#eye-sip-ee

[ririblogsss]

I have found inspiration to write :).

The flash for the fist time in forever stop moving. No twitching. NO moving his leg up and down. No running back and forward to the cafeteria for snacks. He was completely still with his jaw open looking past Batman who at the moment was giving the league members an overview of the missions that have been happening within the past month. Immediately everyone locked in, Flash not moving major red flag. Batman caught it first and proceeded to turn around in a split of a second and froze (caught of guard) this caused the other league members to slowly turn their heads and eyes away from starring at the Flash. And they couldn't believe their eyes.

Superman had his jaw dropped.

Flash was pointing and unable to form words the only sound escaping his mouth was vocals "aa" "ee" he was over all gobsmacked.

Not like the other leagues were fairing any better. It's just that their eyes could not make their brain correctly process what they were seeing. And what they were currently seeing was a teenager with white hair with a box of donuts and drinking something out of a coffee cup. Now this is the watchtower everyone has seen teenagers from various backgrounds to say the least enjoy their coffee and snacks. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that the teen wasn't one of theirs. Not that it really matters Batman.

What actually matters is that the kids outside. IN SPACE. How is he surviving. How isn't he dead? Is he an alien? Then why is the box of donuts from earth?

And the kid has the gull to smile sheepishly?????

---

Danny only wanted help. HE SWEARSS. And the Justice League wasn't helping after they had been spammed with calls for help against the Ghosts. Amity parkers think that the JL has banned them from making calls. So Danny decided if they won't come. He will go to them, but his parents did not raise a disrespectful child the Fentons maybe break tax laws and driving laws and overall all OSHA regulations. BUT THEY NEVER DISRESPECT (unless warranted) ANYBODY. And Danny wasn't about to misrepresent them. So he brought a box of donuts and his fathers homemade fudge in hopes to make some sort of slightly good impression.

So taking a breath in (as a force of habit) he knocked on the watchtowers window and didn't become intangible and go in until Wonder Woman nodded with her head yes.

Batman was side-eying WW, but Danny decided that Wonder Woman had more decision power in this instance.

So with the approval that he may come in Danny made himself (and everything else) intangible so he could enter. Once inside he realize that Jazz had been correct in telling him to at least know how he was going to approach the subject.

He placed the treats on the table and made a gesture that they could eat. He took a sip of his hot ecto and then he opened his mouth.

"Why are you guys hunting us down for sport? w-we are people too"

Danny said it in such a broken voice with teary eyes. He really should have practiced first.

The JL choked.

[pedge-page]

Joel Dealing with Wife: The Duck Dilemma, Resolved

Joel Miller x F! Reader

not necessary to read but here's Part 1

Summary: Joel explores new ways to get the Ducks out of the Miller house once and for all

- - - -

When Joel wakes up, there's a blurred yellow fuzz thing—a fucking duck—standing on his chest, staring down its brown and yellow stained bill right along his own snout and directly into his soul.

"Dinner," he grunts with a sneer.

The little duckie utters an unbothered quack and hops off to the side. If only to its death over the cliff of his bedside edge. Only not so, for Sarah, who's standing by his side of the bed, scoops her up safely in her careful grasp. She leans on her tip toes and kisses Daddy on the cheek, and then holds the duck expectedly to his face with her big beady round baby eyes.

He grits his teeth, his chest grumbling with contained annoyance. 

His daughter, the light of his fucking life, only leans closer to him, Duckie held high with expectant gleam. Letting out a quick sigh, he makes quick work to peck its fluffy little self on the forehead. 

And one by one, he does so for all 6 ducklings she raises up to his lips carefully. He’s kissed more duck heads than he’s ever wanted to in his whole life now. 

She sets the last one down on the floor and walks away, a trail of 6 duckies following her with their aide to side waddles.

How she and you came up with the names Eenie Meenie Miney, Pickles, Pringles, and Presto, he will never ask. They all look exactly the same but somehow Sarah can tell them apart. 

Although, Sarah has called them EE, MEE, My, Picole, Pingle, Pwesto.

God Bless her.

“This one is Pringles—no wait that’s… that’s uh. Eenie? Wait Meenie?” You’re holding three in your arms, lifting them closely, trying to find the identifiable marks you’ve used as cheat sheet to remember them. Failing miserably. 

“Pwesto!” Sarah clarifies, stomping her foot and taking her baby duck back into her arms. They always nibble at her ear lobes, causing the little child to erupt into giggles.

“She’s making it up, I swear. She doesn’t know which ones are which…” you whisper to Joel.

“Just admit you can’t keep track of your hoard of children you keep bringing into this house.”

You frown. “I want 12 more kids from you. So lift your skirt and get to baby stuffing,” you say snakily, slapping his ass.

He sips his coffee with massive bags under his eyes as two ducks sit on top of the stove.

Some thoughts, albeit as brilliant as they are, would get him sent straight to hell. Like the one swimming in his brain at the opportunity right now.

He glances to the left, then right, then slowly reaches for the gas igniting knob along the stove top. Directly below the unsuspecting ducklings…

Threatening growls come from the floor below. He rolls his eyes and backs off with his hand in the air to show retreat, as fearsome Mommy number 2 (3?) Spoon here comes to save the day.

“Ya used to be on my side, lady,” he hums to the dog.

And it’s true. Spoon didn’t know how to react at first. She went from single pet baby sitting a little girl to being swarmed by 6 freaky little two footed flap flaps, the weirdest looking puppies she’s ever seen. When they crowded and yapped incessantly around her, she kept picking her feet up and backing up to avoid them, but they all just kept coming at all angles all over. At one point from sheer curiosity, she hesitantly puts one in her mouth.

 Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs and pointed to Spoon accusingly.

 "Yes good Spoon! That's good girl!" Joel claps quietly. He knows you two wouldn’t blame innocent Spoon if she accidentally ate a duck or half dozen. 

Unfortunately, Spoon does not like the sensation of the duck eating out her extra snack crumbs sitting in her teeth, instantly spitting the little guy out like a bowling ball. She jumps on the couch to avoid the rest, and they all flail helplessly trying to reach her. 

By the next day, Joel prayed maybe Spoon decided she wanted a late night duck-goulash and had swallowed his 6 new problems. Instead, you found the ducks nested tightly against Spoon’s body, sleeping into her heated belly like her own little babies.   "Cmon girl not you too,” Joel says, but Spoon growls at him  when he tries to take them away. She doesn't mind when they yap and tap, just lies down with them peddling all over her body and head, sighing in defeat.

"Did we just make Spoon a mom of 6 overnight?”

 Duck Duty has taken over the house 24/7. 

When Joel goes to the shower, pulling back the curtain, there's duckies paddling in the tub.

He has to empty his shoes before stepping in them because, lo and behold, a damn duck is in there.

There’s more frozen pea bags in the freezer specifically labeled for each duck than he can fit his pizza pockets in there.

“THATS IT!” He barks loudly when you and Sarah are tucking the ducks in his bed sheets for a movie night.

You all, including Spoon and all the duckies, go quiet and look up. 

Except, instead of finishing a statement, that is it. Joel storms out of the room the next moment, leaving you all sitting speechless.

Two seconds later you turn on the TV and all eyes focus on the screen to resume your movie night like normal.

-

Joel disappears in the garage for 3 days. You called Tommy asking if he was going to work, but Tommy told you he had called to let everyone know he would be unattainable for the weekend. Absolutely NO ONE was to disturb him. You could hear sparks and saw blades flying in the garage, heavy banging and all kinds of construction going on. Maybe you should be a little concerned. He hasn’t done anything else but this. 

You rub your hands together, braving the knock on the garage door. Maybe you had gone too far with the ducks. Was he preparing to build himself a new house to live away from you all? A death trap for the ducks to fall into?

A new wife???

You tighten your ass cheeks and raise your knuckles.

The door swings open before you can pound. A sweaty, dirty, musky, saw dust covered Joel Miller, with messy slick hair, flannel and low hanging jeans complete with his decades old tool belt greeted you with gritted teeth.

“S’done,” he says plainly.

“W-what’s done?”

He takes your hand and leads you out. “Sarah! Ducks! Fall in!”

Sarah hops off her chair that she was braiding her doll’s hair. As she follows behind you, all 6 quickly growing Duckies  follow behind her like a pre-school hand holding chain.

You all round out the now empty garage and towards the backyard gate. He opens it and shoves forward.

Part of the backyard and side of the house has been transformed into a Duck Oasis Paradise. A custom built duck house with heating lamps, fresh bedding and smoothed wood adorn the area, with a water fountain and splash pad of fresh water constantly rippling their own little Duckie pond/pool. Each duck has its own feeding station, and even custom bed slots with “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Pickles, Pringles, Presto” hand painted for their own bunks. There’s a raised mini bed for Sarah to lie in with a canopy so they can cuddle and watch projector movies outside. Joel had even installed a side door that leads into the garage if absolutely need be they MUST come inside once again. Everything is painted to Sarah’s princess house liking, and she is able to sit inside the and play around the area while it maintains its Duck-necessities.

As if she had just met the real Santa Clause, Sarah screeches excitedly and runs around with the ducks to explore their new home.

Joel’s hands are on his hips, smirking proudly at your reaction.

Your mouth is on the floor. When the FUCK?? HOW the fuck??

“You thought I was gonna cook em’ didn’t ya?” He boasts.

“I —wushhshh pshhh—N--ta—nmmm-pshhh.” You don’t have words to try to deny it. 

“Ah huh.” He points to his cheek … well, cheekily. “C’mere and give it ta me.”

Inserted, you grip his face, turn him to face you, and plant your entire mouth on his, swallowing his lips and his entire body if you could.

He grins and kisses you back. 

“When are you going to put this much effort into putting another baby in me?” You tease while curling his hair.

He’s left quite shocked, and is about to suggest the two of you stow away while the kids are occupied until—

Sarah runs up like she’s about to pole vault and launches herself into her Dad’s arms for the biggest hug a todler can muster. Joel bends down to his knees to return her kisses.

And that would have been it, were it not for the duck that’s immediately in her hands, held right to his cheek.

“Ugh,” he groans with rolled eyes. He holds it all in as Sarah lifts them to nibble at his beard stubble in a duck fashioned kiss, each getting a turn to clean his facial hair.

You clasp your hands together, beaming at possibly the greatest man the earth had ever put out.

She runs off with the ducks following to go play with their new land.

“2 adults. 1 kid. 1 dot. And 6 ducks…” he says, referring back to your previous comment. “That ain’t enough for ya?”

“12.”

“12…?” Were you serious about 12 kids????

“Ducks,” you state plainly, avoiding his eyes.

“Wh—what, are they all pregnant?” He asks incredulously.

“No…” you lock your fingers together, sealing side to side in the way Sarah does when she’s admitting to doing something horribly wrong. “I thought you were going to eat these ones… and I didn’t want Sarah to be sad and so I … maybe… it’s actually really funny, Joel.”

“YOU BOUGHT—SIX—MORE—DUCKS???”

“Ohh oh no!” You shake your head, as if hoping to dissipate the steam billowing from his ears. Though it’s almost like he knows it’s not any better. “Um… it’s way worse… I bought 12 more ducks. So that’s 18 total,” you smile widely with fearful yet innocent eyes.

Joel sits straight up in bed, his heart hammering and sweat persperating along his entire skeleton.  He clutches his heart, remembering to breathe in the night air, grounding himself in his surroundings from the nightmare. You’re sound asleep at his side, peaceful as ever.

He tosses the blanket and darts off to Sarah’s room. His girl sleeps just as innocently as you, with her teddy clutched under her arm. Lying atop her fuzzy pink decorative rug is Spoon, who raises her head curiously at the intrusion. He does a quick search, but nothing else moves in the room.

Joel runs to the backyard, foregoing any shoes. Despite no evidence in the house, he doesn’t get his hopes too high. He flips on the lights of the duck barn (which was not a dream), and braceshimself.

While he would have liked to have seen 0 flat footed peddling little yellow shits, a mere 6, and ONLY 6, ducks rest in their designated bed, tilting their head at him staring them down.

He wipes the sweat from his forehead and takes a relieving breath.

“Thank fucking duck.”

- - - -

Taglist : @harriedandharassed @lola8888673 @its-nebuleuse @zliteraturehoe @merz-8 @joeldjarin @pascalscoffin @pedroshotwifey @ghostslillady @innerpersonunknown @missladym1981 @mrsoharaxx @survivingandenduring @milla-frenchy @cockykookiee @fairytale07 @daddy-din @pedropascalsbbg @spookyxsam @somehopeatlast @millercontracting @pedrostories @mishala005 @theoraekenslover @animez96 @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @puduvallee @cassiecasluciluce @loohoop @himboelover @callsignwidow @wintersquirrel @peekyourinterest

[d-targaryenshoe]

Achieved Love - Luke Thompson

Word count: 877

Summary: What is more delightful than accompanying your lover to an award show and watching how he achieves something with love?

The Bafta award show was in full swing when you finally arrived, the atmosphere electric with anticipation and excitement.

Paparazzi flashbulbs exploded like popcorn around you as you both made your way up the red carpet, your boyfriend Luke Thompson known as the dashing 'Benedict Bridgerton' was nominated for the EE Rising Star Award this year.

 Looking dapper as ever in his tuxedo, his arm firmly wrapped around your waist. You felt like a princess on a fairytale evening, your dress hugging your curves in all the right places, the diamonds at your neck and wrist sparkling under the bright lights.

As you approached the interview area, a sea of eager reporters and camera crews jostled for position, their questions and comments flying through the air like confetti. 

Luke smiled reassuringly at you, his blue eyes twinkling beneath his perfectly coifed hair, before turning to face the throng of media with a practiced ease that belied his years.

"How does it feel to be nominated for such a prestigious award, Luke?" asked one reporter breathlessly, her microphone inches from his face.

"Well, it's a huge honor, of course," he replied, his voice smooth and confident.

 "But at the end of the day, I'm just grateful to be here, surrounded by so much talent. I'd like to dedicate this nomination to my family, my friends, and of course, my girlfriend," he added, squeezing your hand before looking back at the reporter.

 "Without their support, I wouldn't be where I am today."

You felt your cheeks flush with warmth at his words, and as you looked up at him, you could see the love and admiration shining in his eyes. 

You exchanged a brief, sweet kiss before moving on to the next question. 

The rest of the interview flew by in a whirlwind of questions about the upcoming season of Bridgerton, his favorite category of the night, and his thoughts on the other nominees in his category. 

Throughout it all, Luke was charming, articulate, and gracious, leaving a lasting impression on everyone he met.

Finally, you were able to break away from the media frenzy and make your way into the venue proper.

 The grand ballroom was a breathtaking sight, with towering chandeliers casting their warm glow over rows of gleaming tables set with crisp white linen and sparkling crystal. 

Celebrities from all corners of the film industry mingled amongst the guests, their designer dresses and tuxedos making a dazzling display.

As you scanned the room for your seats, you felt a sudden surge of pride in your boyfriend.

 Not only was he talented and handsome, but he was also so genuine and kind-hearted. 

You knew that no matter what happened tonight, whether he won or not, he would always have you by his side, and that your love would only continue to grow stronger.

Just then, a waiter passed by, carrying a tray of champagne flutes. You reached out and took one, offering it to Luke with a mischievous smile. 

"To winning," you toasted.

 "or losing," you added with a wink.

 "and most importantly, to having each other through it all." He laughed, raising his glass to meet yours, and you clinked them together before taking a sip.

The awards ceremony began soon after, with the host taking the stage to welcome everyone and set the tone for the evening. 

As the first award of the night was announced, your stomach did a little flip-flop when you realized that Luke was among the nominees. 

His category was the last one to be presented, and as the golden envelope was slowly opened, the anticipation in the room grew almost palpable.

Finally, the announcer spoke his name, and the crowd erupted into cheers. 

Luke jumped to his feet, looking stunned and overwhelmed, kissing you deeply before making his way up to the stage. 

As he reached the podium, he took a deep breath and looked out over the audience, his emotional eyes meeting you briefly before he began to speak. 

"I want to first and foremost thank my Bridgerton family, the crew, the screenwriters, the whole Netflix team, and the Bafta committee for this incredible honor," he began, his voice steady despite the thunderous applause.

 "And I want to dedicate this award to the most important person in my life, a few years ago on this day I met one of the most talented people on an auditioning day, for a role in one of the most popular Netflix shows that changed my life."

"I want to thank my girlfriend, y/n y/l/n. She's been my rock, my inspiration, my home, my safe place, and my greatest supporter through all of this. I love you, y/n, more than anything in the world."

Tears pricked at your eyes as you listened to him speak, your heart swelling with pride and love for him. 

He went on to thank his family, his friends, and his agents before sitting down amidst thunderous applause and a standing ovation.

 As he made his way back to your table, you couldn't help but feel that no matter what happened from here on out, you would face it together and that your love would only continue to grow stronger in the face of whatever life threw your way.

[youunravelme]

to all the girls you loved before part 3

author's note: thanks for all the kind words you left in the last two parts!! to everyone who wanted to be tagged but didn’t, i tried and tumblr wouldn’t let me, for some reason. :(

pairing: single dad!mat barzal x reader

summary: being a nanny for rich people was probably the worst thing that ever happened to you, until you started working for mat.

warnings: children, rich people, volatile/toxic relationship

day thirty two

"you look rough."

maybe it was the look on your face, or maybe it was your slouched shoulders. either way, mat almost immediately offered you a cup of coffee instead of apologizing.

"my roommate kept me up with her midnight hijinks. i couldn't sleep."

mat grimaced and all but shoved the cup of coffee in your hands. "i know i say this every day, but if you need to nap when ella goes down, the guest room is open."

you took a sip, cringing at the black coffee, but grateful for it anyway. "i might take you up on that offer."

"when you say 'hijinks'..." he trailed off.

"she was fucking someone really loudly. has been for awhile now," you said as you plopped down on the couch, some of the coffee spilling out of the mug and onto your fingers.

"must be nice," mat grumbled. he gestured to ella who was sitting on the floor with toys in a pack in play. "i haven't gotten any since before ella."

"you expect me to be shocked by that?" he stared at you blankly. "mat, i would know if you were seeing someone. mainly because i'm here more than you are."

he opened his mouth to protest, but sat down on the couch next to you. "touche."

"what time do you have to be at practice today?"

a quick glance at his watch told you it was later than he anticipated when he all but jumped off the couch and ran back to his room.

"running late?" you managed to croak out between laughs.

mat poked his head back into the living room with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. "just a little."

"are you driving or is tito picking you up?"

"ee-o," he called from the bathroom. you could only surmise that you were meant to understand that tito was the one driving today.

and like he was summoned, tito burst through the front door and ignored your presence in favor of cooing at ella.

"are you a sweet girl?" he asked. she didn't pay him any attention, more enraptured with the book in front of her. tito huffed and looked at you. "why is she in baby jail?"

you couldn't stop yourself, a laugh slipped out. "baby jail?"

"it's a pack and play, tito," mat said from the bathroom. "and she's in there because she's safe while i get ready."

"then what are you paying mary poppins here for?" tito joked.

"i don't disturb happy babies," you shrugged.

it was silent for a moment. you and tito held eye contact before he moved to sit on the couch next to you. "you've trained him well," he whispered. "didn't think he had a paternal bone in his body."

you didn't know what it was about tito that always had you smiling. maybe it was the fact that he was so at ease all the time. or the earnest attitude he had. or maybe it was the diehard loyalty to mat. or it could've just been that he was fun to be around.

"give him some credit," you said. "he's made a lot of changes in the past month."

"no denying there. the whole team can see it. you've been good for him, momma bear."

you almost shot off the couch. "mama bear?"

"tito," mat groaned from his place in the bathroom. "i thought i told you not to call her that."

the man in question looked unbothered. "you can't say you wouldn't go mama bear on someone for ella."

you opened and closed your mouth before looking down and ignoring him entirely. a quick glance at the clock on your phone had you changing the subject. "aren't you supposed to be leaving now?"

"we would if mat would stop fixing his hair," tito snipped. he turned his head towards the hallway bathroom. "your hair is going into a helmet, mathew. we're not going to the met gala."

mat came out dressed in all black with his hair looking....

the exact same as it did seven minutes ago.

"what the hell took you so long?" tito asked. "you look like you always do. with the amount of time it took you to get ready, i was hoping you would've looked better."

mat flipped off tito, but other than that, ignored him entirely. he walked over to where ella was and picked her up, kissing the top of her head when she curled into his chest. "i'll be back later, ella bean. i love you."

your ears heard everything, but the moment felt private, so you pretended like someone was texting you something important at 7:30 in the morning. the phone had your focus until mat called your name; you looked up almost immediately.

"i'll be back in a few hours."

day thirty four

"i'm so glad you're here," mat said as soon as he opened up the door. you walked in, albeit hesitantly, waiting for someone or something to jump out at you. there weren't many times when someone was actually excited to see you. though, you supposed, all that changed when you met mat.

"what happened? is ella okay?" you asked warily.

he smiled. "she's great! she's in the pack and play while i got ready. are you okay? how are you?"

"i'm fine?...look are you okay? you seem, hyper."

mat shrugged. "just excited. i have a surprise for you."

you blinked once. twice. three times. until the words finally registered with you. "a surprise?" you'd only known him for a month, how did he know you well enough to surprise you?

it was like a switch flipped and suddenly mat was rubbing the back of his neck and walking over to ella to find something to do. "well yeah," he said. "i know you said you didn't really know anything about hockey, so i thought you could come to the game today."

you opened your mouth to reply but he cut you off.

"an--and you could bring jason! i have two tickets, one for you, one for him."

"what about ella?" you asked. "her sleep schedule might be affected."

"i thought about that, but i talked to matt martin and he said sydney, his wife, had done it. worse comes to worst, we can set up a pack and play in the box and she could sleep there for the time being."

you looked at him, and really looked at him. usually, mat was full of confidence, walked around like he owned the place (which in this case, he kinda did). but now? he would barely meet your eye and kept rubbing the back of his neck like he had an itch there.

"i'll go!" you said to finally put him out of his misery. "i just--what do you wear to a hockey game?"

mat's eyes lit up like a kid on christmas. "you can wear my jersey!" you must've had a look on your face because he quickly backtracked. "or tito's! if you want."

"no!" you said before you could stop yourself. "no, i'll wear your jersey. i know you better anyway." you weren't sure what it was but the poorly concealed panic on mat's face did something to make you agree. jason probably wouldn't like it, but you could probably explain that everyone wore jerseys at games. it wasn't that big of a deal.

