you, confusion heavy in their face as you watched you. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t even piece 2 and 2 together, I’m so dumb!”

“I, uh…I’m a bit lost,” they said, their face furrowed heavily as you brought your hands down to your lap.

“You don’t want Dante coming here cause of who he is, right?” you asked, your fingers tapping on your ankles as you spoke. “Cause he’s…cause his job, right?”

“Wait…do you know about…?” As Alecz spoke, apprehension spread over their face, their body tensing up. “How long have you known?”

“I literally just figured it out,” you explained. “Like, literally as I was sitting here, right now.” Pointing down to the spot where you were sitting, you watched as a bit of the concern left Alecz’ face, though their eyebrows were still furrowed. “But, yeah! I promise I won’t bring him around here anymore!”

“…Okay. Thank you.” Alecz about whispered, their hand slowly sliding over the cover of their book as they looked around the room. “I had no idea that you knew about…”

“…about demons?” you said, finishing their sentence. Watching them nod a bit, you smiled lightly and clapped your hands together. “I just learned about them recently, and I find it all very fascinating!”

“Fascinating?” hearing the word, Alecz looked up to you, their eyebrows raising as they looked over you.

“Yeah! Dante has told me a lot about demons in his shop, like the ones he’s worked with on jobs, and the big scary ones that have tried to take over the world; I had no idea about any of it!” you explained, slowly clasping your hands together. “He told me about how demons have 2 forms, and though I’ve only seen 2, him included, and the other was ugly as can be, that second form always seems to look at least a bit cool! I’m kind of curious about what you might look like, I bet your other form is really awesome!” you rambled on, Alecz’ face slowly changing into a softer expression as you went on about demons and what you had learned from Dante.

You could feel the tension leave the room as you spoke, all your words being heard by your house mate as you continued on for a while. It was only when the living room clock chimed at midnight that you realized how long you had been talking, your face flushing in embarrassment at your rambling, and so you apologized to Alecz as you rubbed your thumb over your other.

But Alecz said they didn’t mind, a small smile on their face as they raised to their feet and thanked you. You were confused, unsure of why they were thanking you for not bringing a Demon Hunter home where your roommate is a demon, something you thought should have been common sense for you but apparently had to be spelt out.

You watched as Alecz went to their room, their door slowly closing as they disappeared. Sitting for a minute by yourself, you stared at the clock, the second hand slowly ticking its way around to the 12 to repeat its path again. It was already tomorrow, you realized, a small smile on your face as you stood up to go to bed.

Making your way into your room, Bagels yelled at you as you turned on the light and you thought about how there was one less day now between you and the day you were going to visit Devil May Cry again, a thought that made you very happy to think about as you got yourself ready for bed.

#devil may cry #dmc #dante #fanfic #myfic #my story #mine #text post #read more #second person #reader #dante/reader #dmc fanfic #SGAAtN

1 note · View note

ciathyzareposts · 6 years ago

Text

Dark Stone Ritual: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The Game Master gives us some useless experience points at the end of Dark Stone Ritual.

Magic Tower I: Dark Stone Ritual

Germany

Motelsoft (developer and publisher)

Released in 1992 for Atari ST

Date Started: 9 April 2019

Date Finished: 12 May 2019

Total Hours: 29 Difficulty: Easy (2/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:

The prolific but amateurish Motelsoft levels up in this entry, with mechanics heavily inspired by Might and Magic III and IV. A pre-defined party (you had to pay extra for a character editor) explores a large world in a somewhat linear manner, piecing together clues, solving puzzles, and ultimately defeating the tyrant Xoon. Top-down outdoor exploration contrasts with first-person town and dungeon exploration. Unfortunately, the combats are too easy, the puzzles too simple, and the story too threadbare to make effective use of the character classes, skills system, variety of spells, and variety of equipment that the game largely copies from Might and Magic. A better game engine than a game.

****

Dark Stone Ritual ended up being larger and longer than I expected. When you begin playing, the game does such a good job confining the world that it seems smaller than it is. Hemmed in by impassable terrain, water, and walls, the party must slowly acquire passwords and items necessary to make incremental progress around the world’s major areas. Eventually, the party finds some teleporters that make navigation easier, as does the “Townportal” and “Caveportal” spells.

Unlocking the “Swimming” ability was the last obstacle to open-world exploration.

As you slowly acquire the skills necessary to navigate in forests and swamps, climb mountains, and swim, the full world opens up to you, and you can explore every square for the items and clues necessary to reach the end of the game.

A bit of the final game map.

Ritual is far more linear than I expected at the beginning. Most of what I thought were “side-quests” turned out to be steps along the main quest, all funneling into one or two key items or pieces of information. For example, to win the game you must first find the Dark Stone, which is in the dungeon of Lunos. To pass a certain point in Lunos, at least one of your party members must be a member of the Dark Stone Sect, which you can join by visiting a hut on section of land to the southwest. To get to this area, you have to use a teleporter in a section of land to the southeast, which in turn requires using a teleporter in a small compound on the starting continent. To enter this compound, you have to find a password (RUHE) by interpreting four messages in the dungeon Zappos. To enter the dungeon Zappos, you need an invitation, and that’s as far as I can trace it back because I forgot where I got the invitation. But you get the idea.

Combat remained easy throughout the game, which discouraged spell experimentation (rarely did spells do more damage than a physical attack) and trivialized all the time I spent analyzing inventory. Only thrice did I have to fine-tune my attacks in “strategic” combat, and neither gave me any trouble once I made that decision.

“Strategic” combat lets you position characters and aim your attacks at a particular foe.

The nature of enemy encounters was odd throughout. You find enemies at fixed locations on the overland map and very rarely at fixed locations in dungeons. There is also a fixed number of enemies wandering each town map. Some dungeons have no combats, and those that do never have more than one or two. This paucity of combat makes the dungeons feel rather empty, and the very light navigation puzzles (a few switches, hidden doors, teleporters, and pits that you have to cast “Jump” to get over) don’t do much to fill them.

Exploring a dungeon. An encounter lies ahead.

Nothing really evolves in the way of a “story,” just a succession of NPCs and enemies that you meet and defeat on the way to the final confrontation with Xoon. Because of these weaknesses, I ended up liking the game less towards the end than towards the beginning. In my first entry on Ritual, I was clearly impressed by the mechanics. I still am, to some degree, but the developers made a somewhat boring, basic game with those mechanics. A lot of it feels unfinished–in particular, more than half the skills are unused, and the dungeons and towns are filled with locked doors that can never be unlocked. Nonetheless, it is an improvement from Sandor and Seven Horror’s, and thus bodes well for the many Motelsoft titles we will encounter in the future.

A few things that I otherwise didn’t get a chance to cover along the way:

An arena appears in two locations in the overworld. When you enter, you can tell the game how many enemies you want to face and at what levels. I didn’t really experiment with it, but it’s an alternate source of experience if you somehow need it. The concept is of course lifted from Might and Magic.

In what I think is an original element, a few dungeon entrances (including the last) required entering a pattern of green, red, and blue gems on some kind of plate. You have to find the correct patterns in other places.

Arranging stones on the door of the final dungeon.

There was one door with a combination lock for which I never found the combination. Fortunately, reader Buck reached the same point before me and figured out the answer from the game’s code.

While I’m on unsolvable puzzles, at least three times I was asked to choose from among five symbols. Choosing the wrong one killed the selected character. A tavern tale had warned me that choosing the right symbol would kill the selected character, too, if it was a man. I had to figure out the answers from save-scumming. I have no idea where I was supposed to get them.

Do those symbols mean something?

There’s a useful “return to entrance” button while in dungeons. If your selected character has a high enough “Pathfinding” skill, you’ll return swiftly to the exit stairs. I wish every game had this.

There are fountains all over the world map that raise attributes, hit points, resistances, and spell points, but no combat is tough enough to require them. The final island has about six.

Okay, I guess they’re not so much “fountains” as “offers of wine.” But they’re direct analogues to Might and Magic’s fountains.

The game culminated on a small compound on a northern island. A guardian demanded a password. What she really wanted was a pass phrase, compiled from five words given by residents in little huts in exchange for certain rare stones. The stones, in turn, came from other residents to whom I brought “stone plates” found scattered about the island. The full phrase, for posterity’s sake, is BRENUM BRANUM KANUM LUZE LEI. (Thanks again to Buck for helping with this.)

Does that look like a “word” to you?

This allowed me access to Xoon’s dungeon, which is called “Dark Stone Verlies.” I verified later that the “Caveportal” spell will take you there if you just know the name, meaning that a second-time player could skip a lot of stuff and just warp to the endgame.

The game reminds me that I must emerge with Xoon’s head.

The dungeon is the only one that has multiple levels (three) and the only one that doesn’t remember your progress if you leave and return. There was only one combat, early in the first level, with a guardian of Xoon’s named Morok (I’m sure that name was in previous Motelsoft titles). It was one of the battles that I had to fight in “strategic” mode to win. In “strategic” mode, you can position your characters around individual enemies and target them, ensuring that you can reduce their numbers faster. (“Quick” combat targets enemies randomly.) You also get more attacks per round. Between the advantages of strategic combat and the “Full Heal” spell that I’d recently acquired, the battle was quite easy.

“Quick” combat was the wrong choice for this final battle.

The dungeon’s second level is one of the largest in the game, full of secret doors, teleporters, traps, and a bunch of pits to jump. Eventually, you find your way to the third level and the mystifyingly anti-climactic encounter with Xoon, if it is Xoon. I’m not sure I haven’t mistranslated or misunderstood something. The climax begins with a black-faced man, flanked by two women, saying: “Ihr wollt meinen kopf, ich weiss. Nun gut wenn ihr unbedingt haben müsst. Ha ha ha. Dann sollt ihr Xoons kopf auch bekommen.”

Nice shoepolish, Jolson.

The scene then dissolves away, the party is teleported back near to the entrance, and in their inventory is Xoon’s head.

