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everlarkficexchange · 4 years ago

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Like The Stars Hold The Moon

Written By : @katnissmellarkkkk

Prompt 59 : "Katniss dad is a victor, he won his hunger games and is a mentor. Peeta is reaped for the games and Katniss begs her dad to help him win the games. [submitted by anonymous]“

Hi! It feels like there’s so much I need to say here and I can’t remember any of it now! This is obviously–if you read the summary, which I assume you did and that’s why you’re here hahaha–an EFE prompt. It was submitted by an anonymous person, so I don’t know specifically if this is what you wanted but I really hope this is good enough that you’ll be fulfilled?

I don’t think there is much more to say? I hope everyone who reads this has a good day! I wrote plenty of this on Easter so I’d like to thank Jesus for rising again. And I feel like the prompt alone is a sufficient summary but just so you know, this heavily features Katniss, Peeta (obvi), Haymitch and Katniss’ father, Hunter (I named him, that’s not canon, I know).

This fic I likely going to be a three-shot with an opportunity for a sequel three-shot. Oh and also, thank you to the anon who sent the prompt!

Oh and this got really long, so I’m just going to submit the first part on here and then I’ll add a link at the bottom to continue reading on AO3. I’ve never done this before so I don’t know if I’m doing it right?

Okay, if you read all my talking, bye now!

Rated T for the canon violence.

At the reaping for the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games, Matty Knick drew out the names of a ”very special boy“ and ”a very special girl“ from the reaping bowls. She read them off in a bright voice and matched the sentiment with an out of place perky smile. The girl’s name was Heather Branch.

And the boy’s was Hunter Everdeen.

Of course, everyone knows the story of Hunter Everdeen.

Year of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games.

"So Hunter,” Caesar Flickerman leans toward the victor, absolutely electrified, and says, “tell us, tell us. How excited are you for the games this year?”

The camera focuses in on gray eyes, the color of a storm cloud or a cleanly polished knife. Dangerous and hard and cunning.

Or protective and frightful and angry.

Or warm and loving and kind.

“I’m about as excited as I always am, Caesar,” he shoots back, not a trace of even so much as a smirk on his face. Not even so much as a lift from the corner of his mouth.

And still, the crowd of Capitol idiots burst out in laughter, as if they just heard the funniest joke in the world, as if this was Hunter’s desired response to the words.

As if the conversation wasn’t about teenagers—and some as young as twelve—killing other teenagers.

“And what about you, Haymitch?” Caesar asks next, segueing from one aggravated man to another.

“I’m looking forward to the free drinks,” Haymitch says while tipping back dark gold colored liquid into his mouth. Almost as an afterthought, he gestures wide and sloppy to the crowd, igniting cacophonous sounds from the population once more. “And of course, the social interaction with all you lovely people.”

No one in the audience recognizes the insult. No one understands the blatant sarcasm at their expense.

Here in District Twelve though, we do. As exemplified by Peeta’s laugh, vibrating against my back. “Shh,” I hush, laser focused on the enormous television screen before us.

“Daddy’s not speaking anymore,” Prim reminds me from the other room, where she’s currently flipping through a magazine our father sent.

“Well, be quiet before he does,” I snap, elbowing Peeta when he rolls his eyes now. “Stop it, I haven’t seen him in weeks,” I complain, fixing him with a fierce glare.

“I know,” he murmurs agreeably, gently kissing my temple. “But he’ll be home in a few days.”

As if they could hear our exchange from inside the television box, Caesar turns his attention back to my father. “Hunter, how excited are you to get home to District Twelve?”

At that, his eyes genuinely light up with ferocity. “I’m counting the minutes,” he replies, but still manages to keep his tone cool. He adamantly refuses to give away his true emotion to even a single soul in the Capitol. It’s his way of withholding power from their greedy, glitter covered hands.

But I see the change in him. Prim, from her position against the doorframe, sees it. I’m positive my mother, who’s watching with our brother from the comfort of our house sees it as well.

Our father’s eyes are now alive again, the permanent frown his mouth resides in on every televised appearance loosens a bit, his brows aren’t knit so closely together any longer.

Caesar Flickerman sees the change too evidently.

“Look at those silver coins!” He bellows, gesturing for the cameras to put my father in a close up now. “They just lit up like the stars when talking about home. Tell me, Hunter Everdeen, how’s the family back in District Twelve?”

At that, my father makes a considerable effort to transform his entire expression into a mask of indifference. “They’re good,” he states evenly, his tone clipped. Making it blatant to even the airheaded Capitol citizens that he refuses to speak publicly about his family.

“Because you’re not property of the Capitol, baby,” he told me once, while on a walk in the woods. “You’re not anyone’s property.”

“What about you and mommy?”

“You’re our responsibility, but not our property.” He’d knelt down to my height, which happened to be the shortest in my second grade class. “Property implies ownership, Katniss. And no one owns you. No one owns you or your sister. Remember that for me. And never let yourself forget it.”

“You’re daughters are both old enough for the reaping, am I right?” Caesar presses further, and my sister and I automatically sigh. Knowing the response that’s bound to come.

“What’s wrong?” Peeta asks, as he still remains completely clueless. I shake my head instead of offering an explanation though, leaning further into his chest.

Peeta won’t understand. He was raised in town by merchants—the owners of the bakery, to be specific. He’s never understood the fierce protectiveness, the instantaneous fury, the irrational tunnel vision, that appears when a victor’s child is mentioned entering the games.

Peeta’s never even met my father. I’m not impatient by any stretch of the imagination to put the two of them in the same room, to watch my father chew my boyfriend up and devour him alive, to abide by his rules and regulations that will surely come with dating.

He doesn’t know Peeta and I have even so much as shaken hands. I’ve never so much as left him even the slightest hint. Not even when I’ve accompanied him to the bakery for the occasional trade with Peeta’s father, the baker himself.

Like both Prim and I predicted, our father is now on edge, his breathing uneven and his nostrils flaring. “Yes. Both my girls are of age,” he says after a long beat, his tone hard and jagged.

Caesar though is either oblivious or is extraordinarily practiced at appearing obtuse. “Well, wouldn’t it be something if either of them were chosen for the games? Am I right?” He directs his questions to the audience. “Don’t we all love a family story?” His words elicit cheers and hollers and a murderous glint in my father’s silver eyes. The camera only catches it for a moment’s time before quickly flitting away, towards the much more enjoyable image of the Captiolites chattering like chipmunks at the very idea.

And suddenly I feel Peeta’s arm tighten around me, the vision of me—the only person in the world he’s certain that he loves—being taken away from our home here in Twelve and tossed into an arena with kids twice her size, too much for even his naïve mind.

“Don’t we all believe in Mr. Everdeen,” the talk show host continues to push and I feel my typical annoyance with the odd man bleed into anger. “I mean, he brought home Mr. Abernathy here.” And with one single hand gesture from Caesar, the entire interview’s focus re-centers on Haymitch.

And unlike my father, he doesn’t even miss a beat before replying.

“Barely,” he mutters with a last swig of his drink, cleaning the glass. “And he was stingy with the gifts.”

Next to him, my father relaxes a bit. Haymitch always brings out a bit of levity in him, even on his worst days.

After all, in my father’s eyes, the paunchy drunk is a symbol of hope.

Haymitch is the only person my father’s ever brought him. He’s the only other living victor inside the confines of Twelve.

Not to mention his closest friend.

And my surrogate uncle, I note, a bit ironically. Haymitch and I have a far different relationship than he has with anyone else in my family but he’s always been there, has known me since the day I was born, often has dinner at our house, rain or shine, no matter how much he annoys my mother, and he’s an irreplaceable member of my family.

The audience is still riled up from Haymitch and howling with laughter—a bit too much, in my opinion—but my father can’t let the subject of his children go before adding one last sentiment.

“Don’t worry, Caesar. If either of my girls are reaped, trust me,” he states, louder and far more pronounced than anything else he’s said the entire interview. “They will be the victor. There’s not a tribute in the arena that would survive against my girl.”

For as long as I can remember, my father had taken me to the woods. He sometimes claims the first time he looked down at me in my mother’s arms, at a mere two days old, he saw a familiar hunger in my eyes.

Not a hunger for food. District Twelve is the smallest and the poorest in the country of Panem, but luckily, my family is one of the richest.

Unlike my schoolmates, I’ve never once had to worry about having enough to eat for lunch. My parents never worried that we’d starve to death or that Prim and I could be taken from their grasp by authorities. They never worried about supplying us with whatever we needed—they gave us more than we ever could have wanted—and they never had to fret that we’d be sent to the mines for work one day.

No, we were far too wealthy and far too famous for any of that.

But my parents had a far different batch of worries to keep them up at night. Not about food or finances or anything remotely common in Twelve.

No, they had to worry about cameras peaking into the privacy of our home and photos being taken without our knowledge and my face or Prim’s face being splashed across every magazine and newspaper in the country.

They worried about the almost insatiable thirst the Capitol seems to have for more family dynamics among the victors.

Especially after the recent back-to-back sibling victories led the hunger games to higher ratings and revenues in the Capitol.

When I was a child, my mother coached me to never go into town without my father by my side. Which sounds easy enough, until my father’s extensive vacations to the Capitol are taken into consideration. For as long as I can remember, my father would leave at random stretches of time, for weeks on end. To go play puppet for a population so dumb, so completely isolated from the rest of the country, that they took his anger for sarcasm. They took his bite as charm. They believed his glare was an act, was part of his appeal, when in reality my father had rebelled against performing for the last twenty-seven years.

When he was gone, our lives became strict. Bedtimes came earlier, curtains remained drawn day in and day out, our mother never wanted to sing or dance or even so much as smile with her husband gone.

But when he was home, sunshine peaked in our windows again. It danced on the floor and it swept us away with its gentle affection.

There was music and laughter and sweets and toys. He never returned from the Capitol empty-handed. He brought back expensive jewels for our mother, he built me and Prim a fancy treehouse in the backyard, put up a large, golden swing-set, went as far as purchasing as many cakes and breads as he could hold from the Mellark Bakery.

Peeta’s parents bakery.

Since I was two, further back than I can even retain, my father would take me out to the woods, would hold my hand and tell me old stories of District Twelve’s past, detail insane urban legends, teach me about plants and berries and trees and the direction of the wind.

And for as long as I can remember, I idolized him. He was so confident and so charismatic and so kind. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be exactly like him when I grew up. It felt like an honor to me that I received far more his end of the gene line than my mother’s. She was regarded as a beauty in her youth, but he was one of the most magnificent people in the country. Having his coloring and the same silver eyes felt like a special gift, awarded every single time someone marveled at how similar we appear.

But my father was gone often and the unpredictable lengths of his stays in the large, foreign city was one of the only constants my family ever knew. So it really came as no surprise when my mother phoned the cabin only minutes after Caesar’s interview was over.

“I’ll get it,” Prim says flatly after a moment, throwing a sardonic glance at me and Peeta on the couch. Now in a much different entanglement than we had been while watching the talk-show.

“Thanks,” I murmur unintelligibly against Peeta’s mouth, before closing my eyes in pleasure.

“Don’t strain yourselves,” she can’t stop herself from tacking on the end.

“We’ll try not to while you’re still here,” Peeta murmurs cheekily, moving his lips downwards, towards my neck, right onto my pulse point. I let out a somewhat ridiculous squeak in response.

“Hello?” Prim says lightly into the receiver, already knowing it’s our mother. No one else calls this phone, inside this hidden cabin, located in the woods surrounding Twelve.

The woods in which officials fenced off years ago. The woods in which it’s illegal to enter. The woods in which my father has taken me to hunt for families less fortunate than ours since I was a small infant.

It’s not a typical cabin found in the outskirts of Twelve. No, ordinarily a cabin out here—a cabin anywhere in Panem, really—is nothing more than a broken down shack. There’s normally nothing other than an unsteady foundation, a freezing damp floor and an unlit fireplace.

But somewhere along the lines, in the years before I was born, my parents resurrected this place from the depths of despair and expanded it, rebuilt it, refurnished and redecorated and turned it into a vast, warm, safe second home for all of us to run away to when we felt the need.

Prim listens into the receiver for a long moment before she sighs deeply and beckons me. “Katniss, can you?”

Instantly, I break away from Peeta’s embrace, cupping his face and pulling him back from my collarbone.

“What’s wrong?” I ask as I scramble off the couch, my anxiety abruptly spiked. “Did something happen?” I search Prim’s eyes as I take the phone from her but, to my utter relief, all I find there is blatant, unmasked disappointment.

I already know what my mother is going to say before I put the phone to my ear. “Hi?”

“Hi, honey,” she murmurs, her voice both strained and higher than typical. Which indicates she’s trying to put up a front for us right now, when she’d rather be moping in bed. “Your father just called. Evidently Effie Trinket informed him he has more scheduled commitments to fulfill before he can come home.”

I deflate, already prepard, knowing this was coming. Isn’t it always coming inadvertently? My father has never been home when he was scheduled to be in my life. No matter the holiday, the birthday, the emergency or event, the Capitol demands that they comes first to him. Not even my birth could upstage his commitments. He wasn’t allowed to return home to Twelve, to meet his firstborn child, until his press events were done and over with.

It’s no wonder he refuses to put on show for those people.

“Okay,” I mumble after a moment, not even convinced my mother is even still there on the other end.

“It’ll be alright,” she says, as positively as she can. “He’ll be home as soon.”

“Yeah.” I try and fail miserably to match her tone. I inherited my father’s ability to act. Or inability, that is.

There’s the faint sound of crying in the background, and my heart aches a bit. “I’m sorry, honey, I have to go check on Archer,” she apologizes as a way of saying goodbye.

I make my way into the kitchen as soon as we hang up. Prim is standing by the counter, staring at the same magazine our father sent three weeks ago.

Peeta comes up behind me then, his hand rubbing my back in comforting circles. “Your father delayed again?”

I nod silently, as my eyes focused on my little sister now. She’s trying her best to hold back the upset that’s threatening to take over.

And without hesitation, my instincts to protect my family from anything and everything painful kick in. “Prim, it’s okay. It’s probably only going to be another week before he’s back,” I console, stepping closer to her small frame and touching her back.

It’s all the initiation she needs before spinning around into my arms and clinging onto me tight. “He’s never around,” she cries into my neck—I’m not much taller than her—as her shoulders shake with tears.

I feel Peeta’s eyes on me, measuring my reaction to Prim’s words. He’s heard me cry the same thing time and time again, he knows the familiarity of this scene better than anyone should.

“He tries his best, Prim,” I whisper thickly into her long, blonde hair. She’s fair and light, like our mother. Like a merchant or peacekeeper. Looking at my little sister, you’d never consider her to be the daughter of a man from the Seam.

But you’d easily believe that she was a girl raised in Victor’s Village and I suppose that’s what counts. Where we were raised and not where we could have been, if things had gone different.

“He’s never really going to be ours though,” she weeps and I don’t have words to comfort her now. Because she’s right.

Our father will always belong to the Capitol, first and foremost.

And not even his children can upstage that.

Prim leaves not long later, to head home to Victor’s Village and more than likely curl up with our mother for the night. They’ve both always been so alike, so much softer and more hopeful than me. I half expect every trip of our father’s to double in time, if not triple. After a lifetime of disappointments, I can’t help but prepare myself.

It’s not that they’re weak for believing. It’s that I have too much Hunter Everdeen in me. I have too much pessimism crawling inside my bones to ever fully trust that he’s really coming home until he’s already stepped off the train in Twelve.

Too many hours of my childhood were spent, wearing fancy stockings and warm, fur-lined coats, standing at the train station, only to welcome a load of cargo and no father in sight. Too many times were phone calls answered in tears. Too many night spent crying, clinging to my father’s hunting jacket, so disoriented by the hazardous schedule in which our lives were ran, waiting for my father to phone, waiting for him to walk through the front door, waiting for him to sneak up on us in the middle of the night or pull us from class on a school day.

That was the true constant in my life. Waiting for my father to finally come home, knowing every moment we shared was on borrowed time. Knowing that he’d never truly belong to us. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to hear my mother’s bedroom door slam and lock, waiting to hear Prim cry or Archer wail, waiting to see that defeated glint in my father’s slate gaze.

I close the cabin door behind my sister now, knowing with confidence that she’ll make it home alright, even with the sun currently setting in the faded blue sky.

Our father never took Prim hunting like he did me, never brought her out to the woods and taught her to shoot a bow and arrow, never showed her how to trap and kill an animal. But even still, the path from the cabin to our home in Victor’s Village is imprinted in our brains, like a birthmark or tattoo. We’d be able to find our way to and from, even if we were sleepwalking.

As would Peeta. Considering this is the place he spends the majority of his time.

Considering this cabin may as well be his permanent address.

And if it weren’t illegal, it very well might be, I think to myself wryly as I walk over to where he’s leaning against the doorframe now.

“Hello,” I greet again, hopping onto my tiptoes and kissing his lips lightly.

He grasps my hips, smiling against my mouth. “Don’t you have to get home too?” He hesitantly asks, his desire to keep me here bleeding through every caress of his fingers, as they trail underneath my loose shirt, sliding upwards and causing an electric current to ripple through the core of my body.

But I just shake my head at his inquiry, moving my mouth from his to kiss down the side of his face, underneath his jawline.

“Mmm,” he moans after a long moment, before suddenly putting a few more inches between us. “Are you sure your mother won’t miss you?”

Peeta’s always been considerate of my mother. Too considerate sometimes, if I do say so myself. Bordering on obsessive.

He is obsessed with keeping her approval, with never crossing any invisible line, with never even so much as mildly exasperating her.

I suppose it’s only natural though. She is the only parental figure he has in his life.

I’ve never been too enthusiastic to introduce him to my father and he’s never pushed the issue too far. Hunter Everdeen is a practical legend around Twelve—and beloved across the entirety of Panem—but he’s the reason, I’ve always privately felt, that I was isolated from all my classmates.

Sure, I’m already not the most friendly person to start with, in anyone’s book. As Haymitch never hesitates to tell me. But there was already very little chance of me making friends in school anyway. Being the victor of the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games’ child dropped the chances of play-dates or sleepovers drastically. My father trusts no one. Not with his children.

And I didn’t mind for the most part. I’m too like him to enjoy people much anyway. This whole notion was much harder on Prim, who adored her fellow classmates and easily endeared herself to them as well. But no matter how darling my little sister may be, nothing changed our father’s mind and when he was set on something, it was practically written in stone.

I can’t even imagine how Peeta must feel, having to live in fear for the entire last year of our little secret being exposed. I may be nervous about how my father will react, but Peeta has to be outright petrified.

“My mother will be fine,” I murmur, rolling my eyes as I lean back against the wall now. “She’s got Prim and Archie to keep her sane until my father’s home.”

Peeta chuckles at me, a mirthful smile in his eyes. “And you got me,” he teases, tapping my nose with his finger.

I giggle in a way I withheld until Prim left. I wasn’t about to give her ammunition to mock me later on. “All to myself,” I add, matching his expression now. “For unlimited hours of the day.”

“That’s my girl, looking on the bright side.”

I snort. “Yeah, that’s me.” I’m the exact opposite of an optimist. I prefer expecting the worse and setting expectations low. Maybe it’s a learned behavior but, at least that way, I’m not crushed like my mother when things don’t pan out the way I want.

Peeta mistakes the look on my face to be one of hidden disappointment. “You’re father will be home soon, sweetheart. They can’t keep him in the Capitol forever.”

“Can’t they?” I mumble, not expecting an answer. Before he can offer one—because Peeta is nothing if not a fixer—I quickly segue to a new topic. “Where do you think you’ll go when my father does come home?”

He just shrugs the question off though, completely unbothered. “Anywhere but home,” he says simply, his stunning blue eyes clear as the sky they remind me of.

“Anywhere but there,” I agree, my smile twisting into a grimace.

A year ago, when I was barely fifteen, President Snow—Panem’s true Gamemaker, my father always said—demanded every victor extend their stay in the Capitol, even after the games ended that year. He gave no outright reason and my father was cagey to speak on the subject, but in the end, the president’s word was law and there was no room for argument. President Snow can demand of us whatever he wishes.

It was a cold, dreary autumn that year, with early snowfall, which was the leading cause to the significant increase in accidents and injuries. My mother, the born healer, had more patients than she could handle, and even while training Prim as her assistant, she required my help. I was to head to town and purchase a list of herbs from the apothecary shop her parents still owned. The people who disowned her, who had little to no interest in her after she married a man from the Seam, victor or not. The people who never cared to meet their own grandchildren, to acknowledge our existence even as we passed right by their shop, in their plain sight.

I was dragging my feet the entire walk there, already with a sour taste in my mouth, when I heard the loudest wail my ears had every registered. When I heard sharp words being screamed out, when the sound of a boy sobbing filled the air.

And my instincts took over, my every sense focused on finding the hurt and helping them, altogether forgoing the trip for my mother’s herbs.

I followed the commotion to the bakery’s backdoor. Right through the open threshold, it was crystal clear, the baker’s wife—the witch, as many of the kids at school referred to her—had beaten her youngest son senselessly.

He’s in my year, I’d realized abruptly, staring with an agape mouth at his bloody face. His eye was swelling and his nose and lip were smeared scarlet and the only thing that crossed my mind at first, was I recognized him as the blonde boy with the colorful notebook, who could never meet my eyes and always wore long sleeves.

Of course, I snapped out of the daze after only a moment. The witch turned and caught sight of me, snapping that no Seam brat was going to get any free handouts from her and to scatter before she called the Peacekeepers.

Something about the unmasked prejudice against the Seam, a place where people in Twelve had next to nothing and were seen as lesser than the merchants, jolted me into action.

“Get your hand off him!” I’d demanded, using my entire body weight, just as my father taught me, to push the door open as she tried to close it in my face. “Let him go or I swear I’ll make you regret it.”

At that, I heard an ugly laugh and the door flew open again, my exerted force throwing it back into the wall.

“I’m serious, child,” she snaps, her blue eyes narrow and her mouth in a snide smirk. “I will call the Peacekeepers to remove you from my shop-”

I didn’t even let her finish. I wasn’t one to be messed with. Not when I just witnessed something awful firsthand, not when I had it in my power to do something.

I knew then I couldn’t bring my father home. He was owned by the president and the Capitol. To an extent, we all were. And I knew I couldn’t stop the games from happening or the possibility of my name being pulled from the reaping bowl. I couldn’t always make my mother come out of her room or even out of her bed, when her illness struck bad. And I couldn’t stop my siblings from crying for our father at night.

But I knew that day in the bakery, I had the power over Mrs. Mellark and I wasn’t going to let her get away with hurting her son anymore.

“Call them,” I dared, not an ounce of insecurity in my voice. “Cray is an old family friend.” He was actually indebted to my father, who’d kept the man’s secrets for too many years to count. But family friend rolled off the tongue more effectively.

“Head Peacekeeper is now making friends in the Seam?” She spat in disbelief. “No wonder this district is so rundown.”

She laughed humorlessly, but my focus was pulled towards the boy. He was covering the left side of his face, as if it hurt too badly to release. As if he was trying to stop his eye from swelling, stop his nose from gushing blood. As if he could hold his now split lip together with nothing more than the palm of his hand.

The sight hurt my heart to see. It burned a fire inside of me that only a true injustice could set alight.

“My father is Hunter Everdeen,” I snapped in the woman’s direction, not even basking in satisfaction when her face drained of all color. The idea that a scrappy little girl with olive skin and dark hair was the child of the most powerful man in all of Twelve struck a cord inside even the witch. “Still wanna make that call?”

The woman’s face was caught between anger and shock when I glanced at her again. And I hated her for it. I hated her and every single person in this district who hurt their kids, who took out their grievances on them, who made them cower and quiver in fear. Who raised them to be afraid of those they loved in a world already so awful.

I know I live a privileged life but, deep in my bones, I know even if things were different, my parents wouldn’t have laid a hand on us. Even if we were so poor I had to take tesserae, even if we were starving to the point of no return, even if we were practically homeless in the Seam, my parents would never hurt us.

“Leave,” the witch spoke then, but her voice was void of all emotion.

“Not without him,” I refused, my eyes planted on the wounded boy in front of me. The boy who was doing everything to avoid looking me in the eye, too busy covering his battered face.

I heard a sound caught between a groan and a shriek, before a cutting board was tossed across the room. “Just go!” She shouted at her son, causing him to flinch severely. “Just go with her!”

On her order, which sounded more distraught than angry, the boy had stormed out the back door and into the chilly evening air, still covering his face desperately, still looking utterly ashamed.

But he waited for me to catch up with him. He waited for me to guide him away from that awful woman he was forced to call his mother.

He didn’t flinch when I touched his arm nor when I took his hand. And when I led him away from the town and towards the village, he followed me without complaint.

Actually, he followed me without a single word.

I realized this just as my house came into view. “You never told me your name?” I whispered, looking up at him gently.

He had tears leaking from his eyes that he was doing his best to ignore, the bleeding on the left side of his face had barely even lightened up, his eye was swelling bigger and bigger, and yet, he chuckled a little at the question. “I’ve been in your class since kindergarten, Katniss.”

I felt my cheeks burn pink, even under the darkening sky. “I know.” But I still peered up at him, curiously waiting for him to tell me.