"great," mat smiled. "that's--that's great."

and it was. you stayed at mat's apartment until it was time to leave for the game. you were dressed in your jeans and threw mat's jersey over your shirt, when jason texted that he was outside. you tossed on a coat. you grabbed ella who was decked out in a mini barzal jersey and sweat pants and sitting in her car seat. you made a quick grab for the diaper bag before locking up.

you met jason down at his car where he sat in the driver's seat. he didn't get out to open the back seat for ella, the most he did was unlock the car. when you finally got her situated, you got in the front seat, not sparing him a glare at his lack of help.

"thanks for the assistance," you bit out.

"i didn't know what you wanted me to do. i'm not a mind reader!" jason snapped back as he pulled the car away from the curb. "besides, it's just a baby car seat, it's not like you couldn't handle it."

"it would've been nice had you even offered to grab the diaper bag or offered any help at all."

jason scoffed. "whatever."

not a word was spoken outside of ella's babbling in the back seat.

by the time the three of you arrived at the arena, you were hopeful that you could act like nothing happened. you got out of the car, and put the baby carrier on while jason grabbed the diaper bag. you quickly got ella situated in the carrier and put on the lanyard mat gave you, handing jason's to him.

the three of you started walking towards the arena. everything was fine until another fan made a comment when you got inside.

he pointed at you and shouted. "a house divided, eh?"

you furrowed your brows. what the hell was he talking about? you turned and looked at jason who was doing his best to look as confused as you were and failing horribly.

he was wearing a rangers jersey.

to the rangers and isles game.

when you were invited by mat.

you clenched your jaw and kept walking, not wanting to make a scene in front of everyone.

by the time you made it inside the box, you were fuming. you wanted so badly to scream at him for being a dick, but another part of you said he was allowed to wear a jersey for a team he liked. after all, that's what you were doing, right?

right?

not that you really had time to think about it because the prettiest woman you think you'd ever seen came bounding over to you with the whitest smile you'd ever seen in real life.

"hi!" she said. "i'm sydney, mat's told us so much about you and miss ella."

you introduced yourself and did your best to smile back, though you're not sure if it was convincing. "this is my boyfriend, jason."

for a moment, just a flicker of a second, the smile on sydney's face faltered. it was so quick you almost second guessed yourself that it ever happened in the first place. "i'm really excited you're here, we love new company." she grabbed you by the arm in a gentle way but with a strong enough grip that you knew you really had no other option. "let me introduce you to everyone!"

after introductions, you found yourself and ella a seat. you pulled her out of the carrier before taking the carrier and your coat off. an action you almost immediately regretted.

"are you fucking serious?" you heard jason say. you turned with ella in your arms to see his normally pale face burning red. "you're wearing his jersey?"

there were no words coming to your mind. the two of you had argued before, but you had never seen him this volatile before.

in a flash, he was in front of you yelling as spit flew from his mouth. you didn't even register what he was saying, how could you when ella was crying? all you remembered was mumbling an apology over and over but that only served to make him angrier.

it wasn't until sydney literally got between you two that he stopped screaming. he looked around to see everyone staring at the two of you and threw his hands up in the air. "you know what?" he said. "fuck you, i'm leaving. you can find another way home."

sydney was in front of you, trying to calm you and ella down but you couldn't hear anything over the blood rushing in your ears.

jason was never the nicest boyfriend, but he'd never been that angry before. you'd never been scared of him before.

"here," sydney said. "let's get you some water."

"ella's upset--"

"because she knows you're upset. once you calm down, you can calm her down."

you nodded and let her sit you in a chair and bring you a glass of water. once your hands stopped shaking, you were able to bring ella to your chest and rub her back in the way you knew she liked.

"i'm sorry," you said.

sydney just tilted her head in confusion. "what for?"

"i brought him here, i didn't know he'd act like that--"

"honey, you are not responsible for a grown man's reaction to a stupid jersey." she pulled her chair closer to yours. "so let's just put all of that on the back burner and enjoy the game, okay?"

you nodded and turned your attention back to the rink where the players were warming up. ella yawned and snuggled into your chest when it hit you.

you forgot the pack and play.

"shit."

"honey, i told you it's okay--"

"no," you laughed. "it's just i forgot the pack and play so my boyfriend isn't gonna be the only who's mad at me by the end of tonight."

sydney, despite the implications of your statement, smiled. "she'll live," she said. "mine have definitely missed bedtime before and they're turning out alright. just means tomorrow might be a little difficult."

"thanks, sydney.'

"anytime!"

the two of you turned your attention to the rink where the game was beginning. occasionally, you'd get up and bounce ella around the suite, but for the most part, she was content as long as she was in your arms. by the time the second period was over, the isles were tied with the rangers 1-1.

ella had long since fallen asleep in the carrier with her thumb in her mouth. the tears were long gone by then, both of you having calmed down significantly since the start of the game. though now your heart was racing due to the intensity of the game instead of the screaming of your boyfriend.

despite your anger at him earlier, and the fear you felt before he left, you still found yourself checking your phone periodically for any text or missed call he might've left.

nothing.

you were so focused, you nearly missed mat's one goal of the night but your attention was brought to the game when you heard sydney shout his name.

you smiled as you watched him celebrate his goal, skating around the rink and shouting. you were too high up to see if he smiled the same way he did when he looked at ella, with that same look of pride. maybe you'd come back to another game to see it up close and personal for yourself.

the isles won 2-1.

sydney, ella, and you waited in the suite until the stands had mostly cleared out, then the three of you made your way down to the locker rooms. ella was out like a light, and you couldn't blame her. you were out later than you had been in months.

you and sydney made small talk while you waited for mat and matt. you watched as other players greeted their friends and family, smiling at the hugs and kisses going around.

it wasn't until matt martin came out that the tears started coming back. the way his face lit up at the sight of his wife, the kiss her gave her that was almost too inappropriate for a public place--

you would've given anything to be loved like that.

in the two years you'd dated jason, you couldn't remember him ever looking at you like that, like you were his entire universe.

you cleared your throat and rubbed at your eyes just in time for mat and tito to walk out.

"mama bear!" tito called. he started to jog over but slowed down when he saw ella asleep in the carrier.

mat, however, looked you over. his brows pulled together and his lips turned down in a small frown. it didn't make sense on the face of someone who shot the game winning goal.

but it made sense for an observant friend who noticed the plus one you came with.

"where's jason?" he asked.

"i--"

sydney cut in with a smile on her face as she dragged her husband over. "this is mat's nanny, babe. the one i was telling you about?"

you could've kissed her feet for the change in subject.

"nice to meet you in person, finally. barzy over here talks about you and ella all the time." matt stuck his hand out to shake, ignoring the glares of the other mat.

"well, we gotta get home to the girls," sydney said. "nice to meet you finally. maybe i'll see you at another game, yeah?" you smiled and nodded and watched as the happy couple walked away.

when they were finally out of sight, you turned your attention back to mat and tito, both whom looked a little too good in their suits.

"where's jason?" mat asked for the second time now that you didn't have another person around to interrupt you.

"he left," was all you said.

"he left you here? alone?"

you nodded. "and he took the car seat."

mat nodded and clenched his jaw while tito glanced back and forth between you two. "i'll drive you home. thankfully, he took the bonus car seat and not the one i use."

you mumbled a small thanks and watched dumbly as he scooped the diaper bag off your shoulder and put it on his own. "mat i can carry it just fine--"

"sounds like you've been carrying enough on your own. i got it."

you had no rebuttal, so you followed him and tito out to the garage. tito parted ways when you reached mat's car. he bid you a silent wave and smile as a form of goodbye and headed to his own vehicle.

you didn't speak until mat started the car. not even when the both of you were loading ella carefully into the car seat or putting the diaper bag in the back. you didn't even say anything when he handed you his phone to plug your address in.

it was silent until you mumbled a small "thank you."

"for what?" he asked.

'"for taking me home. for inviting me to the game even when jason..." you trailed off.

"when jason...?" he implored you to go on. you hesitated. "cmon, you've seen me at my worst, scared about this new baby and raising her. you can trust me."

you sighed. "jason kind of lost his mind tonight and made a huge scene. i tried apologizing to sydney but she wouldn't have it. i'm just sorry that we embarrassed you like that."

mat went real quiet for a second. and in the corner of your eye, you saw his fists grip the steering wheel a little tighter. "what did he say?"

"huh?"

"i saw the look on your face when we came out. he said something that upset you. what did he say?"

and how do you say you didn't remember words just feelings? you couldn't remember the insults he hurled your way, but you remembered the sting of his tone and the burn of his spit and the pure rage in his eyes. you could remember shaking like a leaf during fall and the cries of ella muffled by the jersey with her last name on the back and her father's number on the sleeve.

mat called your name. "i don't remember." he didn't look convinced. "i really don't. he said a lot of things but i blocked most of it out," you said thinking that would placate him.

if anything, it made him angrier.

but he didn't say anything, mainly because your apartment was approaching and he didn't have time. mat parked the car out in front of your building and turned his flashers on.

"you need me to walk you up?" he asked.

you shook your head. "you have ella in the back. i'll be fine."

"text me when you get inside."

any other day, you would've argued with him, but you were just glad someone cared enough about your wellbeing to ask, so you nodded and opened the door.

you got into the elevator, hands wringing themselves together. you wondered what you'd tell your roommate natalie, if you'd tell her anything. but considering how much jason liked to make your relationship business natalie's business, she probably already knew and she probably was waiting on the couch ready to chastise you.

the elevator doors opened at your floor. you walked down the hallway towards your front door. you pulled your phone out, ready to text mat when you heard noises coming from inside your apartment.

your first thought was: intruders. but when listening a little harder, it just sounded like moans. you rolled your eyes and carefully and quietly unlocked the door. only to be confronted with clothes strewn about the living area. natalie's shirt, shorts, socks, all leading on a less than ideal trail to her bedroom. you shouldn't be surprised given how active she's been lately. you just never expected it to be this in your face.

you continued into your apartment, two seconds away from texting mat when you saw it.

a rangers jersey.

taglist:

@whenmypartysover @sunflowerhood @spencereidbasis @icanfsplel @avareadsthings @zegraswrites @calermakar @heyitsmeimdead @kashee-h @bordelhoe

[abigails-gf]

abby anderson x fem reader.

you take abby, your best friend, to a gay bar.

warnings: alcohol, smut, oral sex, fingering, public sex. (all r!receiving).

hii !! happy pride month to you all ! <33 um .. so here's my gift in honor of this month hehe !! .. some friends to lovers w/ smut !! 💌💌 this is my first time writing like ,, proper smut (??) so i'm sorry if it's bad aah. .. anyway !! tysm for all the love on my posts!! makes me so happy !! ee <33 bisous !! 💭 💋 (ps this gif is so OHMGOD .. her nose . need her so bad)

“you owe me, now.” abby said before opening the bar’s door, holding it for you. you rolled your eyes and walked into the crowded place, abby following you. it was loud. some people were dancing while others were sitting in corners, drinks in hands. you held abby’s wrist and walked through the dancefloor, making your way to the bar.

you sat down on a stool, and looked at the crowd. “you didn’t tell me we were coming to a gay bar.” abby yelled next to you. “well, if i told you, you would’ve said no. plus, it’s fun! you’ll see.” you answered, playfully hitting her shoulder. she smiled and called for the bartender. “what are you doing?” you asked abby who was holding her wallet. “are you blind? i’m paying for our drinks.”

“no, you’re not.” she put thirty dollars on the table, looking back at you, smirking. “yes, i am. you owe me even more, now.” you looked into her eyes and smiled. “whatever.”

the bartender came back with your drinks. “yours looks good! can i taste it?” you said as abby took a sip from her drink. she licked her lips and handed it to you. “didn’t realize it was so sweet.” you brought the straw to your lips, feeling abby’s eyes on them. the drink was indeed sweet – it tasted like cranberries and strawberries. you could barely taste the alcohol in it. you looked back at abby, the the straw still in between your lips. you noticed how her cheeks slightly turned pink when you turned to her. “s’good! really good.”

she smiled and took a sip from her glass. as she was looking at the people around, you took the time to look at her. she had her shoulders on the table, her hand holding her head and the other holding her drink. her hair was in its signature braid, two strands of hair falling on both sides of her face. she was wearing a black shirt and a pair of jeans. “are you done looking at me like that?” you could see a faint smirk on her lips. “don’t know what you’re talking about.” she chuckled and turned to you. “sure, love.”

the minutes passed and you were on your third drink. “can’t believe you’re still single. you’re tellin’ me no one wants to fuck you?” she snorted and looked back to you. “yeah, that’s exactly why i’m single.” abby was still sober, despite her second drink. you, on the other hand, were a little drunk. “d’you wanna dance?” abby shook her head. “c’mon, abs!” you whined. she drank from her glass and turned to you. “i’m not gonna dance. but you can go, i’ll stay here.” she smiled softly. you nodded and walked in the crowd of dancing people.

abby looked at your silhouette as you jumped and danced next to other people. she would’ve been a liar if she said she didn’t find you pretty tonight, or any other day, really. you were wearing a white shirt, some of the upper buttons undone, almost revealing your chest, and a tight pair of black jeans. you were smiling, and probably yelling the lyrics of the song that was playing.

“hey.” a girl sat next to abby. abby smiled politely at her and drank from her glass. “d’you wanna..” the girl said, bringing her index and middle finger on the sides of her mouth, her tongue out. abby looked at her, confused. “uh, no. thanks?” the girl sighed. “can i at least buy this gorgeous girl a drink?” she smiled and started rubbing abby’s arm. “no, sorry. i’m not interested.” abby said, shaking her arm. the girl didn’t bother saying goodbye and left.

abby focused back on the crowd, looking for you. it seemed you moved from the spot you were a few minutes before. abby looked around; on the other side of the bar, or in the sitting corners – but you were nowhere to be found. “god, where is she.” abby tried to call you a few times before realizing you had left your bag in her car.

she got up and went straight in the crowd, saying ‘sorry’s as she pushed people, trying to find you. she ended up asking someone if they saw you, describing you. “oh yeah! she was with this chick, and they went to the restrooms. they’re probably going at it right now!” the person laughed. abby clenched her jaw, thanking them and walking through the crowd towards the restrooms.

she opened the door. and there you were; sitting on the sink, making out with some stranger. abby walked towards you and grabbed your wrist, almost making you fall. “what the fuck!” you yelled out. abby walked out of the restrooms and still held your wrist firmly. you tried to get out of her grip but in vain.

once you two made it out of the bar, she let go of your wrist. you looked at her, angry. “what’s wrong with you?! i could’ve gone home with her!” abby was breathing heavily. “i’m the one that’s supposed to take you home!” she took a step back and brought her hands to her face. “christ.” she whispered. “you’re just jealous! because you don’t have anyone to kiss!” you yelled out. abby chuckled. “mhm. sure.” she answered, staring at you, crossing her arms. “it’s not because no boys want to shag you that you get to ruin my one night stands! you don’t get to ruin that!” you said, pointing a finger at her.

you were now close to abby, your finger almost touching her. abby was still staring at you, her arms crossed. “you come here and you ruin my fucking life – just like that!” your voice cracked a little. “you don’t get to do that, abby! stop doing this to me!” you shouted, trying to push abby. she didn’t move one bit.

abby held your hands in hers, making you look up at her. “are you done?” she asked gently. you didn’t answer, your eyes going up and down between her eyes and her lips.

she smiled and kissed you softly. “do i get to do that?” she smiled. you nodded, your lips finding hers. “please.” you whined against her lips. abby took you back to her car, opening the back seat door.

“here?” you asked, unsure. abby smirked and kissed you. “mhm. we both need it, don’t we?” she closed the door. abby started leaving kisses on your neck. “but – what if people see us?” abby bit the skin on your shoulder and looked back at you. “don’t worry ‘bout that.” you smiled and kissed her.

she kissed your neck as she unbuttoned your shirt. “fuck –” she said as she cupped your breast in her hands, making you gasp. “i knew you weren’t wearing a bra.” abby licked your left nipple before sucking on it, making you moan. she did the same with the right nipple, while pinching on your left one. you could feel her cunt against your knee, rubbing against it each time she moved a bit. “fuck – abby... i need you. please.”

she sucked the skin in between your breasts before unzipping your pants. “wait, abs. you’ve never done this before, have you?” she looked up at you and smirked. “i’ll just do what i’ve been dreaming of, i guess.” you blushed at the remark and leaned down to kiss her before standing up a bit so she could pull your jeans down to your ankles.

“look at that.” she said, caressing you through your underwear. “is that wet spot just for me?” you looked down at her. “mhm. for you.” she slapped your clothed cunt, making you bite your lip. “it better be.”

she didn’t take your underwear off at first. she brought a finger to your lips and traced your slit. you brought your hand down. “no.” she said, holding it. “you don’t get to touch yourself. i’m the one who gets to do that tonight.” she smirked at you before putting her face between your legs, her nose against your clit and her lips against yours. she moved her face in order to stimulate your clit and licked you through the fabric. “please, abby.” you rubbed yourself against her nose, moaning each time it felt a little too good.

“do i get to taste you? you owe it to me, don’t you?” she said, playing with the elastic of your underwear. you nodded frantically letting her pull it down with your jeans. she groaned at the view. “s’pretty...” she parted your lips and smiled. “so wet f’me..” she brought the tip of her index finger and rubbed it in between your lips. “so fucking wet.”

you looked down as abby was leaving small kisses on your inner thighs and over your clit. she put her tongue out, making you moan. “such a pretty pussy.. all f’me.” you couldn’t help but grind against her face. “please, abby. need you...” you whined. she lowered her mouth, her tongue was now playing with your lips. she looked up to see you mouth open, eyes slightly closed – you looked gorgeous like that. she took two fingers to part your lips before she pushed the tip of her tongue inside you. she groaned, feeling the warmth and wetness on her tongue. she continued licking, earning beautiful sounds from you. your hands found their way behind her head. you were shamelessly grinding against her as her tongue went deeper inside of you.

she groaned whenever you moaned her name, whenever she felt you push her head forward. “abby – fuck. feels s’good.” you pouted. abby moaned and took her tongue out, looking up. “you taste so good, my love.” her lips were pink and glistening with your juices, you whined at that sight. she kissed you, making you taste herself on her tongue.

abby sat next to you. “don’t close your legs, just yet.” she ordered, putting her hand between your thighs. her hand made its way to your clit. you gasped when she applied pressure on it. “want you to cum on my fingers, baby. can you do that?”

“mhm!” you tried to hold your moans, as she rubbed your clit, looking out the window next to you. you almost forgot that you were in her car – too focused on her. “don’t look outside, baby. look at me.” she ordered.

she kissed you passionately, rubbing your clit at a faster pace. you started grinding into the seat, making abby smile. “you’re making a mess, aw.” you whined as she slapped your cunt with her other hand. “such a good girl.” abby said, getting some of your wetness up to your clit.

she continued rubbing it, adding more stimulation when she used her other hand to play with your breasts. you couldn’t stop moaning, your hips moving against abby’s hand. “‘m close.. abby.” she smirked and kissed your neck. “you owe me, remember? so you better cum when i tell you to.” she whispered. you clenched around nothing – which abby noticed and quickly used the hand that was on your breast to finger you. “let’s see if you can take two fingers, mmh?”

abby put her index and middle finger inside of you, making you gasp and moan when you felt them moving inside of you. “fuck. abby! please!” you were a whiny mess, begging abby to let you cum, moving your hips in chase of your orgasm. abby smirked when she felt you clench around her fingers, pumping in and out of your cunt faster. you were moaning loudly, and she secretly hoped that the girl you were making out with earlier heard how good she made you feel.

“i’m gonna cum!” abby kissed you, rubbing your clit with her thumb as her fingers curled up inside of you. “c’mon, cum for me. cum for me, y/n.” she continued to finger you, rubbing your clit faster. you opened your mouth against her lips, a loud moan coming out of it, her fingers still inside of you as you finally came. abby kissed your jaw as you were catching your breath. “mhm, just like that baby. such a good girl.”

she looked down while pulling out her fingers out, looking at how much they were glistening. she brought them to your mouth. “open for me.” you opened and sucked on her fingers, making a ‘pop’ sound when letting them out. “s’good.” abby kissed you, licking your tongue.

“it was so good, abs...” you said, putting your jeans back on. you looked at her and kissed her. “i don’t owe you shit now, do i?” abby smiled. “mmh, do you?” she joked before kissing you once more. “c’mon, i’m taking us home.”

[pbelfz]

Two to One | 13 |

Pairing: Bakugou x Reader x Midoriya Chapter Title: Default Dance Chapter 12 | Chapter 14 Story Masterlist Summary: You are a simple college girl working at a cheap, back alley café! The top heroes, Deku and Ground Zero, visit your work in hopes of ordering coffee, but they pick something else up instead. You begin an interesting relationship with the pair, while slowly becoming aware of certain underhanded tactics they are using. Idolization isn't always that bad... Right?

WARNINGS: controlling, manipulative?

Deku never smiled as much as he did on television.

Izuku came down with a hearty fever within the first two nights of (Y/n) officially moving in.

Katsuki was quick to point his finger at her, blaming her for bringing her city germs into the house, but Izuku insisted one of his high school interns was coughing in his office a few days prior. Regardless, Katsuki kept his distance from both of them.

In the few hours he was awake, Izuku worked from home, sending reports to his agency secretaries and signing off on investigation collaborations. He slept most of the day otherwise, leaving (Y/n) alone in the spacious house.

All of her personal belongings were relocated to the new house, but it’d been an overwhelming feat to unpack most of the boxes – not that she had that many to begin with. Still, it gnawed at her how final this all seemed. She couldn’t help but feel like she jumped the gun a little too quickly when she saw the face her RA gave her when they exchanged lease documentation.

She’d never lived with any of her previous partners before. What would she tell Hana if she wanted to come over to hang out? Would Deku or Katsuki even be okay with her having guests at all? The last time she recalled needing approval for friends visiting was when she lived with her parents.

Her frown tightened as she performed the next dance move of Rich Girl by Gwen Stefani. She remained sour even as the TV screen dinged, signifying a perfect score.

Izuku groaned into the pillow, hearing the music travel up the stairs and into the master bedroom. Even with the door closed, it grew harder and harder for him to block out the nasally ‘Nana na na na na’s, the ache in his head pulsing with each beat, right behind his forehead. He texted (Y/n) a few minutes ago to turn the TV down, but she must not have seen it. He supposed this was his cue to get up.