I translate his text as, “You want my head, I know. Well, if you have to have it, you should also get Xoon’s head,” suggesting that he himself is not Xoon. It’s worth noting that the game uses the same portrait for the master of the Dark Stone sect earlier in the game (although it also re-uses a lot of portraits). I wondered if joining the Dark Stone sect and finding the Dark Stone itself are optional, and that doing so leads to an “easy” ending where the master kills Xoon for you. This is partly suggested by an item in the game’s hint file that says, “If you have the Dark Stone, the rest is a children’s game!” I tested this theory by loading a saved game from before I had the Dark Stone and using “Caveportal” to go directly to the dungeon. (I had to buff with fountains to win the first-level battle.) But no, the same thing happens even if you don’t have the Dark Stone.

A previous appearance by the same character.

Whatever the case, the game ends when you return Xoon’s head to the Game Master back in the dungeon Glorys. The Game master expresses astonishment that you managed to kill Xoon, who was supposed to have nine lives, and then suggests you save your game for Part 2.

In a GIMLET, the game earns:

1 point for the game world. Ritual comes with no backstory, and while the continent and its features are visually interesting, there’s nothing in the way of lore or culture to be found here.

3 points for character creation and development. Without the separate character editor, the game unfortunately has no creation process. But the characters are quite well detailed in attributes and skills, and development is satisfying enough for a few levels, until the game becomes too easy. In the end, the character sheet is more complex than necessary given the limited game content.

My final paladin character.

1 point for NPC interaction. The little dudes in huts are more like “encounters” or “quests” than NPCs.

3 points for encounter and foes. Monsters are probably the weakest part of the game. Most of them are unnamed. They’re distinguished only icon and number of hit points. Because they lack significant special attacks or defenses, there’s little need to explore the game’s variety of spells. Non-combat encounters are a bit more interesting, with a couple of challenging puzzles, although nothing that approaches Dungeon Master in complexity. I liked the option to search for enemies in already-cleared towns and caves.

3 points for magic and combat. I give some credit for the two combat modes, and “strategic” combat offers some real positioning tactics. I didn’t bother to explore more than half a dozen magic spells, particularly since there are no mass-damage spells and the individual-damage spells do less damage than a physical attack.

Buying spells in the last town. I never found out what half of these spells do and never cast half of the rest.

5 points for equipment. Ritual adopted Might and Magic‘s complexity with inventory, where items can have multiple bonuses and features and there are usable items to sub for many spells. Again, though, combat was too easy to bother exploring most of these features, and I largely decided which weapons and armor to keep based on cost.

This helm effectively increases my level by 1.

3 points for economy. There are lots of things to buy–training, skill acquisition and building, weapons and armor, and healing among them. It’s just too easy to acquire enough money for the entire game within the first few hours.

The game provides absurd amounts of gold at regular intervals.

3 points for quests. The game has a main quest, if a little light, and a few side quests that impart extra valuables and skills.

The party solves a side quest to return a ring, only to find that the quest giver was divorced in the meantime.

2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are fine, but there is no sound at all. The mouse part of the interface works well, but unfortunately the mouse part is the only part, which I don’t find remotely forgivable.

3 points for gameplay. It has a little nonlinearity at the beginning, and the total number of hours was good for its content. Unfortunately, it was too easy and has no replayability.

That gives us a final score of 27. Motelsoft is making better, more complex games in 1992, and letting itself be influenced by the right titles from bigger developers, but it still lacks a certain sense of balance and polish. Despite the promised sequel, it doesn’t look like there was ever a Magic Tower II. We’ll see them again this year with Arcana unless I happen to pick up Projekt Terra (1991) or Sandor II (1991) on my “old” list first.

Let’s see if I can finish up Star Control II this week, too. If not, the next 1992 game is a Macintosh title called Darkwood. Looking at a couple of screenshots, I’m pretty sure I’ve played this before. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it won’t be more than a single entry.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/dark-stone-ritual-won-with-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

1 note · View note

barelylivinblog · 6 years ago

Text

We Went to Canada to See A Lot of Water

After driving through what seemed an endless route to the north pole, my boyfriend and I were crossing Lake Erie and heading across the border into Canada towards Niagara Falls.

Traveling there wasn’t as bad as I’m letting it off to be, but being in a car for six hours definitely put a toll on my childlike soul. I spent almost an hour of the ride harassing my boyfriend by wearing his sunglasses and being ridiculous, which I now realize was a lot funnier in person than written out.

If there’s anything I can tell you about taking a road trip, it’s very simple: Pack Snacks.

Had my boyfriend’s mother not supplied us with a sandwich bag crammed with two breakfast bars, a nutty butty, and two bags of popcorn, I would have perished. We made the mistake not to stop when we saw food, and when I say food, I mean the shady gas stations along side the highway to nowhere. This was the best option because after so far along when we were actually hungry there was NO WHERE to eat until we got into Buffalo. At that point it made no sense to travel into buffalo when we could just wait until we got into Canada.

Starving, we hurried along to our hotel and then quickly settled to eat at the Apple Bee’s right down the street from our hotel. Had we not been so hungry, I’m sure we wouldn’t have settled for the most American option. However, as my boyfriend said, it was easier knowing we were going to a place where we knew we would enjoy the food.

BUT.

To my horror upon looking at the menu: Canada’s Apple Bee’s DOES NOT SERVE BONELESS WINGS. I am an expert when it comes to American Apple Bee’s because if there was one close to my house I would eat there every day. The menu at the Canadian one was, to my surprise, much smaller. They didn’t even offer two for $25.

Another thing I picked up on quickly was how expensive everything was. Even with the conversion I ended up spending double my anticipated amount just from eating and sightseeing. The only free part of the trip was seeing the Falls themselves. My boyfriend even had to pay to park his car for the weekend.

Anyways, after paying what seemed like a million dollars for a meal at the facade that they called Apple Bee’s, we headed down to the Falls for the first time in the dark. In order to get there you had to walk down this steep hill (which continuously killed me when we hiked back up it) and walk under this bridge that still had been decorated for Christmas. The whole city was still decorated for Christmas which was nice considering our trip was a “Christmas” trip.

Once you got so far down the hill there was a picture view of what I believed to be the only Falls. You see, there are two waterfalls in this area: The American side and the Canadian side. In my head the two falls were facing their claimed countries, but it turns out they were both facing the Canadian side.

So I was staring at the American side, lit up by colorful lights, and thinking that this was the big sight to see. To be honest, I hadn’t even realized what I was looking at until my boyfriend said that the Falls were straight ahead. They, especially in the night, looked like projections of water. It was unreal.

And then I saw the Canadian side, or the Horseshoe Falls. Which, again, looked like a large projections. My eyes could almost not adjust to what I was seeing because it was so unbelievable.

After the magic of the falls and being showered in positive ions, my boyfriend and I headed back to our hotel. Below is a list of things we discovered about our hotel:

1. You cannot use bath bombs in the hotel tub or else they will charge you $350.00

2. Channel 4 is the fireplace channel

3. The vending machines only take dollar coins, HOWEVER, the dollar coins they have set out for you are a three dollar charge.

4. The pillows were garbage.

5. Hotel IHop was delicious but I paid 13.00 dollars for a meal I get at Denny’s for 4 dollars.

6. The curtains that would make sense to be able to move DO NOT move.

7. The elevator will smell like weed.

8. The hotel gift shops snacks are very pricey. We lucked out after I spotted a general store directly across from our hotel and got snacks for a little bit cheaper. It was a good business, still selling stuff obnoxiously priced but not as pricey as the hotel.

Our second day we went behind the waterfalls, and climbed over to Clifton Hill in search for something to do. We ended up at a glow in the dark indoor mini-golf course. It was a good way to waste some time and I think was worth the admission price. I was worried it was going to be crowded but everyone was good about waiting their turn which made it a cool experience.

That night, however, my boyfriend took me to the casino.The casino was really dazzling to the eye, but once you looked past the fancy decor and colorful flooring, it was scary how hypnotized some people were. I watched people who looked like their lives had been sucked out of them from hitting a button and betting away a lot more money than one should to a computerized slot machine. I had never been to a casino because in America I’m not old enough, but here all I had to do was show two forms of I.D. and I was stamped and sent on my way.

I ended up not gambling because it was a weird concept to me, but my boyfriend did. He was laughing and carrying on and all the older people were giving us dirty looks. It was fun to watch him, but now I fear he’s hooked (not really, I just like to give him a hard time).

The best part of the casino was the buffet. It was beautiful inside, the food was all very good, and it was one of the cheaper meals we had. We ended up eating there twice because of this, so I strongly recommend that if you are in a touristy area where food is expensive, look for that casino buffet.

On Sunday, we explored a wax museum. It was the worst idea I’ve ever had. Like, I’m ashamed to admit that I was the one that suggested it. The museum was about the size of a house, but laid out in a way that made it seem larger. In order to appear this way, each room was sectioned off by doors rather than archways. At one point I felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic because we were in a small room with about five different figures. The figures themselves looked to be completely real or like creepy dolls -- there was no in-between. I thought this uneasy feeling of being scared that one of them was going to come to life was just me and my overactive imagination, but once leaving I found out that my boyfriend was also pretty spooked about the whole experience.

So to calm down we went and sampled beers. The servers never carded us or looked at us strangely, which made me uneasy as well but also reassured that I wasn’t being illegal. My boyfriend and I argued for which beer was best, but to be honest I don’t really care for beer at all.

Speaking of servers and overall employees, they will never be paid enough to deal with rude tourists. I watched numerous encounters where tourists were being unreasonably rude to staff members and if there’s any advice I can give you about traveling: be nice to the workers and they will usually give you a nice experience. It’s the famous “treat others the way you would like to be treated.”

When Monday morning came, we headed back to the States and I took a well needed nap while my boyfriend played Smash Brothers to make up for his lost gaming time.