“It’s Peeta,” he finally answered, maybe a bit satirical.

“Peeta Mellark,” I suddenly recognized.

“Mhmm. Figured you’d pick up the last name.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s printed across the bakery in huge letters?”

“Oh.” He chuckled at my ignorance, causing my blush to deepen.

And I realized immediately how much I liked the sound of his laugh. How I liked being the reason for the sound.

My stomach did a complete flip at the notion and my ears abruptly felt hot, but I tried to push all this away, needing to get him to my mother.

“Wait,” he halted before I could even reached the front door. “Is your mother in there?”

I shot him a confused look. “Yeah, of course? Who else-”

I didn’t even get a chance to finish though. “I really don’t want anyone else to know about this,” he pleads, his eyes looking as frightened as they did with the witch.

“Peeta-” I start, opening my mouth argue, to convince him to go into the house and let my mother treat his injuries. To let me get him help.

But one look inside his desolated, defeated, terrified eyes and I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t put him through any more than he’d already gone through. Not when he’d eventually have to go face the witch again at home.

“Okay,” I whispered, and I felt him squeeze the hand I didn’t realize I was still clutching. “Let me take you somewhere else. And I’ll try to fix you up myself.”

I wasn’t a healer like my mother and Prim. I was a hunter, just like my father, just like his very name, through and through. But I had witnessed enough of what my mother did—my father had forced me to witness enough of what she did, in case I ever needed the knowledge—and I was confident I had the expertise to help him.

My decision was validated by the relief in Peeta’s eyes, by the visible exhale he expelled from inside. He was ashamed, I realized, of his abuse. He was embarrassed to let anyone know what was happening behind closed doors.

I guided him by the hand outside the village, through the Seam—a place in which he’d never been before—and to the fence line.

“Isn’t it electrified?” He asked, his grip on my palm tightening. I liked the sensation for some reason. I liked the way his big hand felt wrapped around my small one. I liked how he wanted to hold onto me in the darkness.

“Nope,” I say, and let out a proud giggle. Or maybe a nervous one. Whenever I think back to this night, I can never tell.

“How do you know?” His blonde eyebrows knit together, still afraid in a way I’d never had to be. My father had taught me everything there was to know about the woods from a young age.

“Listen,” I urge softly, leaning my ear towards the fence.

He cranes forward too, waiting for the buzz of electricity to fill his ears. Only, just as I knew, it never does. Because it never has. The fence’s electricity was shut off long before we were even born.

I watched as his face registered the silence, as he realized and trusted I was right. And I beamed at him, before showing him the way my father slips beyond the fence and guiding him through the trees, towards the cabin, buried deep inside the woods.

It took an hour to find, not because of the blackened sky, but because Peeta’s face hurt so badly that his gait was slowed. But I remained patient, even though that was never my strong suit either. I waited for him to pick up the pace, to be ready to move, to find our way through the tall green trees. I pulled all the branches I could see out of his path, used the moon as our flashlight and didn’t complain once when he stumbled along the way.

By the time we got to the cabin, it had to be past Archer’s bedtime. My mother would be worried sick for me, but I soothed myself that she had plenty on her plate. I’m her firstborn. The child she understands the least, the one who’s like her husband in body and soul. I knew I was probably near the bottom of her worry list.

The very first thing I did when we entered the cabin was order Peeta to sit down in the dining room. I gathered my mother’s first aid kit from the bathroom, wet a rag in cool water and I got to work cleaning the blood from his face.

“This has to be gross for you,” he murmurs after a long stretch of silence. His eyes betrayed how self-conscious he must have felt.

Trying to alleviate his anxiety, I pretended to shrug it off. “My mother cleans wounds all the time. At our kitchen table, no less.”

Peeta made a noise that indicated he didn’t buy my act of ease. “I heard at school that you run from the sick and injured.”

I raised my eyebrows at the comment. No one at school talked about me. No one knew me well enough to. People stopped trying to get close to any of Hunter Everdeen’s kids years ago.

The longer I stared at Peeta in disbelief, the more he seemed to lose confidence in his statement. “Maybe I didn't hear it,” he finally amended. I brought the damp cloth back up to his face again as a reward, tenderly wiping away the blood, before using the clean side to set against his swelling lid, hoping to offer some pain reduction there as well. “Maybe I saw it,” he added sheepishly.

I furrowed my brows, even more perplexed by the elaboration. “Saw it?”

“When Leaf Barker tripped and broke his knee in Physical Education last year? You were almost green when you bolted out of the gymnasium.”

His words conjured up a vague image. Still though, something about this felt odd to me.

“How do you remember that better than I do?”

At that, Peeta shrugged. “I guess, I notice you sometimes?”

“What do you mean, sometimes?” I pressed, none of his words suddenly making a bit of sense.

“Why did you stick up for me tonight?” He abruptly segued, his expression shifting into something of defense, like he’s trying to deflect.

But I’m not one to be deterred. “I wasn’t going to stand there and watch your mother hurt you,” I stated, my voice remaining firm. “Why?”

He continued to walk around my question. “Is tonight the first night you ever noticed me?”

I pulled my hand and the damp cloth away from his wounded face, reaching in the kit to grab a white cream I’d seen my mother and Prim both use on swelling before. “Yes,” I finally replied, because I don’t know what else to say. That I saw him glance at me sometimes and then watched as his eyes flit away? That I noticed how he doodled in math class, because he found the subject boring? That I’d seen him lift a sack easily over his shoulder at the bakery and watched him beat almost every upperclassmen at wrestling, even while three years their junior?

None of that seems even remotely relevant to mention.

“When was the first time you noticed me?” I shot back, still being careful to apply the cream with only the lightest pressure to his battered eye.

“Kindergarten,” he instantly blurted out, his tone simple and bold.

I stared at him in disbelief for a long moment before chuckling, catching the joke. “Funny.”

“I’m serious,” he refuted, peaking his good eye open, the sky meeting a silver dollar as our gaze locked. And I see that he is serious somehow.

“What?”

“The first day of kindergarten,” he continued, after a long beat of me just staring him. His confidence had wavered once again and he was looking a bit regretful that he’d put this out in the open. “You were wearing a red velvet dress and brown stockings. Your hair was in two braids instead of one and your ribbons matched your dress. The teacher asked during music assembly who knew The Valley Song and your hand shot right up. She put you on a stool and you sang it, clear as day, for everyone to hear. Even the birds outside stopped to listen. And from that moment on… I was a goner.”

I just continued to look at him in disbelief, unable to put the pieces of what he’s said together. Finally, I whispered, “you’re telling the truth?”

“I’ve had a crush on you for forever,” he admitted, his singularly open eye giving away his nerves at the admission. “And I know you probably don’t feel the same way. I know you didn’t even know my name until tonight but I just wanted to say, in case we never have the chance to speak again-”

“Stop,” I cut him off, my mind already about to explode. “Stop, um…” I refused to look at him as I spoke, furiously staring down at my lap. “I need more time to… process this.”

He had a crush on me since the first day of kindergarten? He’d heard me sing and from that day forward he held a hidden candle for me?

And he never once worked up the courage to talk to me?

Dozens of moments suddenly race through my mind.

Cerulean blue eyes finding me in a crowd countless times and then pulling away as soon as I meet them. The time I wanted to play a stupid game at recess and a stocky blonde boy volunteered to be team captain, and then picked me first. The stunning drawing I found in my locker last year on Sweetheart’s Day, that I was convinced was put there by mistake, though it bore a striking resemblance to the doodles on Peeta’s notebook.

And before I could stop it, I felt myself begin to shake with nerves.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he apologized, seeing my frightened reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just… I didn’t know if I’d ever get the opportunity to tell you again-”

“Shhh,” I hushed, picking up the damp cloth once more. “Let me take care of your face. And then…” I hesitated again, unsure what to say in this situation. I had exactly zero experiences to compare this to. “Tomorrow we can talk more.”

Peeta nodded amicably, staying silent for the reminder of my ministrations. I felt a terrible pang of guilt for not responding the way he’d probably hoped, but there was still a part of me too stunned to even fully register the confession.

I was an outcast. I’d never fit in with the kids at school, neither town or Seam. I don’t look like the merchants and I’m too rich for the Seam folk. I would have been alone all the time at school if it weren’t for Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter who sat with me at lunch and partnered with me in class.

How could anyone have even noticed me to be anything other than strange? I barely spoke, even in classes where I knew all the answers. And I hardly participated in games or gossip. I had a father who insisted most days on picking me up himself from school, not allowing me to walk home alone like the other kids.

But the look in Peeta’s eyes was earnest. He wasn’t playing some elaborate trick on me, he wasn’t trying to coerce me into confessing something as well so he could humiliate me. He was being genuine in every way I could tell. And I had my father’s senses.

The same senses that helped him win his hunger games.

A new thought struck me out of the blue. Peeta seemed too kind and too considerate to have a mother who beat him like this. He doesn’t fit the profile of the kids in the community home, brought there by even less abuse than I witnessed firsthand tonight.

The insane urge to get to know him more, to learn more about this complete stranger who I went out on an impulsive limb for suddenly surges through my brain.

It wouldn’t be a good idea, I told myself. He’s a merchant and I’m the daughter of a victor. Two titles that seem not far apart in theory but are miles away from the other in practice. And I’m not experienced with people the way he is. I don’t know how to make friends or how to maintain them. I don’t know what he expects from me but it’s surely more than I know how to give. I don’t know what to say in a situation like this. Haymitch always tells me I’m as romantic as dirt.

But is that what I want to be? I asked myself as I finished fixing Peeta up. Do I want to be romantic? Do I want to be that girl who holds her boyfriend’s hand in the town square and kisses him under the moonlight? Do I want to put an embroidered ribbon in my hair and wear an expensive dress from the Capitol to go to the Sweetheart’s Dance? Do I want to sneak in through my bedroom window at the crack of dawn so my father won’t know I’ve been out all night?

If I could learn to be romantic, would I want to be?

And naturally, the answer I’ve always known automatically seeps through my brain. No. I’m not like my mother and Prim. I’m practical by nature, rather than fanciful. I’ve never truly obsessed about falling in love or fawned over even the most incredible looking men on the television.

But something held me back now. Something inside me said that answer, the truth I’d always known, is suddenly not entirely accurate anymore.

Because I find that I did want those things I just described. I did want to have someone to hold, someone to laugh with, someone who conjured up that same flip in my stomach as Peeta did earlier when he laughed.

I wanted the same kind of love my parents had. The kind of love that brought them both to life, despite the horrible circumstances they’d both separately endured. I wanted the kind of love that they showed me was possible, even in a world as bleak and as inhumane as Panem felt at times.

I only realized how long I’d been silent, contemplating my inner desires, when Peeta offered a minuscule smile and stood up slowly to leave.

I opened my mouth to speak but when his eyes met mine, every thought in my head was magically wiped away. I had nothing to say, nothing that could be of any sort of consequence, that could mean anything in comparison to his confession.

“I should head back to town,” he murmured, trying to appear nonchalant. “Face my mother. Hope she’s in a better mood now-”

But I couldn’t stand the idea of him returning to the witch, the idea of going to school tomorrow and acting like his words weren’t still spinning around my brain, the idea of even sleeping soundly tonight.

“Peeta,” I called just as he was about to reach the front door. “Wait!”

He turned towards me, looking puzzled by my outburst. “What’s wrong?”

And I don’t know what came over me. I still can’t place what made me—a girl who had never been decisive a day in her life—fling myself across the room and smash my lips onto his.

He didn’t respond at first. I caught him too completely by surprise. His lips hung there, frozen, as mine pushed against his, with too much force and an overload of desperation.

But I felt an incredible stirring in my chest, an odd sensation that felt akin to a giggle amplified.

And when he finally recovered from the shock of it all, his hands both came to rest on either side of my hips, his mouth began to move against mine, his knees bent to reach my height with more success, and the stirring turned to a fiery spark. I know he felt it too, as the kiss was swiftly disturbed by his wide grin.

“Don’t go back home tonight,” I gasped out, looking up at him, wide-eyed and breathless.

His gaze melted as he took me in, he head bobbing in agreement without even needing to consider my request.

“Okay,” he’d whispered with a dazed smile, his blue eyes impossibly wild and sleepy at the same time.

His expression, his spirit somehow, was contagious, and I found myself somewhere stuck between a laugh and a blush when I replied.

“Okay.”

After that night, Peeta rarely went back home. I had called my mother and let her know I was staying at the cabin, but intentionally eluded telling her that the baker’s son was joining me. We’d spent the entire night talking in front of the fire, making each other laugh. The bashfulness I felt from my unexpected kiss stayed in my gut, causing me to bubble up with embarrassed laughter every so often.

But instead of that making things awkward, it cut the tension pretty smoothly. It was only months later did Peeta confess he’d felt just as nervous and just as shy about spending time with me. He was charismatic, I realize even that first night. Ironically funny. He was nice, in a way I rarely have found anyone to be. And, the more time went on, the more my desire grew to stay close to him. The more often I was around him, the more painfully I missed him when we were apart.

It was only a matter of time until my mother found out—not least of all, because my siblings accidentally caught us kissing in back of the school, a month to the day we first spoke.

I always imagined she’d be strict on me, the firstborn, when it came to dating. Especially in the world we lived in. Especially with my father’s position. I truly thought she’d forbid a relationship until I was of age. Maybe I was wrong about her. Or maybe she just saw how I looked at Peeta and understood that I wasn’t just being careless or rebellious. That whatever magnetic connection I felt towards Peeta wasn’t just an ordinary school-aged fling.

To my surprise as well, my mother seemed to take on a very similar stance to me when it came to Peeta and my father. Keeping the news of this entanglement from her husband’s ears was almost her idea.

“What are you thinking about?” Peeta asks me now, bringing me back to the present moment. His fingers tickle my neck as they brush my hair back behind my ear, touching one of the satin green ribbons weaved throughout my loose braids.

“You,” I reply coyly, shooting him a sly glance as I slip past him to head back towards the kitchen.

“Me?” He calls in mock disbelief. He trails up behind me, catching me by the waist and swinging me into his arms without warning.

“Peeta!” I exclaim, automatically wrapping myself around him as I try to steady my balance midair.

“What, baby?”

“Put me down, baby,” I mock, pressing my nose to his now, rubbing them together.

“I like holding you though,” he whispers, like he’s confessing some huge secret.

“Until your arms gets tired-”

“That was one time, Katniss.”

“I’m just reminding you,” I say with an air of superiority. “You don’t always appreciate holding me.”

At that, his demeanor falls a little. “I do when I realize I won’t be seeing you much in a few days.”

I feel my heart sink now too. As excited as I am at the prospect of my father coming home, after weeks apart, I always have to be a little more careful upon his first days back.

He always likes to spend time at the cabin and go for long walks in the woods upon his return. Spend more time in nature than the indoors, stay far away from people outside our family, sleep under the stars by the lake. The Capitol is apparently luxurious, but in my father’s own words, it is void of any true or natural beauty. Everything is artificial, man-made, concocted and orchestrated. There’s nothing that compares in his mind—or mine either—to a cool breeze on a sunny day spent in the meadow where the dandelions grow tall.

“But I’ll still see you in school?” I say, though my voice comes out as more of a plea. Peeta doesn’t always like to attend school these days, not when he knows his parents can easily track him down there.

His father, the baker himself, took the ambiguous loss of his youngest—his favorite—son particularly hard. It was only a matter of weeks after I intercepted his mother beating him that Peeta definitively decided to sever ties with majority of his family.

I’d like to say he made the choice all on his own but that’d be a lie. I watched as the physical bruises on his skin healed, as he began to peel back emotional layer upon layer to me, as he slowly told me what really had been going on in the Mellark’s family home. And I can’t say that I was impartial to his decision to cut the connection to a mother with a bruising fist and a father who closed his eyes and let it happen.

“Delly’s parents usually make me go to school so…” He shrugs it off, like it’s of no consequence, his arms hoisting me higher against his chest.

But I feel a sudden wave of gratitude towards the Cartwrights. They may be a little too jolly for my liking and their daughter, Delly, maybe can’t take a hint to save her life, but at least they always watch out for Peeta’s well-being. At least they cover for him when his mother come sniffing around and they feed him what they can afford and force him to attend class, where I’ll be able to see him.

“Good,” I murmur, at peace now. My father will be home soon and Peeta will be safely tucked away with his best friend.

I lean down and kiss his nose sweetly, reveling in the tender moment. His lips follow my lead and begin to plant themselves across my chin, underneath my jaw, causing me to squirm and squeal at the sensation.

“So,” he murmurs against my throat. “We have the entire place to ourselves, for the whole night, huh?”

His audacious smile elicits my own. “At least.” My father’s delays usually mean a minimum of two days.

Within a minute, Peeta has me on my back, against the softly quilted bed of my upstairs room. He takes his time helping me out of my clothes before I hurriedly shove his off, impatient and hungry.

He, of course, finds time to crack a joke. “Good thing Archie is too young to come here unchaperoned. Or else we’d never get the chance to do this.”

I roll my eyes and shove his mouth off my collarbone, utterly disgusted now. “Talking about my baby brother is one sure way to turn me off, Peeta.”

Archer, my three-old-brother, was an unexpected surprise, to put it lightly. My parents were done with two girls. My father joked him and my mother were both already set with one clone each, but alas, the year of the Seventieth Hunger Games was a year full of shocks.

A few months before the games that year, the coal mines—the industry Twelve is known for—exploded. Right in the middle of the afternoon, as everyone was obliviously going about their day.

It was a close call for many and one more reason my father is beloved around these parts. If he hadn’t been at the right place, at the right time, if he hadn’t volunteered to go with Prim and her class on a field trip down to the mines that day, there was a chance that no one would have noticed the gas leak.

It was too late to do anything by the time my father pointed it out, but his warning and the fact that people in Twelve take his word very seriously, managed to save the lives the inevitable explosion would have otherwise cost.

Through the outpouring of gratitude, and the overwhelming media coverage my whole family was abruptly bombarded with, my parents made the decision to pull me and Prim from school for a while, to hole up in the remodeled cabin, where no one could find us because of its illegal location.

I’ve never ask and I don't ever want to know when my parents conceived Archer. But about nine months after the vacation from the world, my mother gave birth to a little boy who looked identical to me and my father.

“Sorry,” Peeta whispers with a chuckle, collapsing beside me. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He moves to kiss my stomach, to trace circles on my hips like he always does. But I shake my head, a different request—or more like it, demand—on my mind.

“Tell me the story of how you first fell in love with me?”

Peeta rolls his eyes. Very dramatically. “You mean a year ago?”

“I mean in kindergarten,” I say with a smirk and then let out a shriek of surprise when he pounces on me, his lips attacking my neck.

“Aren’t you tired of that story yet?” He asks, his voice edging on exasperated.

“You never tire of a classic.” I give him a pout, knowing he never refuses me anything when I pull that trick.

I’m right, as per usual. “Fine,” he relents, but his eyes tell me that he enjoys telling this tale more than he leads on. “Come here.” He holds open his arms and waits for me to crawl into them, to settle against his chest.

I lay there for a long moment, my pointer finger running up and down the center of his bicep, as my ear rests against his heartbeat, patiently waiting for him to begin.

“It was the very first day of school. You were wearing a red, velvet dress…”

Read the rest on AO3

#katnissmellarkkkk #prompt 59 #Springtime edition 2021 #submission

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

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R-r-r-rewatch thoughts for The Mandalorian S2 Ep2

(or Chapter 10 as they seem resolved to call it)

- can I just express my joy for a moment that in one episode we get peli, the answer to my pleas for female representation in the ‘sketchy middle aged car mechanic’ niche, and a female alien designed with no consideration towards sexiness. (I mean I’m sure there’s someone. There is always someone somewhere on the Internet, is the bitter truth history has shown to us. but it’s not the intention behind the design haha)

- they do take great pains to deliberately show you boba’s armour several times both in the recap and in the episode itself, so never despair he is very likely still on his way onto our screens once more

- this dude holding the baby hostage wanting specifically the jetpack in exchange is the one (1) break this whole episode gave din lol

also the Patented Mando Finger Curl of Stress while he talked softly and calmly to not promp this asshole to make a sudden move... the most endearing character tic, I love my space cowboy dad so much

- fun continuity detail: din is all out of whistling birds now, and you can see it here!

I wonder if he could still use the same mechanism with different ‘ammo’, it’s just not as effective? from the way the armorer spoke whistling birds seem quite rare and it would be an inefficient use of beskar if that’s the only thing it can be loaded with

- I love how after the last episode, a 50 min epic with a bunch of original trilogy significance and impressive technical achievements and exciting character reveals, I was like ‘yeah okay I suppose that is quite interesting’, and this mess/comedy of inconveniences is the thing that fully makes my brain tip into the obsessive ‘BABY AND DAD SHOW!! BABY AND DAD SHOW!!!!!’ mind state lol

- ah the traditional ‘mando trudging slowly but steadily through the desert’ montage we all love to see (I hope this is going to be a Thing for the second episode of every season from now on)

Also I assume his suit has some sort of temperature regulation built in and that’s how he didn’t, y’know. die under the blazing desert sun

CAT FIGHT CAT FIGHT man I love the jawa. also mando doesn’t even glance over at them, really emphasizing how he’s like. done with this entire day (and it’s all barely even getting started din! i’m sorry)

yodito’s look in this scene tho... he’s like ‘we’ve Seen some shit lady’ (actually I think he’s staring at ‘dr mandible’ like O___o. it’s been a long day for a lil boy)

you get to see dr mandible’s cards a few times, so I assume anyone who knows the rules of... sabacc? probably? could figure out beforehand that he was in a bad spot. (the star wars fanbase is one of those where I KNOW the rules exist somewhere, and I know people who know those rules exist too)

- that sound the baby keeps making -- the ‘boo-a’, sometimes with a p-sound at the end -- if that’s the precursor to him saying any variation whatsoever of ‘dad’ or ‘papa’ or ‘baba’ or even ‘buir’ or anything, I will die. I will sink to the ground in a heap and never get up (the way he keeps seeking out gaze contact with the helmet and seems perfectly satisfied with it too... fasdhfaskdjhl my FEELINGS)

- it seems confirmed in this ep that the mandos who died on nevarro did so while holding off the enemy so the rest(probably especially the children) could get away; some of them appear to have escaped. which I guess is a small relief

frog lady stepping out of the shadows and into our hearts

I like that her firm nod after Peli translates ‘her husband has seen them’ lets us know she understands... basic? is that the common tongue thing in star wars there’s just so many to remember across fandoms lol? perfectly well, even if she can’t speak it.