Izuku – slowly, with no urgency about him – made his way to the kitchen. His cold was getting worse, but he didn’t want to worry Katsuki or (Y/n). He glanced at (Y/n) in the living room once he reached the bottom of the stairs, and on a normal day, his interest would’ve piqued to see her playing Just Dance.

However, today was not that day.

He turned and continued to the kitchen.

Izuku’s eyes could hardly stay open as he made himself a cup of peppermint tea, adding some honey for his throat. He took his time with it. Why not, right? Gwen Stefani was serenading him.

Deku never smiled as much as he did on television. That was one of the first things (Y/n) noticed when she moved in.

‘If I was a rich girl, nana na na na na–,’

(Y/n) was completely enthralled in the game, but once she turned around for a spin, she locked eyes with Izuku, who was leaning against the wall with his cup of tea.

“EE-eezuku!” She covered her mouth to conceal the tail end of her yelp before scrambling to finally turn off that damn game. “How long–?”

“Did you get my text?” Izuku cut (Y/n) off more harshly than intended, which took her by surprise. He’s never the one to do that. Izuku noticed his slip-up as quickly as she did, and he took a sip of his tea, glancing at the floor.

“No, I left my phone upstairs. What did it say?” (Y/n)’s voice was soft, worried that she missed something important. Izuku shifted his weight, his reply just as soft as hers, much gentler than his previous interruption.

“I was just trying to sleep,” his gaze flickered to the TV hanging on the wall behind her. (Y/n) got the hint.

“Oh… I’m sorry.”

Izuku nodded before turning away, withdrawing from her. “It’s okay.”

(Y/n) couldn’t help but feel compelled to follow him to the kitchen.

“How are you feeling?”

Izuku opened the fridge, bending over to check the lower shelves for something quick to eat. “Better.”

“Good.” She withheld the urge to feel his forehead to check his fever.

Izuku grabbed some bread, meat, and cheese to make a sandwich. He didn’t look at (Y/n) as he reached for condiments, which were right next to her.

Is he really that upset that she didn’t turn the TV down?

“Are you mad at me?”

It’s only natural to ask.

Izuku finally looked up at (Y/n), his face almost appalled at the question. “No,” was all he offered before biting into his sandwich and walking past her. “Just tired. And sick.”

He left her in the kitchen by herself.

With all of the audacity Katsuki carries, (Y/n) never anticipated how attentive he was towards Izuku.

She felt creepy, watching from the doorway as Katsuki spoon-fed Izuku the last of the homemade soup his mother dropped off. (Y/n) was in class when Mitsuki came by, but from what little Katsuki shared of his homelife, the Bakugous were a gourmet family, so it was no surprise they had their own recipe for everything.

Regardless of how big the house was, (Y/n) still felt lumpy and in the way. Katsuki brushed by her when they crossed paths in the hallways, almost purposefully knocking shoulders with hers. She didn’t have the heart to ask him if he actually was doing it on purpose, though; she still felt like a guest here.

More so now than ever, as she watched Katsuki kneel by the edge of bed, stroking the back of Izuku’s neck. Izuku was dozing off with a cooling pad on his forehead. They were muttering to each other about something, and Katsuki wore just a hint of a smile on his face as he monitored a drowsy Deku. (Y/n) didn’t want to interrupt them. They surely noticed she was there, but Katsuki wasn’t going to make an effort to call her in; Izuku was the priority at the moment. She observed how they looked at each other, and a black, tarry pit in her stomach kept telling her it was different from how they looked at her. Their hands found one another, Katsuki’s thickened skin naturally a comfort for Izuku, just as Izuku’s scars were for Katsuki.

(Y/n) hoped she caught the flu next week.

She turned and went back downstairs.

Days passed, and Izuku’s cold lessened into an irritating sore throat.

Izuku became antsy, not accustomed to being away from work for so long. The house was spotless from the compulsive cleaning he did when Katsuki wasn’t around (he would’ve gotten yelled at). (Y/n) gently suggested he continue resting, but her words went ignored. She then offered to help but was disregarded. That was fine with her; she was behind on her assignments because of her shifts at Satou’s.

Izuku’s weights clanged in the basement gym while she proofread a 10-page essay. (Y/n)’s fingers tapped on the keyboard, unable to focus on her work as she listened to her boyfriend work out. Two minutes passed, and there was silence. (Y/n) fixed a sentence on her document.

Clang!

She paused and waited.

Silence for another minute.

(Y/n) read another paragraph.

Clang!

Her concentration muddled once more, she groaned and closed her laptop.

Izuku almost instantly threw himself back into hero duty the second Katsuki’s mothering radar subsided.

The Bakugou-Midoriya-(Y/n) household found what their “normal” was.

Disgruntled Katsuki.

Overworked Izuku.

Unoccupied (Y/n).

It’s not like she was necessarily waiting for them to do anything with her! It’s just this situation screamed “roommates”. Isn’t that what they were now, though? Roommates with benefits, except they haven’t done anything sexual since Izuku’s got sick. (Y/n) wanted to talk to the two heroes to clear up any boundaries, but the throuple were hardly ever in the house at the same time. (Y/n) busied herself with schoolwork, carrying about her business as she usually would back in her apartment, except now there were two hunkering men lumbering about.

“Deku and I made dinner reservations for all of us tomorrow,” Katsuki mentioned over his shoulder.

Neither of them bothered to mention this to her before right now. (Y/n) tightened her lip to keep from rolling her eyes.

“I don’t think I can go. I’m going out tomorrow,” (Y/n) pondered aloud, scrolling through Instagram on her phone.

Katsuki’s attention, previously only halfway in the conversation, was now yanked fully into it. He finished his rep, setting the weighted barbell above him on the bar holder before sitting up on the bench. Sweat gleamed from his torso, and he grabbed the nearest rag to wipe his forehead.

“This is the first time I’m hearing about this,” he grunted, glancing up at (Y/n). She shrugged, still invested in her phone.

“I guess it was kinda last minute.” A slight jab.

Katsuki was quiet for a moment, trying to be careful about his words. “Does Deku know?” He asked, trekking over to the dumbbells.

“Does Deku know what?” Izuku suddenly called from beyond the basement stairs, the sound of the front door closing behind him. (Y/n) glanced upwards, noting how Deku always appeared at just the right moment.

Izuku took his sneakers off in the foyer, exchanging them for his slippers before bounding down the stairs. He was noticeably tired, and even though he wasn’t in his hero costume anymore, his clothes still seemed worn. He may have run into another villain on the way home.

Katsuki snorted a dry laugh, giving (Y/n) a look as he began another set for his workout. The dumbbells were bigger than (Y/n)’s head.

“I’m just going to a karaoke party tomorrow. Maybe some barhopping,” (Y/n) peeped from her place on the floor next to the weight rack. Katsuki glanced at his partner.

Izuku’s mouth tightened ever so slightly, but only Katsuki caught it. “Oh.”

“Who are you going with?” Izuku asked, hiding the hesitance in his tone as he stepped further into the basement.

Katsuki set the dumbbells down much quieter than Izuku did. (Y/n) didn’t know why they were making such a big deal about this.

“Hana. My coworker from Satou’s.”

Both men appeared to be in thought.

Izuku spoke first. “We can talk about it after we shower, okay?” He suggested with a soft smile, leaning back as an invitation for (Y/n) to follow him upstairs to the bathroom. (Y/n) remained seated on the gym floor.

“What’s the big deal?” She asked. Part of her was looking for a fight; they felt it. She wanted to do something with her friends, and they finally decided now was the time to give her attention? Katsuki and Izuku looked at each other. Katsuki was more reclusive than Izuku when voicing his concerns, so he withdrew as he wiped the bench down with a rag. Izuku sighed.

“We’re just worried,” Izuku spoke for the both of them, as he naturally did. (Y/n) blinked, setting her phone to the side as she prepared to hear them out.

“About what? I’m gonna be with my friends.”

Izuku scratched the back of his ear and stepped over to her, crouching down to her height on the floor.

“Everyone there is cool, I promise,” (Y/n) softened her voice, trying to comfort them further.

“(Y/n), we’re concerned about the college culture.”

(Y/n) furrowed her brow at that and glanced at Katsuki, who was watching the exchange.

“What do you mean by th–?”

“Just don’t be a whore,” Katsuki all but blurted as he picked up his water bottle and started chugging.

“Katsuki!” Izuku shouted over his shoulder. The volume didn’t seem to affect Katsuki, but it made (Y/n) jump. There was a beat of silence, as if Izuku was debating on yelling something else, but instead he turned back to look at her with an apologetic expression.

“We’re just worried about drinking and all that,” Izuku tried to explain, returning to his regular pitch. (Y/n) glanced between both of his eyes and held her tongue because she was about to tell him he sounded more like a father than a hero. “While they may not be villains, some people can do pretty villainous things, like slip something into your drink. If you’re going to drink, keep your drink on your person, and try not to take your eye off of it,” Izuku warned. (Y/n) shifted, and although she felt like he was overexaggerating everything, she still felt uneasy under his gaze.

“Yeah, I know…”

“And can you text our groupchat when you get there tomorrow? What time is it at? And the address?” Izuku asked, pulling his personal phone out of his pocket.

“Yeah, of course. I was going to, anyway,” (Y/n) picked her own phone back up to check her texts with Hana. “Karaoke is at around 8:30 PM at 228 Yugun.”

“Text every thirty minutes,” came Katsuki’s request. (Y/n) looked over at him, then back at Izuku, who seemed to be typing the address and time into his phone reminders. There wasn’t any rebuttal from the other hero, so this seemed to be a consensus between the two of them.

“Okay.”

It was so much easier to socialize with Hana by (Y/n)’s side.

(Y/n) cheered along with everyone as Hana completed the song on the screen. It wasn’t perfect, but Hana laughed off her mistakes, something (Y/n) always admired about her.

Their other friend from school, Chiharu, was a naturally gifted singer and was getting high score after high score on each song. Natsuko and Jin, who were dating, sang a duet but were too tipsy to get a score above 37%. Every time someone offered (Y/n) the mic, she politely declined, satisfied with simply sipping on her drink and eating some of the platter.

“Jin fucked that one up that time!” Natsuko laughed, slipping her jacket off and resting it on the seat behind her. Jin was carefree and good-natured. Patient. Everyone in the group knew Jin and Nat were a good match. Jin was flipping through the available list of songs, her shoulder-length hair swaying when she wiped some of the beer from her lip.

“You can’t blame all of that on me,” Jin retorted playfully. Chiharu suddenly shot up from her seat, pointing at the screen.

“Wait! Pick that one! Pick that one! I know the Tiktok dance to it.”

“Oh, God, nooooooo, boooooo,” Hana moaned with a thumbs down.

“Wait, no, I wanna see her do it!” Came Nat from the other side of the room.

(Y/n) sunk into the couch, cradling her drink as she glanced from person to person, a blissful smile on her face. After a dedicated discussion, Jin finally picked the Tiktok song. Just as Chiharu was warming up for her dance, (Y/n)’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out of her bag.

(09:48) Katsuki : What time you coming back?

(09:50) (Y/N)ヾ☆* : not sure yet

Katsuki is typing…

(09:50) Katsuki : Can you ask?

(Y/n) sighed and scratched her head.

(09:51) (Y/N)ヾ☆* : i asked. No one knows

Katsuki started typing again. He was typing for a while, but then the bubble disappeared. (Y/n) stared at the screen. He began typing again.

(09:53) Katsuki :  Deku’s picking you up

(09:53) Katsuki :  When you’re done.

(Y/n) replied with a thumbs up emoji.

(09:54) Katsuki : So let us know when you’re almost done, so he can head over there.

(09:54) Katsuki : Are you drinking?

Jesus Christ, Katsuki can talk when he wants to. (Y/n) shifted in her seat, setting her drink down on the table in front of her so she can type with both hands. Hana eyed her.

(09:55) (Y/N)ヾ☆* : I will

(Y/n) didn’t know if he responded because she shoved her phone back into her bag. She looked over and saw Hana already looking at her.

“You okay?” Hana asked.

“Oh, yeah. Just group project stuff.”

Hana nodded, understanding. Nat then came over and handed mics to her and (Y/n).

“I picked out this duet just for you two.”

(Y/n) and Hana stood on the curb with their arms locked at the elbow as they waved goodbye to their friends, watching the three of them stumble away in the direction of their apartments. Jin and Natsuko lived together, and Chiharu lived in the complex around the corner from them. Hana lived on the opposite side of the city campus, so (Y/n) offered to walk her. They were both laughing at a video someone posted on Twitter of the Deku Fortnite skin.

“Why didn’t they include Shoto? Dynamight and Deku, but no Shoto?”

“I don’t know, maybe he didn’t approve it,” (Y/n) remarked, watching Deku’s character dance on Hana’s phone. “And with good reason.”

“And Dynamight did?!”

(Y/n) shrugged, sputtering a laugh. “Maybe Dynamight likes the game.” By force of habit, (Y/n) pulled her own phone out of her bag to check her notifications. She ended up ignoring it for most of the night, so she couldn’t imagine what she missed.

To her surprise, she only missed one text from Katsuki and one text from Izuku. Izuku was letting her know the time he was picking her up at, which was… in 3 minutes.

(Y/n) stopped walking, her sudden halt pulling Hana back. Hana looked at her, confused.

“So, my ride is actually a few minutes away, and I only gave them the address to the karaoke bar…”

Hana understood, and she smiled. “Oh, okay! Text me when you get home?”

(Y/n) didn’t think Hana realized she didn’t live on campus anymore.

“Of course.”

Izuku pulled up to the curb in the sleek black car he and Katsuki alternated driving. They had other cars, but they both must’ve preferred this one. It was 1 in the morning, and the streets were starting to quiet down.

He wordlessly unlocked the car, and (Y/n) popped into the passenger side, smiling. Izuku didn’t give much of a greeting as he pulled off as soon as she buckled in.

(Y/n) broke the silence first. “I didn’t know you were in Fortnite.”

It was dark in the car, but (Y/n) could see the way his brow furrowed as he drove, as if he were trying to recall what on earth she was referring to.

“Katsuki’s in Fortnite, too,” she giggled. “Your costumes look a lot different, though.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he was no louder than a mumble as he looked past (Y/n) to make a turn.

(Y/n) sunk into her seat, taking this as her cue to leave him alone. Where Katsuki pushed her when he was upset, Izuku ignored her.

“How was your night?” He finally asked, after the lights of the city became sparser. (Y/n) perked up.

“It was a lot of fun! I was a little nervous to sing, so I spent a lot of time watching my friends, but Hana and I did a song together near the end.”

She didn’t know, but Izuku could smell the alcohol on (Y/n)’s breath, and he slightly turned his head away from her as she spoke.

“You have a lot to drink?” He asked quietly, a hand leaving the steering wheel to scratch his ear.

“No, not a lot.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t really–”

“How much, (Y/n)?”

(Y/n) looked over at him, blinking. Izuku’s gaze was still fixed on the road.

“I think no more than five,” she peeped. She watched him.

Izuku continued driving. They were almost home.

“You think?”

“I think, yeah.”

He was silent. He made another turn, and the light from a streetlamp shined down on half of his face, so (Y/n) could finally discern him. He appeared unaffected.

(Y/n) didn’t know what else to say, and whatever buzz she was feeling before quickly dissipated. She sat there with her hands folded in her lap. If this was Katsuki, she would’ve yelled back at him, but this was Izuku. Izuku has a different command about him.

The car was parked, and (Y/n) looked up. They were home. Izuku turned the car off, but he didn’t unbuckle. He turned to (Y/n), the light from the porch finally illuminating his face enough to give (Y/n) an emotion she recognized: pity.

“Please try to keep track next time.”

(Y/n) didn’t know what to say.

“Okay…”

Izuku got out of the car, closed the door, and headed inside with his hands in his pockets, leaving (Y/n) alone in the car.

[honestlydarkprincess]

writing patterns

tagged by @wikiangela !!

rules: share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able and see if there are any patterns!

can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shootin' stars

When Buck had agreed to change flights because of overbooking, he hadn’t been told that the flight they wanted him to switch to wasn’t for another four hours. He was exhausted. He had already waited for his connection and now he had to wait even longer? By the time he boards the new flight its with a scowl and bloodshot eyes. He had spent his four hour wait sipping shitty coffee, draining the battery on his phone, and fighting a migraine.

that should have been plan A

Jake knew he was running late, that he was supposed to have met the other Daggers about thirty minutes ago, but he had had a bit of a fashion emergency.

this is gonna get long so to save ur dash i'll be the rest under the cut!

don't let go

“Well, that was a fucking exhausting shift,” Buck groaned, following Eddie into the Diaz house.

you chase away the pain

Gwen hummed to herself as she walked to her lady’s chambers, a pep in her step that was always there when she was about to see Morgana. Her crush was a doomed one, there was no way that Morgana would ever feel the same way towards her, but she couldn’t help it. Morgana was beautiful, strong, and kind. Who wouldn’t fall for her?

i only want you

Clarke had known it was a stupid idea to go to the party. She didn’t want to go to a party in the first place but Finn had insisted and Clarke had given in, desperate to try and make things work with him. She didn’t like him all that much but at least he was a distraction from her soul crushing crush on Bellamy Blake, her best friend’s older brother. Bellamy was a few years older than them and lived off campus while Clarke shared a dorm with Octavia, his sister.

think pawsitive

“Maddie, you don’t understand, he’s being weird,” Buck whined, throwing up his arms as he paced in front of the TV. He turned towards his sister and raised a brow. “Are you even listening to me?”

a gift i've never gotten before

Buck was nervous.

until you're feline better

“Alright, Ember, what do you think?” Buck asked, turning around and facing the kitten— who was starting to outgrow the title of kitten— that was perched on his bed, watching him intently. Buck was getting ready for a date with Tommy— it was their six month anniversary and Tommy said that he wanted to take Buck someplace special so Buck had gotten dressed up.

and it was purrfect

Buck was exhausted.

you gotta be kitten me

A few weeks after Tommy had turned his world upside down— in the very best way, of course— Buck was walking with him after a lovely dinner and trying to work up the courage to grab his hand. They walked side by side, shoulders brushing, and Buck was very aware that Tommy was right there, that he could just reach out and grab his hand and there was nothing stopping him. He could hold his boyfriend’s hand if he wanted to. That never failed to make him smile— he had a boyfriend now. They hadn’t talked about labels yet but internally Buck had started to think of Tommy as his boyfriend. He just hadn’t gotten the courage yet to ask him. First he’d work on holding his hand, then he’d ask about having the boyfriend talk.

wow okay the pattern is that i like a long ass intro

n ee way

tagging: @bigfootsmom, @eddiebabygirldiaz, @lonelychicago, @monsterrae1, @watchyourbuck

@father-salmon, @underwaterninja13, @devirnis, @itdoesntrhyme, @insecuregodcomplex

@thiamsxbitch, @remembertheskittles, @maygrantgf, @beyourownanchor6, @exhuastedpigeon

[planetaryaether]

Master Post of Blackrock Resources/Information

Every once-in-a-while I’ll get people asking about various pieces of lore or content regarding Blackrock, so I have decided to aggregate it all in one place to make things easier on everyone. If there is anything I have missed, just let me know and I would be happy to track it down and add it! Special thanks to  @fictitiousdreamer,  yogurtyogitup, and @gonic2 for helping gather information!

If anyone knows where I can find old (like 2013/2014) JingleJam streams please lmk! That is the last major place I need to check for info!

Series Playlist Additional Relevant Moments Duncan’s Lab Episodes 3, 10, and 34 (Set Before the Prequels) Duncan’s Lab Episode 64 (After S2E4 of Blackrock) Feed The World Episode 8 (Sometime Between S2 & S3)

Blackrock Songs: "Our Blackrock Story Carries On" - Lyrics ”Sjin and Duncan are Going to Die” "Baby It's Cold Outside” "Blackrock’s Back” Version 1 and 2, Lyrics Zoey's Official Blackrock Playlist Post Functional Zoey’s Playlist (original has broken links) “Do You Want to Craft a Golem” Origin Text Post Enderboy - Lyrics Engineering “Duncan, Why Did You Plant That Bomb?” (based on “Fries” from Adventure Time) Lyrics "Remember You" Not technically Blackrock but it had a BlackRock caption so I am including it for completeness "Blackrock Bunch" Text post "Fresh Princess" Non-Canon Text post

End of Series Lore Posts: End of Series Announcement Post  Zoey Related Lore  (URLs linked are broken, fixed link here, thanks @emimations) End of Series Lore Rest of Cabertown Plotline Nilesy’s Baby Jim Journal

Rythian Lore: Personality in 5 Words Hair Streak Changing Eye Color Used To Know Science Physical Description Who Knows What's Under the Mask Cost of Magic Living Without EE Feelings on Simon/Lewis Cape Origin Official Headcanons Rythian Journal (Gametee) Lore

Zoey: Face Markings Origin of the Mushroom Theme Robot Arm Jailhouse 6 Art Jailhouse 6 Sketches Season 3 Pre-episode post On Returning to the Enclave Disarming the Nuke Additional (unused) Score Fear of the End Zoey Supercomputer Official HC More Jeff Computer Stuff Mushroom Stew/Soup Mechanics

Teep: Inclusion of Teep Teep Vs Ringo Use of Creative Mode Accidental Deaths

Duncan: Forcefield Setup Forcefield Scene Recording Keeping an Eye on Duncan S3 Duncan Planting the Nuke

End Lore: Characterization of the Princess  Enderbane Lore Enderbane Supplemental Enderdragon Rebirth

Misc Lore: 10 Year Anniversary Stream Highlights (various lore/behind-the-scenes info) Baby Jim Origin Baby Jim Origin 2 Almost Cannibalism NewPool Build How Death Works Name of the World Accidental Destruction of Cabertown Rebuilding of Cabertown Realm Of Dawn’s Relationship to the Brightlands Blackrock S1-S3 Posters Blackrock 3.5 Poster (Supernatural Themed) Season 3 Design Concept

Collaborations/Relevant Other Series Lore: Sips Co Enderman Near Flux Buddies Collaboration Near Early Nuke Detonation Canon Status of Other Series Bow to Kill Ender Dragon (KirbyCraft) named after Zoey Second Sips Co Factory MB Zoey vs Blackrock Zoey

The Princess Short Story: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Fun/Noncanon Asks/Moments: Cabertown Fathersday Textpost Umbrella Rythian Hypothetical Jailhouse 6 Tour Fishton Origins

Part 2 of the Master Post Since I Hit the Link Limit (lol)

[kingofthe-egirls]

STOWAWAY: LUFFY x HIYORI

(cw: you are still the narrator, wano spoilers, hiyori gets sick from motion sickness, food/eating)

Songs: “Leader Of A New Regime” by Lorde

words: 1.4k

****

Luffy sits across from you, his legs spread and dangling from the wooden crate he’s straddling. He’s appraising you, his eyes hazy and his soft lips parted. He’s staring at your frame shamelessly. His crew is somewhere above deck, far away from this smuggled-into, tiny space.