Overall, Niagara Falls was beautiful. I assumed that because of winter there wouldn’t be as many people, but it was pretty crowded over the weekend. However, we never ate a bad meal or experienced anything negative (other than the spooky wax museum but we have erased that from our memory). My only regret is that we didn’t explore as much as we should have. It was very easy to do things that we were familiar with instead of taking risks. My prime example of this was the Apple Bee’s, and although the buffet was amazing, next time I would enjoy to explore what Canada’s menu has to offer, food and experience wise. The most exploring we did was nearby, and we typically stayed close to what was familiar to us. The farthest we went was to a Hershey Chocolate World only to discover that it didn’t have the Hershey Factory Tour ride that our beloved Hershey Park has. In the long run however, we did a substantial amount of walking around and had a very relaxing trip.

To summarize: pack snacks, have a lot of spending money, and enjoy the view because it was the best part.

1 note · View note

wannawrite · 6 years ago

Text

The Royals - PWJ

who?: Wanna One’s Park Woojin genre: 🌺 type: bullet point TW: gang au

blog navigator.

The Royals PJH | PJH2 | KD | KD2

part one / two

mafia! AU

what secrets does Woojin hide up in the clouds?

kind of a soft mafia! AU for a change of scenery. Thanks for requesting anon!! Hope you guys anticipate more.

disclaimer: pictures used do not belong to me and credit goes to their original owners everything that is written here is purely fictional DO NOT READ IF TRIGGERING

Park Woojin

code name: 6

nickname: Sparrow

by his friends and enemies alike

he’s deadly quiet, demure even

Woojin is the pilot in charge of The Royals fleet of private jets

no one has a clear headshot of Woojin as he always has on a dramatic fighter jet pilot’s mask

rumour has it that he’s only a boy of 20 years of age, has taupe coloured skin kissed by sun rays and a key identification factor

his snaggletooth

but that’s the only word on the street

Woojin was the most low-key member of The Royals, keeping his profile low and head hidden

no wonder he was called Sparrow

always flying off before anyone’s hand could clasp around him

fast

nimble

brown haired

speckled

another gossip column mentioned he was a good friend of Lee Daehwi, another member of The Royals

and that was how he became a key figure of the secret society realm

Woojin had always dreamt of being a pilot

when he was young, he had wanted to be an airforce pilot

lol how things have changed

his mother was a head officer in Incheon’s flight control tower

that was where the influence came from

his father had been a pilot

a little love story bloomed from there

obviously, they married and had two children

it was a happy family of four, all enthralled by the idea of jetting through the clouds

one day, a tragic accident had claimed his life

Woojin was a bit too young to remember specific details but he had a calling to fulfil his late father’s legacy

he wanted to succeed his father’s wish for him to continue flying planes

a national airforce fighter jet pilot would have been ideal

but he was happy to settle for the position of head pilot of Seoul’s notorious mafia

Woojin was sent to pilot school when he was a middle school student

only when he was a high schooler did he start practicing and honing his skills with real planes

small delivery planes that is

cute

Woojin was the kind of guy who took photos with every plane he had piloted

every single one of them were kept in an album in his mother’s house

yes, his cute snaggletooth was featured in ALL of them

his sister would scrapbook some candids and send them over to The Royals HQ in Seoul

sparrow’s scrapbooks were the talk of the town

Woojin was in charge of a lot of things

excessive things

almost too much

but he loved his job and lived for the thrill of flying

whether it was a goods plane, passenger plane, he just adored piloting planes

oh and it wasn’t exactly hard to renew his license when he had contacts in the business

occasionally, Woojin traveled back to his flying school to assist teachers

or take more classes since he is 20

still gaining knowledge

well, that’s how you got to know him

when you were young, your grandfather would tell you stories of the days when he was a fighter pilot

a pilot

he met your grandmother during his flying days as well

fascinated by his stories and tales, you too were determined to pilot plane

it was difficult

your parents did not favour this idea and your grandparents were your only supporters

in secret, they coached you on whatever knowledge they had

wings, propellor...fly!

you spent hours and hours poring over ancient plane encyclopedias, enriching your mind and spurring on your motivation

and then one day, your grandparents came home with an enrolment letter

into pilot school :D

you screamed and cried with joy

then worried about how your parents would react but your grandparents gave 0 f*cks

they the realest

‘just go, we know people there who will treat and teach you with the best of their abilities.’

and so you started to attend classes in secret

hehe hehe

it was all good

your coach loved you

your love for the planes and even theory classes was unexplainable

not one of your parents knew what you did almost every day after school

until you nearly crashed a plane and were severely hurt

that’s when your parents found out and damn...it wasn’t exactly a pretty scene

the amount of yelling and screaming was enough to shake the whole hospital

you had cried so much that the IV drip had to be replaced TWICE

idk if its a thing but it now is

though it took some time, they finally opened up to the idea of piloting

they managed to see things from a different perspective and wrap their head around it

and now they fund your studies :D

okay, so now the fun starts

you knew Woojin as Park Woojin, the guy from pilot school

your classmate

who is kind of too advanced for your class

Idk what game he playing

if someone asked you about him, you would say y’all talked

but not a lot

considering his attendance had been quite hectic and intermittent

and you did hear some fishy theories about him from the gossipers

Jenna claimed that he worked with the local gang, operating planes so he could import drugs from overseas

sounds a bit dumb but believable ??

you don’t trust Jenna anyway

but her words linger in your mind, unable to dissipate

just simple, harmless gossip

another source stated Woojin was a spy for the FBI, making sure not a single soul could leave the country so easily with their own plane

crazy

how much time do these people have?

you noticed that Woojin was close to many of the staff and instructors

definitely not trying to start your own theory here

he was a person to be curious about, intriguing

just your luck, Woojin ended up being your flying buddy for a term

idk hOw thIS WORKS SO IT GONNA WORK THIS WAY

quite an awkward pairing if you must say

but your instructor liked how you trusted your theory work and equipment, eyeing every reading carefully

he thought it would be a good match for Woojin, who trusted his own instinct but was a firm and steady pilot

day one: silence filled the space between the two of you

the instructor gave y’all an hour to read the manual, study, bond whatnot

yet, half of that was spent buried in books and theory videos

safety books

going over basics

reading about gear care

even though you knew Woojin was an expert in those aspects

there was just no talking

shhhh

quieter than your school’s library

that was most people’s impression of the quiet and cunning little sparrow, tricking people into thinking he’s demure and secretive

see, that’s how all those ludicrous rumours are born

finally, you just HAD to engage in conversation

THE SILENCE WAS JUST TOO STRANGLING

but he was hard to talk to

woojin barely said three words before the conversation lapsed

you pressed your lips together, unsure of what to do

you started to scribble, drawing cartoonish planes and clouds

that was when Woojin commented that your plane looked more like a bird

‘pfp...see if you can draw any better,’ you challenged

Woojin took another pencil from your case

‘Try me.’

And so that’s how you spent your ‘study session’

Since you do have quite a competitive spirit

You brought a whole ass portfolio of drawings the next day

Just so Woojin could get a taste of his competition

Banter, banter

After leafing through yours, he pulled out his own digital file of sketches

And his own little scrapbook

+2 for artistic talent

soon, the piles of non-work related books were growing in your locker

there were a couple more pencil scribbles on the picnic table

other students found rough paper with sketches almost everywhere

even on mock test papers

eventually, your instructor realised something was terribly off when both of you failed the month’s test

as punishment, you guys had to do clean up duty

and more homework

taking away your hands-on flying class for a month

but it was fun

partners in crime play together

partners in crime die together

so slogging after class was much more enjoyable in the company of each other

plus, the ice cream feast after was always rewarding

you guys would purposely take a long route to the bus stop to pick up convenience store ice cream

woojin would try to convince you that his flavour choice was much better

time was killed with the playful banter at the bus stop

many times you found yourself wanting to ask about all the rumours circulated about him

but you realised that Woojin was that kind of guy who would make a joke out of it

and take words like those lightly

bonus!

he had a great sense of humour

variety king

days resembling those wore on

but you were never tired of them

and it seemed like he wasn’t either

every occasion was constantly different from the previous one

another flavour of ice cream to sample

more areas to ‘clean-up’

messing around with the coaches

days at the academy were always divergent

so it was weird when Woojin didn’t show up one day

that time you managed to shrug off the anxieties and assumptions

then, he disappeared for two following days

that you definitely couldn’t ignore

you didn’t attend the same school as him and no one else at the academy knew him very well

when coaches were questioned, they seemed uninterested but assured of his safety

‘Don’t worry,’ said your instructor. ‘Woojin knows his way around things. Perhaps he just hasn’t been feeling very well.’

mhm

you watched how his irises flickered from yours to the surroundings

and back

any trace of uncertainty was erased when you took a second glance

‘Anyway, I have his assignment folder. Could you pass it to him for the summer? Thanks.’

‘Make sure it gets to him safely. Don’t pass it to a third party.’

his footsteps quickened as they grew more and more out of earshot

you scoffed in disbelief, feeling the effects of being alone while everyone else was buddied up

how were you ever going to find Woojin?