- mando might be running low on ammo for the pulse rifle, if the fact that he hasn’t replaced the missing cartridge on his... bandolier belt thingy is any indication

ETA: actually ignore me this has been a thing since the literal first episode of the show my brain just had a hiccup lol

- so baby seems to use a little bit of the force to pull the eggs towards him -- I wonder how often he ‘taps into it’ or if it’s always ‘on’ in the background for him. if so I guess there’s no wonder he’s so hungry (but also... kid you can’t end this lady’s entire family line like that one cat who singlehandedly made extinct a whole species of bird! D:)

- din so rarely gets openly angry, he just gets passive aggressive and grumpy. and that’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with things but I love him

- frog lady reacts so strongly to when din sends the ping when nothing else woke her up, I wonder if she can hear more frequencies than a human

hello darkness my old frieeennnddd

proof nr 1508 that din does not starve this baby you guys, he even has his own little tray just the right size for him! as it happens the baby simply seems to prefer eating things that are... still alive in some capacity. which, uh. maybe they can invest in some form of non-sentient crickets or something for him to hunt down and.... oh dear

Look how they massacred my boy

By the way I finally managed to put into words why the Razor Crest -- and particularly the way it keeps getting beaten to hell and back and patched up again -- is so symbolically important and meaningful to me in this show in this post over here! it’s always a great relief to me when I can finally understand what the hell I’ve been going on about all this time and this was one of those lol

- honestly if it weren’t for frog lady and (more importantly) the baby I think there’s a slight chance din would’ve gone ‘well I had a good-ish run of it for a while there’ and just let the ice claim him haha

- “Why don’t you come over here and give me a hand. Make yourself useful” This is the one time in the episode I think he crosses the line into just being a dick for a moment (but noticeably the baby isn’t just a little hurt at this reaction, he’s clearly surprised and confused, which means this really does not happen often. after the time mando’s been having recently I guess a moment’s snappishness is understandable haha. he does follow up right after with being much more responsive and attentive when the baby toddles away from him, so it feels like it’s going to be okay)

also the ‘boo-ap’ sound is there again when he’s trying to get din’s attention. just sayin’

when din comes over to see the footprints baby makes a declarative little meep like ‘see??? I did tell you!’ haha

- it is very funny that mando is using all his technology meant to track down dangerous bounties in the grungy depths of the criminal underworld... to find a naked lady just chillin’ in a hot spring

cue the ‘father is evil?’ memes fsadfda. actually the funniest thing about this moment (apart from the fabulous finger acting) is that din actually snatches a few eggs out of the baby’s reach more subtly right before, and that baby only whines for ALL OF ONE SECOND before he goes to sniff around for other food possibilities fkadfhjkds. from my experience with human children he’s a lot less prone to tantrums. yodito doesn’t get mad, he gets even

- baby running towards din through the hatching spiderlings like ‘DAD I FUCKED UUUUUUP’, din’s little strangled ‘ngh’ sound as he picks the baby up and watches all the creepy crawlies come out... *chef kiss* impeccable

(that little ‘ngh’ and the soft shocked ‘ah ah AH!’s from when he goes flying at the beginning of the episode... pedro pascal and his voice work for this character gives me so much life. in some ways din has this sort of dignity and grace and in other ways he uh extremely doesn’t. he gets to be cool but also vulnerable in ways a lot of male main characters don’t and it’s probably why I love him so much)

btw here is that moment when din moves to hold the baby tightly against him with both hands as the big spider appears, because it gets me right in the heart... it such an instinctive thing of holding on to the dearest thing you’ve got before something bad is about to happen

fdsafhsdakjlfhsdkjlhfsdajhf oh my god the baby is clutching din’s finger with his little hand during the chase!!!! 😭😭😭

this FUCKING SHOW has just WEAPONIZED putting in small details everywhere to convey the love and tenderness and attachment felt by a little muppet doll even where only weirdos like me will frame by frame their way through the video to see it I am so MAD

- frog lady going ‘fuck this’ and bounding along is e v e r y t h i n g

- din is an amazing shot, though, he doesn’t seem to miss a single one in this whole scene (then again there’s something to shoot at basically everywhere one can take aim so lol)

baby hiding behind/half hugging din’s boot as he tries to get the doors closed hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I can’t breathhhhheeeee

honestly every single one of the baby’s proximity seeking behaviours in this ep has me on my knees

- it’s very unfair to play the heroic happy mando music like everything is going to be fine and then have a huge fuck-off spider drop down from the ceiling and break it off mid-tune, the mandalorian, you have trained me in certain ways and now do you betray me??? how can I trust again

- the camera work in the scene with the new republic guys gives such a good sense of the discomfort of being judged from on high by someone or something you can’t really see -- the glare of the lights blocking out everything in the shots from din’s pov makes it feel like a tense interrogation (the new republic dude who is actually dave filoni has such a look of fondness as he watches din tho it’s kind of sweet)

- ...oh no I think baby was actually considering munching on that dismembered spider leg YODITO NO JUST EAT YOUR KRAYT DRAGON BABY

- hngh this is a weird filler episode and it has my entire heart. I suspect we might get some episodes of a more stationary baby between active ones like this -- you can tell a little bit in this episode that especially having him running around fast is quite difficult to have look natural, they likely save that effort up for when it best serves the narrative

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian meta #the mandalorian spoilers #mmmm brain empty only dad and baby show in here #(actually that's not true there's some tf/graves activity going on at all times too haha)

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ducktracy · 4 years ago

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188. porky’s poppa (1938)

release date: january 15th, 1938

series: looney tunes

director: bob clampett

starring: mel blanc (porky, porky’s poppa, narrator), bob clampett (duck)

it’s safe to say that 1938 was porky’s best year. speaking in terms of solo cartoons, that is. his cartoons were genuinely funny, stimulating, and he looked great appearance wise. 1939 the porky burnout started, and he was slowly reduced to a smiling stock character whose adversaries and costars were much more alive than he was.

as daffy (and later bugs) rose to popularity, porky slipped into the sidekick role, paired primarily with the duck. with that said, the porky/daffy cartoons are some of the funniest around, and i firmly believe the best cartoons for the both of them are the ones where they’re paired together—with a few exceptions, of course.

however, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: a great year of pig stardom awaits. porky’s father, who made a few appearances during the joe dougherty era, makes his final return. in a story that has loose similarities to the premise of porky’s railroad, porky struggles to convince his father that their cow, bessie, is a much better fit for the farm than the newfangled mechanical cow his father has his eyes on.

the introduction is one of the funniest aspects of the cartoon itself. a hand erases the title credits, scrawled on a blackboard, and fills in “PORKY’S POPPA... HAS A FARM”, mirroring the underscore of “old macdonald” (with substitute lyrics) below it.

a layout of the farm cuts to our pint-sized hero, grinning at the camera as the vocals sing “...and on this farm he had a pig: porky pig, you know.” bobe cannon animates porky struggling to sing along with the lyrics, his “oh buh-beh-boy!”s lagging with the beat. the music halts just in time for porky to pump his fists in frustration, not stuttering once as he grumbles “oh, skip it!”

repeatedly cutting back to the layout of the farm in conjunction with the lyrics is practically a gag within itself. the song grows increasingly absurd, with a goose honking horns, a cow showing off her legs as the vocals sing “with a little calf here, with a little calf there...”, struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of the song. bob clampett lends his own voice to a random duck (no relation to daffy!), following a hand pointing at certain areas of the farm and quacking (”with a little quack here, with a little quack there...”)

finally, the duck in his psuedo-donald duck voice instructs “EVERYBODY SING!”, complete with some fun and unique typography. the entire song falls to pieces--before, the cutting back to the farm’s layout added an incongruous feeling of calm to balance out the wacky antics of the animals and the song. now, everything happens at once. the duck zips across the screen in a quacking frenzy, the mother cow shows off her baby calves, thrusting them to the beat of the music, the goose is a one man band of assorted horns, etc. blissful chaos.

things slow down as we cut back to porky, who smugly whips out a phonograph behind his back. the record is just him saying “oh boy!”, playing correctly to the beat of the music. he’s got this song number figured out... or does he?

even technology can’t conceal his stutter. the record begins to skip, mimicking the sound of his stutter, and porky smashes the phonograph to pieces as he slams it against the ground. the wordless yet furious stare he gives the audience as the dying record croaks out a distorted “oooooooh..... boooooooooy....” is nothing short of priceless. though he didn’t say a word himself during this scene, his motives, thoughts, and emotions are clearly visible. you can FEEL his pride at his solution, as well of the subsequent fury of his solution blowing up in his face. a wonderful end to a hilarious song sequence.

“but on his farm, he has a mortgage... woe, oh woe, oh woe!” the score turns in to a mournful, minor key dirge, with anthropomorphic mortgage papers posing proudly on the farm. some very clever posing and metaphorical play as we fade to porky’s dad, moping around on the farm, the mortgage aligning with his silhouette and becoming a physical weight on his back. more playing with typography as the narrator reads aloud the words on the screen:

this is a parody of the march of time, a radio program who would often announce the death of a notorious person by declaring “and so, today, as it must to all men, death came to [name], [age].” even without the context, the gag is rather amusing, bringing a different change of pace to the cartoon with the addition of a narrator and the typography. knowing the source of the gag makes it hit just the right spot.

porky’s dad mutters about ruination, how he has no milk and no money, etc. mel blanc does a fine job of mimicking joe dougherty, maintaining the stutter and the low voice--in the dougherty cartoons, porky’s father was just dougherty’s natural speaking voice, whereas porky was sped up considerably. you can hear both at once here for comparison.

we pan over to the cause of one of these stresses: their cow, bessie, has been quarantined (how timely!) for “hoof ‘n mouth trouble”, a play on hand-foot-and-mouth disease. clampett opts to take things just a step further--we truck inside the stall to see bessie posing for the camera, grinning with her foot INSIDE her mouth, batting her eyelashes and all. the “bull bontana” (bull montana) poster plastered inside of her stall is a clever touch.

after seeing that bessie’s production chart has dipped overwhelmingly into the negatives--a roll of paper unfurling at porky’s father’s feet, indicating just how poor the farm is doing--he places an “out of order” sign on the stall door.

suddenly, porky’s father grows aggravated. “i need to send you to the hamburger factory!” cue a close-up of bessie tearfully picturing her fate--a pile of burgers and hotdogs make up her figure. clampett would reprise this gag (albeit in a much more cruel manner) in porky’s last stand 2 years later, where daffy eagerly envisions a steaming hot hamburger in place of an innocent little calf.

this is the second cartoon to make an ACME reference, the first being buddy’s bug hunt back in 1935. porky’s father phones up ACME mail order company, asking for “one cow--airmail”. context clues are just as important to the gag than the reveal itself: porky, his father, and bessie all become alert to the sounds of an airplane making a cacophony overhead. suddenly, a package bursts through the barn ceiling, floating to the ground with a neatly tied parachute. the animation appears to be the work of john carey, from the tall, pill-shaped eyes to the slow, drawn out way that porky blinks.

norm mccabe takes over to animate the grand reveal. lots of wonderful little subtleties: porky and his father are timed slightly differently, giving them both a natural sense of interaction and movement. there’s a lovely little accent on porky’s father opening the package by pulling a string--he jerks his head up slightly as he plucks the string, allowing the audience to feel the physical impact and snap of the pluck. it’s subtle, but very well done.

instead of a flesh and blood cow, a mechanical hunk of metal slowly unfurls to life as the package opens. as porky’s father reads the label (The New 1938 CREAMLINED COW), porky himself objects to the new addition. “aww, eh-the-there ain’t no such animal!”

indeed there is: porky’s father loads a pile of hay into a chute, pressing down on the cow’s paintbrush tail. the cow pumps along to a brassy score of “old macdonald”, churning out milk from its metal udders, the milk pouring straight into an assembly line of bottles below. bob clampett’s puns are plentiful in this cartoon (notice how there’s no writer’s credit--he often said that he would write some of his earliest cartoons himself. i assume he wrote this one as well? i wonder how much input chuck jones had in the story?), but delivered nonchalantly, so they can actually be enjoyed. the cow caps the milk bottles by putting literal newsboy caps on top of the bottles, the paintbrush tail painting “cream paint” to the outside of the bottles and forming the illusion of cream. interesting business practices!

bobe cannon animates a delightful scene with porky. fun animation and fun dialogue make for a great combo. some very fluid, light, and fun animation of porky giving his pep talk as he hops around, swinging his arms, nonchalantly pushing his hat out of his face after getting so excited. “c’mon, eh-beh-beh-beh-bessie! we won’t let that old eh-neh-nuh-new fangled eh-ceh-co--heifer beat us. you just eat your uh-wuh-wee-weh-whea--eh-ha-hay, and show that eh-teh-eeh-eh-tin-can cow who can make the most...”

porky lowers bessie’s foot from her mouth by climbing on it, preparing to shovel a forkful of hay into her mouth, however, she shoves her foot right back in it, much to porky’s annoyance. “aww, every time you open your muh-mee-muh-me-eh-mou--kisser, ya put your eh-feh-eh-foot in it! eh-bee-bessie, you gotta eat! you eh-deh-dee-eh-don’t wanna be eh-seh-seeah-seeah-smothered in onions, eh-do ya?”

treg brown’s sound effects of doors creaking as her leg is lowered is the perfect touch to the gag. porky struggles to feed bessie, eventually getting stuck in her mouth himself as he attempts to hold both legs down to no avail. he frees himself, just in time to hatch an ingenious idea.

his plan works: porky places the entire pile of hay onto bessie’s legs, who swallows it up whole, her mouth comically huge as she attempts to swallow it. porky is overjoyed, clapping at her efforts before rushing off to give her some privacy.

instead of porky just milking her like a regular farmer, clampett pushes the entire scenario further. porky paces around in the manner of an expectant father, accompanied by a soft score of “lullaby on broadway”. the sound of a baby crying prompts porky to do a gorgeously animated head shake of surprise--bessie hands him a milk bottle, which porky carefully swaddles and places in a basket.

the charade continues, with clampett lulling us into a false sense of security with an already absurd gag. cue a gag that would have been incredibly risque in 1938: at about the fifth bottle, porky reaches out and finds that bessie hands him a bottle labeled “CHOC. MALT”, accompanied by an underscore of “i wish i was in dixie”. porky and bessie both grow bashful, but porky’s nonchalant whistling is cut to a half as bessie delivers yet another bottle. “gosh--eh-ceh-ceh-quin-eh-qui-eh--quart-tuplets!”

porky rushes over to his farther to share the good news. however, dad is too preoccupied with the fancy mechanics of the cow to pay bessie any mind. he shows porky a barrage of dairy-related puns churned out by the creamlined cow:

cottage cheese (cheese in the shapes of houses--and an outhouse for good measure--don the conveyer belt), limburger cheese (cheese slices with clothes pins pinned to their “noses” to ward off the stench), and swiss cheese (a cuckoo bird pops out of the cow’s mechanical side and sprays the cheese wheels with bullets, which turn into yodeling mouths). interestingly, mel’s voice for porky’s father changes in this scene--it’s still him, but the nasally undertones are absent. i wonder if he did this on a different day?

nevertheless, the staging of the next gag is genius. the majority of the screen is black, save for a small window revealing porky holding onto bessie’s udders. “c’mon, eh-beh-bessie! hurry eh... hurry eh... step on it!” the window expands to reveal bessie pouring a bucket of milk into a line of funnels (rather than udders), which are then evenly distributed to the bottles. “’ats a guh-geh-gee-eh-girl!”

mechanical cow seems to be doing just fine, plopping cherries on top of elaborate ice cream sundaes and milk shakes. the only fault in the system is the cow’s own personal whiskey bottle rolling down the assembly line, which it confiscates promptly.

porky, on the other hand, is making do. with an ice block on her head, bessie churns out ice cream cones to the best of her ability. as the cones grow smaller and smaller in size, porky orders her to eat more hay, which she happily does so.

now, it’s cow vs. cow. the mechanical cow opts to play some dirty tricks on bessie, pouring a jar of vanishing cream it produced onto the hay bessie is eating. and, thanks to the law of cartoon physics, the milk bottles she hands porky disappear by the minute. though the effect of the bottles disappearing may not seem like much today, for 1938 the ink and paint department did a wonderful job of demonstrating the illusion that the bottles suddenly disappeared.

with the rest of the hay now gone thanks to a hefty glob of vanishing cream, porky and bessie engage in a wild goose (cow?) chase to find more hay. the mechanical cow gobbles up every square inch of hay in sight--at one point, bessie heaves a dubious shrug to the audience. i love how they made her hooves look like hands, but still remain identifiable hooves. the scramble animation she does as she dashes out of frame (with porky clinging to her like a horse) is wonderfully done as well.

both porky and bessie and the creamlined cow exit the barn, chasing each other around the farm. the mechanical cow physically turns into a vacuum cleaner, threatening to suck up the last remaining pile of hay. in a gag that’s reminiscent of the harman-ising days (is it the inclusion of the outhouse?), the cow-turned-vacuum rushes into a shed filled to the brim with hay. the audience merely watches the shed itself shrink in size as the cow gobbles up all of the hay, the final result a puny little outhouse.

at last, the enemies reach a face-off. the last pile of hay--or, as porky puts it in his punny little way, “eh-thee-the-thee-that’s the last straw.” in a relatively tashlin-esque maneuver, clampett makes some fast cuts to heighten the suspense of the action. cut between porky and bessie to the mechanical cow to the pile of straw (facetiously labeled “MILK WEED”). the cuts grow quicker and quicker, the music crescendo-ing...

until BLAM! in a loose parallel to the finale of rover’s rival, everything explodes at once. nuts and bolts rain in the sky, as do neat little bundles of hay. however, clampett doesn’t allow the audience to rest just yet--with bessie nowhere in sight, the mechanical cow continues to charge forth, seeking refuge in a hay to release a humongous pile of milk bottles. so high, in fact, that the shed (and cow) are elevated several feet into the air. porky’s a goner.

porky’s father, who had been absent for the past few minutes, reappears to declare the tin-can cow a winner, much to porky’s visible dissatisfaction.

yet it’s not a clampett cartoon without a twist! bessie pokes her head out of the mechanical cow’s mouth, mooing the ever popular catchphrase from the ken murray show: “mmmmmmwooooooooooah, yeeeeaaaaaah!” porky gives a celebratory “oh, boy!” as we iris out--the goose and duck from earlier poke their heads into the scene just before the iris fully closes.

this is an early porky cartoon that’s just plain fun. bobe cannon’s animation of porky serves as one of the many highlights, from porky getting aggravated with his phonograph to his excited pep talk towards bessie. corny as the opening number is, it’s a lot of fun at the same time--the intensity in increasing chaos is a prevalent theme to clampett’s cartoons. just look at the climax/ending of baby bottleneck!

i don’t have many complaints towards this cartoon, if any at all. it’s not my favorite porky entry, sure, but it’s most certainly an enjoyable watch and one of his better cartoons of the ‘30s. the visual puns aren’t nearly as hamfisted as ben hardaway’s (as we’ll soon discover), making them more enjoyable than some of the jokes present in, say, daffy duck & egghead. regardless, there are a lot of unique gags, fun animation, and amusing dialogue to constitute a watch.

the cartoon is up on HBOmax, but you can also watch it here!

#lt #looney tunes #porky’s poppa #clampett #reviews #long post

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avengerscompound · 5 years ago

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Finding Home - Chapter 11

Finding Home: A Captain America Fanfic

Masterlist Previous //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers x OFC (Daisy Adams)

Word Count: 2807

Warnings: Angst, mentions of torture, violence, major character death, mentions of sexual abuse/rape, pregnancy, smut (vaginal sex, oral sex, pregnancy sex, Bisexual MMF threesome)

Synopsis: Daisy Adams has abilities. She can read minds. Force her thoughts onto others. As a child, she is taken by Hydra and raised as a weapon. Daisy finds another and speaks to him in his dreams. He has been taken too. He wants to return to the man he loves. Can she get them back together? Will she even want to once she realizes that she’s falling in love?

Chapter 11

I sat and waited, watching everything unfold on the news like the rest of the world. I saw Sokovia start to rise into the sky. I saw the people left on the ground fleeing in terror. People trapped in rubble. I wanted to reach out and touch all of them. Steve. Nat. All my friends. Even the twins who I didn’t know and didn’t fully trust. I was by myself though and worried if I did that I’d lose myself and James would be here alone.

I kept feeling Bucky. He was watching too. He was near coming back to me. He saw Steve and he was so positive that what was happening was the end. He felt terror for his friend. For himself. For me being alone. He wanted to be there and he wanted to find him. I let my fear radiate out of me. Trying to make it like a beacon to him but James picked up on it and started to cry, so I stopped.

The floating city was approached by a huge helicarrier. Like the ones that fell out of the sky when I finally freed myself from Hydra. When they had moved clear again the city dropped and exploded. It felt like my heart stopped and I sent my mind out almost against my will. I touched on Steve. He was alright. Exhausted. In pain. Alive.

Things changed. We moved from the tower in the city to a new compound in upstate New York. The members of the team who were seen more secondary members, like me and Rhodie and Sam were brought in full time. They all moved to the compound permanently. Wanda and the new life, who was now going by Vision were brought into the Avengers too.

Bruce had disappeared. I actually knew exactly where to find him. I told Steve I knew but that I didn’t want to say. He wanted to disappear. I was going to let him.

Tony left. He said he was done with ‘Avenging’. He was still financing the operation but he needed to physically step away from it. He’d still come and see us, but the visits became less and less as time passed. Each time I saw him he seemed more and more broken. I wanted to go into his mind and just delete the hurt. I could do that. I’m sure I could.

Thor left too. He was returning to Asgard worried about the vision he’d seen.

Wanda’s brother Pietro had been killed in Sokovia. She was broken by it. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Bucky had died with the connection we had. It made my heart hurt.

So I reached out to her. We had a horrible shared life experience that had almost resulted in the same outcome. We were taken by Hydra. Sure she chose that but it wasn’t really a choice made by anything other than desperation. We both had these abilities that were scarily similar. I couldn’t do the telekinetic thing but she wasn’t as strong a telepath as I was.

We became friends. It was slightly uneasy, to begin with. She was scared of me. Of what I was capable of doing to her mind. She didn’t like that I could see what she was thinking, even though she was able to do the same thing to others. She also didn’t like that I was easily able to keep her out of my head. I didn’t like how her telepathy felt. It felt like the stone. The stone still worried me despite the fact it was being kept safe in Vision. If I was totally honest, I was scared of her too. I could only read her if I applied massive effort to do so and she could hurt me. I knew it.

Still, it happened. We became friends. It was slow, but we were patient with each other. Soon we would have whole conversations without opening our mouths. Everyone hated it. We would be sitting there chatting away and we’d start laughing about something we shared and everyone would glare at us. It was even funnier if we weren’t in the same room. I’d be alone with Steve and he’d be telling me some boring thing that I probably should be listening too. I’d call out help to Wanda and she’d send the funniest mental image to me and I’d burst out laughing. Steve would always scold both of us like naughty children.

Speaking of children, James was developing very quickly. He was bigger than the average child of his age. Over a year passed in the compound. At one he could walk. He could build these complex structures out of blocks. He could communicate these complex ideas with me. What he didn’t do was make any sound. He only ever cried when hurt. It was like he had no desire to learn to speak. I’d just made it too easy for him to not have to.

Steve didn’t seem to notice James’ strange development. He was in love with that boy. James was still Bucky’s son in his head. In a way that made him more special in Steve’s mind. He wasn’t just Bucky’s son though, not just mine either. James was his son. He thought of him as all of ours. He’d also started thinking of what it would be like having Bucky back in his life. In our life. He had visions of the three of us teaching James to ride a bike. Playing football out on the field that ran down the side of the facility. Of James in bed and the three of us just curled up together on the couch reading or watching TV, but all of us together. A family.

It made me desperate to find Bucky. I was now talking to him. Begging him to let us find him. Assuring him it would be okay. Sometimes he would listen. Sometimes the Soldier would hold me out. He was adamant that it wasn’t safe. I couldn’t seem to convince him otherwise. I realize the hypocrisy of my actions given that I was happy to let Bruce go live his own life, but I needed Bucky back. Steve needed him back.

I physically healed and started training my powers. It was hard because no one wanted me to use them on them. So instead I sent my mind out a lot. Touch on people far away. I think I was stretching myself. Those nosebleeds were becoming almost a daily occurrence. I’d also started actively keeping Steve’s mind silent. On days we spent totally together, I ended up with a headache so bad that it felt my skull had spilt open. I don’t know what was going on that using my abilities hurt me so much. I was a little scared to find out.

Steve became obsessed with training me for combat. He hated the idea of me not being able to physically defend myself. He would take me to the gym every day he was home and teach me self-defensive moves while Nat or Wanda watched James.

I was not a good student.

Steve would try so hard to teach me how to defend myself. I wasn’t getting it. I couldn’t get the moves he was trying to teach me anywhere near the realm of being right. I became less and less inclined to try. Which made Steve more and more frustrated with me.

One other problem I was having was working out with Steve. Him using his strength against me. How often he grabbed me from behind. It was a turn on. I kept getting easily distracted by how badly I just wanted to jump him.

“Daisy. You need to take this seriously.” Steve snapped at me. He held me, one arm around my shoulders the other around my midriff. I had wriggled against him and leaned my head back on his shoulder.

“Well, then stop being so sexy.” I purred, nuzzling against his neck.

He pushed me away from him and turned me to face him. “Do you think this is a joke? This is serious. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“I do actually.” I took two steps back from him. “Try and take me, Steve. Go on. I’ll show you what I can do.”

Steve went to lunge at me and I shut down the part of his brain that controlled his gross motor function. He stood stock-still staring at me. Helpless.

“I’m not good at physical fighting. I don’t need to be.” I snapped at him and let him go. He fell to his knees.

I walked over to him and offered him my hand. He pulled me, flipping me over his head. He backward rolled so he was sitting straddling me, pinning my hands over my head.

“You can be surprised, Daisy. Your mental powers have their limitations.” He said staring down at me.

“I get surprised by you because I actively lock you out of my head. Most people don’t get that kind of consideration from me.” I said. This position wasn’t helping anything though. I ground my hips up into him.

“Your powers don’t seem to work on Alien life. They definitely don’t work against machines. You need to learn this.” He reasoned with me.

“I’m not good at this. I’m never going to be good at this. Even if I get reasonable at this, do you think I’m ever going to be physically strong enough to fight one of the iron legion? Because I don’t. I’m not you, Steve.”

He leaned in close to me, his lips close to mine, staring deep in my eyes. “You like it though. Don’t you, Daisy? You like training with me.”

I swallowed and licked my lips, wriggling against him. “Yes.”

“If you can pin me, you can have what you want.” He purred.

“But what I want is for you to take me,” I whined.

“You think once you pin me, I can’t then pin you?” He growled.

Fuck. I loved when he got like this. This was special. Something just for me. He got to his feet and pulled me up.

We stepped apart and he put himself into a fighting stance.

“Amène toi voir.” He said gesturing for me to attack.

So we sparred. He took it easy on me, but I found no openings. He pinned me over and over. Each time he did, he’d add something sexual to the move. He’d kiss my throat, or press his fingers into my crotch.

“It’s never going to happen, Steve.” I cried. I was frustrated and felt close to tears.

He put his hands on my shoulders. “Put your hands on my shoulders between mine.” He instructed. I did as I was told. “Now turn away from me, but pull me with you.” I followed his instructions and he allowed himself to be moved. “Now use your hip to throw me over.”

“I can’t. You’re too big.” I whined.

“Yes, you can. Start over and we’ll do it in one smooth motion.”

We started over. His hands on my shoulders, mine on his. I moved. He let me, but I managed to flip him, he ended up on the floor and I jumped on him straddling his waist.

“You’re pinned.” I laughed.