Mugiwara no Luffy.

He’s sliding his strawberry tongue across his lower lip. A small, raspy breath leaves him as he kicks a sandaled heel against the wooden crate. He swings his leg, the dark hair shadowing his calf muscles.

“What’s your name, stowaway?”

He asks you, plainly.

His black coat sits heavy around his shoulders, his red cardigan left open over soft, strengthened abs. You shift, in the barrel he’d seen you pop out of after he’d spied you in this closet space. You lick your lips, switching between the lies in your mind you’ve studied like prayers.

“Hiyori.”

It’s your true name,

the one your father

gave you.

He smirks, pleased. “Nice to meetcha, Hiyori!” He says your name plainly, with an accent so different from your own dialect. He says it like—Hee-ya-or-ee—as he sounds it out. He seems to like its taste.

“Same,” you murmur.

He squats on the crate, his sandals firmly planted with his heels flat on the wood. You scratch the back of your neck, behind your satin collar.

“So, whatcha stowin’ away for?” He tilts his head, steady in balance even as the ship tips in rapid waves. Your own stomach is seasick, sweat beading cold along your face.

You swipe away the moisture on your soft upper lip. “Escaped,” You whisper, throat scratchy. You haven’t had fresh water in several days.

His expression scrunches, as he stares at you with a crooked head.

“Saw your wanted poster—in the News Coo,” You say, stepping out of the barrel on shaky feet. You’re wearing plum, pleated pants that billow out before tucking in at your ankles. Your kimono is a matching plum satin that’s embroidered with cream-silk cherry blossoms. Your wooden sandals clack on the storage room’s floor. You reach out to steady yourself on a nearby crate. “Sick—,” You warn, heavy-headed, before swallowing down the bile in your throat.

Strawhat Luffy suddenly hops down from his perch, his face stricken as he closes the short distance between you. His hands are warm and soothing as they cradle your face. “Hey…,” He whispers, worried, “Are you okay?”

You shake your head.

Your stomach churns.

Luffy sees you turn to wretch into the barrel you’d just been stowing away inside. It smells vile.

“Sorry…,” you rasp, swiping the back of your hand across your mouth.

Luffy is silent, before grabbing your hand and leading you upstairs.

****

It’s four days, before you’re allowed to leave the infirmary bed.

Sanji—chef with an even stranger accent than Luffy’s—is sitting next to you, spoon feeding you ginger soda.

“Slow sips,” he’s saying, his voice gentle and quiet. His flaxen hair is sifting over one eye.

“S’okay…,” You say, reaching for the bottle yourself. You’re sick of feeling sick. “I can drink the rest myself.”

Sanji scowls, but he hands you the green-glass bottle. You sip from it, gently. Eventually, your stomach settles.

“So…are you looking to join our crew?” He sits back in his chair, splayed out legs strong and lithe beneath his black slacks. The style is so strange here. So varied.

Searching the ceiling for answers, you suck your teeth as you decide what to say next. The spiderweb in the rafter isn’t helping you much at all.

“Sort of…,” you say, drawling out the words as slowly as syrup. They taste strange on your tongue, too.

“Is someone after you?”

You shake your head.

Sanji stares at you, his eyes burning hot coals into the side of your face.

You study the floor.

“So, what is it you want, Hiyori?”

You stare at the floorboards, your eyes focusing in on the glossy wood. There’s an acorn-shaped spot of knotted wood. It doesn’t help keep your head from spinning, and your saliva still tastes like ginger.

You sip the soda, and

speak:

“Freedom.”

****

So now you’re straddling the neck of the Going Merry’s goathead. Your hands steady yourself as you spill your stories to Strawhat Luffy.

He’s scrunching his eyebrows at you: drawn dark and serious over brown, sunlit eyes. He’s silently listening.

“…and I just wouldn’t. He said I had to, so I left. Escaped. Swam in a barrel until I somehow found my way to your ship. I need ya,” you sigh, swiping your hand across your face as you slurp up the sweet juice of the plums he’s feeding you.

“Need me?”

You nod, sinking your teeth into the plum’s scarlet flesh.

“Aren’t ya supposed to be the best, most dangerous pirate in the seas? News Coo says so much shit about ya,” You swallow, squishing the stone fruit between your forefinger and thumb. You steal another bite. “So you’re the person I want to have help me…find something. M’not sure what it is yet,” you sigh, seeing him perk up at your words. You stare at the plum’s stone heart. You scratch it with your thumbnail as you speak. “It’s silly, but…i have ambitions, y’know?”

“Dreams?”

Strawhat Luffy finishes your sentence. He regards you with softness: curious and honest.

You nod.

“What are your dreams, Hiyori?” He asks, sparkles in his eyes shot gold from the sun. He grins, radiant.

Fuck.

“Um…,” You stare at the side of the ship, at the sea’s choppy waves. The boat rocks still, but ginger and plums have settled your stomach—somewhat. You scrunch your nose. “I’m not sure…of the specifics. Yet. It’s something—with dreams. And…stars. And moonlight. But that’s it,” You say as you shake your head. Your thoughts are so scattered—so symbolic.

“It’s a song.”

Strawhat Luffy tilts his head. “A song?” He seems curious, intelligent. Interested. Chewing your lip, you respond.

“Yeah…a song. Something so—beautiful, that. Everyone else will listen to it and…say that they’re in love with me,” you trail off, swallowing the last of your plum piece.

Luffy scratches his head.

“Sounds like ya just kinda want someone to fall in love with ya,” he snickers. He sees your maddening blush and stops in his tracks. “S-sorry! I wasn’t meaning to be rude—,”

“No, it’s alright,” you snicker, scrunching your nose as you shrug in defeat. “That’s a way more honest way of saying it.”

“So,” he touches your knee, leaning in like he’s whispering you a secret, “What is it you actually dream about?”

“Sex,” you whisper, sedated by his chestnut eyes and sweet stone fruits.

“Sex?” He asks, tilting his head in earnest curiosity. You nod, far too risky with your own honesty.

“Sex is something I’ve dreamed about for a really, really long time. It’s something I really wanna start having, so that I know what it is and if it’s something I wanna keep doing. Y’know? So…for sex to start happening, I need…someone in my life. Who sees me. And…”

Here is where you turn sheepish.

“…falls in love with me.”

Silence.

Luffy is staring at you, his eyes tracing your features like he’s an artist studying a painting. His breath is sweet, as he speaks in whispers, “Is…sex something you need, from me?” He asks it curiously, appreciatively, as if he’s admiring you for saying such a secret thing.

You swallow.

“So…yeah,” you admit, fearsome blush staining your cheeks rosy. He smiles as you fidget with your fingers in your lap. They’re still sticky from the shared plums.

“Is that why ya liked my wanted poster?” He grins, all teeth.

You nod.

“Shishishi!” He snickers, hand on the back of his head to keep his sunny hat in place. He rocks back and forth, pleased. “Seriously?” He asks, wide grin only getting wider. He shrugs, delighted. “Me?”

You nod, sober as the sea breeze blows wispy turquoise hairs across your face. Your voice is steady.

“You.”

He smiles even wider now, as he slaps the back of his hand against your kneecap. He stands, letting out a satisfied grunt. “Welp!” He says as he helps you stand up, “We’d better get started,” he supports your elbow as he helps you stumble down from the Merry’s sheephead.

“Started on what?” You ask, flushed and rosy from the brief physical contact. He stares at you like he’s confused as to why you’re not getting it yet.

“Falling in love, duh!”

****

[tr4gictea]

HEYYYY HERES YOUR FAV NON-ANNON ~

headcanons for genius child/teen reader (around 8 to 16) who would be master at stuff that only people with a phd would start doing (more specifically maths if you don't mind)

Like people at the academia would tremble in fear of this child

You'd have higher-up at the academia begging the child/teen to consider joining the academia when they are the legal age to do so and the child/teen's like "nah" with the most deadpan face ever

They would gang up with al haitham to subtly make fun of paimon, bonding time <3

THEM CORRECTING A CALCULATION ERROR THAT AL HAITHAM HAD MADE LFBGKSKD

Casualy finds solution to problem that the leader of certain nations struggle with ( taxes, mediacl stuff, trade,...)

I just think thats so cute `(>///▂///<)´ <3

❥Masterlist

Tags: teen!reader, platonic, tw: Dottore

A/n: HELLO! I’M BACK! There are definitely spelling mistakes in here, please let me know how i can improve pls. Love u all <3

“(y/n), please at least consider what we’re offering you right now,” One of the scribes of the academia said as you sat across from him sipping a cup of tea in your hand. “You will be getting a full ride scholarship, along with a dorm, and a secured job in the acidemia. Most people would trade their life for this offer.”

Uninterested in his offer you set down your tea, “Yes, but I’m not ‘other people’,”You stood up and the scribe swiftly followed you as you ushered him to the door ”and my answer will be the same as always, no thank you.” You said as you closed the door behind him you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. 

“Archons, they're annoying,” You said under your breath, closing your eyes you let your neck fall. You didn’t know why you never accepted the invitation of a lifetime but the acidemia never felt like a place you belonged. All the students there are from the city while you were from the desert which made you feel lesser than the kids at the city. 

When you reopened your eyes you found a letter at your feet with the acidemia mark stamped on it. The guy must have slid the letter under the door. You thought while ripping it open. Sometimes in the letter the left small gifts like chocolate 

Dear (Y/n), 

We formally invite you to the celebration of the Academia’s senior students graduating, blah blah blah, we are so proud of them, blah blah blah, dinner will be provided, blah blah-! WAIT, FREE FOOD?! 

“MOM!”

“Yes?” 

“Can I go to an Academia banquet,” 

She peaked her head out of the kitchen with a questioning look on her face. “Have you finally said yes to the scholarship?”

“Uh, no, they're offering free food.” You said handing her the invitation.

She took it from your hand and scanned over the letter. She let out a hum “Well, alright then,” 

“Thanks Mom!” 

Time Skip :D 

When you arrived at the Academia you were greeted by a sage who showed you around the banquet and introduced you to graduating students. The sage told you about the benefits of coming to the school when he was interrupted by a woman with green eyes. Her outfit was similar to the other academia uniforms but looked altered. 

“Hello (blank), who’s this sweety?” She said as she put her hands on her thighs and bent her knees so she was eye to eye with you. 

“I’m (Y/n),” You said as you raised your hand.

“They are-,” The sage said but got cut off by the woman

She leaned back up and shook your hand “I know who you are, you're the kid that the Academia begging for you to join,” you nodded your head. “Well it’s wonderful to meet you, I’m Lisa. (blank) do you mind if me and (y/n) walk around for a bit?” 

“Actually, no-” He was cut off again by Lisa

ee

“We’ll be back in an hour or two,” Lisa said as she placed a hand on your shoulder and pulled you away from the Sage. 

You didn't really mind being taken away Lisa, the sage was boring you so much you felt like falling asleep. Although Lisa seem different from the rest of the folks in the academia.  

You guys walked in silence for a bit until you decided to strike up a conversation. “So you’ve heard of me before?” 

She let out a soft giggle, “Hehe, yes I have kept in contact with some of my old colleagues of mine and they told me about the amount of trouble they are having getting some genius teen from Aaru Village to join the Academia.” 

“Really, I’m that famous?”

“I wouldn’t say famous, more that your name is tossed around in passing conversation.” You hummed in response. “But I do wonder what reason you would turn down the Academia?”

“There is nothing that the Academia will teach me that I already know, the most I could get out of it is a certificate, handshake, and four wasted years.” You started counting off the reasons on your fingers. “And I find a desk job boring, I want to live an exciting life.”

“Hm, well that’s as good a reason as any,” You two continued to talk while walking around, you found her conversations more interesting than those in the academia. Lisa later told you she was the greatest graduate from the Academia but worked as a librarian in Monstat. 

“Sigh, sadly the night has come to an end.” Lisa said. “Though I have enjoyed this talk, I hope to see you in the future little adventurer,” and then she winked at you and waved goodbye. 

Huh, strange lady. 

A week or two later…

You were walking around the academia looking for books on old Khaenri’ah tech, which you later found out all Khanrian text was banned from the main library, key word: main library. The books may be on the shelves of the restricted section rotting away. 

The reason you were looking for these types of books was because those books may had information on what they used to power the giant ruin guard. You may have thought that the giant ruin guard would use the same power device just bigger but you had looked inside the main frame where energy was being pushed to and instead of a chaos device you found a crystal gem that was not native to any gems in other nations. Which is interesting considering the- WAIT OFF TOPIC (Y/N). 

Archons, even in your head you can still go on and on about a topic. Anyways, back to the task on hand. 

After sneaking into the restricted section you searched and searched for at least 1 book on Khaenri’ah but you soon left the library empty handed. While you were wallowing in defeat you didn’t notice a tall sage with his nose in a book walking toward you. 

BUMP

“What the hell man, watch where you’re going!” You said pushing yourself from the ground. Surprisingly the man didn’t fall down and was just looking down on you while you were grabbing papers he dropped on the ground and took a quick glance at the paper. It labeled different plants and their properties for medicine, and you could find a bunch of mistakes from similar looking plants having the opposite names, the math was wrong on the dosage amount, and you guessed that the other papers were similar to this one paper.

“This is all wrong,”

“What?”

“It’s all wrong the dosage amount on the headache medicine would cause spasms to the person if taken all at once. You need to water it down. And the names of cedar and birch tree leaves are mixed up.”

He snatches the page from you and to his surprise you were right, he should have check the paper with Tighnari. He couldn’t believe he was getting corrected by some 14 or 15 year old kid. He may not have shown it but this hurt his ego.

Bonus!

While you were searching in the restricted library you heard the sound of shuffling books which were not coming from you. 

“Mm, ‘we have books about everything’. “ The person said in a mocking voice. “We have everything my ass.” 

Peaking your head around the corner you see a scruffy looking man with fluffy blue hair and red eyes. He had a mask covering his entire face but his eyes and left side of his lips. Suddenly his head snapped toward you. 

“You.” He pointed his finger towards you. You turned around to see if he was talking to someone else. But when you saw none you gave him a confused look and pointed towards yourself.

“Me?”

“Y-YES YOU, come here,” 

You didn’t trust this guy one bit. He looked like he smoked several naka weed cigs before he came here. But you still approached him slowly and when you were close enough he grabbed you harshly by the shoulder and pulled you two together.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh, (Y/n),”

“Good, good,” he said while slightly giggling “Now, tell me, do you see any old traditional rituals?”

“Uh,” You scanned across the bookshelf but didn’t find anything on rituals. ”No, I don’t.”

The red eyed man began to let out a loud cackle “heheh… Heheehe… HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH, THE BOOKS ARE GONE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

‘You know what I think that's enough research for today…’ You slowly backed out of the aisle and made your way to the door. All the while the man's laughter never stopped.

[darlingvernon]

day 14: mistletoe | chwe hansol.

↳ the one about hansol avoiding every mistletoe if you’re under it

◇ chwe hansol x female reader ◇ angst with happy ending | friends to lovers ◇ warnings: alcohol consumption, swearing. if i missed anything else please let me know! ◇ 2084 words (lol are we surprised?)

authors note: this is for day 14 of @svthub december prompt challenge: mistletoe. please let me know what you think and i hope you guys enjoy!

another note: i can't believe this is so long lol i guess i really can't help myself when it comes to hansol dfhdjhdj

1 new message nonieeee 

[10:00pm] nonieeee: where are you?

The nerve of this guy, you think to yourself after seeing the message your best friend had sent. He spent the whole night avoiding you, outright at some points even, and now wants to know where you are. 

Fucking typical that is. 

Usually, it’s something you can brush off easily, aware that he prefers to be somewhere else instead of attending big parties such as this, but you were hoping that tonight would’ve been different. 

Wearing his favourite red dress that you own and the necklace he gifted you on your birthday, you wished that Hansol would finally take notice of you, and finally see the way you feel about him. In turn, you hoped that he feels the same about you too.

But, he crushed any chance of that happening with the way he’d been acting, so you spend the rest of the night nursing a glass of wine one after the other. Finally feeling somewhat numb, you’re not going to let him ruin the rest of the night for you.

[10:05pm] you: why do you care [10:05pm] nonieeee: why wouldn’t i?

You almost can’t believe that you really have to spell it out for him, especially in your inebriated state. Almost.

[10:06pm] you: youve been tryging to avoidf me all nigth [10:06pm] nonieeee: are you drunk?

Rolling your eyes, you down the last drops of your sixth wine of the night before replying.

[10:07pm] you: i am notttttt

Placing your phone down on the bar, you ask the bartender for another glass. After taking a few sips of your drink, you finally notice the blinking notification on your phone.

[10:07pm] nonieeee: how much have you had to drink? [10:10pm] nonieeee: y/n where are you? [10:12pm] you: im fgine nonieeeeere [10:12pm] you: go bacjk to ignroing me [10:13pm] nonieeee: i haven’t been ignoring you

You may not be sober but the way Hansol is acting right now is confusing, even if you were. Not one part of you understands why he’s suddenly acting like this and you can’t tell whether he’s being dumb or he’s really not understanding what is happening.

Whatever the case is, your patience has been long gone and replaced by hurt. No longer able to hold it in, you embrace the liquid courage coursing your veins and finally speak your mind. Maybe, your heart too.

[10:17pm] you: omgg yes yuo hav [10:17pm] you: you bolted as sooon as i said hii toy ou,. left the ktcihen when i entered nd left the couch as soon as i satt dwon next toyo u [10:19pm] you: ibet youre wonderngi where i am just so youu cani gnore me again [10:20pm] nonieeee: that’s not true

You laugh at how ridiculous he’s being, though there’s no mirth to it. Finishing the rest of your drink, you throw all caution out the window.

[10:22pm] you: i even worem y pretty dress that you likee and the neckalce that you gotm e formy birthday because i wnted you tos ee me, to finally notice me  [10:23pm] you: but dont worrryy i gett itn ow. im out of th eway so you can enjoy the rest oft he party [10:23pm] you: im gna drnik somr more and maybe do som dncing

As you attempt to put away your phone, it vibrates again in your hand.

[10:24pm] nonieeee: listen i can explain [10:24pm] nonieeee: tell me where you are pls

Just when you’re about to reply, you feel a familiar presence next to you that makes you look up, but you’re disappointed to see that it’s not the person you’re longing to see. “What are you doing here, Mingyu?” you ask, voice slurry from the alcohol.

Mingyu waits for you to take the glass of water he’s offering and to drink it before he replies, “Seungcheol and Joshua sent me. They’re worried about how much alcohol you’re having.”

“I don’t mean to worry anyone,” you pout.

“We know,” he smiles. “What’s got you down?”

Sighing, you reach for the second glass of water he’s placed in front of you and down it too. “Hansol’s been avoiding me all night.”

“Ah.”

“I tried to look pretty for him, so I can pull him under a mistletoe and confess my feelings for him.”

Mingyu’s eyes sparkle, like he knows a secret he can’t share, but it’s gone before you know it and it leaves you questioning whether it’s something you imagined in your drunken haze.

“Well, maybe you still have a chance,” he says. “Why don’t we go and find a mistletoe that you can stand under and get him to find you? I’m sure he’s looking for you right now.”

“Mkay,” you nod, “let me just send him a message real quick.”

[10:37pm] you: yknow hansol i like like liek like like likel ike like you like realllyyyyy reallyyyy like you [10:39pm] you: but icant deal with thsi right noww [10:39pm] you: i gotta dot his mistletoe thing wtih mingyu [10:40pm] you: bye

Just before you shove your phone in your purse, you feel it vibrate once, twice, too many times to count, but you refuse to check it. He was avoiding your presence so the way you see it, you can avoid his messages.

Mingyu sets out two more glasses of water for you which you gratefully accept, sobering up as you finish the last glass. Needing to relieve yourself, he offers to wait for you by the door. 

When you exit the bathroom, Mingyu is there holding out his hand and when you raise your hand to reach for him, another hand wraps around your wrist, pulling you away from your friend. Confused, you look back and see Mingyu beaming at you, holding two thumbs up in the air.

Turning back to your wrist, you immediately recognise the ring on his pinky finger and the watch you gifted him on his wrist. The person who has a hold of you is none other than your best friend Hansol Vernon Chwe himself, the person who’s avoided you all night and shattered your heart into pieces.

“Let me go,” you say loud enough for him to hear over the loud pumping music.

“No,” he replies without looking back, continuing to drag you through the crowd.

“Hansol, let me go,” you repeat, hurt evident in your voice. 

Halting in his tracks, Hansol turns to face you, “No, I’m not letting you go again.” Something in his tone makes you think he means more than what he’s saying and you guess right when he adds, “Just… please let me explain. I don’t want to lose you like this.”

Concern floods your features and you grow more nervous than before, but find yourself nodding to his request. It’s not like you’re gonna say no, you never have when it comes to him. 

In a short while, he leads you through a door and out into the backyard, not stopping until he reaches a tree away from the crowd. Turning to finally face you, Hansol takes his time to look at you, really look at you, his stare making you feel like he can see your soul. 

“Why were you avoiding me?” you break first, unable to bear the tension. 

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were—”

“I wasn’t avoiding you, I was avoiding the mistletoe!” Hansol raises his voice just enough so you can hear him over your own thoughts. Finally letting go of your wrist, much to your dismay, he runs his hand through his hair, pacing back and forth in front of you. 

“Why were you avoiding the mistletoe?” you prod, knowing that he needs your assistance in order to continue. 

Sighing, he stops his pacing and comes back to face you. “The guys had this plan,” he starts and you make sure to listen since he’s finally opening up to you. “They were gonna get the both of us under the mistletoe and get us to kiss.”

The revelation has you reeling and your heart starts to beat so fast that it might beat right out of your chest. “Wait, so you avoided me because you didn’t want to kiss me?”