His mobile phone was turned off too

or he just wasn’t responding to your texts

you: hi woojin

you: I have your work file

you: can we meet so I can pass it to you?

you: you okay? haven’t seen you in a while

woojin hadn’t read those messages

Sighing, you closed the application and continued with your classes

forcing yourself to pay attention to content was harder when Woojin wasn’t around

every moment you swore that your phone buzzed in your pocket

unfortunately, it was just your imagination

there were no texts from him even at the end of the day

you fell asleep that night with an uneasy heart full of worries

woojin: yeah of course

woojin: Thanks btw

woojin: sorry about it

woojin: aha you won’t see this asap since its 2am

woojin: but tell me where to find you tomorrow

what a debonair comment from him

is that even an adjective to describe a phrase?

your face feels a bit warm

stop making a big deal out of nothing!!!

you: how about 11am at the Starbucks near my place

you text him the address

shockingly, Woojin’s response is immediate

Woojin: see you :)

a smiley face

what does this mean?

he’s happy to get his work, that’s what it means

calm down

the red alarm clock reads 8.30am

there’s time to freshen up

there’s also time for you to imagine every possible outcome of this meeting

which is taking place outside of class time

would it be awkward?

strange?

don’t overthink this

after much deliberation, you make it to Starbucks 15 minutes before the agreed time

all is calm at your seat near the window, drink on your table

and clutching Woojin’s file so closely as if it would grow legs and run away

then, two young men approach your table

‘Hi,’ one of the voices said. ‘You’re here for Woojin, aren’t you?’

you’re hesitant to answer, wondering what sort of relationship Woojin would have with them

your reply is cut off by the other guy speaking

he chuckles

‘I’m Jeno and he’s Jaemin. We’re Woojin’s friends and he sent us to collect his work,’ he says.

you observe how he hides his hands behind his back, how he presses his lips together too often

liar

Don’t give it to a third party

pass it to him personally

Jaemin’s hands reach for the file. ‘Now if you just-‘

‘I don’t think so.’ Your words slice through the tension. ‘Woojin is supposed to collect it from me himself.’

The message sent is clear

Don’t f*cking touch this file

Jaemin’s jaw seems to clench while Jeno begins to crack his knuckles

‘Well,’ Jaemin begins, his arms retreating. ‘Woojin has something to attend to so he called us to get it. It was a last minute arrangement.’

Jeno scrolls through his phone, pulling up ‘Woojin’s’ texts

The messages are indeed are from a contact called Woojin, he lacks an avatar though

‘I’ll message him right now.’

however, messages from him rain in

Woojin: hey if anyone with the names Jaemin and Jeno talk to you, get away

Woojin: i didn’t send them, we don’t get along

Woojin: even if you don’t encounter them, I need you to go home this instant

Woojin: I’m so sorry, I can’t meet you today

his texts confirm your suspicions but now you’re curious about his relationship with them

How long could teenage boys hold grudges for anyway?

you: i’m talking to them rn

you: ...what should I do

you: jaemin’s pretty adamant about getting your stuff

Woojin: shit

Woojin: one of my friends is nearby, his name is Jaehwan

Woojin: go with him

Woojin: now, go to the barista and tell them you want a cupful of whipped cream with chocolate sauce

you look up from your phone, a bit taken aback by the information

your guard is well up now

‘Well?’ Jaemin almost hisses before he catches himself

‘Hmm, I’m waiting for his reply. He wants me to order him a coffee.’

your heart wants to thump out of your chest

even your lips begin to dry

something just isn’t right

your brain and body aren’t reacting positively

As the last word leaves your lips, the barista whispers into a well-concealed in-ear

out of the corner of your eye, you catch one of the employees ripping her apron off and tossing it into the bushes

she was outside of the store, clearing dishes from the outdoor seating area

when she draws close, she makes a noise about not seeing you in a long time

but her eyes watch Jaemin and Jeno in the back

It’s to throw them off

Good plan

who came up with it?

the two mysterious boys grow increasingly irritated

it shows clearly in their actions

furious whispers

side glares

constant drumming of fingers

the girl’s eyes flicker over your shoulder for barely a second

an unnoticeable look

‘Jaehwan’s here,’ she says just as the bell chimes

‘You’re in good hands now.’

her smile is genuine and so is her embrace

you and Jaehwan don’t even exchange a slither of a greeting

in fact, you can’t catch your breath as the same lady ushers you out through the kitchen door

it’s only a matter of seconds before Jaemin and Jeno are alerted of your disappearance

that’s when their rage would be on the loose

Jaehwan frantically bundles you into a nearby car

honestly, you aren’t convinced he’s the best company

perhaps better than the previous Js

‘Where’s Woojin?’ you heave out. ‘I need to talk to him.’

Jaehwan begins to exit the parking lot, sunglasses on.

‘Sorry, reaching him will take a while. And, sorry for the suddenness of everything. You must be...surprised.’

‘That’s an understatement,’ you blurt out. ‘I’m utterly confused and terrified!’

‘I don’t even know where I’m going and who’s taking me!’

all your emotions are in a jumbled mess

being with Jaehwan feels like sitting in a lion’s den but with a metal cage surrounding you

safer but not wholly

staying with Jeno and Jaemin would mean the lions would have devoured you before your feet even reached the bottom of the pit

Woojin didn’t answer any of your calls

Jaehwan notices your hopeless attempts at contacting your friend

‘I’m sorry, he isn’t available at this moment.’

‘And why the hell not! He told me to meet him! He doesn’t have any plans! He could’ve come to meet me! I just want to give him his work file!’

The outburst makes you feel a ton better

Like the bag of bricks, you carried had been carrying was thrown at someone you hated

Suddenly, the road sign reading ‘Incheon Airport’ catches your attention

especially when Jaehwan seems to be en route

‘Why are we headed to the airport?’ You question, unsure if you want an answer

‘We’re going to see Woojin,’ Jaehwan replies casually.

‘W-w-we’re going out of the country?’ The stutter is inevitable

Jaehwan appears to furrow his brow as if puzzled

‘Um...yeah. Jihoon and Sejeong will deal with your accommodation,’ he informs, not that it is very helpful

Who and who?

‘Does Woojin even tell you anything?’ Jaehwan asks as he drives to the airport carpark

He shakes his head in disapproval when you answer with a ‘no’

‘I don’t have my passport,’ you say

your words don’t even affect Jaehwan, he simply says that a Kang Daniel has got you covered

again, who, what and how?

‘C’mon. Let’s go. I’m sure Woojin has all the answers to your questions.’

Jaehwan pushes your back, urging you to move quicker

‘What the hell,’ he curses under his breath. ‘Hurry up, I see...uh, J and J allies.’

there isn’t time

Plus, you don’t have the courage to turn around and glare them in the eye

Contrary to your assumption, Jaehwan skirts around the ‘Private Jet’ counter and settles for a commercial flight queue

he says something about it being too risky to dispatch one of his company’s private jets

the jets come as no shock

After all, Woojin does needs his planes

it’s likely his close friends are all like-minded and share the same interests

Jaehwan speedily dashes for the ‘First Class’ row

he speaks to the counter staff in such a quiet tone even you can’t decipher his words

‘Don’t worry about your passport, I have connections.’

don’t actually do this!!!

that makes your stomach clench and twist with nerves in the most horrid manner

somehow

your passport appears

it isn’t a replica, it isn’t a faux document

it’s in the flesh

...did someone break into your house?

‘Yeah,’ Jaehwan answers your unspoken question. ‘Of course someone stole this from your tabletop. You need to get better security.’

you face blushes red in embarrassment

'I’m a pilot,’ you manage a counter attack

your new friend only chuckles

jumping snaking immigration queues is something you could accustom yourself to

ahhh, the luxuries

soon, you’ll be able to join the ‘CREW ONLY’ line

Before you know it, you’re seated in the first class section of a reputable airline

woah

this is new

you don’t want to know where Jaehwan or Woojin or whoever has the money to pay for all this

then again, these people own a fleet of private jets

Jaehwan advises you to chill and enjoy the flight

but the bundle of nerves only tightens in your stomach

You’re on your way to Hong Kong

with a small bag of essentials and the clothes on your back

Jaehwan’s in the same situation

yet he seems so used to it, there’s no point being anxious

tbh you’d rather pilot the plane than ride in it

why would Woojin be in Hong Kong?

did he fly there on impulse?

does he even know the route?

he did just receive his pilot licence......

no, he couldn’t possibly

it sounded like a hasty getaway

A sudden change of plans

as if he was in trouble.....

Who are these people Jaehwan mentioned?

Is Woojin hiding anything from me?

Of course he is! Jaehwan knows but he feels that only Woojin has the right to tell me

besides, he’s asleep

how can he be sleeping at a time like this?

it’s barely 2pm

the day is going just fine

hopefully, things start looking up from here

Hong Kong...

Woojin...

I’m coming for ya

#Admin L #wanna one #wanna one scenarios #Produce 101 #produce 101 scenarios #park woojin

46 notes · View notes

guitypleasure052016 · 7 years ago

Text

Take Me Home Part 2

This is part 2 to “Take Me Home”. Part 1 can be found here. There will be a flashback scene in this section. I will italicize the flashback scene to differentiate it.

Similar to earlier in the day, your other senses were awakened before you even opened your eyes. Your entire body still ached all over, it has lessened some, you assumed because they had put a painkiller through one of the tubes attached to the IV pole. You didn’t have to wonder if Chibs was still in the room as you could smell the all familiar scent combination and you could hear that perfect Scottish drawl. You also heard multiple other voices, most likely the other members of Filip’s club had come to find out what was going on. As exhausted and disoriented as you were, you knew you had work to do and lying in this damn hospital bed wasn’t going to get anything done. You slowly opened your eyes, trying not to draw any attention, and then began sliding one leg off the side of the bed to prepare for your quick escape but it was halted by a sudden noise. That damn bed alarm, you’d completely forgotten about it, and it had thwarted your escape plan. Before you could move another muscle, Filip was quickly making his way to your bed as his friends stood back and observed.

“Please (Y/N), you need to stop trying to get up love, it’s not safe, you’re too hurt”, he pleaded with you while lifting your leg and sliding it back into the bed, gently covering it with a blanket.

“You don’t get it, I have to leave. It doesn’t matter how I feel, I have to get to them.”, you responded.

“You can’t get up darling, we’ll call whoever you need us to call, but I’m not going to let you leave this room, not in this condition”, Chibs stated firmly.

“You can’t call anyone. You can’t do anything. You need to move. Coming here was a mistake”, you cried while again trying to get up out of the bed. You had barely moved before Filip stopped you once again. He placed his strong hands on your arms pushing you down firmly into the bed as he sat down on the edge of your bed.