“I am.” He agreed.

He raised his hand and ran his fingers down the side of my face pushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

“No, Steve.” I grinned.

“Really?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“You promised.”

He grabbed me under the arms and tossed me, so I somersaulted over his head. I rolled and started scrambling away from him, but he grabbed me by the ankle dragging me back towards him. I squealed and kicked my legs, clawing at the mat.

He crawled up over me pressing his body into mine. “Where do you think you’re going?” He growled.

I whimpered and he pressed his lips to my neck. His tongue swirled over my skin. I struggled again. He moved so he was on his knees. He grabbed both my hands and pulled them behind my back and held them, pushing me down in the middle of my back with one hand while the other slid down my spine.

He pushed my legs apart and he began to stroke me up and down my pussy through the fabric of my yoga pants. “This is what you want isn’t it, Daisy?” He growled.

“Yes. Please, Steve.” I pleaded.

He yanked my pants down and pushed his fingers into my cunt. “You need to learn this, Daisy. Do you understand that? I can’t always be here to fight for you. To protect Jamie.”

I wriggled under him. He was working his fingers roughly inside of me. “Can we talk about it after?” I panted.

He let my hands go and I pulled away from him rolling over and stripping off my clothes. He stood up, pulled his shirt off and dropped his pants, stalking towards me.

“Get on your knees.” He ordered.

I complied and he came towards me stroking his cock. I bit my lip, watching him. Soaking up his perfectly chiseled form.

“Open your mouth.” He growled.

I did and he ran the head of his cock over my lips. I poked the point of my tongue out tasting him. He pushed into my mouth and I rolled my tongue along his length. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back, forcing my mouth open and my throat to straighten out. He began to thrust in and out of my mouth. Slowly, methodically. All the while he scowled down at me. I hummed deep in the back of my throat and he picked up speed. My eyes watered, and I started to struggle. He pulled back and I fell on my hands and knees panting.

“Is this still what you want?” Steve asked.

“Yes.” I panted.

He moved behind me and kicked my legs apart and knelt down between them. He slid one hand up my back and then pushed me so my face was pressed into the mat. I felt his cock press against me. He lined himself at the entrance to my cunt and slammed into me. I cried out and he pulled back and slammed into me again. I tried bracing myself on the mat, but he grabbed my hands and pulled them back behind me.

“Yes, Steve. Let go!” I cried.

He could never let go properly. Not with me. All the same, he picked up both speed and power with every thrust. I came apart under him. I clenched and moaned and writhed. An orgasm built within me, spreading out from my cunt like liquid fire and pooling in my core. It wouldn’t quite break and I started pleading with Steve. Begging him for release.

He pulled out and flipped me over, suddenly changing tactics completely. He cradled my head with one arm and slipped back into me. He rolled his fingers against my clit as he rocked his hips against me. Rolling them so his cock stretched me and hit all my pleasure centers.

His mouth met mine and we kissed hungrily. We battled for control, licking and nipping at each other. When he pulled away I chased him, not wanting the kiss to end. He looked down at me. His brow was furrowed but his eyes were soft.

“I want to watch you come, Daisy. You’re so beautiful when you do.” He purred.

It was like he’d just spoken some kind of command phrase. My orgasm broke and crashed through me. I clung to him as my back arched off the mat. He smiled and his face set. As the last quakes of my orgasm ebbed through me he came with a grunt.

He kissed me again and slipped out of me. Straight away moving to get redressed.

“Will you please take this more seriously from now on?” He asked, throwing me my underwear.

“I’ll try. I just … I don’t know if I’ll ever be good enough.”

“I’m just terrified of losing you, Daisy. Everyone I’ve ever loved I’ve lost. I keep thinking that that’s how it’s supposed to be. That I’m supposed to be alone.”

I crawled up behind him and rested my head on his back. “You should see someone, Steve. I’m not planning on going anywhere. But this isn’t going to save me if it’s my time. I’ll listen to your fears as much as you need me too, but I’m still learning how to … person? I can’t even think of a way to say that properly. I don’t know what people do when they aren’t weapons.”

He sighed. “You’re doing fine. Thank you for listening.”

“Always, Steve.”

// NEXT

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x oc #bucky barnes x oc #captain america #the winter soldier #captain america fanfic #the winter soldier fanfic #bucky barnes x steve rogers x oc #bucky barnes x steve rogers #stucky #stucky x oc #fanfic #fanfiction #angst #smut #finding home

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deepseawritings · 7 years ago

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New Shovel story guys! It is a direct continuation of the first one and there’s also a reference to this snippet.

A stroll in Agroprom

The ache in her hands persisted through the day. It felt like she had small shards of glass on her joints, and the skin over her fingers and knuckles was reddened and itchy. But the pain had quieted down considerably since Shovel discovered vodka apparently cured radiation poisoning.

She asked Evgenii if it wouldn't be more effective to douse her hands with the liquor, but his horrified stare spoke volumes about what he thought of her idea. To be honest, it was a waste of perfectly good vodka. And medicine was usually ingested, she reasoned. So Shovel singlehandedly drank a quarter of the bottle. Just enough to dull the pain in her hands. Evgenii also drank, their little misadventure in Garbage had left them both more affected by the radiation than they anticipated. Not to mention Shovel's newfound case of acute paranoia. Bandits that disguised themselves as other factions to kill you... it still made her shudder. Thankfully the vodka also helped with that, she felt much better now!

This was starting to remind her of her teenage years: squatting around a campfire eating shashlik –rat shashlik most probably, but it was better to not think about that– and drinking vodka and bragging about who shot farthest. Only she used to shoot old bottles and cans years ago; now she shot at mutated animals or worse to not get mauled to death. But what had Bes told them? Oh yes, such is life in the Zone!

Next day they were slightly hangover, but her hands felt fine again. Completely worth it. Besides, it wasn't like this was her first hangover ever. After a light breakfast around the ashes of Bes' campfire they crossed into Agroprom without further incidents. Shovel was happy to leave the radioactive mountains of trash behind them. It felt good to walk on solid ground again, without climbing shifting piles of debris or feeling the crunching of glass and metal detritus beneath her boots. The hangar seemed deserted when they passed by, but neither she or Evgenii went in to check if the bandits were still there. No, they just scurried along in their best attempt at stealth. And from there it was only a matter of following the dusty road.

The Agroprom institute was visible in the distance, a massive complex right by the side of the train tracks. Shovel remembered how her father's friend, Mr. Ponomarenko, used to ramble about a secret conspiracy around the old Agroprom Institute and the exclusion Zone. But that used to happen after he'd had a few beers and shots of vodka, so everyone rolled their eyes at his rants and ignored him.

The Agroprom buildings had been abandoned a long time ago, just like the railroads. However, what really caught her attention were the artifacts, strewn around like someone had prepared the most ridiculous Easter egg hunt.

"Fuck me, are you seeing this too or am I still drunk?" Evgenii had the funniest look in his face, like he was seconds away from pinching himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

"I see it too," she was almost as dazed as him. Surely an artifact detector would go crazy and implode if used here. "I thought artifacts were almost impossible to find without a detector?"

Evgenii smiled exceitedly like a child in Christmas. "C'mon, drinks at The 100 Rads are on the one who picks up less artifacts!"

Shovel stopped him by grabbing his arm. Not because she didn't have a clue of what was The 100 Rads, it was impossible to not have heard about it after spending two weeks in a stalker camp, but because she had just remembered a critical piece of information.

"Didn't- uh, aren't artifacts spawned because of anomalies?" Markov might have been a coward and a self-serving pig, but so far all he'd told them about the Zone turned out to be true.

"Yeah, sure, usually inside anomalies..." Evgenii's face shifted into a grimace when he realised what Shovel meant. "We use the bolts then."

Given the amount of artifacts lying around, Shovel had expected to find an anomaly minefield. However, in fact the anomalies were few and far between. She mulled over such oddity until she remembered the anomaly in her farm's field, which randomly disappeared one day. Shovel felt a bit stupid, but in her defence she'd grown so used to constantly seeing anomies around that it seemed like they were permanent. Usually it didn't make a difference if the springboard by the side of the rookie village disappeared one day, because most surely a vortex had popped into existence two steps down the same spot.

The only place that actually was a death trap was the old train tunnel. Evgenii had thrown a bolt in there and triggered at least half a dozen anomalies. He jumped in surprise and let out a shrill cry that he later would deny.

"Shit, don't get inside there!" He yelled to ensure she heard him. "Unless you want to become minced meat!"

Taking good note of that, Shovel shouted back her thanks and avoided the tunnel entrance. Even so, they picked up quite a bounty of artifacts from the clearing bracketing the train tracks. Shovel enjoyed the moment, it really wasn't that different from picking berries with her sister as they did as kids.

It was weird that artifacts moved on their own, though. Normally it was a kind of restless jiggle, but one of them was moving erratically like it wanted to escape. Which was ridiculous, because artifacts weren't sentient, right? Intent on catching the damn thing, she tripped down when chasing the restless artifact. Evgenii made a valiant effort to hide his chuckling as a cough, but without much success. And then the peace was shattered by a not so distant shot, followed by indistinct yelling.

Evgenii looked at her like a deer caught in the headlights. Shovel was in a similarly panicked state, she just was less expressive than him.

"Should we go check it? Or hide?"

As if she had a good answer for that! "Your guess is as good as mine Evgenii."

The synchronized beeping of the PDAs startled them, and Shovel rushed to check the message.

12:06 – Anton Belyavin, Ecologist

Big pack of dogs with a pseudo-dog near the Agroprom Factory. Help needed!

It looked genuine enough. She doubted bandits could falsify that. Or so she hoped. And if you listened intently enough you could hear some faint barking among the distant ruckus. Shovel made up her mind.

"Okay, let's go. Have your weapon ready."

Following the train tracks to their end at the other side of the complex's courtyard, Shovel fought to keep calm. She kept telling herself it was just like going hunting, like the missions she did for Wolf back at the rookie camp. Except she knew it wasn't. Shovel had only faced down about three or four mutants at once before, not a huge pack of them. If they weren't fast or good enough someone might die. That of course if she hadn't misjudged the situation and it was a trap after all.

Once they crossed to the other side of the broken concrete fence the furious barking was almost deafening. A stalker in an orange protective suit had climbed to the lowest branch of a tree, cowering from a pseudo-dog, while a stalker in a more typical dirty green suit tried to keep a pack of rabid dogs at bay. Shovel went straight for the pseudo-dog, who had finally grabbed the climbing stalker by the leg of the suit and was trying to drag him down the tree. Her hunting rifle had never disappointed her and now it wasn't any different. When she had to reload it Evgenii took over, shooting at the pseudo-dog with his Fort-12. They were getting used to work as a team.

The pseudo-dog let its current prey go and ran towards them. Shovel shot at it again, hoping it would be enough to kill it. It wasn't. The limping and bloody pseudo-dog lunged at her. Shovel jumped to the side to avoid it, and once she was out of the way Evgenii finished off the mutant with a headshot. The rest of the dogs scattered soon after that, not as bloodthirsty after the other stalker kept shooting at them with the Obokan.

"Good timing, if it wasn't for your help the little doc would be dog food." The stalker slung the Obokan back, yanked down the bandana covering her face and offered Shovel her hand. "Name's Gecko."

"Yul- Shovel, I'm Shovel!" She squeaked, feeling her face grow hot as she accepted the handshake.

The stalker was a woman. Which wasn't that surprising, Shovel had seen before other lady stalkers, as she dubbed them. But Gecko was dark eyed, and delightfully tall and her short hair stuck out adorably like a hedgehog. Shovel was instantly moonstruck.

Seeing as Shovel went mute, Evgenii introduced himself. "Glad be could be of help! I'm Evgenii."

Gecko nodded at him and then addressed the other stalker, who finally jumped down from his branch. "How's the leg, little doc?"

"Fine, fine. The suit's wrecked though," the man held his leg raised, showing them all the shredded suit leg. Gecko coughed pointedly, but the man didn't notice it. "Where did we stash my instruments?It's vital that I gather samples while the specimen is still fresh."

With an exasperated sigh Gecko rumaged around her backpack and gave him what looked like a small toolbox. She cleared her throat again, but seeing as the man eagerly squatted next to the dead pseudo-dog's body, Gecko desisted in trying to capture his attention.

"You'll have to excuse doctor Belyavin, he tends to focus too much on his work."

"You're ecologists?" Evgenii perked up. According to the rumour mill at the rookie village, ecologists paid pretty well for any artifact you brought them.

"He works on old Sakharov's team. I just make sure he comes back alive and with not many limbs missing," Gecko gave a short, bitter laugh. "Not like doctor Vasilevich. Just barely outside the camp he stepped into a whirligig and bam! he rained on us like confetti."

Shovel grimaced. It was a horrible way to go, both for the victim and the witnesses. She would have offered her condolences, but she had no idea of what to say, so she kept her mouth shut.

"Ah, where are you going now?" Evgenii asked.

"Back to Sakharov, in Yantar. If the little doc decides he's done taking samples?"

"Just a moment!" Belyavin said while he fumbled with his toolbox. "I don't know why are you so eager to get to the swamp, it's a terrible place."

"Swamp?" Evgenii asked Gecko. He looked as confused as Shovel, who had no idea of where was Yantar.

Gecko made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "The Yantar camp is near a small swamp. And on our way out of Agroprom we'll have to skirt a swampy pond."

Shovel wasn't a fan of swamps, but that didn't sound so terrible.

"Yeah, and both snorks and zombified stalkers love the goddamn swamp," Belyavin ranted displeased. For someone who looked younger than Shovel, he surely was grumpy like an old man. "I can't wait to get out of this hellhole, research opportunities be damned. I won't be able to publish anything if I'm dead!"

Shovel and Evgenii looked at each other alarmed. He mouthed "Zombies" at her in horror, and Shovel wished she could believe it was a joke. Unfortunately, the scientist had sounded very serious in his complaint. Meanwhile Belyavin had kept complaining about what the dangers of the Zone, which where many according to him, despite Gecko's efforts to make him stop.

"Little doc stop it, blin! You'll scare the rookies!"

"Well, perhaps they should be scared! It might be good for them. Who in their right mind willingly comes underequipped to squat in a dangerous radioactive area?"

"We can accompany you to Yantar. For extra protection." Shovel's offer made everyone shut up and look at her in surprise, even Evgenii. She started to blush again under Gecko's scrutiny. "It's not that I don't think you capable, because you look formidable like an Amazon... uh, what I meant to say is maybe a couple of extra weapons could be helpful against the dangers of the Zone, even if we're rookies... and uh, we have artifacts?"

Thank God Evgenii took pity of her after her terrible and bumbling speech and came to her aid. "Yeah, we were looking to sell our artifacts. And if the ecologists are short on people I wouldn't mind lending a hand."

Gecko looked at Belyavin, who shrugged back in indifference.

"Fine by me," Gecko eventually said with an impish look in her eyes. "I've never before travelled with someone who thought I was formidable like an Amazon."

Shovel hid her face in her hands. Just for once she'd like to not put her foot in her mouth when speaking with a woman she liked.

As if to mirror her mortification, the sky darkened considerably, casting literal dark clouds over them. Crackling thunder built up in the distance. All very dramatic. Then all the PDAs beeped simultaneously, and even worse, a shrill alarm blared loud enough to reach even the old compound behind them.

"That can't be right," Belyavin went pale like a ghost and hurriedly checked his PDA. "The next emission was supposed to –"

"Well, you were wrong," Gecko cut him off. "Look at the skies, we must search for cover."

Shovel wasn't certain of what was happening, yet she was sure it was nothing good. Still, she disliked being in the dark. "What the heck is going on?"

"A blowout. C'mon, there's an entrance to the underground tunnels somewhere nearby," Gecko said.

At least Evgenii seemed as lost as Shovel was. It was a small comfort, but as her babushka used to say, when things went to shit it was better to find comfort wherever you could.

The sky turned blood red alarmingly fast, the light dim and unnatural, and Shovel was reminded of that weird storm years ago, before the first anomaly in her fields appeared out of nowhere. Gecko found the entrance to the tunnels, but Belyavin was feeling rebellious.

"I don't see why we can't go to that building instead of crawling underground like roaches," he pointed to the dilapidated complex behind them. A sound like thunder grew and grew while he talked, making it difficult to hear him.

"Underground is safer than a building full if holes!" Gecko had to scream to be heard at this point. "If you want to go, fine! But don't expect me to carry your dead or zombified arse back to Yantar!"

After such a convincing argument Belyavin stopped opposing her idea to find refuge underground. He climbed down the ladder between Shovel and Evgenii, who unlike Belyavin didn't think for a moment to argue against the most experienced person of their group.

The Agroprom Underground was unpleasantly cold and damp, and it smelled like something had died down here a long time ago, which was extremely probable. However, contrary to what Shovel imagined, it wasn't a tunnel nor some kind of sewers, it was more like an underground hall. A dim orange light, coming from an emergency light bulb, bathed the place.

Gecko was the last one to come down the ladder, just as the earth shook and a deafening noise was heard coming from outside. She ordered them to get away from the entrance and this time everyone complied at once. Shovel mesmerized by the red light filtering down the ladder's shaft. Had the Red Storm, as her father had called it, been a blowout too? Shovel was starting to realise that being on the other side of the fence didn't mean that her farm hadn't been part of the Zone almost since the beginning. Did that make them all technically farming stalkers?

"Well, hello there!"

Two guys emerged from a shadowed corner, sauntering towards Shovel's group. Their ensemble of long dark coat plus balaclava gave away their affiliation.

"Bandits,"Belyavin said through clenched teeth.

The grumpy scientist wasn't happy with their current situation, but neither was Shovel. And she couldn't imagine Evgenii was happy either. Gecko looked tense as a spring, ready to jump at the slightest indication the bandits were going to attack.

"I'm Noodle and this is Squint. Must say we weren't expecting anyone!" The tallest of the two opened his arms in a welcoming gesture.

Time seemed to go still, like everyone in their group. Shovel could see Gecko's fingers twitching, like she wanted nothing more than to grab her weapon. Yet no one dared move, waiting with baited breath for the other party to move first. Belyavin muttered something about "freaking bandits are worse than a plague" with the utmost contempt. Unfortunately his voice carried loud enough in the tense silence.

"Bandits? Who's a bandit? Not us, that for sure!" In a different situation, Noodle's affectation of innocent surprise could have been comical. But right now Shovel could only think it was forced and creepy. "Not anymore at least."

Yeah, sure. And Shovel was the long lost empress of Russia. Evgenii's chortle, masked as a cough, made her think she'd said that aloud. But no, it was just his reaction of disbelief to the bandit's assertion.

"They don't believe us." Well, wasn't this Squint a keen observer?

"Not everyone has felt the call brother," Noodle made a show of sighing exaggeratedly and shaking his head.

"What call?" Gecko asked them, still looking ready to grab her weapon any second now.

"The call of the Monolith, of course!" Squint said with a gleam in his eyes.

"Our comrade Leech heard the Monolith, it spoke to him. And he changed. He only wanted to go find the Monolith," Noodle explained them, like they were friends talking over a cup of tea. "Why assault and rob people when the Monolith could grant us wealth and anything we wanted? So we decided to go with Leech to Pripyat and find the Wish Granter."

Wasn't the Monolith just a myth? Shovel always thought Wolf's stories of the Wish Granter were tall tales, entertaining but faker than a four ruble coin. But if what these two said was true... the idea of a thing that made people obsess over it, that spoke to them and made them changed their minds overnight... was she the only one who thought it was creepy beyond belief? Her face must have betrayed some emotion, because Noodle suddenly focused on her.

"The girl knows what I'm talking about, right?" He pointed at her with a nod, and Shovel's entire group turned around to look at her.

"No! I don't hear voices!" Shovel quickly defended herself.

"Leech said it began as a faint whisper," Squint supplied unnecessarily.

There had been a couple of times when the wind seemed to whisper things, gibberish, but that was just the wind. It also happened at home, before the Red Storm, when everything was normal. Shovel was thinking of how to voice that, because she didn't like how the bandits were looking at her. Too expectant and hopeful. Thankfully Gecko intervened with a rather pressing question.

"And where is your friend now? This Leech?"

The so called ex-bandit grimaced and made a vague gesture that pointed someplace behind him, in the dark. "Dead. Fucking bloodsuckers got him."

Wait, what? Bloodsuckers? Shovel had heard a lot about bloodsuckers, especially around campfires while the veteran stalkers tried their damnest to scare the rookies. And Shovel was pretty sure she didn't want to meet those mutants ever. Even if the stories had been exaggerated.

"There are bloodsuckers here?!" Even Gecko was worried, which wasn't reassuring in the slightest.

"Yeah, further down," Noodle said. "But it's cool, the stairs will stop'em."

They all stopped to listen, searching any indication the mutants had figured out the stairs. And if on cue, there was a strange rasping sound far away in deep, dark recesses. Was her imagination playing tricks on her or did it truly sound like something was scratching metal? They all looked at each other in search of reassurance, differences like ex-bandit and stalker forgotten in their common fear of bloodsuckers. Gecko took a hesitant step forward, finally reaching for her weapon.

"I'll go have a look. Stay alert."

Gecko directed a fleeting glance to the ex-bandits. She clearly didn't trust them much. That was fine, Shovel didn't like them at all either. Evgenii solemnly nodded, unholstering his pistol as they watched Gecko disappear on the dark end of the corridor.

They say the waiting part is the worst. And Shovel never had much patience to begin with. Had they been waiting just seconds or minutes already? Time stretched strangely when you were on alert. In the end they all walked further into the room, stopping on the nexy archway. Stil no sign of Gecko, only darkness ahead.

There was a crackling sound coming from far behind her. She had learnt to identify the sound as the discharge of an electro. Turning around, she took a couple of steps towards the sound. Her flashlight revealed a small tunnel, alight with the fain blue glow of an electro. Then all hell broke loose.

The dreaded and unmistakeable sound of someone firing a rifle echoed in the underground tunnels. Shovel wiped her head around and saw Evgenii dart a couple of steps forward, gun held high.

"Are you ok? Gecko! What's going on?" He yelled into the dark.

There was no reply, just another crack and hiss from the electro. Was something (a bloodsucker) coming for them? They had no idea where that tunnel lead, and there must be a reason for the electro's discharges. As far as she knew, electros only cracked like that when something or someone stepped into them. So Shovel turned her back to the rest of the group and aimed her hunting rifle to the entrance of the suspicious tunnel.

"I fucking hate the Zone," Belyavin said aloud to no one in particular. “It’s all a death trap.”

"Leech used to say the Monolith demands sacrifice," was the laconic answer of Noodle.

"Oh yes? Lovely."

"Yeah," Noodle replied.

Shovel heard two quick shots behind her, too close. Terrifyingly close. Something hit the ground. Her thoughts tangled in an endless loop of "No, no! This isn't- can't be.."

She wanted to turn around, see what happened. Yet at the same time she was too afraid of what she would see. The cold fingers of dread were squeezing her, keeping her rooted to her spot. Then something hard impacted painfully against the back of her head, and Shovel's last jumbled thought was "I hope 'm not bleeding. Taking blood out of my hair is going to be a nightmare" before her world went black.

Author’s note: now you have a better idea of how this spoilery little piece fits into Shovel’s misadventures.

#S.T.A.L.K.E.R.#OC #shovel #evgenii

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mysr3 · 7 years ago

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Kpop Game ^^

I was tagged (indirectly><) by @floralseokjin (Love you Boo) and I tag @seoulsoul7 @omgaligirl @lunarimagines @bangtan-spells @enchantingstigma @jeongguukks @sheactslikesummer3 @noir0neko @btsxshots @btssmutgalore @dailydoseofdia (even am sure you might have already done this but I tag you anyway hehe) and anyone who wants to do this, Rules: list your top 10 biases and answer the following questions.

1. Min Yoongi

2. Jeon Jungkook

3. Park Jimin

4. Kim Seokjin

5. Jung Hoseok

6. Kim Namjoon

7. Yang Yoseob (Highlight)

8. Im Jaebeom

9. Kim Taehyung

10. Kim Sungkyu (Infinite)

between 1&4 who would you rather kiss?

MIN YOONGI (ALL THE WAY)

between 2&7 who would be your best friend?

Jungkook because he has both kid and mature side which is similar to my personality trait. He is very considerate and sensitive which I believe we can relate and understand each other. So we could talk about our problems and cheer each other up, share secrets (hehe) Yoseob on the other hands, our personality is totally opposite and I cant imagine we would have idle chit chat between each other. I feel we would end up fighting lol

between 5&10 who has the better voice?

Sungkyu

between 1&8 who is the funniest?

I think it would be Jaebeom. I feel both of them have similar traits in personality but I feel Jaebeom light up more

between 6&9 who would you date?

Oh lord- this is hard because I cant see myself dating either one of them L what to do… umm okay I would go with Namjoon because I still see we have things in common better than Tae. I feel we could hit off as close friend so dating him would be okay and fun. Mr Tae and I are totalllly different and rarely have things in common but I still treasure him as a cutest softest human being alive. This man is so sweet. But boi date him would have us fighting all the time

between 9&10, who would you do a collaboration with?