“Of course, I didn’t want to kiss you,” he confirms and if your heart wasn’t broken before, it certainly is now. 

“Wow, that’s um, great—”

“It’s not like that,” Hansol clarifies quickly, not wanting you to misunderstand further. “The reason I didn’t want to kiss you was because I didn’t want to ruin everything and lose you.”

“Why would that ruin everything?” you ask but Hansol doesn’t seem to hear you, too lost in his own head and feelings.

“But then, you said you were going to kiss Mingyu,” he continued, voice pained, “and it turns out that I was going to lose you even if I didn’t kiss you.”

“I wasn’t going to kiss—”

“I don’t want you to kiss him,” Hansol looks at you, broken. “Especially not after all you said in those texts.”

Dread fills you and suddenly you feel queasy from more than just the alcohol. “What did I say?” you ask in a panic, your memory failing you. 

Hansol closes the gap between your bodies and cups your face in his hands, “You said that you wanted me to see you, really see you—”

“Oh god, I—”

“—and that you really like me.”

The urge to run breaches the surface. “Listen, Hansol I—”

“I’m in love with you,” Hansol confesses and you swear your heart stops beating. “I didn’t think you felt the same way so I never said anything and that’s why I thought I was going to ruin everything if I kissed you. So, don’t kiss Mingyu. Please.”

“I was never going to,” you finally get to tell him. “The whole reason he was taking me to a mistletoe was so I could stand there and wait for you to show up. He was going to fetch you straight after.”

“Really?” he asks, face lighting up with hope. 

Nodding, you wrap your hands around his wrists while he still holds you. “You’re such an idiot,” you scold lightly, tears of joy welling up at the corners of your eyes.

“I’m your idiot.”

“You’re blind too.”

“The same goes for you,” Hansol scoffs.

Stepping closer until your chest to chest, your lips brush against his. “Too bad there isn’t a mistletoe out here,” you tease.

“Actually, there is one,” he swallows nervously, pointing at a tree branch above you. There it is, in all its glory, tied with a red string. “I put it up there, in case I ever got the courage to actually confess to you the way I wanted to.”

“You’re so cheesy.”

“Can I kiss you yet?” Hansol whines, leaning his forehead against yours. 

Smiling, you cave in, kissing him just as you wanted.

-

[10:41pm] nonieeee: what? [10:41pm] nonieeee: what mistletoe? [10:42pm] nonieeee: y/n! [10:42pm] nonieeee: what are you talking about? [10:42pm] nonieeee: where are you? [10:43pm] nonieeee: are you kidding me right now? [10:43pm] nonieeee: y/n!! stop!! [10:43pm] nonieeee: reply back to me right now [10:47pm] nonieeee: and mingyu isn’t answering me either so that’s just great :) [10:47pm] nonieeee: y/n i’ve been in love with you for the longest time i can’t believe you’re so blind [10:48pm] nonieeee: how come you never said anything??? [10:50pm] nonieeee: wait don’t answer that, i should’ve known but i was too busy pretending that i was imagining things because i don’t deserve someone as amazing as you hahaha [10:51pm] nonieeee: also you looked so beautiful tonight i lost all my fucking brain cells [10:52pm] nonieeee: i can’t believe i avoided you all night just for this to happen [10:52pm] nonieeee: and i can’t believe i’m saying all of this to you through text instead of in person [10:53pm] nonieeee: i’m sorry you like an idiot like me [10:53pm] nonieeee: please stay where you are [10:53pm] nonieeee: i’m gonna come and find you [10:55pm] nonieeee: no matter what happens, please don’t kiss mingyu

-

[03:00pm] you: hansol? [03:00pm] nonieeee: yes, my beloved [03:01pm] you: i 🌋 you (get it? i lava you) [03:02pm] nonieeee: now who’s cheesy? [03:02pm] nonieeee: i 🌋 you too :)

[ Challenge Master List ] - link to be added at a later date!

TAGLIST: @teamwangs

© nonrevblr 2022

pls do not copy/repost my work

[lokidokieokie]

Campfire Confessions

Summary: You and James share stories of your wildest adventures while on a camping trip, leading up to a confession of their own.

Pairing: James Conrad x Adventurer!Reader

Warning(s): fluffy fluff, love confessions, James is probably very OOC

You and James had been working together for months now, leading expeditions and exploring the wilds of some of the most remote and dangerous places that Earth had to offer. You had always admired his strength, his courage, and his quick wit, and you found yourself growing closer to him with each passing day.

As you sat around the campfire one night, roasting marshmallows and swapping stories, you found yourself gazing into James' eyes, feeling a fluttering sensation in your chest.

"So, James," you said, breaking the silence. "What's the craziest thing you've ever done on an expedition?"

James chuckled, taking a sip of his coffee from his thermos. "Oh, that's a tough one," he said. "I've done a lot of crazy things in my time, but I think the most insane--besides accepting the job for Skull Island--was probably the time I had to outrun a pack of angry wolves in the Yukon."

You leaned forward, eager to hear more. "What happened?"

James grinned, his eyes glinting with mischief. "Well, the team and I were tracking a herd of caribou, and we accidentally stumbled upon a pack of wolves that had been following them. Safe to say that they didn't take kindly to our presence, and before we knew it, they were charging straight at us."

You gasped, feeling a shiver run down your spine. "What did you do?"

"I did what any sane person would do," James said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I ran like hell. I had never run so fast in my life. Luckily, I had a head start, and I managed to make it to a nearby tree before the wolves caught up to me."

You laughed, feeling a sense of relief wash over you. "Well, I'm glad you made it out okay."

James shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee. "It's all part of the job, you know? Sometimes you have to take risks if you want to make a discovery."

You nodded, feeling a sense of pride in the work that you and James were doing together. "You know, James," you said, looking into his eyes. "I don't think I could do this without you. You make me feel safe, even in the most dangerous situations."

You chortled, "Hell, you made me feel safe when we were being hunted by those skull-crawlers."

James smiled, reaching out to take your hand. "That's what I'm here for," he said softly. "To protect you and keep you safe."

You felt your heart swell with emotion, feeling a rush of affection for the man sitting next to you. "James," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "I think...I think I'm in love with you."

James' eyes widened in surprise, but then he smiled, his hand tightening around yours. "I think I'm in love with you too," he said, leaning in to press his lips against yours.

As you kissed, the flames of the campfire flickering around you, you knew that you had found something special with James Conrad. Together, you would explore the world and face its dangers, but you would do so with the knowledge that you had each other's backs.

A/N thought I'd try something new :)

Taglist! Everything: @thewaithfuckingannoyme@evelyn-kingsley@moonlight-ee

[nuagederose]

Dark Roots of Earth | Chapter Six: Where the Wild Roses Grow

ao3 link

“I cannot believe we did that,” Christine chuckled.

“‘We’?” Alex burst out laughing.

“Hey, you talked me into it.”

“Yeah, and you got a lot more chutzpah than I realized, too,” he said, still laughing.

It was two weeks after the incident happened, and after Alex had begun teaching summer school as well, and thus, he had money filtering in from that point onwards. As a result, he took her out to dinner out on Long Island, and she resisted the urge to tell him about what Nelly did for her in the wintry months before then. In fact, it had been quite some time since she had even thought about Chris, as her thoughts of him had subsided away while she and Eric were out in California together. Christine sipped on her milkshake and locked eyes with him from across the table, and all the while, Alex would lean back every so often so she could see his body.

She had also stopped thinking about Ann as well, as her memories had faded out with the passing of time. Her time with Alex, and she had let her own ghosts fall away for the last couple of weeks, and after she had promised to tell him about it as well.

Perhaps she could move on after all. She wanted to move on, anyway.

“I've been meaning to ask you this, too,” he started again as he set his glass of stout back down on the table, “how’s Eric? Was he at all excited to be out in California?”

“Oh, he’s been great!” Christine replied. “And yeah, he absolutely loved California. For him, it was all about being down by the water most of the time.”

He chuckled at that: those deep eyes never left her gaze for one second right then. It was like a flash of light as she thought back to that night in the snow, and she had her hand on Chris' tombstone. Where before she saw the ocean, she could feel the cold of the stone.

“I should also tell you that I have another few gigs coming up here,” he reminded her.

“A few?” She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Yeah, one right after the other, if you can believe that,” he said, and his face lit up at the sound of that. “Yeah, I have two with the trio, another with another kinda... let's call them a 'fusion' band, and another one that's a little more rock n' roll. All within days of each other.”

“Wow-ee. And I'm guessing they're all taking place over the Fourth of July weekend.”

“And you would be correct,” he declared, and he chuckled again, that time a nervous chuckle. She could see it in his eyes. She could only hope that Captain Howdy hadn't suspected anything with him, especially when, as far as she knew, she never saw either of them out there on the street.

“You wanna pull another prank on her?” he asked her.

“If it's nothing that's not going to get us killed,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “How's that sign doing, by the way?”

“Oh, some people in the apartment complex were like 'hurray! Someone finally broke that damned thing!' but she was livid, though.”

“I would imagine.” She chuckled.

“And now, she's having it put back up again, but now—” He leaned forward with his hands folded before him on the table. “—get this. Apparently, that sign has set her back some... three grand, I think is what she said. I wasn't properly paying attention, but it's costing her a bunch of money to have the glass replaced and also to have it moved so it's facing more towards the street as well as the synagogue. Because of that, it's costing her company more money out of pocket, money that they can hardly keep up with now just to keep their heads above water. She hasn't asked me for anything... yet, anyways.”

“You know she will,” Christine followed along.

“Oh, absolutely. You know, I just keep expecting to get a call from her asking me for a thousand bucks or something like that. So—”

“If we're going to do another prank, we're going to have to do something that's not going to make you possibly inadvertently tighten your belt at some point,” she followed along some more.

“Exactly! And to make matters even worse, she actually wants a piece of my world music project.”

Christine gaped at him.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah! She and I were talking about it... last week, I think it was. And she practically begged me to get onboard with it.”

“Did you accept?”

“I told her I would think about it,” he replied with a pursing of his lips. He locked eyes with her again. “Do you want to be a part of it?”

“What would I do?”

“Well, I've seen you become a bit of an artist lately,” he noted, and Christine shook her head. “What're you shaking your head for?” He couldn't resist chuckling again.

“I'm not that good,” she protested.

“Oh, but you can be,” he assured her with a wag of his finger. “If you're willing to go ahead and make a freaking graphic novel by hand, I reckon you can do some album art for me. Or—” He snapped his fingers and his face lit up again. “You can do illustrations that go along with the music. You know, like an accompanying piece or something like that.”

“But that would require me to do good art, though,” she pointed out as she brought the straw of her milkshake back up to her mouth.

“Christine, art requires courage—and as I've seen, chutzpah. You've got a great deal of it. You can do it. If I give you a deadline, you can do it. If you did it for me in a scholastic setting, you can probably do it here, too.”

“Well, I'd have to listen to the songs you've done, though,” she insisted with a little gyration to her head.

“Now, that can be arranged,” he promised her with another wag of his finger and a wink; he then leaned back in the seat again so she could see his body.

“Shifting gears, when’s the first day of fall term?” she asked him, and then he paused with his attention directed off to the side for a moment.

“September the... sixth, I think?” he gingerly replied. “All I know is it's the day after Labor Day. You know how it usually goes with us.” He flashed her a wink before he sipped on his stout. “How's your milkshake, by the way?”

“It's delicious,” she told him, and she offered him a sip. “Nice and chocolatey and decadent. Care for a taste?”

“After my beer?” He raised his eyebrows and looked on at the chocolate ice cream within the frosty glass as well as the remainder of the dollop of whipped cream on top: she did offer him the cherry on top before then, however. “It's so tempting but I worry about the aftertaste. Maybe next time, though.”

No sooner had he said that when their food finally came. Christine thought about a next time in which Alex would help himself to something as tasty as a milkshake, or maybe something else hearty and filling. She thought back to her trip out to California, and the night where Eric helped himself to some fresh slices of pie courtesy of the diner they had visited: he wanted more than one, and she was happy to share a second slice with him. Now, they were in another diner, and they were seated right near the counter which held the display of all the pies and cakes they had made for that day. It was a busy day prior to then, so she thought about suggesting some apple pie to him and seeing his reaction to it.

It was a crazy thought but she pictured herself tying him down to a chair and feeding him some pie. She shook her head at that, to which he looked on at her slightly baffled. It kept slipping through, however, the thought of the two of them donned in black leather together and she would be the mistress and the dominant over him. She continued to shake her head at the suggestion as it seemed to come out of nowhere.

“You okay?” he asked her with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I just... think I got some water in my ear is all,” was all she could think of. She hated the idea of having to lie to him, but it was either that or tell the full scoop going on behind her eyes out in the open like that. But then again, when he finished his pasta, he leaned back and rested his hands on his belly to relish the feeling.

“God, that was good,” he said in a low voice. “Filling, too.”

“All those veggies,” she remarked as she finished off the rest of her French fries. “All that cream sauce.”

He gave her a chef's kiss and downed the rest of his ice water. Christine couldn't help but let her eyes wander on him, and more so when they walked outside to the warm evening and the growing shadows around them.

“Not gonna lie, that Reuben you had looked utterly delicious,” he confessed to her. “But... I love my Italian food, though.”

“Even when it's not that cold out,” she remarked.

“Even when it's not that cold out, exactly!”

“By the way, would it be alright if I sat in on a class session?” she asked him.

“You’d have to get a guest pass from the registrar's office but, yeah, you absolutely can,” he assured her with a hiccup. “Do you remember where we parked?”

“I think we shared a cab,” she told him, and she grimaced at the thought of him driving after he had had a few too many to drink. The wind fluttered his black hair back from his shoulder and the side of his neck, and even though they were out in public in Bedford, she couldn't resist it for any longer. She put her arms around his body and rose up on her toes so she could kiss him on the side of his neck.

“I’ve always loved you,” she whispered right into his ear.

“Whoa…” he breathed. He turned his attention to her and showed her a little smile. “Let's go around the corner here.” But she was quicker than him: Christine led him around the corner of the diner into an alleyway so they would remain out of sight. She couldn't hold it in for a second longer as she shoved her tongue inside of his mouth. He seduced her with the taste of Alfredo sauce and stout while she wanted to tempt him, and constantly tempt him like the kiss of chocolate and the taste of pastrami. Her hands glided down the small of his back as if she wanted to peel off his pants for him, but she would have to go through his belt, however.

Meanwhile, his hands found their way up the inside of her shirt and to the hooks of her bra. His body was so warm and welcoming, even in the thick of a warm summer's evening; he unhooked her while she undid his belt for him. Nothing more than the shadows to protect them from any passersby on the street next to them.

Her fingers crept down inside of his pants just to feel him.

His fingers meanwhile crept inside of the cups of her bra to feel her.

“Chr—Alex—” She choked out the words, and all the while, she stopped herself from saying the wrong name.

“Christine—my strawberry girl—” He breathed the words right into her ear.

It was right then she realized that Alex never received her letter.

He never saw her confession. He never saw her tell the truth. He never saw any of it. And she wondered what exactly had happened to it if it had been lost in the post or if Captain Howdy had something to do with it.

Either way, she knew right then that he never learned about her past. And she held back from the softness of his cherry lips and his body.

“What happened?” he asked her, slightly worried. Christine could feel her throat close up at the sight of him and at the thought of it all.

Chris. Ann. The ghosts of her past. The skeletons in her closet.

Alex frowned.

“What did I do?” he asked her. In the dim light, she could see the look of concern on his face. The concern that turned into pain as if he had done something wrong.

“It's not you,” she assured him with a shake of her head. “It's not you. I promise, it wasn't you. I just—” She shook her head again and brought her hands to her face.

“Christine?” he asked her, and she could feel the tears welling up. “Christine, what happened?”

She turned away from him, towards the street so he wouldn't have to see her.

“Christine—”

Her mind was going a mile a minute as she knew that she was going to have to untangle everything from thence forth. She caught the sound of his jeans rustling through her own tears and racing thoughts. He rested a hand on her shoulder; she could smell the stout on his breath and the cologne on his neck as he brought his face closer to hers.

“Maybe there is in fact something that I don’t know about you,” he confessed to her, and she shuddered at the thought of that. “Was it Eric?”

“No,” she whispered, and shook her head. “It wasn't.”

Alex lightly stroked her back. “Take your time with it,” he coaxed her. “You don’t have to tell me anything right now if it’s really that heavy.”

“And it is heavy,” she replied in a gentle whimper. He put his arm before her chest and turned her around so she faced him again. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and held his face close to hers again; she could feel his comfort again.

“The scars on your heart tell me everything, but your lips need to carry them,” he whispered over the noise of the street next to them. She sniffled and a tear streaked down from her eye.

“Be brave, Christine,” he said. “Your strength is formidable.”

“I don’t know, Alex…” she confessed with a shake of her head. “I’m weak and I know if I go back to it, I’ll just tear myself apart.”

He lightly kissed her neck. “You aren’t weak,” he whispered into her ear. “You chucked a brick from thirty feet away and destroyed the sign on the outside of the office building belonging to my fiancée, and then I pulled the fire alarm, and we ran off. You have been staring at your own insecurity and began taking art classes. You are anything but weak.”

More tears streaked down her face, and she struggled to catch her breath. But he still kissed her again, that time on her lips and with the most passion she had ever felt from him. She was the one who gave out the passionate ones, but he proved to her that he could do it himself. He was willing to spoil her while keeping one foot back with his relationship. He was willing to spoil her and see her for what she kept in the wings, and yet she worried about him finding out the entire truth, all of the shades of gray she withheld in the wings, away from his already wounded heart.

Alex put his arms around her, and she followed suit with him. Christine lay her head on his chest to hear his heartbeat and his steady breathing; even with her bra unhooked, she pressed her chest against his belly to feel his warmth. She gripped onto her wrist, right at the small of his back: she could feel him doing the same with her.

She didn't want to let him go.

She wanted to let the skeletons rest in the graveyard, but she needed to bury them first. And yet she didn't want to let Chris go. She didn't want to let him go, and she didn't want Alex to know about it, either, simply because he was buried way out on Long Island.

And yet she didn't want to let Alex go. Chris needed to rest before she could be inside of Alex's warmth for a second longer.

“You are anything but weak,” he repeated to her, and he tucked another lock of hair behind her ear again. They locked eyes again, and that time she could see the ocean with him again.

“Come on... let's share a cab and I'll take you home. I'll give you my schedule on the ride back so you can come and sit in with me in a class. If anyone gives you any looks, I'll give 'em hell. And most of all, I'll make sure you and Eric have front row seats for the trio shows.” He kissed her forehead, and she curled her toes inside of her shoes at the feeling.

How she wanted to keep his warmth all to herself.

But at the same time, she knew that she had to bury Chris again, and something told her she could do it without Alex knowing. She could do it without any question about it.

She could do it through art, and she hoped that he was right and she was brave enough to bring it forth.

[sketchy-scribs-n-doods]

Bee and Argie, Billy and Argyle

Arturo Guillermo Franco Valdes.

Arturo Guillermo, and a friend that calls him Guille, Artie, Argie.

A red faced Billy that pronounces Guillermo as ‘Gah-ee-ler-moh’ before learning that ‘ll’ makes a ‘yuh’ sound in Spanish.

Artie calling him Bee-yee, and later Bee, as a joke because of it.

Billy tosses out nicknames like the affection he’s never been sure how to express. But he loves the way his friend's name rolls off his tongue, the syllables strange and clunky and a challenge that Billy readily takes up. Soon, it falls full and melodic from his lips, prettier than any song he's ever heard on the old radio his mom left him with.

Mi amigo, Arturo.

Argie tells him not to sweat it, but Billy doesn’t understand why nobody else seems to want to make the effort. Like it’s too difficult, or like Argie isn’t worth the effort. Most of the other Mexican kids at school already know how to pronounce the names that give their white teachers pause, but outside of that demographic there’s a pathetic lack of effort that incites Billy sometimes. 

“Don’t sweat it, bro. Not everyone can roll their Rs as good as you.”

“What, like it’s hard? Fuckin’ idiots.”

(Years later, when they find each other again, Billy will know why his old friend Argie goes by Argyle, because Argyle will nudge him with a serene little smile of his and say, “Long time no see, Bee. Your ol’ pal Artie Gyle-ermo missed you, amigo.”)

Once, early in their friendship, Billy asks Argie why he has so many damn names. Why does he need like half a dozen of them? And Argie says,

“Well, I dunno. I think it makes me pretty damn special, though. How many ‘Arturo Guillermo Franco Valdes’ do you know?”

“Just you, obviously. But that doesn’t mean much, I don’t know any other ‘William Hargrove’s either.”

“Maybe not. But it’s prolly a lot easier for some random Hargrove to be named Billy than for someone to line up a buncha random names to smash together and create a Franco Valdes named Arturo Guillermo.”

“That ‘random Hargrove’ is me, jackass!”

“Exactly!”

“At least my name’s not a fuckin’ mouthful!”

“Oh, so I’m a mouthful, am I?”

“Fuck you!”

A few months later, well into Billy's friendship with Argyle, the kid invites him over to his place to check out his new bike or something, Billy doesn't remember.

What he does remember is meeting Argyle's dad and paternal grandma, Nana Hermelinda.

It's getting colder, for California at least, and Nana insists on making the kids chocolate abuelita while Argyle's dad is at work. A much richer hot chocolate than Billy is used to, the smell is spicy sweet and warm in the air as it foams up in the pot Nana is using, instead of the mild chemical sweetness of the mugs Billy puts in the microwave when he can sneak a packet of Swiss Miss in the winter. Her worn, wrinkled hands make quick work of it, expertly spinning between them a wooden stick with rotating round bits at the end that goes into the frothy mix. Nana calls it a molinillo when she sees him looking at it, and rather than freeze up over being caught staring, as he normally would, Billy instead finds himself trying to pronounce the new word for the remaining five minutes the chocolate takes to finish. The air feels almost soft around him, pleasantly warm and sweet like cinnamon as Nana lets the mixture cool while she searches for mugs in the cabinet above them. When she offers him his own, a brown mug with a rounded bottom and pretty dotted flower designs on its shiny finish, Billy is shy and hesitant to take it. But the warmth as he wraps his chilly fingers around it is welcoming and its smells so good. The first sip is cautious, slow like he's still unsure about whether he's allowed something so warm and comforting.

It's incredible.