“You will not move from this bed (Y/N), not until your cleared by a doctor, I don’t want to hear another thing about it”, he ordered.You nodded, taken aback by how firm he was being. He noticed how nervous you became and his expression quickly changed from firm to concerned, as he removed one arm from your side in order to brush a piece of hair out of your face, and caress your cheek.

“Don’t be upset lass. I’m not cross with you, I just don’t want you hurting yourself…even more, than you already are”, he reassured you. You turned your face in his hand, kissing his palm, and then turned back to offer him a sad smile.

“My sweet love, why are you so scared, don’t you know I’ll always protect you”, he questioned. You sighed and shook your head, not even beginning to know how to explain what was going on. You didn’t have much time to think about what to say as one of his friends from the club chimed in.

A tall man with curly black hair slowly walked up, clapping a hand on Filip’s shoulder and announced, “Besides, we’re all family and if you’re important to Chibs here, you’re important to us too. We won’t let anything bad happen to ya doll”. The other men in the room nodded and grunted in agreement. You smiled first at the curly haired man, then at Filip, then at the rest of the men in the room.

“I appreciate your offer guys but I couldn’t ask that of any of you, not with the drama I’ve brought with me. Coming here to Charming was a last-ditch effort for a hopeless situation and I won’t have anyone else hurt on my account”, you told the chivalrous group of men.

One of the youngest of the group, a man with little to no hair but a rather large head tattoo, spoke up, “Don’t worry (Y/N). We won’t let that Jason guy anywhere near you”. Your smile quickly turned to a scowl and you whipped your head back towards Filip.

“What did you tell them”, you accused.

“Nothing, I didn’t tell them anything yet love but I did show them the card from the flowers…..it didn’t say much….it just said that he would see you soon and he signed his name…we didn’t get much farther than that before you woke up. It took them a while to get here, plus the nurse only gave you a mild sedative to calm down so you weren’t knocked out too long”, he explained. Before he could say much else, that same nurse entered the room, interrupting the conversation.

“What the hell is going on here, this woman is supposed to be resting and recovering, not hosting all of SAMCRO. You all can see her in the morning, but for now you’re going to have to leave”, she ordered. All of the guys groaned and grumbled but seemed to heed the nurse’s request.

“We’ll leave, but my two guys here Juice and Rat are going to be outside the door to make sure she’s safe but they won’t disturb her”, a tall man with shoulder length blonde hair responded while nodding to the two men. When you looked closer, you saw that blondie had the president’s patch on his kutte. The nurse rolled her eyes but agreed to the man’s conditions. She seemed to be familiar with the biker crew as you were sure they had people in and out of this hospital all of the time.

“I’m not leaving her here. I’m staying right here by her side til we figure out what the hell is going on”, Chibs suddenly spoke up. The nurse sighed deeply and turned around.

“Listen I know y’all care about this girl but the only people that get to stay here overnight are family or significant others. Anything else is against hospital regulations”, she informed the guys.

“Well, that’s fine then cause I’m her man, her significant other or whatever shite the hospital says. I’m with her”, Chibs responded as he stood up from the edge of your bed, standing in front of you protectively, placing himself between you and the nurse.

“No he’s not”, you called out from behind “I’m married and he’s not the husband”. Almost every head in the room quickly turned to look at you in confusion.

“Don’t do this (Y/N)”, Chibs pleaded as he quickly walked back over to your bed, that familiar painful look plastered across his face.

He tried to grab your hands but you quickly pulled them out of his grasp and looked away, whispering “It’s easier this way Filip. I won’t let you or your brothers get hurt for me”. Before he had a chance to respond, the nurse quickly stepped around him and ushered all of the men out of the room.

It was several hours later and you were exhausted. The hospital was much quieter at this time of night. All you could hear was the shuffle of feet in the hallway, whispers of hospital staff, and the beeping of monitors in your room. The night shift staff tried to keep everything quiet so patients could sleep but you would not be sleeping tonight.You had spent the past hours sobbing ever since you watched Filip walk out the door. You thought you’d be used to this feeling. Every time the two of you met, it always ended this way, in heartbreak because no matter how much you loved each other, you both knew that you could never be together. Almost as if on cue, the door to your room creaked open and there he was. He offered an apologetic smile and entered the room, softly closing the door behind him. You know you should send him away but you had no resolve at this point and smiled back at him, reaching your arms out to him. You could see him breathe a sigh of relief that you didn’t send him away again, and he quickly came over to you, engulfing you in as tight of a hug as your bruised and battered body could handle

. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t leave, you stubborn ass hole”, you teased as you smiled up at the man you loved.

He smiled and then sighed and asked, “Do you remember the day we met lass. That and the first night we….well ya know”?

You offered him a confused smile at the sudden reminiscing and his nervousness and responded, “Of course I do Filip. I remember it like it was yesterday”.

It was a blistering hot summer day, typical early June weather and you were pissed. You had decided to take a break at a rest stop in some random town in Pennsylvania. You had gone inside to hit the head and grab a bite to eat. You gorged yourself on Chick-fil-A and made sure to order some waffle fries for the road. You walked out to your car, ready to get going and hit the road. You put your key in the ignition and to your dismay, it didn’t start. You cursed your shit luck and banged your head against the steering wheel. You got out of your car and popped the hood, bending over and looking everything over as if you knew what the hell you were doing. You cursed again and pulled out your phone to call local mechanics in the area and dreading the mounting costs that this little hiccup would cost you. You had a long road ahead of you. You had just graduated from graduate school in Upstate New York. You wanted to stay there, you loved your life there with your friends and you loved studying chemistry. You tried to convince your family that you should stay there and continue going to school but your father insisted you return home so here you were with a station wagon filled to the brim and hundreds of miles to drive across the country to drive to your small town in Oregon. You were lost in thought trying to calculate how much the tow and the fix would potentially cost you when you were brought back to reality by a voice from behind you. You jumped and turned around quickly, reaching for the pocket knife in your back pocket. You came face to face with a man whose arms were now up in the “surrender” position.

“Sorry lass, didn’t mean to startle ya but it seems like you’re having car trouble. I know a thing or two about cars so I thought I might be able to help” he explained. You noticed his accent right away and smiled. You had already thought he was good looking but that was just the icing on the cake.

“You’re not from around here are you”, you questioned.

The man chuckled and responded, “You’ve got me there lass but since we’re currently at a truck stop in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, I’m gonna guess you’re not from here either”. You laughed, feeling oddly at ease with this stranger.

“You’re right, I’m not from here. I live all the way at the other end of the country. I’m Y/N”, you introduced yourself, sticking out your hand to shake his. He took your hand in his own and brought it to his lips, gently kissing your knuckles.

“My name’s Filip, but everyone calls me Chibs. Now let me take a look at that car and see if I can help you out”, he replied. You stepped back and let him get to work. You stood back and admired the view while he looked over your car. He was a tall man, dark colored hair mixing between brown and black with a speckle of grey throughout. He had two scars on his face that added to his allure. You could tell he was a man who lived a full and eventful life. He wore a pair of dark colored jeans, along with an even darker shirt. What really caught your attention was the kutte he was wearing, worn leather with a large reaper plastered across the back. Above the reaper were the words “Sons Of Anarchy” in large bold writing. You had just met but this man intrigued you. You knew you wanted to know more about him. It also helped that he was an attractive guy with an accent and who knew how to fix a car. You were suddenly brought back to reality by Chip, no that’s not it, Chibs is his name.

“Earth to (Y/N), you enjoying the view?”, he teased. You blushed, embarrassed that you were caught staring and shook your head.

“I think I’ve figured it out. It’s your battery. It’s dead. It looks ancient as hell, to be honest”, he informed you while shrugging his shoulders and running a hand through his hair

“That makes sense”, you mused, “I’m pretty sure the last time the battery was changed was when my granddad gave it to me years back”.

“Well you could pay to have it towed, which will cost you an arm and a leg or if you want to there’s a Walmart about a mile up the road. We could walk up there and pick you up a battery. I only need a couple tools to do it and I’ve got those in my bag. Before you say you don’t want to impose, you’re not imposing. It’s my honor and duty to come to the aid of a beautiful damsel in distress”, Chibs offered. You blushed at the compliment and agreed to Filip’s plan.

The two of you started off down the road. You were worried it’d be awkward but the conversation flowed as easily as if you were two friends. You told him about your life in New York and about your recent graduation. He was impressed with your degree and inquired as to why you were heading back to Oregon if you loved your life in New York. He could tell that question triggered something as your entire body language changed. You shrugged and told him that as much as you wish you could’ve stayed in New York, that you had a position in the family business waiting for you back home and your father insisted that you return to play your part, that it was very complicated. Chibs noticed you seemed upset and quickly changed the subject. He told you about his childhood, being born in Scotland, but spending most of his life in Ireland. He made you laugh when he told you the story of how he got himself kicked out of the British Army. When you asked him why he found himself in the US if so much of his life is across the sea, you noticed he suddenly became uncomfortable.

He seemed at a loss for words but then finally responded, “I had to leave. It’s…it’s…it’s complicated”.

“I get that Filip”, you reassured him, “Don’t worry, we don’t have to talk about it. Can I ask though where you’re headed”? At this point, the two of you had reached the store and went on the hunt for the car battery. While he shopped he told you about his group of old friends he’d be meeting out in California. He explained that they were a group of motorcycle enthusiasts, who were like family, pointing out the patches sewn on to the back of his kutte. He also told you about the motorcycle he wanted to buy once he got out there. A couple hours later, the car battery was installed. Chibs shut the hood and instructed you to get in the car and try to turn it on again. You held your breath and put your key in the ignition. The car roared to life and you squealed with excitement. You hopped out of the car and ran over to Chibs, jumping into his arms and enveloping him in a hug, thanking him repeatedly. He laughed, a little taken aback by your outburst but he hugged you back. You spent the next half hour talking and laughing outside your car, neither of you wanting this conversation or moment to end. That’s when you had an idea.