Another hard one… going to blame myself for ranking my bias like this….I think I would want to do with Sungkyu because I really like his voice and I think we have similar tone of voice (in my head when I sing along to their song lmao) Taehyung would be fun but would be hard for me because that boy has such deep (sexy) voice, so It will be hard to harmonize with.

between 4&8 who is the best dancer?

Haha sorry Jin but has to be Jaebeom, have you seen the way he dance omg

between 3&5 who would you most likely marry?

Whyyy…. Oh dear I would go for Hobi because Jimin and me have very similar in sensitivity. I think with us marrying each other, we will be the most sensitive couple on earth. So I would want to have sunshine Hoseok in my life if I have to choose.

between 1&7 who would you nurse when they are sick?

MIN YOONGI (WHO ARE YOU TRY TO KID)

between 2&3 who has the better smile?

Whyy another hard question… oh dear for me personally would be Jungkook. I love his bunny smile (sorry Jimin)

between 6&8 who would you vacation with?

Jaebeom. He would protect me and we would make each other laugh so much

#get to know me #kpop game #this is fun and mind tiring

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bubblline · 8 years ago

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so i've recently gotten into haikyuu and your art is so amazing and i 100% ship kuroken because of it. like wow, you really capture their subtle feelings really well. i was wondering if you had any fic recs though? you've dragged me into this hell, please take responsibility.

just so you know THIS IS AMAZING AND I AM NOT SORRY ANON

thank you so much for your kind words Q-Q, I often feel like my art is not enough? like not expressive enough, or just not nice to look at so that means a lot me

okay I’ve read TONS of excellent kuroken in my days and here are some of my favorites. Also be aware that most of these are longer because I love slowburn and you can’t just have that in 3k words but there are some shorter oneshots around too.

The links are under the cut because I have no chill and there are SO MANY

AND PLEASE READ ALL THE TAGS BEFORE DELVING IN

Let’s start with a Classic: How Kuroo found Kenma by @suggestivescribe.It’s a really funny and cute college-get-together-fic in which Kuroo suddenly realizes he’s been in love with Kenma FOREVER and chaos ensues. Oikawa is also Kuroo’s other best friend in this and idk about you but I love me some Oikuroo friendship. This fic is sort of a prequel to another of Scribe’s iwaoi fics, which is also amazing and Kuroo and Kenma do appear from time to time: Conquering the Great King (but be warned that fic has A LOT of smut)

The first multi-chapter story I read with them isSeasons of Love by @nimbus-cloudThis is set after the current events of canon, Kenma is a third year and Kuroo is off to college, they have to figure out how to deal with a long-distance relationship. It’s very well written and a very sweet discovery of what it means to grow up.(There’s a second part too!!)

And from here on out the fics I’m listing aren’t in any particular order

Chamomile and Carnivorous Plants by @ellessey-writes (M) 10k‘There was no great defining moment, no point in time Kenma can look to and say, That’s what did it. That’s when I fell for Kuroo. He just did somehow.And it’s the worst. For so many reasons.’–Kenma needs to admit a few things to himself, and to Kuroo.and the second part Come a little bit closer (E) 13k

this is seriously DELIGHTFUL I love Kenma coming to terms with his feelings and his futile attempts to not be in love

Dream Catcher by @shions-heart (T) 16,9kTetsurou is an Akumu no Seishin, a Nightmare Spirit. His kind absorb the nightmares of humans, allowing them peaceful sleep. Although Tetsurou has existed for centuries, he’s never truly felt alive.Not until he comes across the first human to ever see him.

really really cool world-building, I also imagined this Kuroo a lot like Howl in his raven form. And I think it’s obvious that I love Sy with all the other fics in this rec……..

Thieves in the Night by skittidyne (M) 15,7k“Oh.” The man blinks a couple times, surprised, and looks around at the mess again. “…You live like this?” The amount of raw sympathy in his voice is, frankly, insulting. “Why are you in my bedroom in the middle of the night?”“Oh, I was going to rob you,” the man replies easily. He winces at the mess around him once more. “I, uh, kind of thought you were already hit, and I didn’t want to make things worse for you, y’know?”“Get out.”(( or: kenma gets visited by a stupidly considerate thief, who won’t stop visiting him )).

I’ve laughed so much while reading this it’s 1000% RIDICULOUS but at the same time very sweet and funny. Seeing Kuroo as a catburglar has to be one of the funniest images ever.

Being Human: Origins by @shions-heart (M) 41,7kKuroo Tetsurou is a witch’s apprentice living above The Black Cat, a magic supply store where he also works. When his master leaves him for an assignment in China, and his best friends Oikawa Tooru and Iwaizumi Hajime abandon him for a working vacation on the beach, Kuroo commits the taboo and summons a demon to help him in the shop and help drive back the loneliness that lingers in the shadows.

Only the demon he summons isn’t the type of demon he expects, and he finds himself stuck with it with no idea of how to return it to where it belongs.

I love this universe with its urban magic and Kuroo is just the sweetest in this? He just wants some peace to study?? but boy does he get more than he signed up for

An Ode by manzana (G) 1,7kkenma unironically loves kuroo’s laugh – gross and loud and embarrassing and all.

pure sweetness, I love reading Kenma’s POV and see how he just genuinely loves Kuroo

Step by Step by @dgalerab (M) 14,7kEveryone might think that Kenma is the one that is always following Kuroo, but it’s Kuroo that’s been trying to slip his life into Kenma’s since he can remember. He might get a little scared by the idea of going off to college without Kenma. Kenma handles it.

I love the hc that Kuroo just decided to be Kenma’s friend and then stuck with him, they balance each other so well and I think that comes out in this story

The Start of Something New by @shions-heart (T) 5kBefore Kuroo leaves for university, he realizes this may be his last chance to confess his feelings to his best friend, Kenma.Despite his resolve, actually getting the words out proves to be … difficult.

This was my birthday gift this year and I love it to bits, it’s very very cute and Kuroo my love is just so dense it’s glorious.

Common side effects by @notallballs (M) 38k (not complete)Kuroo Tetsurou is pushing thirty, recently single, and just moved back in with his mother. Struggling to reconnect with old friends, losing touch with his goals, Kuroo feels like his life is slipping backward, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

A chance encounter with an old friend might just be the sign he’s been waiting for, if he’s smart enough to make the most of it.

This story is slightly different from what I usually read because it starts off rather dark, Kuroo got dumped, hasn’t seen Kenma in ages and is generally in a bad place mentally but it’s so great to see him slowly pulling through all of that and rekindling his friendship with Kenma. Another bonus is Kuroo’s mom in this story, she’s AMAZING. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

How to Save a Life by @shions-heart (M) 18,4kKuroo Tetsurou’s parents are killed by vampires when he is eight years old. Twelve years later, consumed by rage and hatred for the vampire kind, the hunter still searches for the coven that killed them, vowing justice (or revenge).Kozume Kenma thinks he’d rather die than live as a vampire, but when the newly turned nineteen-year-old’s path crosses Kuroo’s, the hunter spares his life in exchange for his assistance in avenging the hunter’s parents’ death.Tension is a string pulled taut between them, and sooner or later something will snap.

Another thing written for me BUT I LOVE IT SO MUCH OKAY IT HAS VAMPIRES AND ENEMIES TO FRIENDS TO LOVERS. Kuroo is also a lot harsher and meaner than what we usually see of him but that only makes it so much more satifying to read when he finally wakes up.

Teach me the way home by @icespyders (T) 22kDon’t go far off, not even for a day, because —because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is longand I will be waiting for you, as in an empty stationwhen the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.Kuroo and Kenma grow up in transit.

This fic is ethereal, it definitely succeedes in conveying this sort of restlessness that trains have for me, it’s very episodic and I love that about it because it still manages to tell a coherent story and to be a sort of character study. I really really love it.

Best Friends by @mysecretfanmoments (E) 6,3kEvery evening they walk home together, Kuro smelling of salt and suntan lotion, Kenma’s hands sore from scooping ice cream all day, and it feels nice. Peaceful.He’s glad Kuro came, after all.((During the two weeks he spends manning his uncle’s ice cream booth on the coast, Kenma decides that maybe he likes his best friend back, after all))

Reading this fic feels a lot like hanging out outside in summer, just enjoying the warmth and comfort of the familiar. I can’t tell you how often I read this fic, dozen of times probably. It just captures their relationship really well I think, I also love the setting around the beach a lot

national hot dad alliance is now calling… by @dicaeopolis and @owlinaminor (T) 58,2kSawamura Daichi: What the fuck.

(Or, the captains’ squad interactions that definitely happen outside of canon, presented in Skype chat form.)This isn’t focused on krkn but it’s hilarious and it definitely made me cry too, it’s mainly in chat format but there are a couple of ‘novel style’ scenes as well, I would say this is also a bit of a character study, the authors managed to tell each of the captain’s stories with so much humor and wit but also seriousness when it was needed

Those are not all the kuroken fics I’ve read of course and I couldn’t list every single one i like but I have an ao3 where i save my bookmarks and add new ones when I stumble over anything good

#Anonymous #kuroken #kuroo tetsurou #kozume kenma #hq!!#hq #otp #fic rec

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hazzamylouworld-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Love, You’re Not Alone