Billy's pretty blue eyes light up like Argyle has never seen before. He can feel his heart thump awkwardly in his chest as those baby blues shine bright in the soft yellow light of the kitchen.

Then Billy lowers the mug, and a little mustache of foamed milk and chocolate lines his upper lip. Argyle quickly forgets the brief stutter of his heartbeat and cackles at the sight.

Billy is too busy having a religious experience over his mug of hot chocolate to bother with telling him to shut up like he normally would, but he doesn't truly mind- he likes the sound of Argie's loud bouncing laughter.

Nana looks fondly at them over her own mug, sitting comfortably on a stool by the kitchen counter as Billy politely thanks her for the drink with what little clumsy Spanish he's learned from Argyle so far. She coos at him, putting down her mug as she answers in a kind, lilting Spanish that Argyle will later tell him roughly means, "Of course, love. Come here whenever you like. I will make you a mug anytime, son." Billy inhales the warm steam wafting up from the mug he holds tight as Nana places a gentle hand on his cheek and calls him mijo.

Years later, Billy still remembers it as one of the last times he'd felt so held and cared for.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #51: Dex

This story is highly autobiographical in a way that's actually kind of painful and embarrassing, and you'll all know why after you read it. And you'll also know why it has taken me two and a half years to write one year's worth of stories and I'm still not done.

BTW I hope like fuck none of the Reddit handles in here are real, but I didn't have a chance to check them all.

***

Jason had promised his boss he’d have a debugged version of the code checked in by morning.

He’d been tracking down a bug when he’d gotten sidetracked reading Stack Overflow. Dammit. He’d just lost an hour, and he still had no idea why his code wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was 10 pm. Teresa was expecting a new version to be checked in by 9 am and she was expecting that it would run.

This was a job for more Coca-Cola. Jason got up, went downstairs and got himself a slice of pizza and a cold Coke.

His mom, also burning the late night oil at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, said, “How is it going? You think you’ll have what your boss is expecting by tomorrow?”

No. “Yes,” Jason said. “I just need a few more hours to track this down.”

“Well, you’re running out of them. You’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep, then waking up fresh in the morning early enough to work on it then.”

Mom was 57 and had apparently forgotten everything she had ever known about how night owls worked, despite having spent her younger years routinely staying up until 2 am. “Is that what you’re doing?” Jason couldn’t help saying.

“I’ve got a house showing tomorrow, I just have to make sure that I have my talking points memorized.”

“Why? Does the house really suck?”

“It doesn’t really suck. It’s a good house, really. Great bones, a nice big yard. But I’m gonna have to redirect the prospective owner’s attention away from how ugly the carpet is and things like that, because the seller? Whoo-ee. There’s people who have no taste, and there’s people who never fix anything, and there’s people who own dogs, and then there’s my seller, who is all three.” She sighed. “I tried to get them to rip the carpet out and install hardwood flooring before putting the house on the market, but the market is hot right now; I don’t blame them for wanting to charge forward. I just think they’d get more if their house didn’t smell like dog and look like water damage had a horrible transporter accident with the 1970’s.”

“That bad, huh?” He leaned up against the fridge, sipping his Coke. “You wanna go over your spiel with me, Mom? Some late night practice before you go to bed?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds good.”

So Mom talked enthusiastically, if hoarsely, about the four bedrooms and the two and a half bathrooms and the recently modernized kitchen and how great the neighborhood was, and Jason listened, because he wasn’t contributing nearly as much to the mortgage as his mom was and she was also paying most of the utilities, so her career was important, not to mention what stress did to her heart.

When he got back to his computer it was 11:30 and he’d finished his Coke and pizza. He thought about getting ice cream, but best not to do that until Mom went to bed, if he didn’t want to get sucked into another conversation. Not that conversations with Mom were bad; they were much more entertaining than debugging code, which was the problem.

He opened up his coding window, stared at it for thirty seconds while doing nothing, and then convinced himself that maybe Reddit would have an answer to his question.

It didn’t. It did have answers to how to solve a particularly difficult problem in his current favorite game, a number of people who wanted to know if they were the asshole, some great reviews of movies on streaming that he hadn’t had a chance to watch yet, political rants, and some really entertainingly stupid coding mistakes that people had posted.

It was 12:30 am. Teresa was expecting this at 9 and she was expecting it to work.

His eyes glazed. The act of reviewing the code for the tenth time, looking for the bug he hadn’t yet been able to find despite knowing the general area it had to be in, was almost physically painful. He checked his brackets, again. The error didn’t look like a missing close bracket, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had a dollar for every time the error didn’t look like a missing close bracket but turned out to be one, he’d have maybe twenty dollars, which wasn’t a lot in terms of actual money but was a lot of times for the same stupid thing to happen in his code.

The software was supposed to warn him when there was an unclosed bracket, but half the time, if the code was particularly complex, it didn’t. It just re-interpreted the bracket locations and then his code broke.

One more time. Stepping through. Why the fuck was it stopping there? There was nothing there that could account for the error.

Time to go get ice cream. Maybe some sugar would help him stay awake and focused enough to get this done. Another Coke, possibly, too.

When he sat back down, he had Discord messages, so he needed to check them. And messages on Slack, which he could be checking in the morning, and probably should be, but maybe one of his co-workers had found an answer to his problem. They hadn’t, but Priyal had a different question and that one, he thought he could quickly get an answer to, so he fired up Google, dug in, and got her answer for her, which he sent. She’d have it in the morning. Unlike Teresa, who probably would not have what she was expecting.

It was 2 am. Stupid of him to get sidetracked with Priyal’s problem when he was having such difficulty with his own. He flicked over to Reddit again because this was unbearably boring and if he didn’t give himself a break from it, he’d fall asleep.

But he had to go back to debugging the code. Or to sleep. He could handle Teresa being pissed off in the morning a lot better if he got some sleep.

Third page of the subreddit he was on. Four. Man, he needed to keep up with this stuff, there was so much here he hadn’t read yet.

Fifth page of the subreddit. He really, really needed to get back to work. It was 2:30.

A screenshot of something really stupid from Cicada. Damn, someone actually posted something that stupid? Over to Cicada to see if there was context that explained it. There wasn’t, but there was a lengthy thread of people absolutely shredding the OP. Including someone he followed, and he should probably catch up with that.

No, he should get off Cicada and go back to coding. Or bed. His eyes were burning. Bed was probably a better idea. Give up on finishing the debug, tell Teresa he hadn’t found it yet and would need another day.

That was an interesting news article, though. He had to check that out.

No, he didn’t. He needed to go to bed.

Jason’s mouse clicked the link to the article. His eyes read the page, despite burning with exhaustion. Some frantic voice in his head was yelling, screaming, get up, put the computer down, you need to be awake to deal with Teresa in the morning, it’s late, you’re doing nothing useful, get up.

Back to Reddit.

Stop this. Get up. Go to bed. You need to go to bed.

3:30 am. He could barely keep his eyes open, but they were still riveted to the computer, his butt still glued to his chair.

Get up get up get up and go to bed, go to bed, turn the monitor off, you need to go to sleep so you can deal with Teresa tomorrow, get up, go to bed, go to bed

4 am. Look, there was his Firefox home tab, with articles from Pocket. A few of those looked interesting.

Don’t read them, you need to sleep, you need to sleep

Right, right, he didn’t have time to read them right now. He just needed to open them all so they would be there for him tomorrow. If he didn’t do that, Pocket would refresh and he’d lose all of them.

Wow, did they really find carbon deposits on the moon? He had to check that out.

Stop it, stop it, you have to stop it, you need to sleep, stop it

5 am. There was no way he’d be up at 9 to deal with Teresa.

Email. “Hey, I’ve been up all night bashing my head against this thing and I’ve made progress—” This was a lie. “—but it’s still not running. I’m gonna have to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll be logging in around 11 am.” This was also a lie, it would probably be closer to noon. But since he worked from home, all he needed to do was drag ass out of bed around 10:30 to send everyone a status update, tell them he was diving into the code and probably wouldn’t see incoming notifications until he came up for air, and then dive back into his bed instead.

Set an alarm for 9:30 am. Set an alarm for 10 am. He’d blow through them both, of course, but they’d wake him up enough to actually wake up when the 10:30 alarm went off, and then he’d convince himself to get up and send the status message by promising himself he’d return to bed.

Check out that article about a different way to manage your ADHD?

No. Go to sleep. Off the computer. Sleep.

Right, but obviously, he needed to put on his Spotify for music to fall asleep to, and adjust the volume because he couldn’t let it be too loud or it would wake Mom up, calm and peaceful or not.

Pop over to Reddit one last time.

5:30 am. Sleep!

The panic finally overwhelmed the inertia and he managed to drag himself off his chair, turn the monitor off, and stumble to bed. Now to get some sleep.

Oh, except now, he couldn’t sleep because he was overwhelmed by his anxiety and fear about not getting enough sleep to deal with Teresa even if he slept until noon because she was going to be seriously pissed off with him because this was the third time he’d blown the deadline.

It was another hour before exhaustion finally claimed him, and he knew that because the sun had risen.

***

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm.

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm, he’d blown through 9:30 and 10 just like he’d planned, but he’d never turned on the 10:30 alarm, so it was half past noon and he’d never sent that status message, so everyone would know he overslept way past the point Teresa would be okay with after an all nighter, and there was a meeting at 1 pm and he had to shower and shave because it was going to be a meeting with video so he couldn’t look like he’d just dragged himself out of bed.

Or maybe he could. He sent Teresa a message on Slack. I think I’m sick. My throat’s sore, and I’ve got a migraine. And I don’t have the program working anyway, so there’s really nothing to show anyone. Can we postpone until tomorrow?

The response was almost immediate. You need to figure out how to manage your time better. You’re sick because you stayed up all night.

Yeah, but I was trying to solve the bug.

If you can’t get something fixed by 11 pm, it’s not going to get fixed. You should have gone to bed.

I know, but I wanted to try. I was getting close. This was a lie. I thought I could get it done before morning.

Yes, and instead you made yourself sick and the program still doesn’t work. ☹  I’ll postpone the meeting this time, Jason, but we need results before tomorrow. Sorry that you’re sick but you know as well as I do it’s because you didn’t get any sleep.

Yeah, I know. I’ll pull myself together, have some coffee, and get back to work. I’ll try to have it done before 5. This was a lie. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to get it done by 5, not when he was this tired.

Do you want me to have Jorge review it? Maybe he can see something you missed?

No, that would be the worst possible thing, because then Jorge would know that he’d made basically no progress last night. I don’t want to add to his workload, but if I’m running into trouble later today I’ll pass it over to him, see if adding some eyeballs might help.

All right, I’ll let him know.

And now Jason was awake, the imminent terror of Jorge finding out that he had done basically nothing last night flooding him with enough adrenaline that he could focus enough to turn on his monitor and get back to work.

***

He had to stop living like this.

Sooner or later he was going to get caught, and he was going to get fired. He couldn’t stay focused on his work when it was boring, which debugging generally was; he enjoyed the act of creating code, making things happen, but when it wouldn’t work, it was an exercise in frustration and soul-crushing despair. He couldn’t keep up with his own documentation, he missed emails and chat messages because he was obsessed with something else when they came through, and he wasn’t even spending his time doing things that were fun; endlessly surfing Reddit and checking the news and articles wasn’t something he did because it was incredibly fun. It was just more bearable than focusing on work, sometimes.

It wasn’t like there would ever be a programming job where you never needed to debug, or never needed to polish off the last few functions that you’d kept skipping because of how tedious they were. He knew that. He’d gone into the profession knowing that. But when he was younger, his meds had worked better. Or maybe he’d just been better at being able to go without sleep. Or not as acclimated to the panic. It was the panic that got him moving, that made it so he could do the boring jobs. He had to be terrified of the consequences of failure before the fear and anxiety could override the whatever-it-was that kept him sitting in his chair, playing video games or surfing the Internet, rather than doing the boring parts of his job.

It had gotten worse since he started working from home. In the past, he’d had the fear that his boss might come by and see him goofing off. So he’d still goofed off, but carefully, always prepared to jump back into his work at a moment’s notice. Sometimes he’d pushed himself, polished off what was normally three or four days’ work in one afternoon, and then goofed off for the next three days. Because he could. Because when he was on, he was magic. The insights were lightning, his speed was legendary, his accuracy was amazing. When he was on.

He was off most of the time. And more and more often, nowadays.

Medication didn’t work anymore. It just made him jittery and irritable, so he’d stopped taking it. Overdosing on caffeine did the same but somehow felt more palatable, and he’d grown to associate the feeling of being competent with the tastes of coffee and Coke, so he used those instead. Then he couldn’t get to sleep. On the nights when he actually managed to get a satisfying amount of work done, he might have a beer or two to unwind and let himself relax and sleep, but that was impossible to do when it was late and he wasn’t done. Which was most nights, nowadays.

He couldn’t keep living like this. He couldn’t depend on a state of fear to enable him to work. Sooner or later he’d slip up, he’d be caught, and he’d get fired. And then he’d have to admit to his mother that he got fired. That terrified him far more than the thought of having to get another job. Jobs weren’t that hard to come by, but his mother’s disappointment and sorrow was utterly horrible.

Jason had spent his childhood alternately disappointing her and making her proud. She thought he was stable now, that the problems that had plagued his childhood – the inability to do homework, the losing it when he had done it, the dishes he didn’t wash, the laundry he didn’t do, the leaves he didn’t rake – were gone. And it was true, nowadays he could get the laundry done, because he’d figured out how. Pile it up in front of his door, and as soon as it got too irritating to open his bedroom door, he could gather up the laundry in his arms and dump it in the wash. It helped that he’d finally figured out that he didn’t need to sort anything if he washed everything in cold water and never bought anything that was white.

He didn’t know any way to pile up a debugging project in front of a web browser. He’d tried using software that blocked him from doing anything that wasn’t work related, but the trouble was, Reddit was a legitimate source of information on how to fix issues he’d never encountered before, and Stack Overflow and other sites and forums dedicated to development problem solving were enticing time sinks of entertaining information. There was no way to solve this programmatically, because no AI was capable of telling the difference between “this is useful stuff you need to solve this problem right now” and “you’re just reading about all these other problems other people have had so you don’t have to work on your own problem.”

And even if there was…

Jason was one of the best programmers at the company. He was only 29, but he’d been doing this since he was 12. So people came to him with their problems, and he was usually able to solve those. Most problems people had were something he’d encountered so often he could fix them when asleep, which had actually sort of happened a couple of times – he had once or twice found that he’d sent an email at 3 am that he had no memory of sending, when he’d been pulling an all-nighter, that elegantly and correctly solved a co-worker’s problem.

Their problems were easy, and the feedback was immediate and gratifying. People thanked him profusely, told him he was a genius, sometimes gave him homemade cookies or delicious ethnic lunches (this was the thing he missed most about working in the office, but too many of his coworkers were also working from home; he’d gone in once or twice after lockdown was over, but it had never been the same again.) Everyone had nothing but great things to say about Jason’s willingness to help a coworker out and ability to solve their issues. His own problems, not so much. But he got a lot of leeway for being the genius who could fix everyone else’s issue.

When he was stuck, it was rare that anyone else could help him with it. And it was rarer that he was willing to let them. The humiliation of needing help, of what if it was a simple, stupid thing and it destroyed his wunderkind reputation that he’d missed it, made it so he never wanted help, not with the big problems he couldn’t solve himself. If your whole life was based on your skill at swimming, how close did you have to be to drowning before you were willing to call for help?

Jason managed to get the code working a little before 3 pm, after ignoring three messages from Teresa that maybe now it was time to bring Jorge in, and one from Jorge asking if there was anything he could do to help out. He then gratefully handed it over to Jorge. It’s working, but I could use some more thorough testing than I’ve been able to do. (I have done minimal testing because testing is so boring it makes me want to spork my eyeballs out, but I’ve made sure that it runs start to finish in the most basic scenarios and that the more complex functions kick in when given at least one example of data that should make them kick in.) The QA department would beat the crap out of it later, but the programmers didn’t hand over code to them until it at least ran, most of the time. Well, some of the time. Well, at least the one time they tried it.

He needed a nap, badly, but he was too wired to get one, and it wasn’t a good idea. If Jorge did find something in testing, he needed to at least look responsive. So he started reading the article tabs he’d opened last night, when he’d promised himself he’d just open them so they’d be available for him today.

Oh, and there was the article about a new treatment for ADHD. That was timely.

***

“The newest ADHD treatment on the market isn’t a pill, and it isn’t an app. Dex™ is an implant, that promises to revolutionize treatments for the long-forgotten invisible victims of ADHD… the ones who grew up.”

Oh, that was definitely promising. It had long been a source of deep irritation to Jason, and pretty much everyone else he knew with similar issues, that ADHD was treated as a disorder of childhood. Once you were grown up and out of the educational system, you were an adult and you could adult like an adult, because you were an adult! Right? It was a blind spot in the entire system. The go-to medications for kids could have long-term effects that got more and more unpleasant as you got older… such as developing high blood pressure. Or desensitizing to it, as Jason had. (His doctor had claimed that was not possible, but tolerance was a thing for pretty much every other drug, including allergy pills, so Jason thought that was bullshit. He was planning on changing doctors. As soon as he got around to picking a new one.)

But… implant?

“By utilizing dopamine, the natural chemical made by the body that promotes motivation, Dex™ enables adults with ADHD to stay focused on the important things in life. Their work. Their family. Their loved ones.”

Aaand it was off and running into marketing bullshit. Jason scrolled through the article, but it was pretty obviously pay-for-play.

Another article was more promising. “The idea behind Dex sounds frankly somewhat terrifying. A brain implant that uses AI learning algorithms to dose you with chemicals that make you want to do things? It sounds straight out of a science fiction dystopia. But in fact, the science behind Dex is rigorous.

“One of the biggest problems people with ADHD face is that they can’t motivate themselves to do what they know they need to do. This has long led to sufferers of the disorder being told they are ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated’, or worse things. But it turns out that this is a genuine medical condition. Science has identified the neurotransmitter in the brain that gives us motivation. It’s called dopamine, and people with ADHD don’t produce enough of it.

“By jolting the brain with a dose of dopamine every time the Dex user is doing something they need to do, it helps them stay focused and on task, even with the boring tasks that most ADHDers are famous for being unable to do. Wash the dishes. Remember to take out the trash. Finish that essay.

“Some have concerns because Dex is manufactured by Ulysses… the newest medical/pharmaceutical company to place its wares on the market. Ulysses’ focus has been on combining artificial intelligence with low-dose, just-in-time medication, such as the anti-anaphylactic implant Destiel or the—”

Wait. Wait. Did this company seriously name a medication Destiel? Who was that for, people who had never been in their teens on the Internet while a certain TV show had been airing?

“—or the virus-fighting Ajaxon, but—”

Too late, Jason couldn’t take a company seriously that named their product something like that. He flipped away to read about a nonprofit who would paint your roof with super-reflective white paint for free, to help fight climate change.

***

Jorge didn’t find any critical bugs, and Jason managed to take a nap after hours, which was good, because anxiety about the meeting that had been postponed started to creep in around 10 pm, and despite the fact that he knew he needed to be well-rested for the meeting, which had been moved to 1 tomorrow, he had to get online and play a video game to relax.

It was 3 am before the need to go to the bathroom forced him to get off the computer. He gratefully accepted the out his bladder had given him, and as soon as he was out, he went straight to bed. The light from the monitor was irritating, but if he got up and went over to the computer to turn off the monitor, he might succumb to the temptation of just checking one thing, and then who knew when he’d get to bed? It would go to sleep eventually, and in the meantime, he could use a sleep mask.

He hadn’t forgotten the alarms, this time. 9:30 am was probably too early to wake up when he’d hit bed at 3 am, but after yesterday, he knew he had to be online and responsive from early on to make up for his fuckup. Didn’t mean he had to actually work. As three cups of coffee made their way down his throat, he browsed online comics, read email, skimmed articles, answered Slack messages, pretended to be contributing to the discussion about the strategy for the meeting, and finally ended up at r/AMA, because when he googled Dex, he found that one of the people who’d developed it had done an AMA on it.

“I’m one of the lead scientists on the development of the new ADHD treatment, Dex. AMA”

He read over her initial post. Her name was Suzanne Burke and she worked for Ulysses, which was a subsidiary of the online retail-and-cloud-computing giant Jupiter.com. This was troubling. Jupiter was known for its forays into AI, having gotten its start with neural networks that recommended books to people, and was now well known for its near-ubiquitous AI household assistant, Ray-Ray. Mom had gotten one of those for Christmas last year, but Jason hadn’t let her hook it up. His specialty wasn’t cloud security, but he’d been working in IT long enough that he had no trust whatsoever in an appliance made by a giant corporation that could turn your furnace off and on and was probably sending all your data back to the mothership. On the other hand, he was guessing that Ulysses had been bought out by Jupiter, because naming a medical device after a fan fantasy of a gay relationship between a monster hunter and an angel from a TV show that had ended a few years ago did not seem like the kind of stupid mistake Jupiter would make.

[u/ineedcheese: How does it work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Diving in the deep end I see! OK, for any of this to make sense, I have to give you guys a simplified run-down of how ADHD itself works, because it isn’t “ooh! Shiny!” It’s a serious medical condition.

[Firstly, ADHD is described as Attention Deficit Disorder because from the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like. A person with ADHD can’t pay attention. Unless they’re really interested, and then they can’t stop paying attention. But that’s really more of a symptom. What it should be called is Executive Function Deficit Disorder or maybe Executive Dysfunction Disorder.

[You can think of a brain as having multiple multi-threaded tasks, like a computer. One of those tasks is consciousness, of course, but the rest of them run in the background and you are rarely aware of them. Until they break. Executive function is the manager, the dispatcher that takes commands from consciousness – or other parts of the brain, I’ll get to that – and, generally, informs consciousness of what it should be doing. It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is. It remembers where you put your keys. It allocates your attention to speech, to reading, to tasks.

[A lot of this is performed by stimulating the brain to release dopamine. Now, if you’ve ever sought out help for depression, you’ve probably heard of neurotransmitters. There’s tons of them, but the ones you hear about most are serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Very very roughly, and with the caveat that some recent evidence calls some of this into question, we can describe serotonin as the happiness chemical, dopamine as the motivation chemical, and norepinephrine as the excitement, fight-or-flight chemical. Very roughly.