“Listen Chibs, I remember you said you were hopping trains and buses to make your way out to California. I have a better idea. Why don’t you ride out with me? We can split when we get closer but I’d love to have some company other than that radio that plays the same song over and over. Now before you say don’t want to impose, you’re not imposing. It’s my honor and duty to come to the aid of a damsel in distress”, you proposed, winking when you quoted his line from earlier.

“You’re cheeky ya know that”, he laughed. You smirked back at him, wiggling your eyebrows.

“Ahhh alright, I guess I should tag along in case this beast of yours gives you any more issues”, he mused “one condition though, I’ll drive”. You agreed, excited not to have to drive for once and tossed him the keys and hopped in the passenger seat.

You were so happy Chibs had agreed to come with you. It was amazing having company but there was something more. The two of you just clicked. You talked about anything and everything, and when you weren’t talking, you just sat in silence enjoying one another’s company. There was lots of flirting and a definite sexual tension but Chibs insisted on being a gentleman, well the biker version of a gentleman. When it was time to sleep at night he always insisted on him sleeping over the blankets or taking the couch if there was one. That all changed one night during your trip. The two of you had dinner at this little pub that was having $1 drink specials. You were waiting at the front while Chibs went and paid your tab. He always insisted on paying and you had to sneak the bill if you wanted to treat. You were standing up at the front searching through the music when you heard a low whistle from behind you. You rolled your eyes and turned around coming face to face with a drunken scumbag. He had greasy black hair and looked like he hadn’t showered in weeks. He smelled like it too. He looked you up and down, lingering a little too long for your liking.

“Hey creep”, you called out, “What the hell do you want”.

“The only thing I want is you baby”, he responded while he sauntered even closer to you, attempting to pin you between himself and the jukebox. You were having none of it though and pushed past him, trying to walk out the door to find your car. He turned around and grabbed your arm, attempting to stop you. Before he had a chance to drop another stupid pick up line, you turned around and landed a punch on his smug face, right in the jaw. You shook out your hand and readied yourself for the fight that was about to happen.

The drunken asshole was bending over holding his jaw but after the shock wore off, he stood up and screamed “You stupid bitch, I’m gonna”….but he was interrupted. Chibs had arrived on the scene and quickly grabbed the drunken idiot by the collar and dragged him out to the parking lot. The rest of the crowd seemed unfazed by the incident so you quickly ran outside to find Chibs. You heard him before you saw him and quickly followed the noise. You found them behind a parked car. Chibs’ fist was covered in blood and that same fist was repeatedly bashing the face of the drunken scumbag.

Chibs was screaming at him, accent thick with anger, “What the fuck did ya think you were doing you inbred piece of shite, puttin yer hands on a woman like that. You’re lucky I don’t kill ya”! You were wary to try to break it up but you didn’t want Chibs to actually kill the man so you quickly stepped in and tried to pull him off but you weren’t successful.

You screamed Chibs’ name over and over and finally got his attention when you shouted, “Filip please stop. You’re going to kill him”! Hearing the twinge of pain in your voice, he quickly stopped and spun around. He had a deadly look on his face and seemed to be panting.

He took several deep breaths to calm himself and replied to you, “Alrighty Darlin’. I’m about finished up here, then we can go back to the motel and I’ll clean up your hand”. You rolled your eyes at the thought of you being the more injured of the pair as Chibs turned around and kicked the bastard as hard as he could. As the man called out in pain, Filip turned around and threw an arm around your shoulder.

“Let’s get going lovey”, he declared and off you went to the motel.

You were back at the motel. Chibs had cleaned up your hand rather quickly as you’d only thrown one punch. He protested but you insisted he sit down on the bed as you gently wiped the blood from his now bruised hand. You hadn’t talked much since you got back from the pub but there was this feeling in the air, you couldn’t quite put your finger on it but you felt it deep down inside of you. After you had helped him clean up his hand, he smiled and pecked you on the forehead. He told you that he was going to take a shower to wash off the smell of the drunk.

“Give me your shirt first”, you called out, “I have stain remover in my bag and that t-shirt is going to need it”.

“You’re just trying to get me naked lass”, he teased but he complied, taking off his shirt and throwing it your way. You barely caught it as you were distracted by the sight in front of you. He was covered in tattoos and scars. You wanted to explore all of them even closer but you didn’t get to check him out too long as he strolled into the bathroom to take a shower. You got out the stain remover, poured it into a bowl, and soaked the bloody t-shirt inside. As you kneaded the dirty t-shirt in the liquid, you couldn’t get the thought of Filip’s half-naked body out of your head. You suddenly had an idea. You opened the door of the bathroom, announcing that you had to wash the liquid off your hands as he grunted in response. After you washed your hands, you quietly and carefully slipped your shirt off, up and over your head, reaching behind to unclasp your bra. You slid your jeans down your body and stripped off your panties, throwing them on the floor. You took a deep breath and stepped into the back of the shower, struggling not to audibly gasp at the sight in front of you.

Chibs turned around shocked and asked you, “Lass what the hell are you doing”.

“What you don’t like what you see”, you asked shrugging your shoulders and pouting.

You saw him gulp as he looked you up and down and he growled, “Of course I like what I see (Y/N). I mean I’d be crazy not to. You’re sexy as hell”.

He suddenly tried to look away, hiding his gaze, “But we shouldn’t do this”, he sputtered, “You’re just excited cause I fought that prick for ya and we’re both drunk. I don’t want ta take advantage”.

“Filip”, you purred, “Yes I’m drunk which is probably why I’m feeling a little more confident but not drunk enough that I’ll do anything I’ll regret. I’ve wanted to jump your bones since the moment we met in that parking lot. Seeing you beat up that creep for me only made me want you more”. Feeling bold, you took a step forward, pressing your body against his wrapping your arms around his neck. Chibs tried to look away but you could feel his excitement which gave him away.

He groaned, “Lass we shouldn’t do th..”. “Oh shut up and fuck me Filip”, you interrupted. That did it. He growled and wrapped his arms around you, shoving you against the wall of the shower as his lips crashed into yours. As your kiss deepened, the two of you explored one another’s bodies with your hands. You lost track of time, lost in one another, and the water eventually turned ice cold. You whined and Chibs took the opportunity to grab your ass and lift you up in his arms, carrying you out to the bed, still soaking wet. He tossed you on to the bed and took a moment to hungrily take in the sight of your naked body writhing on the bed in anticipation. He groaned in appreciation and was soon on top of you. The two of you fought for dominance for a while but soon found a steady rhythm. He was obviously experienced as he made your body feel things that you’d never felt before. You could tell he appreciated your skills as well each time he let go. Quite some time and many many orgasms later, the two of your laid across each other on the bed, trying to catch your breath. He was laying on his back in the middle of the bed as you laid on top of him. You ran your hands through his hair, as his hands rested possessively on your ass. You started to laugh and Chibs raised his eyebrows, spanking you sharply.

“What’s so funny lass. Way to make a man feel good”, he teased. You continued to laugh and placed your head down on his chest, lifting it up to offer him a mischievous smile.

“It’s not that Filip…we left the shower on”, you laughed.

“Well then”, he growled, “let’s get going love”. He slapped your ass with his right hand while his left arm wrapped around your waist, he stood, lifting you up and carrying you to the bathroom. You wrapped your legs around his waist and squealed in excitement.

You came back to reality and blushed at the shared memory. You and Filip were only supposed to stay at that motel for one night and get going in the morning but you stayed there for 3 days, only leaving to get food and then immediately returning.

“So why the walk down memory lane,” you asked as you scooted over, patting the bed next to you so he would climb in. He sighed and hopped up next to you, adjusting your blanket so you were covered and wrapping an arm around you. You welcomed the sudden closeness and snuggled into his side. He sighed, you could tell he was thinking and waited patiently for his response.

“Well lass, after everything we went through on that trip and since then, it just kills me that you’re this scared and don’t trust me to protect you. You know I’d do anything for you Y/N”. You looked up at him with a confused look on your face.

“Is that what you really think Filip, that I don’t trust you”, you asked. “It’s not that at all, it’s just all…it’s…it’s complicated”, you explained.

“Isn’t it always”, he groaned in response. “Now get some sleep love. You need to rest”, he ordered as he pulled you closer, placing a kiss on your forehead.

“Tell me a bedtime story Filip”, you pleaded.

“Alrighty love”, he mused. “Do you want to hear about how I got kicked out of the army again”, he asked.

“Ohhh yes, that’s my favorite”, you replied while snuggling into his chest. You knew you had things to do but for now, for tonight, you were going to fall asleep in the arms of the man you love.

Part 3

Click Here To See My Masterlist!

Click Here If You Want To Be On A Tag List!

#sons of anarchy #chibs imagine #chibs telford #chibs telford x reader #chibs x reader #guitypleasure052016 #soa edit #soa imagines #soa imagine #soa

210 notes · View notes

kpurereactions · 7 years ago

Text

She Boss | Part 3

Summery: She’s her own boss and theres nothing that can’t stop her from ruling the world. Except for the soft heart she sprouts from the young, handsome Korean Leader. Pairing: Kwon Jiyong x Reader Rating: Drama, Angst, Smut, Fluff WARNINGS: Language, light|heavy Violence, light|heavy Smut

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

“Your host tonight, G Dragon and the lovely Valentina Cappucio.” It said as all eyes were turned towards you two.

“So that’s what Val is short for.” He said giving you a wicked smile as he led you down the six steps it took to get to where everyone stood.

The two of you made your way to the center of the dance floor where Ji spun you once before pulling you in tightly to start the first dance. With everyone clapping you could hardly hear the music, this made you glad Ji was leading.

“What is a big bad man like yourself doing taking the first dance?” You tease raising an eyebrow at him.

“Tradition.” He said trying to hold his boss face.

“Tradition.” You repeat as he spun you once again.