"Can't we just write them a check?!" Louis Tomlinson moans from his spot curled up in his bed. His sister, Lottie, scoffs from the door to his bedroom and enters into the (probably) hazardous area. She grabs hold of his ankle and jerks as hard as she can. It doesn't make much of a difference seeing as Lottie is quite a bit smaller than Louis but it does pull his covers down just enough to be an annoyance. "No Louis. We're VOLUNTEERING. Not throwing money at them. They need our help, not just our money." Lottie rolls her eyes at her brother's stuck up attitude. He's not usually so unkind and self absorbed but it is six AM and he is an eighteen year old boy. "How much help do they really need? Won't you and Fizzy be enough? I can just write a check to equal my part." Louis mumbles, pulling a pillow over his head. "It's a pregnant teen and young parent shelter so....I'm thinking a lot. Come on, Louis...this was mum's last request.." Lottie's voice falters at the end of her sentence just thinking of her precious mum. The Nest, the shelter the Tomlinson's are set to volunteer at for the next few months, was a shelter very close to the heart of their mum. She was a single mum when Louis was born and the shelter was the one who got her on her feet. And since then she always given back. Her and Louis' stepdad owned a multi-billion dollar company so they were always able to give generously to them. And she wanted the legacy to live on through her children now that she's passed. The Tomlinson's have never been selfish with their money or the typical stuck up rich kids so they didn't mind at all when the shelter called and asked if the oldest kids could volunteer. And Louis still doesn't mind it's just..he was hoping they could start helping at noon not 6 AM. Still..it WAS his mum's last wishes and he loves her dearly so he stands from his bed, grumbling sleepily and swats his hand toward the door as to tell his sister to get out. "Aunt Lou is fixing breakfast. We're leaving in twenty minutes so you better be bright eyed and bushy tailed by then." She says, slamming the door. Louis shakes his head, attempting to figure out just when his fourteen year old sister become such a sass. He's able to get ready in just enough time to grab a waffle off the stack on the table and kiss his Aunt Lou on the cheek before rushing out to the car with his two sisters in tow. Felicite, or as the family calls her Fizzy, is hard at work on her phone trying to figure out the right song to play from her playlist. Lottie sits in the back seat, taking selfies of her make up for the day. Louis slips into the front seat with half a waffle hanging from his mouth and starts his car. "You look lovely." Fizzy says with a laugh. "I'm tired, leave me alone." He pulls up to the shelter and marvels at its beautiful exterior. He wants to be an architect so he is obsessed with the structures of buildings. "This place is beautiful! It doesn't look like any shelter I've ever seen." Louis gasps. "You've never seen a shelter at all." Lottie sasses, pushing him toward the door. He shoots her a look and steps inside. And his mouth drops. Because at the welcome desk is the most beautiful man he's ever seen in his entire eighteen years of life. He's got brown curly hair and the most gorgeous green eyes of any human being alive. When he looks up and smiles at Louis, dimples pierce his cheeks and Louis has to hold onto the counter or he's sure he'll pass out. "Hi, welcome to The Nest. Are you here to volunteer?" "I um.....I...." Fizzy gives him a confused look. "What is wrong with you?" Lottie pushes Louis to the side, fluffing her hair and smiles. "Yes. We're here to volunteer. I'm Lottie, this is my sister, Fizzy and my older brother, Louis." The boy smiles and Louis swears he sees him subtly wink at him but he can't be sure. His heart is racing. "Hi Fizzy, was it? Nickname?" Fizzy giggles a high pitch that Louis has never heard come from her. "Yes, my real name is Felicite but everyone calls me Fizzy." The boy nods. "It's very nice to meet you, Fizzy. And Louis, right? Hello. I'm Harry." "H-hi." "Here is name tags for all of you and a pen to write your name in. Once you're finished, I'll give you the grand tour." Louis quickly fills out his name and shoves his body directly beside Harry before his two sisters can beat him to it. "Ah Louis, quite the fast writer. I'll have to remember that." "Do you volunteer here often?" Louis asks him. Harry nods. "Everyday after school. Kids have always been close to my heart so I've always wanted to help out somehow. Figured the beginning of their lives is a good place to start." Louis nods. Not only is he cute, he has a HUGE heart. Louis' knees feel like buckling beneath him. "Is this your first time?" Louis blinks back into reality. "First time what?" Harry laughs and Louis really didn't need another reason to fall for this guy. "Volunteering here." Louis nods. "It is for me. My mum used to live here when she was pregnant with me. She owes all her success to this place. She met her husband when she was still living here and they started a great big business together and well...she became pretty well off." Harry nods. "I bet she's proud of you for volunteering." "She would be, I think. It was her last request..she um..she passed away in December." Harry's face falls and for a second Louis thinks he might start crying. "Louis, I'm so sorry...I can't even imagine what that would be like...I...it's really amazing of you to come here and help out." Louis shrugs. "I'm a trust fund baby. I need to give back somehow." -- It doesn't take long for Louis' "little crush" to form into something quite a bit bigger. He even took the boy over to his house for dinner to meet his entire family. And he's pretty sure not only does all of his little sisters have a crush on him but his aunt is pretty well ready to adopt him. She might love Harry more than she loves Louis. Harry loves fashion so his aunt was immediately drawn to him just for that reason. They talked all evening and Louis barely got a word in. He didn't care, not really, he could watch Harry talk all day and never tire of it. But....he still hasn't gotten the courage but to ask Harry if he's single or not. Or if he even likes guys. And apparently he doesn't have to because his sister does that for him. It's Monday afternoon and the three of them are putting together gift baskets for the residents of The Nest. "So you must have a beautiful girlfriend, right?" She asks boldly. Louis feels like clonking himself in the head with the mini hairdryers they're putting in the baskets. Harry laughs. "I don't." "Oh...hm. Well what do you think of ME?" "LOTTIE!" Harry laughs again. "I think you're very pretty. But you're a bit young for me.." Louis' heart slows in his chest. "And I much prefer someone like your brother, if you know what I mean." And Louis feels like fainting to the floor. Lottie laughs like it's the funniest thing in the world and Louis' face turns a deep shade of red. He clears his throat three times before he's able to speak again. "Yeah so um...these are finished, Lottie. Want to um...take them back to the back room?" Lottie beams and winks at her brother before nodding. "Did that surprise you?" Harry asks. "W-what?" "That I'm not into girls?" Louis shrugs. "I..uh..no. I don't judge..because well, I'm not either." "I know." "What? You do?" Harry nods. "Do you have a boyfriend?" He asks casually. Louis chokes on his breath and has to cough several times before he's able to compose himself. "No...I...no, I don't. No." Harry smiles. "Hm. Interesting." "Do you?" Harry's face suddenly turns hard and he shakes his head, gritting his teeth. "Newly single." "I suppose it ended badly?" Louis asks boldly before profusely apologizing. Harry laughs. "You don't have to apologize. And yeah...yeah I guess you could say it um...ended quite badly." "I'm sorry." Harry flicks his hand. "All for the best." Louis nods. It IS all for the best. - Louis gets considerably closer to Harry after that conversation, making sure to flirt as much as possible. Harry receives it well and even flirts back most of the time. Louis adores it. He and Harry have started walking to their cars together and even having coffee on a few occasions when Fizzy and Lottie weren't with Louis. He's also invited him over by the request of his aunt six times and each time, his heart grows fonder for the curly headed lad. - Harry has been very quiet today and Louis is a bit worried he's done something to offend the boy. He's barely spent any time with him at all and every time Louis so much as approaches him, Harry walks away. He's gone to the bathroom at least six times during the day and he looks a bit pale and like he's been crying. And Louis is truly fed up by the end of the day, desperately missing his talks with Harry. "Harry, do you want to walk out to our cars now? Maybe get a bit of coffee?" Harry's eyes widen and he shakes his head, looking down. "Um...no. No thanks Louis." Louis sighs dramatically and bites his lip. "Why are you mad at me?" "What? Mad at you? I'm not." "Yes you are. You've ignored me all day and now you don't want to do our daily walk to our cars and-" "It's because I live here now." Louis stops talking and looks up in shock at him. "You....I'm sorry, you what?" "I live here now." "But...but you live with your mum. And this is a shelter for.." Harry nods. "Pregnant teens." "You're-" Harry bites his lip as his eyes fill with tears. "Yeah....I'm eight weeks. Found out a few days ago and when I told my mum she...." his voice falters, "She kicked me out. Never liked the guy I was with, boy was she right. But ehm..yeah she kicked me out so I live here now." Louis' heart lurches. "Oh Harry...is it your-" "My ex's yeah. I'm not going to tell him obviously but...yeah." "Have coffee with me." "What?" "Have coffee with me." "I can't." "Why not? Harry, I don't judge you at all, my m-" "No I mean...I can't drink coffee. Caffeine is bad for the baby and just the smell of it makes me nauseous. Could we um...could we just go to the park or something? I don't think I could stomach any food right now anyway. I've been really sick." Louis nods. "Of course, Harry. Yeah." Louis leads Harry out of the building and to his car. Harry gets into the passenger side and marvels at the inside of Louis' vehicle. "Nice car." Louis shrugs. "Trust fund baby. Came into a bit of money when I turned 18. Decided to splurge." Louis drives to the park and he and Harry get out, sitting on a nearby bench when after walking a few steps, Harry feels sick. Louis hands him a water and rubs his back. "Feeling any better?" Harry presses a hand to his stomach and swallows thickly. "Yeah...yeah, it's going down a bit now." "Good. So I guess why you kept going to the bathroom today was because-" Harry nods. "I was throwing up." "Harry, I'm so sorry. I can't believe your mum would kick you out for this." Harry bites his lip and nods. "She was right..about the guy I mean." "What happened between you two, if you don't mind me asking?" Harry sighs. "I um...I caught him cheating on me about two months ago...and that wasn't even what was so bad. The worst part was all the cocaine and other drugs I saw all over the room..he was an addict and I didn't even know...w-when I found him...he....he beat me up. Punched me in my stomach and my face...it's a miracle this baby's even alive, really. Anyway...after he-he beat me...he um....he wanted to make sure I knew he was in control so he uh....he...he forced me t-t-to...." Louis' eyes widen. "You didn't want to have sex but he.." "Yeah..anyway. I started feeling sick a few weeks ago but I thought it was just the flu but...clearly it wasn't. So now I live at the shelter until I can figure things out.." Louis shakes his head. "Live with me." "What?" "Live with me, Harry." "Louis, I couldn't do that. We barely know each other and-" "Bullshit, Harry. That's bullshit. I know loads about you. And my aunt loves you and I have so many siblings I could use some help with them and what better practice than-" Louis feels Harry's lips connect with his and his eyes widen again before promptly closing and leaning into the kiss. "Is that a yes then?" Harry nods. "It's a yes." - It doesn't take much convincing for Lou to allow Harry to stay. She immediately said yes, as she is quite compassionate towards single parents through her own situation, and gave Harry some chamomile tea that she swore by when she was pregnant for morning sickness. Louis' step dad doesn't mind either, being quite the philanthropist himself. The girls and Louis' youngest brother, Ernest, love having Harry around to play with. Harry lets the girls put make up on him and fix up his hair when he's lying around nauseous from morning sickness and he lets Ernest roll a car up his arm (which actually is beneficial and helps distract him from how sick he feels). Louis watches in complete fond and Lou smiles at him, pulling him toward the kitchen. "What do you need, Aunt Lou? I really should get back to him..he really isn't feeling well." She smiles. "I think your siblings are taking great care of him. I'm sure you have a moment to talk." "About what?" "You love him, don't you?" Louis bites his lip. "Yeah...I...I think I do." "And does he feel the same?" "Um...I'm not sure. We kissed a few weeks ago when I asked him to move in but...I don't know..it could've just been like a thank you..we haven't talked about it since." "I think you should." "But...he's got so much going on and I really don't think it's the time right now..I mean he's pregnant.." "You need to let him know how you fee or you could lose him." Louis rolls his eyes. He can't really lose Harry. I mean they're living under the same roof. ....Can he? - Harry's twenty weeks now and he's just found out he was having a girl. He held a contest between Louis and his siblings to come up with the best name. Louis thought he had it in the back with Harriet but his younger sister, Daisy ended up winning. Harry's daughter is going to be named Minnie. When asked why that was picked (and also a bit of poking fun at the fact that it's like Minnie Mouse), Harry just smiled and said "You're right. It is like Minnie Mouse. Because Daisy and Minnie are best friends and that's what I want for THIS Minnie and Daisy." And well..since then Louis' crush has only grown stronger. He's pretty sure his heart could beat out of his chest at this point with how much he loves Harry. Still he hasn't brought up their relationship in fear that Harry might not reciprocate his feelings. Louis sits with Harry on the couch watching a movie with his siblings. He keeps smiling down at Harry's new rounded bump like it's the most gorgeous thing in the world. Harry catches him and picks his hand up placing it on his belly. "You could've felt it ages ago. You know I don't mind." "Wow. Your skin is so stretched. Does it hurt?" Harry shrugs. "My back is adjusting to the new weight but no..not really." "That's amazing." "Louis, I really think I'd like to get a job." "Harry, we've discussed this..you don't have to contribute...we love having you here and we have enough money." Harry sighs. "I know..but I just want to feel like I have a purpose, you know? It'd only be a few days a week and I could still help with the kids and stuff-" "What? Hazza, you don't have to ask my permission for things. I'm not in charge of you. If you want a job, go get you a job. That sounds wonderful." Harry sighs and lies his head down on Louis' shoulder. Louis' heart races in his chest at the close contact and he has to physically remind himself how to breathe. "Y-you tired?" Harry hums. "Yeah...she takes a lot out of me." He sighs, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Want to head to bed?" Harry shakes his head. "No...like watching the kids.." "You can um..you can nap on my shoulder if you um..if you want..and I can just wake you up when the movie is over." "You're the best, Louis." Louis bites his lip. "No. You are, Hazza." "Like it when you call me Hazza." Louis smiles. He'll remember that. - Harry starts a job at the local coffee shop two weeks later. He's twenty four weeks now and really loves his job. He's met so many wonderful people and Louis loves to come visit at least once a week. Harry loves it too and always has his favorite coffee waiting for him when he arrives. Louis is sat at the bar chatting to him now, watching him work on everyone's coffees and smiling at how much his belly's grown in just a few short weeks. "You're really poking out there now, yeah?" Harry laughs. "I am. I feel huge." "You aren't huge at all. You're bea-" "Hey Harry!" A male voice calls from behind Louis making whip around quickly to view the source. A tan, dark haired beautiful man walks up and plops down beside Louis. And Louis absolutely does not like the way he's smiling at Harry. Is he...is he jealous right now? The heavy ache in his stomach tells him yes as he watches the boy interact with Harry. "Hey Zayn. Louis, this is Zayn. Zayn, this is Louis." "Hi mate, nice to meet you." "Oh hm. Nice to meet you too, Zach." "It's um..it's Zayn." "Oh sorry. I must've misheard." Harry gives him a confused look and continues chatting to Zayn, making Louis pout. Zayn finally leaves and Harry's shift ends soon after. Louis walks him out to the car with a protective hand over his belly and helps him into it. "So um..who's Zayn?" "Oh he's just a guy that comes into the coffee shop sometimes. He's an art major so he likes to draw there." "Oh hm. Nice. Do you like..you know..um..think he's cute?" Harry laughs. "Louis Tomlinson, are you jealous?" "NO. I'm just simply asking." Harry frowns a bit, wanting Louis to show him that he cares for him, but quickly shakes it off with a smirk. "He's pretty cute, I guess." "Mm. I think he's a bit too...tattooed, don't you think?" "Louis, you and I are both covered in tattoos." "Tasteful ones." "I have Big on my big toe." "Well, its just telling the world which one it is. TASTEFUL." Harry giggles. "Yeah..su-" He stops mid-sentence and sits up, eyes wide and hand on his belly. "Harry?! Harry, what's wrong?!" "I..." "Are you hurt? Does your stomach hurt? Do you need the hospital?" Harry shakes his head. "She kicked." Louis' eyes widen. "WHAT? You're kidding." Harry shakes his head. "She just kicked. I felt a jolt...here.." Harry pulls Louis' hand onto his belly. Louis waits for three seconds and almost throws a temper tantrum before feeling a tiny jolt hit his hand. "Oh m-Harry...she's MOVING. She's real!" Harry cackles. "Well yeah...t's why my belly's growing." - Louis smiles in adoration as Harry snoozes on the couch with a bowl of popcorn perched on his belly. Daisy giggles from beside Louis and he turns to her with a grin. "The baby's kicking the bowl!" "Shh, you'll wake him." He does smile a bit wider when he realizes that the bowl is moving in soft waves due to baby kicks. It's no surprise that Harry has fallen asleep with a bowl of popcorn. The boy is now seven months pregnant and eats like an endless garbage disposal. Which Louis finds absolutely adorable. There's not much that Harry does that Louis doesn't find adorable. Harry grunts and his eyes slowly open up to peer at the two Tomlinson's staring at him. Louis bites his lip. "Sorry Haz. Did we wake you?" Harry sighs and wipes his eyes, "No." Lou walks into the room with a smirk on her face. "Louis, we're taking the girls and Ernest to get ice cream, we'll be back. You can hold down the fort, yeah?" Louis rolls his eyes, knowing what Lou's ulterior motive is. She hugs him and gets as close as possible to his ear. "Tell him." She lets go of him and smiles at Harry. "Come on, Daisy. Let's go." "Bye Harry!" Harry smiles lightly. "Bye Daisy." The family leaves and the house plunges into a comfortable quiet. "Did you sleep well?" Harry nods. "Yeah sorry. Did I fall asleep before our movie was over?" Louis laughs. "Yeah, but that's alright. You looked knackered." Harry sighs. "I am. She keeps me awake all night with her kicking." Louis frowns. "You can always come to my room." "What?" "Um...I mean...you know if you..um..if you can't sleep, you can wake me and you know...I don't know." Harry smiles. "I'll remember that." Louis beams. "Care to finish that movie?" Harry asks, patting the couch. Louis nods. "I would love to." Louis turns the movie back on from the paused position it's been in for over an hour. "Could we get more popcorn?" Harry asks with a sheepish smile. Louis laughs. "Of course." Louis pops the popcorn and brings it back to the living room, putting it between he and Harry. Harry ends up half the bowl on his own before the climax of the movie. Louis puts his arm around Harry cautiously and Harry smiles, leaning onto his arm comfortably. Louis thinks he's fallen asleep again until Harry begins to move about uncomfortably, grimace plastered on his face. Louis looks down at him in concern and rubs his arm. "Hey...are you alright?" "I...I don't know.." Harry groans and placing a hand to his side. "What's wrong, Haz? Are you hurting?" Harry huffs. "Yeah....my stomach hurts..." Louis' eyes bulge. "What?" Harry nods, "Oww Louis..it really hurts." Louis bites his lip. "Ok.." inside his heart races but he knows he has to stay calm and be strong for Harry, "Ok H. We need to go to the hospital, ok?" Harry gasps and his lip wobbles. "Harry, it's ok. I promise. Everything's going to be alright. I'm sure everything is fine, we just need to get you checked out." "I..I'm scared..it's way too early.." "Don't think like that, ok? It could be nothing." Louis' hand shakes as he grabs Harry's hand and quickly shoots a text to Lou with the other. He helps Harry into the car and heads toward the hospital. "I feel sick, Lou..." "It's ok, H. It's ok. We're almost there." Louis drives far over the speed limit to get Harry to the hospital, each groan making his heart leap into his throat. Harry's brought back quickly and Louis is told to stay in the waiting him. It feels like the longest wait of his life. "Are you here for Mr. Styles?" A nurse asks him. He jumps up and bites his thumb nail. "Yes, yes I am!! Is he...is he ok? Is the baby? Is he in labor?" The nurse chuckles lightly. "Don't panic, Mr...." "Tomlinson. Louis Tomlinson." "Don't panic, Louis. Harry AND baby girl are just fine. Harry was just experiencing some indigestion and gas pain from overeating or eating too quickly." Louis sighs in absolute relief, heart finally relaxing in his chest. "Can I see him?" "Of course. Room 212. He should be able to go home soon." Louis barely hears her last sentence as he bolts down the hallway to Harry's room. He bursts into the room and Harry smiles lightly. "I'm so embarrassed, Louis. I thought I was in labor but I just had a stomach ache. I'm really s-" "I love you." Louis dead pans. "What?" "I love you. I love you so much. I adore you, Harry. I want to be with you." "I-" "Don't worry about saying it back right now, ok? I know you have a lot on your plate and-" "HARRY! Thank God, you're alright darling!" Lou shouts, opening the door. Harry's eyes stay locked with Louis' for a moment longer before turning to Lou. He smiles. "Thanks for coming, Lou. Sorry for scaring you." "We're just glad you're alright, Harry." Dan says, patting his shoulder. "Harry! No baby?" Louis' sister, Doris asks, climbing the bed. "No baby." He says with a smile. He's discharged fifteen minutes later and falls straight to sleep on the way home. He only wakes up for a moment as he stumbles inside and upstairs before falling straight back to sleep again. Louis smiles, relieved that he's alright. "Did you tell him?" Lou asks, patting his back. "I did." Lou smiles. "Good." - Louis sighs as he types away at his laptop. He's lost track of time but he knows it has to be late with how quiet the house is. Dan told him last week that he will be moving the company into his hands within the next year or two and Louis was thrilled. But it's a lot of hard work he's come to realize very quickly. He hears a soft knock at his door and shakes his head, clearing it off the daydreaming fog it quickly settled in. "Come in." He mumbles without even looking to see who was coming in. He's too tired to care. He hears a sniffle and his head pops up from his hands and whips around to the door. "L-Louis?" "Harry? What's wrong? Are you hurting?" The boy is thirty two weeks now and they're quickly closing in on the end. And ever since the hospital visit, Louis has been much more alert when it comes to him. Harry shakes his head and sniffles before a sob leaves his lips and he buries his face into his hands. "Harry, what on earth?" Louis asks, quickly standing and rushing over to bring him into a big hug. "M-my um..my mum called." Louis' heart sinks. "She did? What did she say?" "I...I didn't answer. I was asleep and it caught me off guard and I....I don't want to talk to her.." "That's ok, H. That's ok. You don't have to. You never have to." "Y-your my family now." Louis' heart warms at his words and he smiles. "Course I am. You and Minnie will always be my family." Harry sniffles. "M'sorry I barged in. Were you working?" Louis snorts. "Hardly. I needed a break." Harry smiles with puffy eyes and lies down on his side onto Louis' bed. "C-can I sleep with you tonight?" "You um..you..you want to sleep with me?" "Um...yeah...I mean, I mean, if that's ok....I just...I guess I'm really shook up about my mum and..I don't know. I feel at ease when you're around." "Of course, Harry. Lie down, I'll give you a back rub." "Thank you. For...everything." "No Harry, thank YOU." - Louis is a bit upset, if he's honest. Not really UPSET..maybe hurt is the right word. Harry is thirty four weeks now and it's been over a month since Louis told him he loved him and well...Harry has yet to reciprocate. He knows he's busy, working and getting ready for the baby, but ever since Harry's mum called two weeks ago, Louis has been scared to lose the boy. And Minnie. He's grown quite fond of the princess who kicks about just below Harry's heart. He imagines himself raising her, taking her to Disney World, and dressing her like the princess she'll be. And he really just can't imagine doing life without her and Harry. "What are you thinking about, Louis?" Harry asks, crunching on a mouthful of cereal. Minnie kicks wildly in his belly, creating waves across the top that peep out just over the kitchen table. "Nothing..sorry I must've zoned out. She's kicking you pretty good, yeah?" Harry giggles. "Yeah. My ribs are killing me. It's her new favorite hang out." Louis smiles. "I think we should go furniture shopping today." Louis says. Harry's face pinks and he looks down. "I...I've made a lot at the coffee shop but I just don't think it's quite enough yet to buy her stuff for her room. I've been saving and stuff...so maybe...next month? Louis rolls his eyes. "Harry, do you not know me at all right now? I'm quite literally swimming in money. I'm buying Minnie everything she needs." "Louis, I couldn't ask you to do that-" "And why not? Would you rather Zayn do it?" Harry's eyes widen. "Zayn? The guy from the coffee shop? He has a girlfriend, Louis. And I'm not interested in him." Louis beams. "And who are you interested in?" Harry's cheeks turn red again and he shakes his head. "My child." "I am as well. So why don't we go look for her some furniture? Pleaaaaase let me buy it for you, H. I think Lou will burst if we don't go baby shopping soon." Harry smiles sheepishly. "Fine." "Is that a yes?!" "It's a yes." "YES." Louis presses a hand to Harry's active belly, "Did you hear that lovely? Your curly headed Daddy's getting your room together!" Harry smiles but rolls his eyes playfully. "Don't get her all excited." "Why not? I am!" Harry groans as his back aches awfully once they reach the seventh store of the day. "What's wrong Harry?" Louis asks, pulling away from the crib he's fallen for. "My back is killing me...is there a place to sit down?" Louis smiles. "How about this chair?" Harry sits down and sighs in relief. "Do you like the way this chair feels? Nice on the bum?" Harry giggles and rolls his eyes. "Louiiiiis." "What? It's going to be a lot of late nights for the both of us." Harry smiles softly. "The both of us?" "Of course. You don't think I'll force you to get up alone, do you?" Harry looks him in the eyes and takes a deep breath. "I love you." Louis' eyes bulge. "What?" "I love you. Or...I love you too, I mean." Louis beams and bends down to kiss Harry passionately on the lips. "What took you so long? I've been so worried you didn't feel the same.." "You told me not to answer...of course I feel the same.." Louis face palms himself. "I'm an idiot." "Yeah..but you're a cute idiot." - Louis tiptoes around the room, attempting to get ready in complete silence as to not wake Harry, who's still sleeping in his bed. Harry in his bed has become a nightly thing for some time now, Harry growing closer and closer to Louis as his due date quickly approaches. He's thirty eight weeks now and his bump pokes out from the covers just a sliver, making Louis' smile. His belly has really grown the past few weeks and it's all round and active with life and Louis has just never loved two things more in his life. Louis stubs his toe on the bed, staring at Harry not helping him walk very straight. He curses and bites his finger as to not scream out as his toe throbs. Harry grunts and his brow furrows. Louis' eyes widen and he holds his breath, watching the boy. He grunts again and snorts, turning over on his other side and pressing a hand to his rounded tummy. Louis supposes the baby must've woken up if Harry's discomforted face is anything to go by. Minnie is quickly running out of room. Harry inhales sharply but soon settles back down into a deep sleep and Louis sighs in relief. He finishes getting ready and tiptoes over to the bed, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder and bending over, kissing his cheek. Harry stirs and cracks open his eyes sleepily. "Shhh go back to sleep, love. I'll be back." "Hm?" Harry asks, groggily, rubbing his eyes, "'Re are you goin'?" He struggles to open his eyes any further and Louis smiles. "I've got a meeting." "What meeting?" Harry mumbles. Louis smiles, not wanting to give much away until he knows final details. "Just a meeting. Go back to sleep, Hazza. I'll be back when you wake up." "Hmmkay...kiss us." "I wouldn't dream of forgetting to." Louis coo's, kissing Harry's pouty lips and bending down to kiss his rounded belly. Louis watches as Harry quickly falls back to sleep and he grins, softly closing the door and heading downstairs. "Where are you headed so early?" Lou asks him, brewing up some tea. Louis grabs a mug and takes a sip, humming at its warmth. "Sure you can have some tea!" Lou sasses. "Thanks. I'm um..I'm going to meet with the realtor." He beams. Lou smiles back at him and hums. "So you got the house then?" He nods. "I did. It's just a matter of paperwork..I hope Harry likes it." "How could he not?" "I just hope he's ok with living with me..." "He's loved it for the past nine months..we'll miss you though....I was hoping he'd have the babiy before you both left.." She frowns. "Lou, we're only five minutes away and all of you are welcome anytime. Besides, you know we'll still come over here for spaghetti bolognese night." She smiles. "You better. Minnie loves my spaghetti bolognese." "It was the only thing that Harry could keep down the first few months, yeah?" She nods. "Hey Louis?" "Yeah?" "I'm really proud of you. And I know your mum would be too." He shrugs. "I love him. He's everything to me so I'm going to do everything in my power to provide for him and my daughter." "Your daughter?" "I mean....you know..Minnie." She smiles. "Yeah. Minnie." Louis curses when he looks at his watch and realizes the time. "Shit, I've got to get going. I'll see you in a bit." M "Good luck!" She calls as he heads out to his car. Harry feels a rippling pain grip at his back and opens his eyes just in time for the pain to reach up to his sides and cover his whole middle, seizing it up, making it quiver beneath his pajama top. He sucks in a breath of air and places a hand to his belly, rubbing his palm in circles. He moves his legs about uncomfortably as the cramping worsens. He exhales sharply through his nose and lets out a sleepy grunt. The pain lets up quickly and he pouts, rubbing at his eyes again. That's the second stomach cramp he's felt this morning and the tenth or so since last night. He's become accustomed to Braxton hicks and indigestion now so he figures it's probably a combination of both but it doesn't make it any less rough to deal with. His belly feels like a lead weight strapped to his waist, heavy and solid, and if it's not a cramp waking him, it's Minnie stretching or pushing down. He turns on his other side and huffs in frustration, gripping on to the pillow beneath his bump and closing his eyes, determined to get more sleep. He wishes Louis was still in bed with him, he'd give him a back massage or a belly rub or at least a cuddle. He's able to fall back to sleep, but is woken up some time later by the tightening and cramping of his belly again. It's a bit stronger this time and he vaguely remembers feeling the light tightening feeling in his sleep, thinking he was dreaming. So the pain must've been building while he was sleeping. He grunts and turns on his side, pushing a hand beneath his top and rubbing at the tight skin. Turning doesn't help, only sends a shooting pain up his back and makes the cramping worse in his belly. "Hohhwooo..." He exhales, furrowing his brow and rubbing his hand in circles over his belly button. The pain fades again and he scrunches his face in confusion. And annoyance. He's really quiet tired. He hears the rustling about downstairs so he knows he must be the last one in bed but he just doesn't have the energy to get up. And his stomach feels so /heavy/. And that's probably because it is, but today it just feels much heavier, lower, and more solid. The thought of getting up doesn't sound good at all so he decides to try and keep ignoring the pains and get some more sleep. And it works. If only for a bit. But he's soon woken up again by the same cramp washing over his belly. He groans under his breath and furrows his brow, placing a hand to his belly and rubbing it side to side. His stomach feels quite tense beneath his hand and he's shocked at how it's gone from a bit firm to quite solid in a little less than 24 hours. And. It. Hurts. He tucks his chin to his chest and grunts under his breath, pushing his belly forward and pulling it back again, as his thumb rubs softly to the side. "Ugh.." He moans before exhaling long and deep. He takes a deep breath once it passes and runs a hand down his belly. And then. He sleeps. And then. He awakens. The pain is much more severe when he wakes again and he presses a flat hand to the bottom of his belly and grimaces. "Mmmmgh..." He moans, teeth gritted as the cramp rolls over his tight bump. "Ugh......" He grunts, noticing the pain lasting a bit longer this go. He presses his free hand to his back and presses his belly forward as it seemed to help last time. But the pain is much stronger this time so not much helps at all. Instead, it just rides itself out and Harry is left panting. Minnie kicks up a storm and Harry feels quite close to throwing a fit. THIS is what happens when Louis Tomlinson leaves him in bed for a meeting. Minnie is clearly just as unhappy as he is. He whines lowly and rubs a hand over his tummy. He sits up as the urge to see pulls him from the warm comforter. He huffs and places both hands to his sides and gently massages them. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and takes a deep breath, trying to will himself to stand up when his belly feels so heavy and tight. The urge to wee grows stronger and he's pushed upwards by the sheer force of not wanting to pee all over himself. He waddles uncomfortably to the bathroom, wincing and letting out a little whine at the throbbing in his lower back. He sits down on the toilet and leans his head onto his shoulder. There's a deep, uncomfortable pressure in his back and he scrunches his face up, rubbing the tips of his fingers up and down his belly. He finally stops peeing after what feels like ages in his sleepy mind and stands up. He's quite thirsty and his toothbrush is calling his name. He washes his hands and wipes them sleepily on the hand towel before rubbing his eyes with his fists. He bends slightly to grab the toothpaste and his brush and groans when his belly hits the counter. He's carried quite high his entire pregnancy so there's definitely a change in the shape and placement of his belly on his hips. He stands and puts his belly atop the cool counter and sighs, rubbing it in large circles as his brushes his teeth thoroughly. He's just putting his brush back in the holder when he feels the familiar cramp wrap about his belly, seizing it up tightly and pushing it forward, making his top nearly snap in two. He grips the counter and grunts under his breath, closing his eyes. He alternates his weight on both feet and places his flat hand to his belly, rubbing in large circles as the pain grows. "Mmmmgh...." He moans, bending over to try and stretch out his back, burying his head in his arms. "Mmmmgh-ughhh...." He grunts, propping up on one arm and placing a hand back on his belly when the pain gets to be too much. "Wooo....." He breathes and sniffles, standing up and placing both of his flattened hands to the bottom of his bump and sways. The pain finally ends and he waddles back to bed. His original plan was to go ahead and go downstairs but he's not so sure he wants to with how bad these stomach cramps are getting. He sits up slightly in bed and places both arms over his eyes, groaning. If he could just get a BIT of sleep. He DESPERATELY needs it. And Louis. Louis smiles as he scribbles his name on potentially some of the most important papers of his life. He usually is quite carefree with his handwriting, most signatures of his looking like chicken scratch, but he finds himself making close attention to THESE signatures, making sure to dot each I and everything. "Here you go." He says, beaming at his realtor. The realtor flips through each page and nods. "Alright Mr. Tomlinson, that's all I need from you. I have no doubt that you and your little family will make beautiful memories here." The realtor says, standing and shaking Louis' hand. "I believe we will as well." "You're going to be a dad pretty soon, yeah?" Louis nods. "I um...yeah, yeah I am. A little girl." "Congratulations. And congrats on the new house! I almost forgot, here's your keys. The house is all yours. It's been an absolute pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Tomlinson." "Call me Louis. Thank you so much for all your hard work." "Good luck with the new family, Louis." Louis beams and looks around the place he can officially call HOME. Six bedrooms, four baths. He, Harry, and Minnie can start a life here. And Louis and Harry can continue to fill this house up with babies. Harry looks so radiant pregnant. Which reminds him of his curly headed love all snug in bed. He's sure he's probably awake by now and he really can't wait to show him the pictures online of the house. He makes sure to lock the door behind him and heads out to his car, driving towards what will soon only be his family's home. He pulls up and feels his heart rate quicken at the thought of seeing Harry. It's funny because he's lived with the boy for months now but his body still reacts the same. He opens the door with a huge grin and sees his whole family all spread out in the kitchen and living room. They all greet him and he sort of waves them off, really only in search of Harry. "Well lets see the house then!" Lottie exclaims, rushing up to him. "Shh. It's a surprise, remember. Where's Harry?" She giggles. "It's fine, Louis. He's still asleep." Louis gives her a confused look. "Still?" She nods. "He's been in his room all morning. We didn't want to disturb him." "Has anyone checked to see if he's still breathing?!" "Relax Louis, he's knackered. He is REALLY pregnant, remember?" Louis bites his lip. "Yeah...I guess you're right." Lou rolls her eyes playfully. "Go. We know you want to." Louis beams and rushes up the stairs, stopping only for a moment in the living room to grab his computer. He opens his door quietly and nearly jumps a foot in the air when he sees Harry sitting up in bed, shirt pulled up and belly exposed, with tired eyes. "Hey Hazza. Thought you were still sleeping." Harry shrugs. "I've been trying to...but I can't. She's just too uncomfortable, I guess." He mumbles, rubbing his eyes sleepily and yawning. Louis frowns. "Well..we'll take a nap together in a bit if you'd like." Harry sighs, rubbing his thumb to his belly. "Yeah..sounds nice.." "Are you alright?" Louis asks, confused by the boy's quiet demeanor. "Yeah..sorry. I guess I'm just not in the greatest of moods." "Of course not, you're sleepy and that's ok. Because I think I've got something to put you in a great mood." "Yeah?" Louis beams again. "Yeah." He opens his computer and brings it over to Harry's side, squatting down. Harry looks at the computer in confusion when he sees a massive house on the screen. "What's this?" "This, Harry, is where we're going to live." Harry's eyes widen. "What?" "I bought us a house. I mean...if you..if you want. I just thought we'd have more space and you know...I have all this money and I only want to spend it on you two." "I....I don't know what to say." "How about we take a virtual tour?" Louis smiles, clicking on the house, "This of course is the doorway and over to the right here is an open concept living room and kitchen, massive and so beautiful in real life you just have to see it-" "Hohhh..." Harry suddenly grimaces and places a hand to his bare belly, rubbing down the front as the other hand keeps him from falling backwards. "And this is the stove, I know you love cooking and-" "Hohhhh...ugh...." He grunts, face scrunching up tighter as his belly quivers and tightens up. Louis stops and turns toward him. His eyes widen at Harry's pain-filled face and he places a hand to his shoulder. "Harry? Babe?! What's going on?" "Hohwoooo...." Harry breathes, rubbing both hands to his sides, "Its my stomach...I've been getting terrible cramps all morning...bloody miserable." Louis' eyes widen impossibly larger. "What? Um......ok..." Louis places a hand on Harry's belly and gasps, "Your stomach is hard as a rock.." Harry lies his head back on the headboard and nods. "I know...it's killing me." "Harry...I think you're in labor." Louis beams and it's Harry's eyes turn to widen. "What?" "LOU!" Louis yells. Harry cringes and Louis grabs his hand. "I'm sorry love. I'll be right back." He rushes into the hallway and to the top of the stairs. "LOU! We need you up here!" Lou walks briskly to the stairs and smiles. "He loved the house, didn't he?" Louis shakes his head. "Lou...he's says his stomach's cramping." Lou's eyes widen and she walks up the stairs, pushing past Louis. "Harry darling?" Harry's face is already in another grimace as his hand rubs over his tummy. "Yeah?" "Louis says your tummy's been cramping.." Harry squeezes his eyes shut and grips his bed sheets. "Hold on..." "Ughhhhhhhh....ohhhhhhhhh...." He grits his teeth and tucks his head to his chest until the pain passes. Lou frowns and Louis bites his lip in absolutely agony watching Harry in so much pain. "Ok darling, the important thing is to relax, ok?" Lou hums in a gentle tone, rubbing Harry's shoulder once the pain recedes from his face. Harry sniffles and places both hands to the bottom of his belly and nods. "Ok. How long has your tummy been cramping?" "Since last night..but it wasn't bad until this morning. Think I slept through the easy part.." She frowns. "That's alright. It's worth it, I promise. May I feel your tummy?" He nods and she crawls over to him, pressing around on his belly. "Yeah...you're definitely firmed up. And you've dropped a lot." He nods. "I'm feeling a lot of pressure...down here..." He mumbles, rubbing his lower belly. She nods and hums, rubbing a hand over his belly. "Poor love. I know how uncomfortable you must be. It's looking like you're in labor, for sure. Now..last question-have you timed your contractions?" Harry bites his lip. "N-no..I just kept trying to sleep through them but I couldn't.." "That's alright, you need your rest. Are they somewhat close?" "Yeah they're definitely close. I'd say five or six minutes tops." Lou nods. "Okay perfect. Harry darling? I think we need to head to the hospital, ok? Don't worry, I promise everything will go off without a hitch and you'll be holding your little girl in your arms soon." She beams as he bites his lip. "Um....ok...yeah....yeah, I can...I can do that." "I know you can. Alright, I'm going to call your doctor and tell them to prepare a room. Louis, you get him ready and meet me downstairs, alright? It's BABY TIME!" She squeals, rubbing Harry's belly again. She heads off in the direction of her bedroom and Louis and Harry are left on their own. "Alright Hazza. This is it. You're about to be a dad." Harry smiles lightly and nods. "You probably don't feel much like talking, do you?" Harry shrugs. "Do you want to stay in your pajamas or do you want to change?" Harry shakes his head. "I really don't feel like changing.." "That's perfectly fine, love. Can you scoot to the end of the bed for me? I'll shove some shoes on your feet for you." Harry inhales deeply and nods, scooting down to the edge of the bed. Louis makes quick work of shoving shoes on Harry's feet but it proves to be not quick enough when he hears Harry grunt under his breath and furrow his brow. "Another?" He asks. "Mmmgh....mmmmmgh...." Harry presses his belly forward and placed a flat hand to his belly rubbing his side and front, "Mmmgh....mmmghmmm..." Louis bites his thumbnail in concern and shakily drops a hand to Harry's belly, rubbing down the front and into a circle. Harry's belly feels like stone beneath his hand and he's shocked at how different it feels now. He feels it soften slightly beneath his hand and Harry sighs. "You're doing great, H. Ready to go have a baby?" "Can you grab my beanie?" He mumbles, voice barely above a whisper. Louis smiles. "Of course." He hands Harry his blue beanie and helps him off the bed and down the stairs. He feels so sorry for the boy as he hears his shaky breaths. Lou meets them in the living room and smiles at the family as they watch Harry in concern. "Right. So. I need you all up and ready because we're headed to the hospital to meet Minnie today!" She squeals. The room erupts in happy cheers and smiles. "We get to meet our new sissy today!" Doris shouts. Lottie shakes her head and pats her shoulder. "No love. Not our SISTER. Our niece." She shoots Louis a look and a wink. Louis smiles at her and nods. "YAY! My knee!" "Your nei-you know what, never mind." Lottie laughs. "Hohhhh....." Harry breathes, face scrunching up and hand going back to his belly. Louis' eyes turn soft and he pulls Harry closer to him. Harry buries his head in Louis' neck, his body so close that Louis can feel his tummy quivering from the force of the contraction. The room goes silent and stares at Harry. "Right so Lottie? I need you to get Harry's bag. Fizzy? I need you to make sure all the little's get into their seats properly. Daisy? Phoebe? Make sure the doors are all locked. And Louis darling? Get Harry to the car and massage his belly, yeah?" Louis nods and unlatches from Harry, who hisses in pain. "Sorry love, need my hand?" Harry grabs onto his hand and presses the other to his belly, walking slowly behind him. They finally make it to the car and Louis carefully buckles Harry in with a beaming grin. Harry leans over, pressing his head into his hand. Louis smiles again and places a hand to Harry's belly and gives it a rub. "Hi My little Minnie love. I can't wait to meet you today. I know you're going to be so pretty, just like your daddy." Harry smiles lightly and Louis feels a soft kick down low in Harry's belly. "Wow. You've really dropped, haven't you love? We're headed to the hospital now so try to stay in until then, yeah? And don't hurt your daddy too much. He seems uncomfortable enough. He knows you're coming. Take it easy on him, yeah?" Louis leans down and kisses Harry's belly. "I love you." Harry whispers. "I love you so much, Harry." They lock eyes just before the car is bombarded with Tomlinson's. Daisy and Phoebe look at Harry and beam. "I can't WAIT to meet Minnie today." Daisy coo's. "Me neither!" Phoebe shouts. "Girls, maybe not so loud, yeah? Harry's in quite a bit of pain. I'm sure he'd appreciate some softer voices, yeah?" The girls nod and stare at Harry in adoration. Dan starts the car and it roars to life. "Everybody ready to meet our little princess?" The car erupts in cheers and he takes off toward the hospital. "Ugh....mmmgh...mmmmmgh..." Harry grunts quietly, catching the attention of Louis beside him. He moves his legs about uncomfortably and rubs his hand over his belly in wide circles, keeping his head on his fist and his eyes closed. "Hmmmgh....mmmmgh..." He grunts, pushing his hand beneath his shirt. Louis isn't entirely sure of how comfortable Harry is with being touched during his contractions so he keeps his hands to himself and quiet. Harry relaxes again and sniffles repetitively. It's mere minutes later when he tenses up again, pressing his fist to the window seal and curling over himself, hand rubbing from his side to his front and his face curled up. "Mmmmgh....mmmmghhh...mmmmgh....ugh..ughhh....mmmgh..." His moans stay quiet and Louis has a sneaking suspicion it's for their benefit and not for Harry's. "Hhohhhhhhh..." He breathes out, before slowing relaxing again. Louis watches as his stomach muscles relax beneath his top and chews on his bottom lip. "Ok love?" He whispers, so his family won't hear. It's unlikely they would anyway with all the excited chatter bouncing off the walls. Louis knows it's doing nothing to help with Harry's pain but the curly headed lad is far too nice to say anything. Louis' ready when Harry's next contraction rolls over his throbbing belly. The boy grips the seat beneath him and his face curls up before he presses his back to the seat and throws one arm over his face. "Mmmmgh.....mmmmgh...." He places one hand below his belly and rubs his thumb over the skin, "Ohhhh....ugh-ughhh-ughhhhhhh..." Louis takes the opportunity to place his hand over Harry's belly. He rubs his solid bump as it quivers and heaves and Harry grunts and breathes quietly under his breath. "Mmmmghhh...." Louis continues to rub until the muscles soften beneath his hand. He then presses his hand to Harry's shoulder and gives it a small massage. Harry smiles lightly between sniffles. The drive seems endless and Louis can tell Harry's getting more and more uncomfortable despite keeping his groans at a low volume. By the next contraction, Louis can tell Harry's getting to his breaking point. He sits up straight before pressing his face into his fist again and rubbing his hand over his side and to the front of his belly. "Mmmgh....mmmmmgh....hohhh...hohhh....mmmmgh..." He grunts. Daisy looks back at him and frowns. "Harry, are you ok?" "Daisy, be quiet." Louis commands. "Hoh...hoh...ughhh....mmmgh..." He moans. Louis is shocked when he feels the boy collide into his side and bury his head into his shoulder. Louis feels his short breaths and groans hitting his neck and frowns, placing the free hand that's not up in Harry's curls over his belly, rubbing in soft, gentle circles. "Ohhhhhhh..." "Lou?" Louis calls, continuing his rub. "Yes darling?" "Are we almost there?" "About.....twelve or so more minutes of traffic would let up. How's he doing back there?" "He's...um...he's hurting. He's getting really uncomfortable." "Ok. That's alright. We'll be there soon. His water hasn't broken, has it?" "I don't think so..he's not wet or anything." "Ok great. Hang in there, Harry!" Once the contraction ends, Harry stays locked to Louis' shoulder but the boy doesn't mind in the least. Lou pulls into the hospital parking deck just as Harry detaches from Louis and groans, placing both hands to the bottom of his belly and leaning over slightly. "Ohhhhhhhhwooo...." Louis frowns, rubbing his back and shushing him. "Mmmghhhhh.." "Strong one?" Louis whispers. Harry nods before gripping onto Louis' leg. "Ughhhhhhhh...." "We're here loves!" Lou calls. Everyone hops out of the car and Louis helps Harry out slowly. Harry walks behind the family and right next to Louis, hands plastered to the bottom of his belly and his head thrown back, attempting to take deep, calming breaths. "Hi. I'm Lou Teasdale. I called early, this is Harry Styles. He's thirty eight weeks pregnant and in labor." Lou explains to the nurse at the front desk. The nurse smiles warmly and nods. "Congratulations." Harry presses his hand to the desk and rubs the the other to his side. "Thank you." He grunts through gritted teeth. "Oh you poor love. Lets get you a wheelchair, yeah?" Another nurse soon brings Harry a wheelchair and he sits down graciously, closing his eyes and rubbing his sides. "Wooooooo...woooooo...wooo..." He breathes. "Alright you've got quite the family here." The nurse hums. "He does." Louis says proudly. "I love it. Is he ok with everyone heading back?" "Um..." Louis looks down to Harry for an answer. Harry scrunches his face as a new contraction washes over his belly. He does a very visible nod though and Lou smiles. "Yeah...just...not like..when you're checking me.." She smiles. "Of course. More of a private thing that. Come on back everyone, we've certainly got enough room." She exclaims and leads them back. She rolls Harry into the nice hospital room and walks back in front of him with a clipboard in hand. "Alright Harry, I know you're probably hurting quite a bit at the moment but if you could answer a few questions for me about your labor, I'll leave you alone." Harry exhales through his mouth and nods. "Alright. How long have you been having contractions?" "All night..." He stops and his brow furrows as he puffs out air, "They only started getting uncomfortable this morning..waking me up and that and-" He stops and grips the chair with a small grunt, "Only a bit ago they've gotten super painful..." She nods with a sympathetic frown. "I see that. Poor dear. Looks like you've got quite the support system though so that's great. Have you timed your contractions?" "They were about five minutes apart back at our house...maybe every four or so minutes now?" Louis says, taking over for his curly headed love. She nods and scribbles that down. "Perfect. Now, you'll need to get changed into this gown and I'll be back once you're dressed to hook you up to a few monitors and check your dilation and blood pressure and all that fun stuff." Harry nods. "Alright so, if you guys want to step out with me?" The nurse says and everyone nods. Louis begins walking out but hears Harry whimper. "Louis..." "You...you want me to stay? To um..un-undress you?" "Please....I can't do it on my own....this hurts so bad.." "Of course, Harry! I'll never leave you." Everyone else follows the nurse outside the door and Louis picks up the gown from the little tray beside Harry's bed. "This might be the most baggy thing you've ever worn, Styles." He turns around to see Harry bent over, gripping his knees with his head tucked to his chest. "Ughhhhhh......mmmmgh...mmmgh...." "Oh Hazza..." Louis coo's, ducking down and pawing at his belly. "Ohhhh..." He breathes, hissing and arching his back when the pain grows. It finally dies down and Louis helps him breath a few times before coaxing him out of his t-shirt. "Ready for your pants?" Harry nods softly and Louis slowly slips them off. He hands Harry his gown and helps the poor boy into it. Harry quickly sits back on the bed and presses his hands to his belly. "Ohhhhhhhhh....ohhhhhh...I want my mum..mmmghhh I really want my mum..." Harry whimpers. Louis bites his lip. He wants his mum too. And he's worried that getting Harry's mum here might be just as impossible as getting his own here. The nurse knocks and comes back in, hooking Harry up to various monitors, strapping them to his belly. The room fills with the thudding heartbeat of Harry's precious daughter and Louis smiles, rubbing Harry's side. "She's ready, yeah?" Louis hums. "She is..." The nurse presses around on Harry's belly making him wince, "Sorry darling. She seems to be in a great position. Harry nods before turning his head over and burying it into one arm as the other clamps to his belly. He brings his leg up closer to him in discomfort and scrunches. "Ughhhh....ughhhh...." He grunts, pushing his belly forward. "Ohh that's a big one.." The nurse mumbles, watching his contraction print-out. "Mmmmmmgh...hoh....mmmmmgh.." Harry turns back and takes a few deep breaths before sniffling. "Alright darling, I'm just going to check your dilation, ok?" Harry nods and puts his hand out for Louis to grab. Louis does, kissing it softly as the nurse bends down and pulls the sheet from Harry's bottom half. Harry's face scrunches and he peaks with one eye out at Louis. "Alright darling. You're at about a three and a half, which is great progress. "A 3 and a half?? But he's in so much pain!" Louis gasps. She nods. "Well yes. He's still very much in active labor. First births take time, I promise it will be worth it." She winks, "Ok. I'm going to let your family back in and I'll be back in an hour or so and I'll take this monitors off." Harry nods and lies his head back with a sigh. Louis' family walks back in and Louis backs up. "Lou, would you watch him for a bit? I um..I need to make a phone call." "Of course darling." Louis quietly slips Harry's phone from his pajama pants pocket and heads out the door. The phone rings one. Twice. And a third time. Louis is just about to hang up when the phone clicks. "Harry, oh thank goodness, I-" "This is Louis." "Louis? Louis who?" "I figured you'd want to know your son's in labor. And he's asking for you." Silence. "H-he..he is?" "He is. So you might want to head up. Or don't. I don't really care but he clearly does." "What hospital?" Louis tells her the location and he hears her rustling around. "And you might want to buy pink balloons.." He pauses, "Because it's a girl." He quickly ends the call and sighs, scrubbing his face. He tried his best to be cordial which is hard for him. Because he's sassy anyway. But also that woman hurt Harry. Her own son. And Louis loves Harry and that baby more than any two human beings on the planet. He pockets Harry's phone and rushes back in. "Ughhh...ughhh....ugh..." Harry grunts quietly again, wanting to hide his pain with everyone in the room. He's on his side now, gripping the hospital bed bar with his face scrunched and eyes tightly closed as he softly pushes his belly forwards and backwards. Lou is beside him, softly rubbing at his back. Louis quickly goes to her side and nudges her. She smiles softly and moves to the side so Louis can be behind Harry. He rubs Harry's back and side of his belly, humming softly in his ear until he feels the muscles relax. Harry keeps his eyes closed but huffs out miserably. "Harry? Is he ok?!" Louis panics, when the boy keeps his eyes firmly shut. Lou nods. "The nurse told him he should try and rest between pains." "Pains that come every four minutes?" Lou shrugs. "That's just what she told him." "I...um...I called his mum." Louis whispers. "You what?" Lou's face turns hard and Louis shakes his head. "I had to. He was asking for her...begging really. She called a few weeks back and he didn't answer. I don't know...I think she might be coming." Lou bites her lip. "Louis...that might not have been the best idea. He's in a lot of pain, you don't actually know if he wants her or not." Louis' eyes widen and his heart sinks. He never thought of that. He always just wants to give Harry exactly what he wants. He never even thought about the fact that Harry might not actually want his mum. And now she's on her way here. Shit. Harry whimpers and Louis asserts his attention back on him. He grips his hip and groans lightly. "Ughhhh....ughhhhhhhhhhh...." He groans, cupping the bottom of his belly and rubbing back and forth, "mmmmmmmgh..." "Shhh..it's alright, Harry. It's alright." "Hohhhh..." He breathes, spreading his hand across his belly and rubbing his palm to the skin. When the contraction recedes, Harry groans and pulls his arm up to his face. "Ugh..when can I take these straps off my stomach?" He mumbles. "Shouldn't be too much longer, love. Why?" "I don't feel good.." He mumbles, barely audible. Louis rubs his back. "You don't?" Harry closes his eyes and sighs. "I feel sick to my stomach..." Louis frowns. "Yeah? Lou? Is that normal?" She nods. "Unfortunately it is. Don't worry, it's just from the pains...it should pass. Want me to put a wet cloth on your forehead?" Harry nods slowly, taking in a slow breath through his nose and letting it out equally as slow. "Oh babe, feeling really nauseous?" Harry exhales again and nods. "It just really hurts..." "Here darling.." Lou coo's, placing the wash cloth on his forehead, "You should feel better in a bit." Harry gets a contraction just as the door swings open and his mother walks into the room. "Oh Harry..." She gasps, rushing over to him. Harry's eyes pop open only for a moment before they're closing again as he groans. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh..." "Breathe darling. Just breathe..." Harry's mum hums, rubbing his belly. Louis feels a surge of anger bubble in his chest but Lou holds onto his arm. "Just let her have a moment." Harry exhales but relaxes again, closing his eyes and continuing his deep breathing. "Why does he have a cloth on his forehead?" "He's feeling queasy." "Poor dear. How's he progressing?" Louis huffs in annoyance. "He's progressing FINE actually. He's four centimeters last they checked and they should be coming in soon to take the monitors off." She nods. "You must be Louis." "And you must be his MOTHER." Louis exaggerates the word mother, putting air quotes around her name with a roll of his eyes. "I know you must hate me." "I don't particularly like you." "Has he been um...living...um...living with-" "His ex?" Louis laughs bitterly, "No. He hasn't. He's been living with me. And he plans to continue to do so in our home that I've bought." Harry's mother looKs down with a soft nod. "Good...I'm...I'm glad he found a place to stay." "No thanks to you." "I really do care for him, I know you don't believe that but-" Louis scoffs and shakes his head. "Not as much as I do. No possible way. I'd do anything for him and that baby girl and you? You haven't and won't do a damn thing for either of them." She bites her lip. "I only called you because Harry said he wanted you. I don't think we have to speak otherwise." She nods. "I just-" "Ughhh please stop fighting..." Harry moans from his bedside. He slowly brings himself up from his lying down position and groans, rubbing both his hands to his sides. "Are you alright love?" Harry presses his hand to his thigh and scrunches his face. "Mmmmmmmmmgh...mmmmmgh...mmmgh..." He groans, gripping his thigh and pressing the other hand to his tummy. "I think I'm gonna throw up..." Harry mumbles miserably. Louis' eyes widen and he searches the room. He feels a container hit his hand and looks up to see Harry's mum with a sheepish smile. "Thanks." He mumbles before pushing beneath Harry's lips. Harry spits once...twice..and then a small amount of vomit leaves his lips. Louis frowns and rubs his back. As soon as the vomiting episode is over, a contraction grips his belly. He presses both hands to his thighs and groans as his belly contorts and tightens beneath his gown. "Ughhhhhhhhhh....ughhhhhhhhh...mmmmmghhh...." Louis rubs his belly in circles until the pain recedes. "Can I please get these offff? I need the loo.." Harry mumbles miserably. Louis pages the nurse who comes in quickly and smiles, taking the monitors off. She makes everyone step out as she checks him again for dilation. This time, Louis lets Harry's mum stay with him instead of him. He knows it's the right thing to do even though it feels pretty rotten. He hears the nurse say six centimeters through the door and sighs in relief at the closer number. He also hears Velcro ripping so he knows the straps are coming off and he smiles. The door opens and he nearly falls to the floor. The nurse smiles at him with a wink and he rushes back to Harry who seems even more miserable than before. "Louis..." He moans. "What love?" "I need to stand. Can you get behind me and rub my belly?" "Of course." Louis helps Harry up and over to the window seal. Harry places his hands down on the surface and bends over it a bit. Louis steps behind him and rubs gentle circles over his belly. "Mmmmmgh....mmmmmmmmmgh..." Harry moans, rotating his hips. "Shhh..." Louis hums. "Mmmmmmgh..." Harry moans, lying flush against him. "Louis....I need the loo...BAD." He whimpers. Louis nods and helps him into the bathroom and lowers him to the toilet. "Do you want me to leave or-" "NO. STAY." "Ok, I'm here. I'm here." Louis rubs Harry's curls softly. Harry grips onto the toilet immediately with his face contorted into pain. "Ughhh...ughhh.....mmmmmmgh..." Harry throws his head back and groans before feeling a pop between his legs and a gush of water. His eyes grow wide and he snaps his head back up. "Louis..." "Yeah love?" "My water broke." Louis' eyes widen and he nods. "Ok....ok, that's good love. That's good news." "Ughhhhh..." Harry grunts, face scrunching up again and hands going to the bottom of his belly, rubbing it up down, "Ohhhhh g-mmmmmgh...." He places both hands to his upper thigh and leans over. "Mmmmgh...hoh...hohwoo...mmmmgh....." Louis frowns and rushes up beside the miserable boy and rubs his back tenderly. "Ughhhhhh..." He grunts, lifting his head and tossing it back, gritting his teeth. Louis makes sure the contraction is done before he pulls Harry's face toward him. "Ready to get off the toilet, love? Or does it feel better right there?" Harry whimpers. "Nothing really feels good.." Louis frowns. "But I guess getting up would be nice..t's a bit cold." Louis smiles this time and nods. "Ok. Give me your hand." Harry reaches out to him and Louis helps him up slowly. He immediately grips onto the sink and presses a hand to the side of his belly as it heaves forward. "Mmmmmmgh.....mmmghhhh-ohhhh....ughhhh..." Louis rushes behind him and places a hand to his rock hard belly, rubbing in gentle circles against the skin. Harry stays locked in place until Louis feels the muscles unclench. "Louis? Everything alright in there?" Lou asks, knocking on the door. "Yes! We're fine. Harry's water broke though and he's just having a bit of trouble working through these contractions.." He hears Lou tell the rest of the family what's going on. Harry stands back, but keeps both hands locked to his belly. "Ready to go back?" Harry scrunches his nose. "M'still leaking...like...a lot." "That's ok, love. Don't worry about it." Louis reassures him and links their arms, heading back into the room. Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. His mum walks up to him and rubs his arm. "Doing ok, darling?" Harry's brow furrows and he sharply exhales, leaning his head down on his shoulder. "Mmmgh....mmmgh....." He presses his belly forward and rubs his sides with a deep exhale. "Ughhh...." He pushes it out further and his face scrunches tighter as the pain grows stronger, "Ughhhhhhhhhhhh...." His mum rubs a hand over his belly and he seems to tense up further at her touch. Louis rubs his arm in reassurance and kisses it lightly as the boy grunts and groans through the intense pain. It finally ends and he huffs, waddling back to the bed and lying down on his side. Louis comes behind him and rubs his back, whispering sweet nothings in his ear that have him smiling softly. And oh how Louis loves that smile. Harry soon grows uncomfortable again though and sits up, lying his head back on his pillow and placing one hand above and below his belly with a discomforted face. Louis watches as his belly pushes forward and Harry's face scrunches tighter. He presses his head harshly to the bed, kneading the heel of his palm into his aching belly as it clenches up. "Ughhhhhhhh....ughhhhhh...mmmmmm...mmmmmmghhhh....." Louis massages his shoulder and hums lightly as the boy groans. He can tell he's still holding back with the amount of people in the room. Louis' pretty sure he's just as ready for it to just be he and Harry. "Woooo....woooo...wooo..." He breathes, eyes darting toward his mum, "She's kicking now, mum. If you want to feel her.." He mumbles, closing his eyes. She smiles timidly and walks up to the bed, placing her hand carefully to it. She smiles when she feels the jolt low in Harry's belly. "Her name's Minnie." He says, barely above a whisper. "Minnie. I like that." Harry winces and grips on to the hospital bed bars as a contraction seizes up his belly. "Mmmmmgh.....ughhhhhhhhhhh...hmm...ohhhhhhhhghhhhh......" He groans, tucking his chin to his chest as his legs shake from the pain. "Ughhhhhhh..." Louis feels his own hands shake as he desperately wants to go help him. The nurse walks in and smiles, directing everyone except Louis and Harry out. "Those contractions are really starting to pick up, huh?" She says sympathetically. Harry nods, lying his head back on the bed. "You know what to do." She hums. He lifts his legs and nods. "Okay great! We're at seven centimeters." "And his water broke." She nods. "I see that, that's GREAT. And baby girl still seems to be in position." Harry smiles softly before closing his eyes back and furrowing his brow. He grips onto the bars again and huffs. "Ughhhhh...mmmmmmghhhh...mmmgh..." She frowns and walks behind him, pressing her thumbs into his back with a massage. Harry groans until the pain passes and smiles lightly at her. "Thanks." "No problem. Any more questions before I go?" "Is it...I mean...is it alright if everyone waits in the waiting room besides me and Louis? I just...I can barely speak through these contractions and all the noise is really starting to get to me." She smiles. "Of course. I'll let them all back in for hugs and kisses and let them know." He nods. "Thank you." Everyone is let back in and the nurse smiles at them. "Alright everybody. Harry is seven centimeters. Things are about to really, really pick up and I think it's best if the people in the room are minimized down to one, is that alright?" Everyone nods. Daisy and Phoebe rush to Harry and give him a kiss, also kissing his belly. He smiles and rubs their heads. Ernest and Doris are hoisted up by Lottie and Fizzy and they love on Harry's belly once more before exiting. Fizzy and Lottie place two loving kisses to his bump and say their goodbyes. Dan gives Harry a hug and a good luck. Lou is the last of the family to leave and she gives Harry a big kiss on the cheek and a pat on the belly. "You can do this. I know you can. I love you so much darling." "I love you too, Lou." Harry's mum sticks around a bit longer. Louis swears he sees Harry dart his eyes toward him and his mum nods. "Alright. You can stay." Louis smiles and gives him a hug. "Thank you." She whispers and Louis smiles his first genuine smile at her. She hugs onto Harry a bit longer but soon leaves behind Louis' family. Harry places his arms over his eyes and moans. Louis frowns and rubs a hand across his belly. "Did you call my mum?" Louis freezes. "Um...y-yeah. H, I'm really sorry, I know I had no place to do it but you were asking for her and I-" "Thank you." "What?" "Thank you." Louis smiles. "I'd do anything for you, H." Louis bites his lip and begins to twitch. He's really got to wee but the thought of leaving Harry makes him want to cry. Harry turns on his side and huffs, rubbing his belly. "Mmmmmgh....mmmmmmmgh..." "Shhhh..." Louis coo's, rubbing his side. "Ohhhhhhhhhh...." Harry moans, throwing his head back. The pain ends quickly and Harry looks back at Louis whom has begun to pace with how bad he has to wee. "Lou.." "Yeah love?" "Go to the bathroom." "No...I...I don't need to, I'm fine." Harry shakes his head. "I'm fine, Louis. GO." Louis bites his lip but nods and rushes for the loo. He uses it as quickly as humanly possibly and washes his hands before rushing back into the room. Harry is turned on his side but his groans are much louder than before. "Mmmmmmgh....ohhhhhhhhhhh..." Harry turns on his back and presses his hand to his belly, head squished into his pillow. "Ughhhhh...ughhhhhhhhhhh-hoohhhhhhh...." He moans. Louis frowns and rushes over to him, rubbing his belly in large wide circles. The pain finally ends and he takes a few deep breaths. "Distract me." "How?" "Show me...pictures of the new house." Harry pants. Louis smiles. "Is that your way of telling me you'll move in?" Harry lies his head back and puts both hands to his belly with a grimace as another contraction clenches up his belly. "Ughh....mmmmmmghhh..." Still, through his grunts he nods and Louis can't help but smile. "Mmmmmghhhhh...ughhhhhhhhh..." Harry moves his hips in discomfort and pushes his gown up to reveal his belly, pressing his hands to the skin. Louis frowns and rubs a flat hand to his skin in large circles until Harry relaxes again. "Ready?" Harry nods. "Here is the living room." Harry looks before grimacing and pressing his head into the bed and pressing a hand to his belly. "Ughhhhh...ughhhhhhhh...." He leans his head further back and presses his belly forward, rubbing the heel of his palm to it. "Mmmmmmmmghhhh..." Louis frowns and rubs his thigh. Harry shakes his head. "Keep talking." "This is the kitchen.." "Mmmmmmmghhh...." Louis gets all the way to the upstairs part of the house slide show before Harry pushes away his phone. He presses his face into the bed and scrunches his face tightly, hands gripped to his belly. "I'm sorry...I can't...mmmmmmmmmmmghhhh....ughhhhhhhh..." Louis places his phone on the table and nods, rubbing his palm into Harry's belly. "Ughhhhh I have to lay down..." He grunts and slides down the bed. Harry slides down the bed and presses his face into his pillow, arching his back. Louis phone dings with a text from Louis and he massages Harry's back. "Lou's asking how you are.." He hums. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Harry moans, pushing his belly forward. "He's hurting." Louis texts back. Louis' heart drops when he feels the bed shaking. He turns to look at Harry's face and notices the boy is shaking with sobs. "Oh love..." Harry sobs and groans, rubbing his belly in large, ceaseless circles. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh....ohhhhhghhh...mmmmmmmmgh....ughhhhhh...." He presses his face harder into the pillow and sobs. Louis massages his back but it doesn't help much as Harry continues sobbing. The nurse comes in moments later and frowns sympathetically at the two teens. "He's really hurting." Louis croaks, on the verge of tears himself as Harry groans, gripping onto the hospital bed bar. "Lets have a check, yeah?" "Eight and a half centimeters. Nearly there. I bet if you took a bit of a walk, it could ease you right into pushing, hm? Just around the room?" Louis nods and Harry sniffles, wiping his eyes and rubbing his belly. The nurse leaves and Louis helps Harry stand. He walks a few steps before his face crumbles and he grips his thigh, bending over. "Ughhhhh...ughhhhhhhhh...ohhhhhhhh..." "Shhhhh..." Louis coo's, rubbing his belly. "Ughhhhhhhhhhhh..." The pain ends and he grabs Louis' hand again, pacing slowly. "We're meeting her so soon." Louis hums. Harry closes his eyes, officially in no mood to speak anymore and presses both hands below his belly. "Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh....mmmmmmmmmmmgh..." He throws his head back and shifts his weight between his feet. "Ughhhhhhhhhh..." Louis gives up walking and just allows Harry to use his shoulder to lean on through the contractions. As he moans, Louis rubs his belly in wide circles and coo's in his ear through the pain. Soon Harry squats down deep. "Louis, I...mmmmgh...I'm feeling loads of pressure and a really big urge to push..." Harry deadpans, gripping onto the end of the hospital bed. Louis' eyes widen. "Yeah? I'll get the doctor." Louis punches the nurse button until their sweet nurse arrives. She takes one look at Harry and nods, rushing to get his doctor. The doctor comes in and smiles sweetly at Harry. "Ok darling. You look ready to go. Would you like to lie down or stand or maybe try the shower?" Louis nods. "You did say the shower helped your back when your belly started to grow. I know this isn't the same but-" "Ughhhhhhhh..." Harry moans but nods. "Ok. We'll sort of stand back in the bathroom and direct you and your partner here, ok?" The doctor hums. Harry takes a deep breath and nods before leaning over with another pain. Louis helps him stand back up straight and waddle to the shower. "Mmmmgh hurry Lou! She feels really low." Louis' eyes widen again and he nods, quickening their pace. He quickly unties Harry's gown and helps him into the shower. Harry grips onto Louis' shoulder blades and lies his head in his neck, rocking side to side. "Mmmmmmmm......mmmmmmgh..." "Harry, just push when you feel ready, darling. I'll count down from ten as you are and then I want you to take a breath, ok?" Harry doesn't give her any reaction at all, only continues rocking. "Uughhhhhhhhhh...." Louis feels Harry pull down on him as he squats down. The doctor begins counting as Harry's face turns red from the force of his push. "Nnnnnnnnnnnghhhh...." Once the counting stops, Harry stands back up and lies his head in Louis' neck. "Hhohhhhhhhh....hhohhhhhh....mmmmmm....mmmmmmgh..." "Feel her moving down?" Louis coo's. Harry nods and grunts in pain. He squats down again and the doctor begins counting. Louis holds Harry up and watches with a smile as the boy pushes Minnie toward earth. "Mmmmmmmmmghhhhhhhh..." He pushes hard again for ten more seconds and stands back up. "Ughhhhhhh..." Harry throws his head back this time and lets go of one of Louis' shoulder, placing it to his belly as it throbs, "Mmmmmmgh..." Soon, he's squatting again with another push. Louis watches this time as the baby's head slowly becomes visible. "Ughhhh..." Harry moans, standing up and pressing a hand beneath him, feeling the baby's head. "Feel her love?" Louis beams. Harry nods and presses down on his thighs with a low grunt. "Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." His face turns red from force and Louis sees the baby's head becoming more visible. Harry stands back up and rubs his belly in large, ceaseless circles. "Mmmgh...mmmgh....mmmmmmmmmgh..." He squats down again with a big push and the baby's head comes fully out of him. Louis beams and squats down, holding the head steady. "Ughhhhh..." Harry groans, pressing down on his belly and tucking his chin to his chest, grunting with a push. "Mmmmmmmmmmghhh..." Louis soon feels a warm weight on his hand and quickly places both hands beneath Harry to catch sweet, curly heady Minnie Styles. Once Minnie and Harry are cleaned up, the entire family comes in to view her. Harry smiles widely but can't keep his eyes off Louis. "What's her middle name?" Lottie shouts. Harry beams. "Lou." Both Louis and Lou beam. "Why are you smiling? MY name is Lou." Lou sasses with a smile. "LOU is MY nickname." "Oh whatever. It's for both of us." Lou says, with a watery smile, hugging Louis. Harry's mum holds Minnie and tears flow down her face. "Thank you, Louis. And Harry love, I know nothing will forgive what I've done but I'm so sorry." Harry shrugs tiredly. "You don't deserve to be here..." He yawns, "But I'm glad you are." The family soon allows Louis and Harry some alone time with Minnie. The nurses bring in Minnie's birth certificate and Louis smiles, watching Harry write. "Minnie Lou Styles, your first official document." "What about...Minnie Lou...Tomlinson?" Louis' eyes widen. "You mean....you want me to be her legal father?" "Yeah...I mean..if..if that's what you want." "It would...it would be an honor." Louis feels his eyes fill up with tears and he kisses Harry. "You saved me, Louis." "No Harry, you saved me." - "Ok keep the blindfold on, Styles! I don't want to see your pretty greens again until we're inside!" "Louis, this is SILLY. I've seen the house before...I saw pictures." "There's something you haven't seen." Louis hums, putting Minnie's car seat down on the floor and grabbing the small box off the table. He gets down on one knee and smiles up at Harry. "Ok take your blindfold off.." Harry takes it off and looks down at Louis in utter shock. "Harry Styles, will you marry me?" Harry's eyes soon fill with tears and he nods excitedly. "Yes YES OF COURSE!"