[Basically everything a person does, is done because it feels good to do it – in some way – or, being smart animals, we know that not doing it has a bad result. If we don’t wash the dishes we get roaches – brr! If we don’t do our homework, we get a bad grade and Mom and Dad yell at us. In a normal brain, small amounts of motivational dopamine are released when we set ourselves to a task that will prevent a bad thing, but that we don’t inherently like. Or, sometimes, to a task that we enjoy, but maybe it’s hard and we’re not always feeling it. Wash the dishes, get a tiny amount of dopamine because yay, you have successfully fought off the roach apocalypse for another day.

[People with ADHD don’t get that. The small amounts of encouragement dopamine aren’t there. We don’t wash the dishes because we enjoy it, and it turns out, we don’t do it because we are afraid of the roaches. We do it because our executive function has decided that roaches are bad, and it will reward us with some dopamine for doing things to keep the roaches away. Everything we voluntarily do, we do because it gives us at least a little dopamine.

[I want you to think about the mythical Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a rock up a hill, because he’s been told he can be free of Hades if he gets it to the top – a thing he wants, a lot. What if someone tells him, the deal’s off? You’re never getting out of Hades, no matter what you do? Well, he probably wouldn’t keep pushing the rock, because what’s his motivation?

[That’s what washing the dishes is like if you have ADHD. It takes time, it’s not pleasant, and it doesn’t reward you with that little bitty bit of dopamine. So what’s your motivation to push the rock up the hill? You can intellectually know that washing the dishes is a good idea and that not doing it exposes you to disease, yucky tastes, and maybe roaches, but you don’t do the smart thing because it’s the smart thing. Or at least, most of us do not. We do the smart thing because executive function rewards us for doing it. And people with ADHD do not get that reward.”]

[u/beepityboopbop: “It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is.” Unless your name is Karen and you’ve called for technical support, in which case five minutes is an hour]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: Suzanne Burke you seem to have a serious fixation with roaches]

[u/semicolonbang: Yeah did the roaches eat your baby?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: They ate my last relationship. My girlfriend and I broke up because of roaches.]

[u/semicolonbang: that sounds like an interesting story]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it is but it’s got nothing to do with Dex so maybe I’ll answer it in a few days if I feel like it]

[u/ineedcheese: that’s a lot of stuff about how ADHD works but how does Dex work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Getting to that. People with ADHD gravitate toward things that overstimulate the dopamine reward system, because it’s the only way they get any. Playing video games generally gives you lots and lots of small rewards along the way. Endlessly bingeing Netflix feels good while you’re doing it because television is created to entertain and reward you.

[Now, being smart animals like the rest of humanity, ADHDers really do not want to spend their entire lives playing video games and bingeing Netflix. They want the same things anyone does – to do work that’s rewarding, to have satisfying relationships, to get along with family and make friends. But to accomplish those broad tasks, usually you have to do a lot of small tasks that aren’t inherently rewarding themselves. It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.

[So stimulants enter the picture. Adderal, Ritalin, and the most powerful and oldest stimulant of all: norepinephrine. Excitement, fear, anger, sexual desire, they all release norepinephrine, which tells the body to rev up. Charge up with energy. It’s time to run away from that tiger! Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl! Or ride your horse, which is terrifying and exciting because you’re moving faster than a human can, on top of an animal who is perfectly capable of doing whatever it wants instead of what you want.

[People with ADHD procrastinate, because the fear of the consequences of not doing the task eventually becomes high enough that that provides the motivation. If you can’t have dopamine, you can at least have some norepi. I don’t want to write that paper, so I pretend it’s not happening… and my executive function is so bad at keeping track of time, it’s easy for me to pretend, until the night before I have to turn it in, and my professor has reminded all of us to do it. Now I’m terrified. I’ve done exactly nothing on this paper, I’m gonna fail my class, my mom and dad will be disappointed, my asshole ex will laugh at me, I’ll suffer shame and disgrace for generations to come. Now I’m scared enough, flooded with enough norepinephrine, that I can do the thing. And maybe I will even get a dopamine reward when I’m done, because “congrats on getting us away from that tiger, buddy!” is a thing that even most ADHDers get.]

[u/semicolonbang: “It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.” Personal experience much?]

[u/estesrocketsarenottoys: “Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl!” not exactly feminist]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: “not exactly feminist” maybe not, but try being a lesbian with a beautiful girlfriend who all the guys are hitting on and she is really weirded out and upset by it and she just wants to be left alone, are you going to tell me you would not want to punch them in their sexist faces?]

[u/semicolonbang: your life story seems very interesting Suzanne Burke]

[u/ineedcheese: I still don’t know how Dex works]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Dex works by releasing small amounts of dopamine when you do a task you know you have to do, even if you don’t want to.

[We’ve used sophisticated AI to analyze the brain states of thousands of volunteers who recorded a moment by moment diary of what they were doing for a week and how they felt about it, and from that we’ve figured out how to distinguish the brain state of “I really, really hate doing this and there is no good reason to” – Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill after Hades has told him, the deal’s off buddy – and “I hate doing this, but it’s a step toward getting what I want.” When you make yourself do the thing you don’t want to do, but you know it will be good for you to do it, Dex rewards you with a little dopamine. Just like your own executive function would have, if you had one that worked.

[Dex can also tell when you’re caught in that paralysis loop – “I really should be working on my paper, but instead I am reading Reddit” – how many of you are in that place right now?]

Jason blinked. Wow, that was a little on the nose. This was posted a week ago, though, so she wasn’t talking about him. Specifically.

[If you’re doing a thing, but you feel guilty about doing the thing because there’s something you should be doing instead… Dex can uptake your existing dopamine. Basically, Reddit bores you! So you go looking for some other source of entertainment. Well, if you take that moment and use it to write your paper, or wash the dishes, Dex will make you feel good about doing it.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How good?]

[u/peterporkerthesuperbspiderham: Yeah, doesn’t like heroin or morphine also give you dopamine?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Not that good, and not exactly, but we’re not going to get into that. Dex isn’t addictive. Video games are a lot more addictive than Dex. Not that I ever blew a few hundred dollars on DLC, or anything.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How do you know?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Because we’ve tested it. There have been years of clinical trials at this point. There are a lot of people who were very, very upset at the thought of ever losing Dex… but we drilled down on that, and they were more like, wheelchair users upset at the thought of losing their wheelchair than addicts upset at losing their fix. They described how Dex made it possible for them to focus, to get things done that they’d always wanted to be able to do. Not that it made them feel good. Because it doesn’t. Tiny jolts of dopamine for washing the dishes doesn’t feel good. It just feels like it makes washing the dishes tolerable.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Should we be concerned about Jupiter’s involvement in this project?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Jupiter didn’t buy Ulysses until we were already in clinical trials, so no. They’ve been very hands off, actually.]

[u/ineedcheese: how does this fix me forgetting my appointments?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it doesn’t. But if you’re like most ADHDers you’ve been told, “Oh, just program a reminder on your phone!” And then the reminder to take out the garbage comes through, but you don’t feel like taking out the garbage, so you ignore it. Or you forget to add the reminder about the doctor’s appointment because that just seemed like a lot of work and you didn’t feel like it. What Dex will do is allow you to use those tools to manage the parts of ADHD that it doesn’t directly fix. You won’t remember the doctor’s appointment, but you will feel like putting a reminder into your phone about it was a worthwhile thing to do, when you made the appointment, and you will feel like getting up and going to that appointment is more worthwhile than checking Facebook, again.]

[u/stephaniestick: no one uses Facebook anymore]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Or Cicada, or Instagram, or Tumblr, or whatever.]

[u/ineedcheese: so it’s not as good as medication.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: In what way?]

[u/ineedcheese: medication helped me remember things I was supposed to do.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If medication works best for you, that’s a fine thing, and we’d advise you to stick with it. But a lot of adults can’t take the medication, or it doesn’t work for them.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Or they won’t prescribe it for you. I was diagnosed as an adult and my doctor told me, basically, no one will prescribe amphetamines for someone my age.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: also true.]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: you said it makes things unrewarding to do if you feel guilty about doing them. What if you feel guilty about everything?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: you absolutely should not use Dex if you have a scrupulosity complex, or in any other regard feel a lot of guilt over things you really shouldn’t feel guilty about.]

[u/beepityboopbop: so no Catholics, got it]

[u/mushroommushroom: A lot of people feel guilt over having sex, even if it’s healthy consensual sex.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, so it turns out that the human sex drive is so powerful, Dex can’t do anything with it. We tried. We recruited a few volunteers who wanted Dex to reduce their interest in sex, because they were trying to not cheat on their spouses, or they wanted to get more done… or whatever. We didn’t probe very deeply. It didn’t work for any of them. It can help with more traditional addictions, alcohol or smoking, but it does not actually seem to reduce sex drive even in people who feel guilty about having sex and want to have less of it.]

[u/supermansshorts: But you can use it to stop smoking?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If you feel bad about smoking, yes. If you know you shouldn’t smoke, and you would like to quit, but you are compelled to smoke anyway, having Dex will make smoking feel a lot less fun, which will help you quit. But you still have to do the hard work.

[Dex doesn’t magically solve all your problems. I’m pretty sure there is no implant that could do that. What it does is it gives you the tools you need to solve your own. When you have work to do, and you don’t want to do it, but you want to want to do it because you need to do it… Dex isn’t smart enough to know to reward you for that the first time you make yourself do it. It has to read your brain state while you’re doing it to know that this is a thing you should be doing that you don’t want to. You have to summon the willpower to do it the first time, yourself.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Because willpower and ADHD are so well known to be found together.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I actually think people with ADHD have enormous willpower, because they don’t get rewards for doing the useful things they have to do to stay alive and healthy. Other people aren’t really using willpower alone, they’re using the fact that it feels good to do a thing you need to do. People with ADHD have literally no emotional motivation at all, no brain chemical telling them to do the thing, but often they manage to force themselves to do it occasionally anyway. I think that takes a lot more willpower than doing a thing that rewards you with a little dopamine.]

[u/mushroommushroom: How do you get it?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Currently, only a psychiatrist can prescribe Dex.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Not a regular doctor?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: No, and actually, we recommend that you be in therapy while working with Dex. Among other things, there’s a phenomenon called spin doctoring that you might need a therapist to help you recognize and work through.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: You obviously want us to ask what spin doctoring is.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Haha, yes! OK, so you’re all familiar, I hope, with the fact that the brain has two lobes. They have a lot of overlap in function, though in a lot of people only the left side controls speech. But you are not two people, because there’s an entire wall of connecting neurons, the corpus callosum, between the two.

[Well, back in the old days, one treatment for really severe, life-threatening epilepsy was to sever the corpus callosum. So in a sense, patients became two people, but only one of them could talk. They did an experiment with those people. Sat them in front of a viewer where each eye could be shown a different image, and while they were doing tests, they sent a message to the right eye, go get a Coke. The right eye connects to the right lobe, which doesn’t usually have the ability to talk.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: Doesn’t the right brain control the left side and so on?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yep, but the crossover happens below the head. So the eyes, being in the head, are still connected to the lobe on the same side. Anyway, so they’d tell the right brain, go get a Coke. So the right brain would get the body up and head for the Coke machine. Now, keep in mind, the left brain has not seen this message, and without the corpus callosum, and given that the right brain can’t talk, the left brain has no way of knowing why the body is heading for the Coke machine.

[You would think this would be terrifying. Your body is doing something and you never told it to! Aaahh! Horror movie! But when they asked people, what are you doing? They got answers like, “I was thirsty”, or “I wanted to stretch my legs a bit.” None of them expressed any fear or uncertainty about why they were doing this, and also, none of them knew they’d been told to go get a Coke.

[So the theory goes, consciousness is not actually where all of your decisions come from! Maybe not even most of them! A lot of stuff is being done by deep processes in the brain that are black boxes, that consciousness has no insight into. But when those processes decide that the entire collection of stuff that is you needs to do something, consciousness often smoothly and easily rationalizes why you are doing the thing, without any recognition that that’s what you’re doing. It feels to you like you got up to stretch your legs, and while you’re at it, why not get a Coke? When the real reason is, the right side of your brain, which your left side can no longer hear, was told to do it.]

[u/supermansshorts: Is the right side of the brain, like, vulnerable to mind control?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, no, no. These were volunteers who’d agreed to do the experiment and follow the instructions. It’s not like the right side of your brain is a completely different person from the left side. Even if you sever the corpus callosum, both sides are still you, near-identical copies who think and feel much the same way about everything. So if the left side signed the papers and spoke the agreement, it’s likely that the right side also agreed, for the same reasons. The right side wouldn’t have done something like “jump out a window”, it’s just as capable of making rational decisions as the left side is. But it agreed to follow instructions the same as the left side did, because if the left side was the kind of person who’d volunteer to follow the experimenters’ instructions, then so was the right side.

[Anyway, so spin doctoring. Consciousness is so good at coming up with rationalizations for why you are doing a thing that some deeper process said to do, it doesn’t even know it’s doing it. So a lot of the time, we make decisions based not on anything rational, or even an emotion we understand and recognize, but something deep down that we’re not even aware of.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Like Freud’s ego and id.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Similar, yeah, but it’s more like, there’s all these different processes happening, and consciousness isn’t actually aware of any of them, just their outputs. And when the body as a whole acts on one of those outputs without going through consciousness first, consciousness comes up with a reason why they wanted to do that.]

[u/ineedcheese: But I do things all the time that I literally have no idea why I did it, like one time I poked a cake my mom had just iced and when she asked me why I did that, I didn’t even know.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, spin doctoring doesn’t always work, particularly since the ADHD brain is particularly vulnerable to processes just totally bypassing consciousness and doing a thing. That’s called “poor impulse control.”

[But the point is, we do things for reasons we don’t even know, and then our consciousness comes up with a reason why we did that thing, and then it enters our database of “reasons to do or not do things.” Like… if I found it very hard to do a thing, I might, for the sake of my pride, come up with “I really hate doing that thing” or “I think it’s stupid” or “That thing is completely unnecessary.” But maybe the only reason it was hard was I wasn’t getting any dopamine from it, and maybe Dex could fix that for me… if I was willing to try to do it, but the spin doctor might have already convinced me, doing that thing is dumb and why should I?

[One of the roles a therapist or psychiatrist can play with a patient trying Dex is to work through the spin doctor’s bullshit. Help you try out things you have already written off, or break patterns you think are just the best way to do things when maybe they’re not.]

[u/ineedcheese: Like what kind of thing?]

[u/snowflakespecialaisle10: Writing documentation if you’re a programmer.]

Ouch. That one especially hit home.

[u/semicolonbang: How is the implant done? Like do they drill through your skull?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: It’s a laparoscopic surgery done up through the nose. Outpatient surgery, you go home the same day.]

[u/supermansshorts: And that doesn’t fuck up your nose?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, your nose hurts like a bitch for about a week. When I did it, it drove me a little nuts because I have allergies, but blowing my nose would cause giant nosebleeds. Now, we give people a cocktail of antihistamine, numbing solution, and decongestant in a nasal spray, and apparently that works a lot better.]

[u/semicolonbang: You did it yourself?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I told you that I lost my girlfriend because I never washed dishes and then we got a roach infestation and she blamed me, and you think I wouldn’t be signing up for the clinical trial the moment we opened it to human trials?]

[u/mushroommushroom: To be fair, the roaches probably came in on your groceries or from the next door neighbor or something. Not washing the dishes just gave them a source of food and water to breed from.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I mentioned that. Turned out that was not a helpful argument.]

At this point, a Slack message popped up, and Jason had to turn his attention to that. It was from Teresa.

Jason, I haven’t heard from you in a couple of hours. Are you going to be ready for this meeting?

Ready, eager and waiting, he typed back. Shit, the meeting was in ten minutes. And look, there was the Outlook reminder he had reflexively shut off the moment it popped up, popping up again. Good thing Teresa had decided to poke him.

***

The meeting went well. Great, in fact. Jason was able to demo his code, and nothing went wrong. There were a couple of features he hadn’t implemented that the upper-level managers were concerned about, but Teresa backed him up, because he’d told her a month ago that those features would have to come in a later version. She politely reminded the upper-level managers that she’d informed them in email a month ago that those features wouldn’t be in this version. “Controlling scope is a very important part of controlling costs,” she said, and they couldn’t disagree.

Afterward there was a second, internal meeting of the team, which didn’t go quite as well because Teresa was banging the documentation drum. “If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, no one here would know how to support your code,” she said.

“Good thing I never go anywhere. No bus injuries in my future,” he said, and everyone laughed.

“But you know, they say that most accidents happen close to home,” Adrian said. “Seriously, Jason, I know doc’ing sucks, but you gotta get it done.”

Adrian extensively documented his own code, and got it done approximately 20% as quickly as Jason when he was on. And probably only 75% as quickly when you factored in how much time Jason wasted. “I know,” Jason said.

Stacy, the business analyst charged with writing user manuals, said, “It makes my job a lot easier when there are docs.”

“I’ll take a few days and go back through and do that.”

Then they talked about next steps, and the QA team revving up to test. Duane tried to get Jason’s help with a different problem he was working on, but Teresa deflected it, unfortunately. “Jason’s focus has to be on fixing his documentation,” she said. “Jorge, maybe you could team with Duane, see if the two of you could get any traction on this?”

“Sure,” Jorge said, dashing what small hopes Jason had of being able to find an acceptable task to work on that was not documentation.

When the meeting was over, he opened up his code, stared at it for three minutes trying to figure out where to even begin documenting. Due to the lack of documentation, he wasn’t even 100% sure he knew what all these functions did.

Fuck it.

He jumped over to Reddit, where he still had the Dex AMA open, which reminded him that he’d wanted to google Suzanne Burke’s claims and generally the whole thing, because the idea of a brain implant that could help you control your own behavior wasn’t real far off from conspiracy theorists’ paranoid fantasies of the CIA putting mind control devices in your brain.

Three hours later he’d learned some things:

All the bad reviews of Dex came from people who had obviously never used it or didn’t even really know what it was, people who were complaining about absurd things (“I wanted it to help me stop eating snack chips so I filled my room with snack chips to test it and it didn’t work, I still ate snack chips”) or things no one had never claimed it could fix (“I still keep losing my keys”), or people who had gotten one of the earlier versions at the start of clinical trials. Most of the most recent reviews either raved about it or said something like, “It’s a lot of hard work to re-engineer your whole life even with Dex, but with Dex I can actually do that work without getting in my own way”, or “It’s an adjustment and you’ll find there are things you are used to wanting to do that you don’t even really want to anymore, and that can be bothersome, but they’re usually things you wanted to stop wanting to do”. Most of the complaints that remained after the positive reviews and factoring out the old and/or stupid ones were about the surgery – “They said my nose would hurt for about three weeks but it’s been six weeks and it still hurts when I blow it”. One person had a bad allergic reaction and they had to take it out.

There were many complaints from friends and family members of someone using Dex. “He never has time to hang out anymore”, “We used to spend hours chatting on Discord and now she blows me off after like half an hour”, “He’s like some kind of zombie drone where it’s all about work, work, work” (this was troubling, but when Jason drilled into that, it turned out to be a boyfriend who was annoyed that his paramour didn’t want to spend hours a day canoodling, because he had work to do.)

There were a lot of conspiracy theories about how Jupiter was using Dex to mind control people on behalf of the government, the New World Order, the Jews, the reptilians, the liberal left, fascism, or corporations. These were all presented with tremendous hysteria and very little actual evidence. One persistent theory was that the founder and CEO of Jupiter, who’d expressed an interest in space colonization, was going to use Dex to mind-control a sizable workforce into going into space to build his space colonies. Another one seemed to think that Dex had been created by the infamous tech billionaire who’d managed to destroy Twitter, as if all tech billionaires were the same guy, or had some kind of hive mind agenda.

One credible theory claimed that the device had a wireless component to receive updates, and that therefore it could be used in the future to send ads to people, somehow. The wireless component turned out to actually exist, and it really was sending brain scans back to Ulysses for analysis, and Ulysses really was sending out software updates. Ulysses claimed this was fully anonymized, that the analysis was necessary in order to improve the software that ran Dex, and that the software itself was so unusual and proprietary that it would be literally impossible to infect it with malware. Jason was suspicious. All of that sounded very plausible and also something a corporation could decide to throw out and do something evil with the moment the board of directors decided they could get away with it. He couldn’t figure out exactly how it could possibly send ads, but he was sure it could be nefariously used for something.

In the end, there were two factors that decided him on not bothering to look any further into Dex. The existence of the wireless connection to Ulysses’ servers, and the fact that he’d have to find a psychiatrist if he wanted to be prescribed it. Finding a psychiatrist sounded easy enough, but given that Jason had had “change doctors” on his to-do list for two and a half years, and hadn’t been to a dentist in longer than that because he just never got around to making an appointment, he had no illusions.

But without researching Dex as an excuse to himself, he had no good reason not to work on his documentation. Just the usual reasons. It was boring, he didn’t want to, and he couldn’t make himself do it without a stunning amount of caffeine in his system.

Well. Time for early evening Coca Cola, then.

Jason had a system. Complex carbs, he thought, slowed him down and made him sleepy. Simple carbs, sugar, were a quick shot in the arm of energy, but there’d be a crash afterward. Greasy protein was even worse than the complex carbs, so pizza was absolutely terrible for focus. (This did not stop him from eating it when it was available.) The secret was lean protein, cold vegetables (because warmth made him sleepy), and sugar. So grilled chicken or salmon on a salad, and Coke. It was a pain in the ass to make this for himself; salad, in particular, was annoying because you had to wash it and then somehow you had to dry it, or wait hours for it to dry on its own, or your croutons would get soggy. He put in an online order at a local place, and then turned to video games.

The good thing about ordering food online was that, when it showed up, it would automatically disrupt whatever he was doing, so it was a great way to break free from something he probably shouldn’t be doing to switch to something he should. The bad thing about ordering food online was that it resulted in multiple interruptions while he was trying to relax with the game, because they called to confirm the order, and then they called to find his house, and then they called to tell him they were on the porch downstairs. And then Mom called up to tell him his food was here, and why hadn’t he asked her if she wanted anything?

But now he had his food, and his Coke, so it was time to focus on this thing.

This boring thing.

This thing he would rather do almost anything than be doing.

He slogged through it, incredibly slowly. He’d add a comment, scroll down, pop over to Reddit or a newsfeed or Youtube or literally anything other than this documentation, do that for several minutes – he had no idea how many – and then abruptly remember he was supposed to be doing his documentation and go back to it. As the night wore on, he became less and less efficient, more time spent not documenting, less time unraveling his own code to figure out what he did and write it down. But he couldn’t just go to bed; he had to make enough progress that he looked like he was making progress. But he couldn’t stay up all night, because then he would oversleep tomorrow and he would look bad.