Promising you a dance later Ji pulled you from the center of the crowd and off to the side where he led you to a section that was closed off with exception of a few people. Carlo and Ule were sitting in there along with the men that had accompanied Ji to the meeting. In the center of the two groups sat a crippling old man in a wheelchair and an aged, but never the less gorgeous woman.

“Mom, dad, meet Valentina Cappucio.” He said and instantly you reached your hand to shake his mothers hand. She just chuckled at you and stood pulling you into a hug.

“You’re even more beautiful than he described. Such elegance to you.” She smiled as her eyes flicked from yours to the necklace, warming at the sight.

“And a hell of a shot from when I’ve heard.” The old man grumbled now holding out his hand. Just just the first time you reached for Ji’s hand you expected him to shake it but he flipped your hand to kiss the ring on your pinky.

You curtsied in respect to the two before Ji directed your attention to the four men sitting to your right.

“These are my best men, Yongbae, Daesung, Seungri, and my right hand Seunghyun..” he said and you nodded to the boys in front of you, making a mental note it was Yongbae and Seunghyun that your brothers were getting friendly with.

“We’ve set up rooms for you all here, so please feel free to eat and drink all your heart desires. Your safe and more than welcome in our home.” Ji’s father said raising his glass of what looked like grapefruit juice towards you and then your men.

“If I’m lucky you’ll stay with me.” Ji whispered into your ear causing a stern look from you. He chuckled and held the hand that how lightly clung to a champagne flute, his other being too busy resting itself on your lower back to move.

The 11 of you sat in the closed off area talking about business for close to a hour. It wasn’t until Ji’s mother rose her hands in frustration while scolding Ji’s name did the two of you disperse.

“Enough with this, go dance, drink, make a baby I don’t care! Anything but this.” She whined. Your cheeks flushed and you started to silently thank Mina for the blush she already set on your cheeks.

You curtsied once more while bowing your head to his parents before letting his hand lead you back towards the dance floor you had to admit, all the talk about work made you loose count of the flutes you had so as Ji spun you around the dance floor, only one hand holding onto you as his other constantly brought champagne to his lips, you could t help but giggle.

“Why are you laughing?” He said, a playful grin tugging at his lips. You rose a finger in between the two of you and wiggled it telling him to lean in closer.

“I think I’m drunk.” You said biting your lip as Ji continued to sway you.

“Is that so? He smiled looking down to you before laughing at how much darker your cheeks had gotten. "How about we take a walk.” He said placing his half empty flute on a passing tray.

He intertwined his fingers with yours this time, not caring who saw the informality. He led you gently through the passing bodies and out one of the large back doors. The cold air hit you harder than you expected and you instantly shivered. Feeling your discomfort he shrugged his jacket off and placed it around your shoulders. You thanked him and wrapped your free hand around his bicep as the two of you walked silently in the dark.

“Are you having fun?” He said slightly bumping into you.

“A lot more fun than usual.” You smiled.

“You don have fun like this in Italy?” He asked looking down at you.

“Shooting people can only be so much fun.” You shrugged. “Honestly since daddy died I don’t think I’ve had any fun.” You said as he sat the two of you down on a bench.

“The life of a boss. I’m luckily my mom is still with me, if she wasn’t I don’t know if things like this would still happen.

You nodded and looked around, spotting Seunghyun and Carlo strolling around.

"I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get away from my brothers either.” You said sighing as the two older boys made eye contact.

“This struggles we live with.” He smiled sweetly.

“You should smile all the time, you have a nice one.” You said before you realized what exactly it was you said. “Sorry, drunk.” You said pointing at yourself.

“I do have to say it is hard for me to keep a straight face around you.” He confessed rolling his eyes at his own cringe words. You laugh at this and shake your head.

“Look at us. Two mighty heads turning into children.” You said making him chuckle beside you.

“Another reason why I hate these stupid parties.”

“I don’t know, I could get used to a little fun every once and a while.” You said looking back over to the light pouring through the windows.

“Stay in Korea then. I know I wouldn’t mind seeing you more often.” He said leaning forward slightly to catch your gaze.

“Ive already decided on staying.” You say causing a smile to tug at his lips.

“That’s good news.” He smiled giving your hand a squeeze.

You looked at him and smiled, not being able to help it when you let your eyes flick to his lips and back up quickly. He seemed to think the same thing but before he could lean in any further you reached into your clutch to hold your cigarette case out to him. He smiled lightly and took one before you pulled the gold gun out and flicked it on.

“That thing is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” He said pointing at it.

“It was my dads. I learned the whole pound flick thing from him.” You chuckled while running your thumb over his initials that had been carved a line over yours.

The two of you decided it was time to go back into the warmth after stepping out the cigarettes. He helped you stand before placing an arm around your waist and leading you back inside, Seunghyun and Carlo following closely behind.

“Mr. Kwon, may I steal my sister for a dance?” Carlo called from behind the two of you.

“As long as you give her back.” He said handing your arm back to your brother and removing his jacket from your shoulders. “Come back to me.” He whispered kissing your cheek gently before twirling the jacket back on and walking over to where his parent sat. You eyed Carlo as he gave you his infamous big brother ‘I told you so’ look.

“Do you even know how good it feels to be right for once?” He laughed as he spun you to the faster beat of music.

“Shut it.” You said still blushing from the small act of affection. “Do you think he knows?”

“What that you’ve never seen a man? Probably not with the way you introduced yourself yesterday.”

"So he thinks I’m easy.” You say nodding your head slowly and looking back over to see him watching you.

“No. I actually think he’s more impressed with you than your not spoken about sex habits.” He chuckled.

“Or lack thereof.” You scoff.

“Val, you are literally the definition of intimidating females. Cut the guy some slack.” He said cocking his head as Ji stood and made his way back over to the two of you. Without even having to ask Carlo held you at arms length and bowed as Ji replaced him in leading you.

“What were you two talking about?” He asked with a soft smile.

“You.”

“Good things I hope?”

“He’s very impressed with you.” You say earning that smile that makes your heart jump.

“Good, I’ve never had good luck with big brothers.” He said rolling his eyes dramatically.

“Oh and whys that?” You laugh.

“I don’t know things like 'he’s to dangerous.’ 'Did you see who he hangs around?’ Blah blah blah.” He said waving his hand before reconnecting it with his other behind your back.

“You are kind of dangerous, huh.” You said tilting you head.

“Says you, miss 'I’m not your sweetheart!’” You laughed and shook your head before removing your arms around his neck to take two flutes off a passing tray.

“To our empires.” He said clinking his class to yours before the two of you took a sip.

The rest of the night was spent with Ji spinning you around, the two of you completely forgetting who you are in the eyes of the public. The two of you ran around hand in hand while downing champagne to the point where Seunghyun had to carry you up the steep staircase after you tried to out ran your guards.

“I’m going to kill all of them.” You said bracing yourself against Ji who wrapped his arms around your waist. “Buona Notte!” You called after Seunghyun as he walked away laughing at the two of you.

“Stay with me.” Ji says looking at you with needy eyes. You bite your lip before nodding, your giggling starting right back up as he took your hand and pulled you down the hall opposite to the way Seunghyun walked.

“Ji you’re going to fast I’m stepping on my dress!” You laughed.

You’re giggles turned to playful screams as he bent to catch your waist against his shoulder and turned walking swiftly once again down the hall with you over his shoulder.

You couldn’t help but smile at how over the top his bedroom was. The walls were a deep red and in the corner was a large wrought iorn bed frame with dark blankets. There was a desk and lamps and more books that anyone could ever have time to read. The bathroom was open and just like the rest of the rooms down stairs; white marble that seemed to have a gold glisten to it.

“Here.” Ji said tossing you a long dress shirt.

In your drunken state you struggled to get a grasp on the zipper that rested just out of reach. You sighed and turned to Ji who was just only walking out of his closet in a pair of sleeping pants and nothing else. You blushed at the sight of the tattoos that covered his body and frustrated you turned your back to him.

“Can you unzip me?” You say.

You could hear him chuckle from behind you and soon his hands were brushing against your skin, sending a chill down your spine. You felt the dress loosen around your torso leaving your back completely exposed to the point where you were positive the top of the lacy red underwear you wore was visible. His fingers traced back up your back as if to push the sleeves off your shoulders but since they were never there to begin with he just ran his fingers back down your back and over your own long snake tattoo that curled over itself with its head risen to peek into your back. You didn’t even realize you had let your head roll to the side until he pressed his bare chest to your back and placed a deep, sweet kiss on your neck.

You sighed blissfully a his hands continued to tease the nerves on your arms and his lips continued to move the length of your neck. The second time he hit the soft spot right behind your ear your head you turned, forgetting all about holding your dress up. He looked down to you with heavy eyes and pulled you in closer. Gaining your usual confidence back, you hooked your arms around his neck and pulled him down till your lips were hardly apart. His hands snaked tightly around your waist which pulled you in closer causing your lips to meet. It was slow at first as you tried to recover from the light feeling that exploded through your body, and you could tell he was feeling it too as the moment you both caught up to real time the kiss grew heavy, needy almost. With both of you pulling one another closer there was no telling how the two of you were actually breathing. One hand still hooked richly around your bare waist he let his other hold onto your cheek as he started to walk you back to the bed, neither of you caring that you were still in your heels and heavy jewelry.

He laid you back with such care you could only pull him even closer to you. He deepened the kiss by licking your bottom lip, which you immediately submitted too. It didn’t last long though as you put up a fight to gain dominance through a kiss. He crawled over you while pushing you further back into the large bed, your hands not being able to hide any shame as you ran them up and down his back and across his sides finding every scar that’s ever interrupted his perfect skin.

It wasn’t until his lips left your so he could kiss down the length of your body while his hands began to slowly remove the bit of clothing that kept you from him did you realize how far things had actually gone. You’re eyes snapped open as he start to kiss past your navel and as if by instinct you shot up and slipped off the bed reaching for the shirt he had handed you.