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myauralove-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Me.

1. Name 1 thing you miss about being a kid- No money, no responsibilities, not having a heart lol 2. What was your favorite musical group when you were a kid? Spice Gallsss 3. When was the first time that you had alcohol? year 10, 15 years old 4. What is your worst dating experience? hahahah year 8, RB. or JW 5. What is the craziest thing you have ever done? punched a police officer in front of 200 people and got held in a cell for 6 hours.. 6. Name one thing that not many people know about you. I’m actually very clever literacy wise. I love to read! I would love to be a writer/editor/journo 7. What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? Kindness. That I changed someones life for the better. 8. Do you have any phobias? Spiders >:( 9. Name three countries you would like to visit. Italy, UK, Asia 10. If your house was on fire and you could grab only 3 things before leaving, what would they be? My dog! Photos, Phone 11. Do you believe in extraterrestrials or life on other planets? yesyesyesyes 12. Do you believe in the paranormal? yes shut up now im scared 13. What would be your dream job? Getting paid to travel/vlog, writer, english teacher

14. If you could have 3 wishes granted, what would they be? lifetime supply of money, to have children, to have my family safe and happy forever

15. If you HAD to change your name, what would you change it to? hahaha umm? Zoe? Love that name

16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? Hawaii 17. If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left. Spend time with each of the people I love most, laugh alot and take loads of pictures 18. What crazy activities do you dream of trying someday? none :/ Is travelling classified as crazy activities?

19. If you could go on a road trip with any person (dead or alive), who would you choose and where would you go? My mum/sister

20. Any tattoos or pierced body parts? 2, 5 21. What’s your favorite color? Green 22. What is your favorite flower? Sunflower 23. What is on your bedside table? dont have one 24. What was your best Halloween costume for Halloween? cat lol 25. If you could be any cartoon character, who would you be? none? 26. Are you a morning or night person? both 27. Name a singer whose voice you can’t stand. Mariah Carey 28. If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do? I wouldnt 29. What do you remember about your high school formal? bad bad memories. ditching all of my mates at the after party to chase a boy to his ex’s house and then walking home alone with a bottle of vodka, getting allllll the way home and smashing the bottle....... 30. What’s your favorite holiday? Christmas! 31. Have you ever been mentioned in a newspaper? Yes 32. Have you ever gone skinny dipping or streaking? no 33. What body part do you get caught staring at? face, bum lol 34. Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? both 35. What is your most treasured possession? photos, jewellery 36. Adult Beverage of choice? cocktails! 37. What is your favorite food? Pasta 38. Can you fake any accents? indian, british, new Zealander 39. What’s the first thing you notice about the opposite sex? eyes, smile 40. Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? anal hahhahahhahhahah 41. If you had to live under the sea what kind of an animal would you be? seal 42. Most hated chore on the household chore list? dishes 43. In life who has had the most influence on you? mum, dad, sister 44. What do you like best about yourself? eye colours, wrists hahahha, personality 45. If you could be one kind of beer which one would you be and why? yuck none 46. What extremely difficult life situation have you overcome and how did you do it? heartache, being ripped off 10k, being bullied by friends, anxiety, moving to alice springs, being undermined at work, living with a bipolar person and being away from my family. lol i didnt overcome it 47. What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? omg getting my period during sex with my crush hahahhaha he was disgusted 48. If you could choose, how would you want to die? old age in my sleep please 49. If you could change the world what would you do? create awareness for womans rights, stop child abuse, stop violence against men and women, get rid of guns, world peace! 50. Name 1 thing you love about being an adult - noone having control of my money but its also very very bad 51. Which would you rather have, $50,000 or true love? the money for sure aahahha 52. Do you believe everything happens for a reason? yess 53. What song always makes you happy when you hear it? ilysb lany, anything by blackbear 54. Who’s the funniest person you know? mum/sister 55. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? mum 56. How big is your bed? queen 57. What is the wallpaper on your cellphone? sunset 58. What’s the first thing you thought about this morning? work ugh 59. Are you afraid of the dark? kinda 60. 3 things you cannot live without? social media, money and family 61. Favorite song? ilysb lany, flex your way out, anything by ruth b, 62. Are you a giver or a taker? both 63. Virgin or not? nah 64. Are you very sarcastic? super 65. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? no lol what a rebel 66. Which you favorite icecream flavor? choc mint or rum raisen 67. What was the last drink you drank? orange cordial 68. Do you prefer hugs or kisses? both are nice 69. Have you ever gone cow-tipping? what 70. Do you like to sing in the shower? somedays 71. What’s your favorite midnight snack? anything food is my life lol 72. Whats your favorite movie? life as a house, the choice, the best of me 73. Have you ever gambled at a casino? badly but yes 74. Have you thrown up in a car? hahahah yuh 75. Do you scream on roller coasters? very loudly 76. When did you go to your first funeral? 2010 77. Where did you go on your first airplane ride? cairns, 2 yrs old 78. Whats your favorite season? winter 79. Who was your imaginary friend? fairies named magenta, indigo and sapphire 80. Date someone older or younger? either but only 3 years max 81. If you don’t know the words to a song do you improvise? hahaha yep 82. What turns you on about the opposite sex? half smiles, confidence but not too cocky, good kisser, smells good, neck kisses, when they tuck your hair behind you ear, when they are a combo of sexy and cute, sense of humour!!!!! rough but in a way where they know what they’re going with the flow not where they’re straight out shoving their dick in your throat.. 83. What turns you off about the opposite sex? bad smell, hair pulling, vile dirty talk, overly cocky, treats you like meat, forces it, no intimacy, no foreplay 84. What scares you the most and why? not being able to have kids, losing family, having nothing to show for my hard work, never succeeding in my dreams 85. What do you do in your free time? read, watch tv or youtube, listen to music, social media, babysit, spend time with friends or dad, drink 86. Name 8 things in life you find most beautiful? nature, genuine kind beautiful people, genuine happy souls, love, art (music, paintings, movies, books), being gifted with family, animals, big 100% real, cheesy smiles, 87. Tell me about something you really regret? 10k to my ex. moving back to alice 88. Tell me about your favorite book, magazine or comic? you by caroline kepnes. go read it 89. Something or someone you miss the most from childhood? having brothers who were just children not adults, being free, making memories with my sister everyday 90. Your best friend dies, what would you do? considering thats my sister id die 91. What is your zodiac sign? aries 92. Name a couple of T.V. shows you watch a lot? friends, neighbours, ex on the beach, the middle, modern fam WAITING FOR RIVERDALE TO COME BACK SO I WATCH EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING ATM 93. Name a movie or movies you can watch over and over? best of me, rom coms. sad movies, anything adam sandler, old classic 90′s disneys movies, christmas holiday movies 94. Would you ever go skinny dipping? yes 95. Have you been told you can sing well more than once? like never 96. What is the strangest dream you’ve ever had? so so so many 97. What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh? at work with the kids, today with dad at the star track angry small man 98. What is your happiest childhood memory? alligator in our backyard (imaginary) at dixon road with Eb. Think i was 4 or so? Playing pirate boats with blake and zane at mimosa, I was 7 or so, dads old house and all the cool computer games we used to have 99. If you could take a one month trip anywhere and money was not a consideration, where would you go? Europe!!!! 100. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? no swearing, no moving towns

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creative-salem · 8 years ago

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Salem Horror Fest launches in fall 2017 #knowfear

#KnowFear

To overcome fear, we must first understand it. Salem Horror Fest * Sept 21 – Oct 15

Salem Horror Fest examines American fear with a month-long celebration of terror and social justice partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum

SALEM, Ma. – Salem Horror Fest, in partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum and CinemaSalem, today announced four weeks of screenings, parties, concerts, panels and exhibits that explore societal themes of fear and anxiety in horror at the Halloween capital of the world; Salem, MassachusettsAmidst the notorious backdrop of the 1692 Witch Trials, the festival will feature a city-wide program set to kick off at the Peabody Essex Museum on Thursday, September 21 as part of the PEM/PM evening party series in conjunction with their upcoming exhibit “It’s Alive” Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection.

“We live in fear. Fear of failure, commitment, each other and beyond. It’s one of the few things that unites us all. Salem knows this more than most,” said festival director Kevin Lynch. “The cinema is a graveyard of cultural reflections trapped in time like a celluloid ouija board. If we are to overcome fear, we must first understand it.”

Following the Opening Night Party on Thursday, September 21, Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) will accept the first-ever Salem Horror Award on behalf of Duane Jones for his cultural contribution to the genre as one of the first positive representations of a person of color on the big screen in George A. Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead.

A concert performance by queer, negro-gothic soprano M Lamar will be held at Ames Hall on Friday, September 22 featuring a program The New York Times called an “otherworldly, goth-tinged projection into the distant future of our violent, racially and sexually charged present offering a space of melancholic, alluring, ultimately stirring reflection.”

Four films will be screened in the PEM’s Morse Auditorium with panel discussions exploring subtextual themes of cultural fear found in Night of the Living Dead, Matinee, Gods & Monsters, and The Haunting.

We live in fear. Fear of failure, commitment, each other and beyond. It’s one of the few things that unites us all. Salem knows this more than mostKevin Lynch

Following the Haunted Happenings Parade on Thursday, October 5, CinemaSalem will host Wicked Shorts, a free evening of short films in consideration for the first annual Orlok Award, named in honor of Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery’s 10th anniversary.

The second half of the festival will screen seven double features at CinemaSalem that feature social themes such as racism, misogyny, gay panic, media manipulation, and xenophobia in films like Get Out, People Under the Stairs, Tragedy Girls, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, American Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Mist, They Live, Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Cruising, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Videodrome, Let the Right One In, and Fright Night.

All these events can be found on Eventbrite and Facebook. (Creative Salem members receive $50 off a VIP all inclusive pass! Please look for an email with your special code!)

The October 7th screening of Tyler MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls will be the New England premiere at Women With Guts, a celebration in partnership with Rue Morgue Magazine. The event will also screen Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood followed by a Q&A session with its stars Lar Park Lincoln and Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees) moderated by The Faculty of Horror podcast.

For more information, visit salemhorror.com.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening Night PartySalem Horror Fest partners with the Peabody Essex Museum to bring you the ultimate kickoff to the Halloween season! Featuring PEM special exhibition It’s Alive!: Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection, come haunt our inaugural Horror Fest with this night of live music, and interactive programming as part of the PEM/PM evening party series.

Thursday, September 21, 6pPeabody Essex MuseumM Lamar This “otherworldly, goth-tinged projection into the distant future of our violent, racially and sexually charged present offers a space of melancholic, alluring, ultimately stirring reflection.” – New York Times

Join us for this very special performance, featuring Queer Soprano M Lamar, who will perform an assemblage of old spirituals, in the “gothic-devil-worshipping-free-black-man-blues-tradition” in recognition of the 156th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Friday, September 22, 8pAmes Hall at the Salem YMCA

Wicked Shorts Wicked Shorts celebrates independent filmmakers with a timely showcase of terrifying horror shorts. Submitted films will be curated and considered for the first annual Orlok Award, named in honor of Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery’s 10th anniversary.

Thursday, October 5, 8pCinemaSalem

Women With GutsSalem Horror Fest partners with Rue Morgue Magazine to celebrate women in horror for the New England premiere of SXSW hit Tragedy Girls! The screening will be paired with Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood followed by a post-credit Q&A with the film’s stars Lar Park Lincoln and man behind the mask, Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees) moderated by The Faculty of Horror.

Saturday, October 7, 6pCinemaSalemSCREENINGS

Night of the Living Dead Director: George A. Romero

America: The year is 1968. The Cold War is approaching détente, the Civil Rights Movement is winding down, Vietnam continues to escalate… And then come the zombies, creeping in through the cracks in American life. Taking shelter in an abandoned farm house, seven strangers must navigate their differences before the walls give way to a ravenous zombie horde.

Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) will accept the first-ever Salem Horror Award on behalf of Duane Jones for his cultural contribution to the cinema as one of the first positive representations of a person of color on the big screen.

Thursday, September 21, 9pMorse Auditorium at the Peabody Essex Museum

MatineeDirector: Joe Dante

The escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis collides with the premiere of a new atomic-age monster picture, MANT. This comedic homage to legendary producer William Castle celebrates the joy of horror cinema and theatrical gimmicks in one of Joe Dante’s (Gremlins, The Burbs) most underrated films. Panel discussion to follow.

Sunday, September 24, 2pMorse Auditorium at the Peabody Essex Museum

Gods & Monsters

Director: Bill Condon

The last days and career of renown gay horror director James Whale (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) are explored in this biographical drama set in the time following the Korean War. Panel discussion to follow.

Saturday, September 30, 2pMorse Auditorium at the Peabody Essex Museum

The HauntingDirector: Robert WiseA scientist, skeptic, psychic and lesbian question reality as they explore a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of death and insanity in this 1963 horror classic. Panel discussion to follow.

Sunday, October 1, 2p

Morse Auditorium at the Peabody Essex Museum

Get OutDirector: Jordan Peele

Slavery is a zombie in Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out, which falls somewhere between Alfred Hitchcock and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Chris is preparing to meet his girlfriend Rose’s Caucasian family for the first time. What could go wrong?

Friday, October 6, 7pCinemaSalem

People Under the StairsDirector: Wes CravenUS, 1991Gentrification and racism are among the topics of socioeconomics tackled by this 1991 Wes Craven offering. On his 13th birthday, young Fool attempts to burglarize the house of his family’s evil landlords, before making a horrifying discovery in a tongue-in-cheek tale set in a post-Reaganomic, urban apocalypse.

Friday, October 6, 9pCinemaSalem

Tragedy GirlsDirector: Tyler MacIntyre

Salem Horror Fest presents the New England premiere of Tyler MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls, following the unanimously positive response at the 2017 SXSW Festival!

Named “one of the freshest, funniest horror-comedies to emerge in ‘Scream’s’ long wake,” by Variety, the film stars Alexandra Shipp (X-Men Apocalypse) and Brianna Hildebrand (Deadpool) as two social media-obsessed high school serial killers who use their online show to turn their small town into a frenzy.

Saturday, October 7, 7pCinemaSalem

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New BloodDirector: John Carl BuechlerJason Voorhees has been imprisoned at the bottom of Crystal Lake for years, until a troubled, and telekinetic teenager unwittingly sets him loose upon the camp, once more. This installment of the franchise steps away from the classic elements of gore, and takes a more supernatural turn.

Saturday, October 7, 9pCinemaSalem

American PsychoDirector: Mary HarronDo you like Huey Lewis and the News? You never know if it’ll be the last thing you hear. Grab your Walkman and unsettle yourself for this cult-classic interpretation of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is an Alpha Male, CEO/psycho, whose murderous, misogynistic fantasies begin bleeding into his reality, in this dark-comedy directed by Mary Harron.

Sunday, October 8, 7p

CinemaSalemTexas Chainsaw Massacre

Director: Tobe HooperWhat you are about to see is true. Who’s to say, really? First released while America was struggling with the realities of an oil embargo, the impeachment of a president, and what seemed like endless war, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a direct response to the horrors of its time.

Sunday, October 8, 9pCinemaSalem

The Mist

Director: Frank DarabontA supermarket becomes a petri dish in this film inspired by the Stephen King novella of the same name. A group of strangers are forced to confront the unknown as a unit, as a mysterious mist rolls in around them. Are they human enough to survive? Or are they too human for their own good?

Monday, October 9, 7pCinemaSalem

They Live

Director: John Carpenter

In a world where the media is flooded with subliminal messages constantly making demands of humanity to conform, obey, consume, and reproduce, it would seem the only thing left to do is throw on some shades, and see the true horror that is our ruling class. John Carpenter’s 1988 commentary on the state of American democracy, society, and consumerism.

Monday, October 9, 9pCinemaSalem

Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

Director: Jack SholderThis 1985 camp classic explores the homoerotic horrors of high school when the man of Jesse’s dreams, Freddy Krueger, claims his body as a portal into the world of flesh.

Friday, October 13, 7pCinemaSalem

CruisingDirector: William Friedkin

Al Pacino stars in this controversial crime thriller from 1980. When human remains begin washing up in the Hudson River, the NYPD sends an undercover officer to investigate a string of murders in the Meatpacking District, in which gay men are targeted specifically.

Friday, October 13, 9pCinemaSalem

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Somewhat of a departure from the slasher genre and Halloween franchise canon, though nonetheless produced by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Season of the Witch delves into the supernatural as terror takes root in the themes of commercialism, media manipulation, and the superstitions and traditions of All Hallows Eve.

Friday, October 14, 7pCinemaSalem

VideodromeDirector: David Cronenberg Director David Cronenberg serves up this chilling and surreal gauge at media consumption. James Woods stars as Max Renn, President of a Canadian UHF television station known for its outrageous programming. After coming across a disturbing broadcast from far away, Renn is inspired to deliver high levels of violence to his viewers in ways previously unimagined.

Saturday, October 14, 9p

CinemaSalem

Let the Right One InDirector: Tomas AlfredsonPart vampire movie, part coming-of-age film, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In is a refreshing visit to an otherwise well-trod genre. A young teen, frequently the target of schoolyard bullies, makes a new friend in a mysterious neighbor who has just moved in next door, in what Roger Ebert called “the best modern vampire movie.”

Sunday, October 15, 7pCinemaSalem

Fright Night

Director: Tom HollandCharley Brewster enjoys the rather simple life of a 17-year-old horror fan. He watches the movies, and really digs the late-nite horror show, “Fright Night.” But things start to get a little strange when two guys move in next door. They spend a lot of time alone together, and seem to be quite… close with each other.

Sunday, October 15, 9p

CinemaSalem

EXHIBITIONS“It’s Alive” Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art From the Kirk Hammett CollectionKirk Hammett, best known as the guitarist of the rock band Metallica, is also an avid collector of classic horror and sci-fi movie posters. This exhibition features 90 works that provide insight into the evolution of horror and sci-fi films and how they have played upon contemporary societal fears. Hammett acknowledges his poster collection as a source of inspiration for his own musical creativity. The exhibition features film posters as well as collectible electric guitars, monster masks and sculptures.

Saturday, August 12 – November 26, 2017Peabody Essex Museum

Count Orlok’s Nightmare GalleryPrepare for a delightfully creepy journey down the eerie exhibit halls as you discover characters from the darker side of cinema. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, madmen (and women), and all things that go bump in the night are all represented here by life-sized reproductions made by Hollywood Special Effects Artists.

Hours: 10AM – 6PM (More hours added as the season approaches!) More details here.

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Salem Horror Fest launches in fall 2017 #knowfear

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