The two balanced each other at 3 am, and he was finally able to go to bed, the documentation close to sort of done. Not to sleep, though, because he’d had way too much Coke and he was much too worried about what Teresa would think. Was this enough to show due diligence, or would she be angry that it wasn’t complete?

***

It took four days.

Four days of Teresa pestering him about whether the documentation was finished, four days of having nothing required of him that he actually wanted to work on. Four days of dodging the documentation as much as he could by helping everyone else out. Including helping with their documentation, because as annoying as documentation in general was, it was much better when he was getting the warm fuzzies for helping someone else, directly.

There was a weekend in the middle of those four days. Jason promised himself he’d work on the docs over the weekend and then didn’t even open the file. Then he promised himself he’d get up early on Monday to do some work on it, and instead woke up at 10, having missed a 9:30 scrum.

At 2 pm on Tuesday, he was finally able to report being finished with documenting his code. He checked the final version in, breathed a sigh of relief, and got himself a beer. He’d finished the slog. Time to unwind. He didn’t officially clock out, because frankly he’d been working so ridiculously late each night that if he weren’t salaried, they’d owe him a whole extra paycheck, so it was only fair. While he didn’t log off Slack or close his email, he did dive into a video game that occupied the full screen and wouldn’t let him see if messages came through. He told himself he’d pop out periodically and check.

Six hours later, when he finally checked, he had a Slack message from Teresa to come into the office tomorrow. It was much too late by now to ask her why.

***

“You’re letting me go?”

He stared at Teresa, a feeling of cold and heat at once sweeping through his veins. “You know I’m the best programmer in the department, right?”

“No one disputes that,” Teresa said, conciliatory. “But it takes you too long to get your work done, because you’re always in late, or leaving early.”

“I’ve been working until 3 am for a week now! And I only left early yesterday because I’d finished my documentation, and I needed a break.”

“Right. Jason, other programmers do not take four days to finish documenting their code. They document it as they write it. If you’d been hit by a bus over the weekend, we wouldn’t have had any idea how the code works, and I’d have to put someone on tracing it back and figuring it all out.”

He realized, then, that she’d just been waiting for him to finish it before she fired him. “I’m always helping out everyone else in the department, that’s why I’m slow sometimes.”

“You’re a great help, and you’ll be missed, but we need programmers who can work standard hours and hit their deadlines. I’m sorry, Jason, but it’s out of my hands. Upper management looked at your metrics and told me you’ve gotta go.” She shook her head. “I know you have personal effects here at the office, so you can go get those. Charlie here will escort you.”

Charlie wasn’t dressed any differently than anyone else at the company, but he was probably security. Certainly Jason didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t in IT. “Fine,” he snapped.

“We’ll need the work laptop back,” she reminded him. The one he had never taken out of the box, because the box had the specs on it and he’d realized that it wasn’t nearly powerful enough for his needs, so he’d been doing all his work on his personal desktop.

“I’ll drop it off.”

He knew that by now he’d already been locked out of all the computer systems, so he wouldn’t have a copy of any of his Slack messages, or the code he’d just finished. If he wanted his email he’d have to find a way to convert his Outlook OST to an archive without actually opening it, because if he opened it, it would probably ask for a password and then just endlessly prompt him for a login until he closed it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep his email that badly.

What a dick thing, to make him come into the office just to fire him. But then, it would also have been a dick thing to fire him by Slack message or voice call or email, and then he wouldn’t have had a chance to get his very minimal amount of stuff, which included a few cartoons he’d pinned to his cubicle wall and a family picture he’d photoshopped to completely remove Dad, so it just had him and Mom. Not that he couldn’t print out another copy of that, but the frame had come from a college friend he wasn’t in touch with much anymore, and he had sentimental attachment to it.

***

Mom was home, in the kitchen, on her laptop, as he came in, because of course she was. “Honey? You okay?”

For a moment he contemplated saying “Fine,” and stomping off to his room like he was still 17, but Mom would get it out of him sooner or later. Better bite the bullet now. “I got fired.”

“Oh. Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help?”

Not tell me about how it’s my fault, I hope. “Not really, but thanks for the offer.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve got savings and I’ve got health insurance until the end of the month, and more if I take COBRA. I want to see a psychiatrist about these problems I’ve been having.”

Mom nodded. “That might be a good idea. Maybe there’s a new medication you could try.”

“There’s this thing I was looking into, called Dex. It’s like an implant that helps you train your brain to focus? I’m thinking maybe I need to take it more seriously.”

“That might be a good idea. Do you need help with finding a psychiatrist?”

He was about to say no, it’s fine, I’ve got it handled Mom… and then thought better of it, because that kind of thing was the strategy that just got him fired. “Yeah. I need you to keep reminding me I need to do it. Even if I get bitchy about it.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Mom said, amused. “Also, I don’t know how quickly they’ll get your COBRA paperwork to you, but you need to get on that immediately. Check the mail every day—”

“I’d think they’d email it.”

“They might, but probably they’ve turned off your email? Do they have a personal email address for you?”

A good question. “I think they have my Gmail…”

“Check that every day. Including the spam boxes. And check the regular mail every day. There’s some time limit they’re under for how quickly they have to provide you that, but I don’t remember what it is. And it’s to their advantage if they wait a few days so maybe you’ll forget. You need to be on that. You could try to go through the marketplace, since losing your job is a qualifying event, but that’s likely to be much more disruptive, and COBRA is probably cheaper than that.”

Jason nodded. “Keep me honest?”

“I sure will.”

“Gonna hit up Dice and Linkedin, maybe Monster, see how quick I can land a new job.”

“Good luck.”

***

But he had savings, and it seemed like a dumb idea to take a new job and then get brain surgery. Sure, the AMA had said it was outpatient surgery, but what if there were complications and he had to take time off? It might be a better idea to find out if he was getting Dex or not before he got a job.

He found a psychiatrist who didn’t take his, or anyone’s, insurance, which was expensive, but living with your mom for several years and paying only a third of the mortgage and half the utilities, while holding a good job, had enabled him to save up a fairly large nest egg. She was the kind of psychiatrist who never actually told you what she thought, but spent all her time asking you what you thought about things. She presented options and made suggestions and offered to help by writing prescriptions for whatever she had suggested that you had decided to go ahead with.

The company had given him one boon; they hadn’t told the state they’d fired him for cause, even though doing so would have saved on their unemployment insurance. Unemployment was less than a third of what he’d been making, but on the other hand, he didn’t have to order food out nearly so much when he wasn’t breaking his neck for the company that had just fired him. He could actually cook. He could help his mom when she cooked, and learn how to make some shit he didn’t already know.

Jason tried three non-stimulant medications over the course of eight weeks. One of them made him horny as hell, which was unfortunate as he didn’t have a significant other, and he felt like jerking off three times a day was a waste of his time. One did nothing. One made him overwhelmingly sleepy. He tried stimulant medication, again, a slightly different formulation, but still felt like it made him jittery and his heart raced and he got headaches and was irritable. A lower dose of stimulant medication gave him the same symptoms, just a little less of them, and lower than that didn’t actually work at all to help him focus.

This wasn’t the first job he’d been fired from for not being able to keep to a schedule or make deadlines, and if he didn’t do something, it wouldn’t be the last.

In the end, he talked himself into asking his doctor about Dex, just like the commercial said.

***

Outpatient surgery, it turned out, was still surgery… it just didn’t involve a lengthy stay in the hospital. When his mother came to pick him up, because he wasn’t allowed to drive after surgery, his nose was starting to hurt like a motherfucker. They’d given him a nasal spray that would keep the area sterile, promote clotting, and relieve pain, and they’d given him decongestants because it was EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, according to the aftercare nurse and the directions he was given on paper, that he not sneeze or blow his nose. If his nose started to run, they’d given him a second nasal spray that was a direct decongestant and antihistamine, and he was supposed to use that instead. If he had a nosebleed, he was to use his spray and lay down immediately until the bleed went away. Yes, his nose would clog up, because there was a healing wound and the spray was promoting clotting; he would just have to breathe through the other nostril. And this was supposed to go on for up to two weeks.

Joy.

They also gave him regular painkillers, which he quit taking about four days later because seriously, how do people get addicted to the sensation of having a fuzzy head? He had enough issues with being half-brained from exhaustion, he didn’t really want to add opioids to the mix. Tylenol and the nasal spray would do.

It was at that point that he decided to engage in the difficult task of trying to get a new job. He’d already updated his resume, but he hadn’t uploaded it; he’d already done some initial keyword searches for jobs, but hadn’t actually applied to anything.

He opened the job search site, logged into his profile, and began the laborious task of adding his newer skills from the job he was just fired from, and updating the length of experience he had with the other ones. It was nightmarishly boring, just like it had been every other time, so he popped over to Reddit. Just for a little while, just to do something more entertaining for a few minutes.

Except Reddit wasn’t entertaining.

He browsed around for a while, looking for something to catch his attention, but frankly nothing was as compelling as the idea of getting the goddamn resume done and out there, so he could get a job, get health insurance he didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, and stop making his mom anxious. So he went back to the job search site, and this time, managed to get the entire task done without interrupting himself. It wasn’t fun, but it was something he wanted out of the way, and he was able to power through it, and then finish doing the same thing with two other job search sites.

It wasn’t until after he was finished that he realized.

Holy shit. This thing works!

***

After that, Jason went a little nuts, self-admittedly, with his new superpowers of actually being able to focus and get shit done.

The AMA had been correct. He wasn’t any better able to remember where he put his keys than he had ever been. But he was able to order a bunch of devices that could be hung on key rings or slipped into wallets, that he would be able to use an app to find, and then get them set up and put them on the devices they needed to be attached to. He got “Find my Droid” configured for all the times he lost his phone, and a bunch of chargers he could plug in all over the house, including QI chargers, that he could leave the phone attached to whenever he didn’t want to deal with carrying it around, so now it wouldn’t die out of his custody.

He wasn’t any better at remembering that he had appointments. But he was able to focus enough to put in sufficient reminders, that would catch him at enough points in time, that he wouldn’t be blindsided… and enough to actually check the reminders when they showed up, rather than just absent-mindedly dismissing them. After he next saw his psychiatrist, he actually put his upcoming appointment on his calendar, so he didn’t have to run around like crazy trying to find the little appointment card when he finally remembered that there was an appointment.

He remembered to wash his clothes three days before a job interview, so he had options. (It was virtual anyway, but it did require his camera, so he wanted to look good.) He showered and shaved that morning, rather than forgetting and then racing to try to get it done before the interview. He actually ate breakfast, not just coffee, because he paid attention when his alarm went off, didn’t just snooze it, and managed to drag himself out of bed early enough that his mom was still home and making herself eggs and bacon, which she shared with him. He used Linkedin and Google to read up on the companies he was being interviewed for before the interview, so he actually knew who some of the people were and had some familiarity with what they did.

And in the meanwhile, he kept the dishes clean, the trash taken out, the kitchen floor swept, the toilet paper on the roll and the empty rolls in the trash can, the soda cans in the recycling bin, and he even got around to fixing the bathroom shelf above the toilet and taking his mom’s car to the mechanic for her, because a 30-year-old guy was a lot less likely to get scammed by a mechanic than a nearly 60-year-old woman.

This was fucking awesome.

He wrote a few of the personal programs he’d always wanted to get around to, like the one that helped him use his phone to take an inventory of his and his mom’s shit, so if there was ever a fire, they could back up their claims of what was lost… and then he actually went around taking the photographs, labeling them, and using the program to push them into the database he’d set up. He remembered, finally, after about twelve increasingly upset emails from Teresa, to bring in that work laptop and drop it off. He returned his library books, paid his fines, and checked some more out, and then returned them on time. He set up a blog and started writing about programming challenges he’d encountered in his career. He put a Pi Hole on his mom’s wifi network to block ads at the router so none of the computers had to work at that. He bought a cheap laptop and set it up with Linux like he’d always planned, and actually did the experimenting he’d always wanted to do.

His time on Reddit plummeted, and was mostly confined to subreddits about the games he was into, where he knew people and had stuff to say that he cared about, rather than endlessly surfing sites like r/AmITheAsshole and r/TodayIFuckedUp. He still gamed, in the evenings, for a reasonable amount of time that didn’t interfere with his sleep schedule, and felt no guilt about it because he was getting his important shit done, so he had every right to relax as hard as he worked. When he wasn’t doing job interviews or searching for jobs, during the day in what would be working hours, he was reading up on new technologies and actively teaching himself new skills.

Jason’s mom cried when she told him how proud she was of him for taking this step and getting his life turned around. He himself wanted to cry, sometimes, when he realized that he’d wasted 30 years of his life without this, and that ordinary people, people without ADHD, just lived like this. Out of the box. Without having to have a foreign object shoved up their nose and into their craniums.

The day he got the new job, he happily updated his LinkedIn, after making connections with old co-workers so they could see he’d landed on his feet and he wasn’t a total fuckup. A couple of them contacted him, asking if he could help out with some problems they were having. He asked them to go back to Teresa and get authorization to pay him as a contractor. They didn’t ask again after that.

He even went and updated his profile on some dating sites. Now that he had a job again, and now that he no longer felt constant guilt over what he wasn’t getting done at his job, it was time to try to get back into that game. He hadn’t had a partner since shortly before the first lockdown… that was a long time to go without.

And then his first paycheck arrived, and he grinned to himself. He’d been good… at least since getting the Dex implant. He hadn’t bought anything unless he needed it or it would help him improve skills and be more marketable. No new games, no new DVDs, no books, no new phone, no new speakers for his PC, no replacement pump and filter for the fish tank that had no fish in it and was at this point just an algae-growing experiment, no cast iron skillet because Mom had sold hers at a yard sale due to her hands being too arthritic to hold something so heavy while cooking, nothing.

It was spending spree time! He’d been promising himself this since he got Dex. Save his money while he didn’t have a job, keep spending as tight as he could, and he’d go on a spree as soon as he got a paycheck.

He went to Jupiter.com first, because that was where he could get most of everything he wanted, maybe even everything he wanted. Two new games he’d been jonesing for. Several graphic novels, a science fiction novel, and a memoir. A box set for a TV show he loved, because relying on streaming had gotten more and more erratic as fights over licensing continued. PC speakers with surround sound that were two generations better than what he had, and an upgraded graphics card. Fish tank supplies – maybe he was finally going to be responsible enough to keep fish alive. A hat, because it looked cool, even though he couldn’t imagine a circumstance where he’d actually wear it.

For clothes, though, and the cast iron frying pan, it was better to shop local, where he didn’t have to pay shipping, and he could immediately return anything that had an unpleasant texture. So he went over to Target’s web site, and was immediately bored out of his mind.

He tried to convince himself that the search tools for clothes were more specialized here, and he was more likely to be able to find one thing that fit and then six other things like it in slightly different cuts or colors. No go. It was like looking at the red color scheme and the font was draining the life out of him.

Which was ridiculous. He forced himself to look for the cast iron frying pan. That should be simple and easy.

But they had multiple options, and it seemed like just such an enormous amount of work to sort through them.

He went back to Jupiter.com. The fonts seemed cleaner, the pictures more inviting. The cost of shipping was challenging, though. But he could fix that. Just click the button for only free shipping, and look at that! He could even get three of different sizes. He added it to his cart without thinking about it much.

Clothes continued to be a challenge. It was kind of fun to go hunting, but his frustration was building, because there were so many items coming up in his searches that weren’t what he searched for at all. And no way to tell the texture of anything just from pictures, whereas with a local store he could go there and check things out.

So he tried going over to Walmart, which was disgusting, and JC Penney’s, which was overwhelming, and some of the sites for fancy mall stores, which just seemed to not have any kind of selection. He was used to buying from Target. They had good search filters for men’s clothes, that rarely pulled back complete bullshit. He should go there.

Except when he went there, everything looked overwhelmingly hard and chaotic and he just didn’t want to. All the fun of clothes shopping drained away.

And then he went cold.

Jason tried going to Barnes and Noble’s web site for a specific book. It was too hard to use the site. He’d used it before, but somehow it seemed really inferior now. He tried going to a PC online retailer to look for the video card he had already bought from Jupiter. The filters were too unresponsive. He went to Swappa to find a used phone to replace the one he had, and almost immediately gave up because none of the products looked good and he was feeling a general sense of unease about the idea of buying a used phone from a shady online store… even though he’d gotten his last three phones there and had been satisfied.

Shit. Shit.

He had to post about this. If this was happening to him… he couldn’t be the only one. He opened up Reddit and found the thread about Dex, clicked the new post button…

…and lost all enthusiasm for the task. Jesus, did he really have to write a post about this bullshit? Who cared? Probably everyone would jump his shit. It wasn’t like he had any scientific proof. And the idea of having to explain, in detail, what was happening? Humiliating.

No. No. That was more of it. He had to write this post. He started typing, grimly, using the same fortitude he’d used when he’d spent four days documenting his code so his boss could fire him.

“I really loved Dex at first, but”

“but some disturb”

“but I found”

“but there’s one thing”

Nothing looked right. The documentation, at least, had been right when he’d written it. Everything he was writing now just looked terrible and whiny and like there was no point to saying anything.

But he had to do this. He had to write this post. The thing in his head had to be making him not want to do this, not want to say this, but he’d gone for 30 years forcing himself to do things he really, really didn’t want to do.

“I really loved Dex at first, but its changing what I want, its bad, you shouldn’t”

No. Fuck. What was that? That was utter shit. Couldn’t he even be bothered to capitalize and use punctuation?

“I really loved Dex at first, but it won’t let me write this post about what it’s doing to me”

Fuck this, go read r/AITA.

Go read his video game subreddits.

Check Microsoft Teams, which his new company used instead of Slack. Maybe someone had a late-night request for help? Or something he was supposed to do tomorrow that he could get started on tonight instead?

No!

“I really loved Dex at first, but it makes me”

An hour of reading the news.

“makes me feel bored with shopping”

Just one round of his video game. Just one.

Six rounds later.

“shopping anywhere but Jupi”

This dog growled at the baby sitter, you’ll be shocked when you find out why!

25 screens later of a story he had predicted the end of when he’d started reading it.

“Jupiter. I go to tar”

Had anyone online ever posted that stupid ditty where they sang “shop at tar-jay” like the word Target was French? Go check.

“target or any other site”

Wow, it was late, shouldn’t he go to bed? Bed sounded really great. He really shouldn’t disrupt his sleep schedule for this now that he’d gotten a new job and finally established a good sleep schedule, right?

Focus.

“site and it makes me feel like it’s boring, or too complicated, or just bad”

How about his favorite TV show? Was there going to be another season of that?

“just bad, until I go to Jupiter, and then shopping feels fun”

Yeah. That was it. That was the message. He didn’t need to keep doing this. He could stop and post it here. Actually he should spell check first, right? And it was late, maybe he wanted to hold off on posting until tomorrow, when he could look at it with fresh eyes.

“feels fun. And it wont let me”

1 am. This was ridiculous. He had work in the morning. He couldn’t lose this job just because of something stupid like this.

Another half hour of reading the news.

“let me write this to warn you.”

Right! Wrap it up, turn off the monitor, go to bed! He’d done his part. The message was out there!

Jason absent-mindedly turned his computer off, and only then, wondered if he had ever actually hit post.

Well. He could check on it in the morning.

After work. And his chores. And he was supposed to game with his friends tomorrow, so after that, too.

Oh, fuck this. He'd spent his life struggling against things his brain didn't want him to do, and it was awful and it had traumatized him and he never wanted to go through that bullshit again. If he'd forgotten to hit post, oh well. Let someone else do it. Jason was done beating his head against the wall of things he really didn't want to do, that he thought he should do, forever.

[ronmanmob]

Confess 🤐

Confessions Meme

"--Somefin' I should'a said bu'...didn't-"

Thoughtfulness came out as a slightly rightwards cant of the head and faintly furrowed brows. Next came a little glance about the shoppe he and Cory were sat in enjoying an early evening sup. It was past closing time, and the establishment was hers. No one else was here to hear them, but Ron glanced nonetheless. Like something in him made him have to. Then--

"This'll...This ain't a nice story, bu' i's long gone now, okay?" A couple of seconds were spent silent -- a purposeful pause to let the lady respond as she pleased. Then, following a quick wetting of the whistle sip of the cuppa he'd been nursing, Ron picked up the tale.

"My farvah's...a good 'alf th'reason I'd not lay violent 'ands on women. My own self's th'rest'a th'reason. It ain't done. Evah. Bu' from tha' man I learned th'bones'a tha' disdain 'n 'is b'cause I 'ad t'watch 'im beat my muvvah. Semi-regular, tha' was. 'N when I was..." Dark eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he guestimated, then found Cory again. "Abaht eight. When I was abaht eight 'ee took exception t'er again. At th'kitchen table, this time. Was me there, 'n bruvvah Reggie, 'n bruvvah Charlie, 'oo was oldah. Man bounced 'er 'ead off th'pine 'n Charlie was up tryin' t'elp 'er. T'stop 'im. Reggie too, bowf screamin' at 'im. Bowf gettin' an 'idin' for it too. Off 'im 'n off mum as well - f'interferin'..."

That last bit there looked like it left a bad taste to say.

"Bu' I jus' sat there....Too scared t'do nuffin' bu' watch."

That bit did too if Ron's newly pinched expression was anything to go by. He shook his head at the memory, went for his cuppa again to wash his mouth clean of having repeated the words that made it up. Then, after a breath was taken in and let free--

"Double th'age I was then though -- sixteen? Ol' man learned. F'got 'is lads was biggah than 'im by then. F'got I was in th'ouse when 'ee bloodied me mum's nose 'til I broke 'is 'n 'ad 'im against th'f'kin' wall..." Something horrendous took up brief residence in Ron's expression; the echo of the one his father had faced going on twenty years back. "--'N I told 'im th'God's 'onest" he said, heedless of the story his eyes were telling. "If 'ee evah put violence on 'er again I'd kill 'im."

Silence for a beat and then, another sip of tea. As the last had seemed to wash away the memory's bad taste, this one seemed to wash away the tension that'd crawled into Ron's voice. When he spoke again, the words were appreciably lighter.

"--N 'ee nevah did touch 'er again, aftah tha'."