“Val what’s wrong?” He asked, eyes widening with worry.

“I’m sorry, I can’t… I mean I don’t… I mean I haven’t… I’m sorry I’ll leave.” You said trying to find the right words but nothing came out. You reached down to scoop up the dress and was just about to leave the room when Jiyong stepped forward and took a light hold of your wrist.

“Don’t leave.” He said sternly before taking the dress out of your hands and dropping it back to the floor. He saw the million things running though your head which tugged a smile from the corner of his mouth. “Breath.”

You let your eyes close as he placed a kiss on your forehead before letting his rest on yours.

“I’m sorry I got carried away.” He said with a small smile, pushing back the hair that had pulled their way out of your now very messy bun.

“Ji, I…”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I meant it what I said don’t leave though. I want to sleep next to you.”

You smiled gently at his words and sat on the closest chair to take the heels off before he helped you remove the mass of pins that were holding your hair up.

“You’re more beautiful like this than the other things I’ve seen you in.” He said eyeing how his shirt rested against the tops of your thighs.

He took your hand and walked you to the light to turn it off then back over to the bed where he let you climb up first. Before making you look at him.

“Can I kiss you one more time?” He asked bringing his thumb up to stroke your cheek.

“Of course.” You said still looking at your intertwined fingers.

His finger hooked under your chin to make you look up and when you did he slowly bent his lips down to yours causing the same feeling as before to erupt throughout you.

#bigbang #bigbang mafia #bigbang mafia au #Kwon Jiyong #Jiyong mafia #jiyong mafia au #gdragon #gdragon mafia #gdragon mafia au

114 notes · View notes

krystalclearfashion · 4 years ago

Text

Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt

I want to give a Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt shout out to the honest company back in february I ordered their prenatal vitamins I didn’t receive them and eventually looked through my emails they had been sent to my old house address assuming I forgot to update my address on file I figured it was my loss after awhile I recalled having a delivery to my current address here it is nearly may and I finally called the honest company it turns out that I had added my current address but somehow it was not set as default customer service made the address change for me and is sending me the prenatals I ordered back in february anytime I have called for help with an order the honest company has gone above and beyond to help me and btw the organic breathe easy rub has been a miracle for my baby’s chest congestion. Want to join opening night of springsteen on broadway this week bid on front row center orchestra seats plus invitation to the after party in support of the kristen ann carr fund here ️ the auction closes tomorrow afternoon. Why is victoria’s secret paying for tests on animals again animals used for testing live in small or overcrowded cages with little to do but wait and wait in panic and constant fear of hearing the cage door open because when it does they are forced to ingest or inhale cosmetics ingredients or substances are rubbed onto a raw patch of skin on their back or dripped into their sensitive eyes then they are made to suffer without painkillers for up to two weeks while these cruel tests are conducted and they are eventually killed please stop contributing to animal cruelty thank you

Source: Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt

Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt, Hoodie, Sweater, Longsleeve T-Shirt For Men and Women

Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt

See more: Don't Ever Give Up Vintage T-Shirt

Premium Trending This Summer Season will Presents Who Love:

Face narsskin luminous moisture cream stick concealer soft velvet loose powder eyes black valley eye paint black moon eyeliner pencil via veneto larger than li a Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt eyeliner pandora duo eyeshadow iskandar eye paint brows oural brow gel brow perfector lips red lip mysterious red velvet matte lip pencil nihiwatu velvet lip liner nude lip stick concealer narsskin restorative night treatment. Glasgow king tuts show on tues will be supported by midnight lion miaoux miaoux tickets have gone very quickly if you would still like to come along then get a ticket before the night. So this is going to be a bit long but bear with me I had what I believe to be a pointless and incredibly frustrating experience with the assistant manager jamie at your auburn hills great lakes crossing location today I have been coming here for three years I frequent your orlando san marcos and new jersey locations as well at least once a year when we stop we usually spend 5 to 10 thousand dollars on your products the system is simple I go in park in a corner and bring bins to my corner sort them bag them move them to the front register and repeat today I brought a personal duffel bag as it holds about 8 to 12 of your bags worth of stuff I get told that i’m not allowed to use it because it’s policy not a big deal at all I say okay i’ll do that for the rest rather than rebag all of this i’ll just go up in line and pay for it and it can sit behind the counter seems pretty reasonable to me nope I got obstructed suggested that I might be stealing something and not allowed to pass stating if I don’t want to follow the system I can leave he then takes my entire duffel dumps it onto the floor and then rebags it into victoria secret bags then moves it to the front counter so it can be rang in I thought this was a little odd but hey he was doing all the work rebagging it so whatever i’m like dude i’m going to be spending about 8k today all I want to do is come in spend some money get out without any drama what’s the problem whoevers in charge should be thrilled with a sale like this we’re spending 8k keep in mind that I told him that I would do what he wanted and it wasnt’ a big deal and the response was to the effect of stop being lippy and just listen I told him what do you want from me I just agreed with you and said I would use your bags i’m not being lippy at all I know this because I said okay dude not a problem i’ll use your bags his response was maybe if you get to buy it i’m like what are you suggesting that an 8 000 order is something you guys don’t want he’s like yeah if you buy it i’m like dude we are spending 8k today why would I bag up a bunch of stuff and spend 2 3 hours picking our your fabulous product to not buy it anyway so I had 4 credit cards one card had 2 000 one had 3500 one had 2000 and one had 1000 because I am buying for multiple people I had 4 different cards all in my name I wanted one receipt for each card not a big deal to me right wrong again he cited some policy and said if the order is more than 750 items that they aren’t allowed to ring in under 750 items on any one receipt id like to point out that that amount is higher than your employees said they could take as a cash payment I asked him to please show me that I would understand better if I could just read it he was willing to do so he brought out the policy book and to my surprise what it actually said was words to the afffect of cash payments cannot be split up or over 750 items I forget the second half my immediate reply was so what’s the big deal im using credit not cash he snatched the policy book away from me at that point and said you know what you can just listen to me or I don’t have to let you buy anything it’s up to my discretion I then called your orlando outlet and your new jersey outlet and talked to the store managers and cited your policy I was given I asked them to confirm if that was accurate and both said if it was a policy it was news to them I then asked if they would let me buy my order using 4 cards and 4 receipts the woman at orlando said oh my gosh yes we do that every single day I asked if I went to her store if I would have any trouble with this in the future and was told no then she said you can always come down here if you’re in the area and i’ll be happy to take your order after that phone call I tried again here’s the video of that attempt I said listen I have 4 credit cards your register girl said you told her she can’t ring up an order under 750 items that’s 3500 if it’s 5 items not all of my cards have that much I have done multiple receipts every time I came here heck I can even supply them to show it he tells me that because I am order so many items that I can’t have less tan 750 items per receipt so I point around to everyone else and ask what about everyone else you aren’t forcing them to spend a minimum of 750 items what about the final charge i’ll have 750 items for two tickets but the leftover isn’t going to be 750 items you’re not going to let me buy them he shrugged his shoulders to say no at this point I haven’t yelled ive been a bit snarky and sarcastic because I know he’s just giving me a hard time two people ring in our order almost every time I am up there and we were there 3 times in the last 6 months spent a bunch each time so at 730 8pm or so we are done shopping assuming that two people could ring us up ended up being a fantasy he forced one employee only to ring us up later on he comes up when its now close to 9pm and says hey you mind if we ring you up on both registers I chuckle and say no I don’t but you do you don’t want to be breaking that 750 rule do you he glared at me and then sent the employee away and walked off after blinking a few times I laugh because after telling me over and over he couldn’t do it he just got caught trying to do what should have been done to begin with a short while later after 9 I find out that everyone is standing uip front except for the one girl and another associate because none of the rest of them are allowed to help her ring us up the only two people left in the store with about 700 more items to be rang in if that’s not enough since it was a holidy all of these employees are apparently being paid overtime to stand around and wait at a bit after 10 all but two girls leave and one girl is waiting to count cash while the other girl sits and keeps ringing stuff in we apologize profusely we expected two employees to ring us up like always and timed our visit to be out around 9 if this had happened instead of having one literally stand there and watch her for 1 hour and 47 minutes after close we would have all been out on time and no overtime or extra hours spent so finally at 10 47 pm our orders are done we thank the lovely girl lauren and jasmine who got stuck staying 2 hours past close because a manager made up some random policy and had to double down when I pointed out he really needed to follow that 750 rule when he was going to toss another girl on the register if this is policy fine it doesn’t seem to be no manager at your other outlets knew what he was talking about the orlando one insisted that the only restrictions are on cash payments and verified I was paying cash or credit it’s a pretty humiliating experience to get hassled trying to buy panties and bras by someone who’s on some type of power trip the only thing I said sideways to him was that I flat out didn’t believe his policy and that credit absolutely is not the same as cash I didnt call him any names scream at him or did anything to disrupt the store beyond what you see in the videos if this is not policy i’d like an apology from that manager in person or over the phone admitting he was mistaken I would hope that the next time I go there I am not hassled but if not I guess there’s always orlando or new jersey who seem to be quite friendly I also want to give recognition to jasmine and lauren lauren is the poor soul who got stuck ringing everything in alone because of the manager’s silly rule and not allowing anyone to help because it would be in violation of the 750 item rule jasmine was the cash counter who had to wait until we were out of the store to count cash even more interesting is that I had a former employee with me helping me buy and she said she never heard of this policy either but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t added since she left she was just as confused because the manager spent over 30 minutes trying to explain and defend this when that time certainly would have been more efficiently spent doing productive things instead of hassling someone who literally sits in a corner and speaks to no one while sorting through your products one bin at a time id love a call back about this or to find out what exactly is going on ive never been hassled like this before and it was a little frustrating and very trying to keep my cool joe rossetti alexandria gunn See Other related products: Walk Away I Suffer From That Disorder Where I Speak The Truth T Shirt

#Trending #Walk #Away #I #Suffer #From #That #Disorder #Where #Speak

0 notes