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katsu28 · 1 month ago

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summer's golden haze - chapter three

pairing: lando norris x reader

summary: bar hopping, damsels in drunken distress, and a late night heart to heart. (5.1k)

warnings: swearing, alcohol, lando talks about the hungarian gp shitshow

a/n: yes this is me maybe slightly projecting my feelings about hungary onto my characters okay! they're my barbie dolls to play with i can do whatever i want 😌↕️ anyways hope u enjoy <3

previous chapter | masterlist

“Hello? Are you even listening?”

You blink, bringing yourself back to reality and back to the current conversation. Your friends are looking back at you with matching concerned, albeit a little annoyed expressions. “What? Sorry, I was—I’m here, sorry. What’s going on?”

Samira tuts, but not unkindly. They all know you’ve got a million things running in your mind at the moment. “I was saying our dinner reservations got canceled. Something about the kitchen having to close down for maintenance, I dunno. Anyways, it frees us up tonight and we’re trying to figure out what to do instead.”

“Oh. We could stay in? Order some food, watch a movie?”

“I know what we need,” Camille gasps suddenly, eyes lighting up like she’s just had a brilliant idea. “We’re going bar hopping tonight.”

“Bar hopping? We haven’t done that since—” You pause, taking a moment to think. You haven’t been bar hopping since Samira got dumped by her girlfriend a few months back, the time before that when Maren finally cut ties with her situationship last year. The only time you all go bar hopping is after a breakup. They think what happened with Lando is the same as breaking up with a partner. “Guys, seriously, I’m fine. He was never even my boyfriend anyways!”

“Say what you want, but you’ve been super out of it these past few days. You need to let loose, do something that makes you stop thinking of Lando and start thinking about yourself again.”

You scowl, crossing your arms over your chest. “I think about myself plenty.”

Camille rolls her eyes at you. “I mean not in that mopey, sad ‘I say everything is fine even though it’s not’ way. There’s more fish in the sea than Lando. Find one, or don’t, it’s up to you. But you need to forget about him.”

Your lips press into a thin line as you sink back into your seat.

You don’t want another fish in the sea. You want the weird little crab with the cute accent and the sparkly eyes, the one you’ve already let back into the water.

The one you can’t have.

Things haven’t been too awkward with Lando yet, but they definitely aren’t the same. Two people who really like each other but have decided to remain friends doesn’t really scream smooth sailing from now on to you. The wound is still fresh, and there are hints of it as you spend more time with the guys.

Immediately filling the empty seat next to each other like it’s second nature but then having to awkwardly scoot away when your shoulders bump or your hands brush. Lingering glances across tables and rooms until one of you breaks and looks away first. Finding him first in a place full of other people and drifting towards him, only to come to your senses and switch up directions at the last moment.

You wish you could say forgetting Lando would be easy. It really isn’t—not when your friend groups have basically melded into one big one, and everyone gets along so well. It would’ve been easier if you’d gone your separate ways, but you don’t think your heart would’ve liked that very much. Not that it enjoys skipping a beat every time you catch Lando’s eyes on you a little too long either.

You wrinkle your nose, brows following. “I’m sad and mopey?”

“A little bit.”

“Okay, fine. Fine, let’s go bar hopping,” You concede, letting your shoulders drop.

If you’re going to get over him, you might as well start right now.

That’s how you end up in bar number one of the night, four tequila shots on the bar table in front of you. You eye the unassuming little glass warily, even as each of your friends snatch one up eagerly.

Samira, as if sensing your hesitation, nudges yours toward you. “It’s one shot, babe. It won’t kill you.”

“I know that,” You insist, throwing your shoulders back. “I just…need a second.”

“Take all the time you need. We’re going all night.”

Tonight isn’t about your feelings for Lando. Tonight is about you moving on, moving past what could’ve been with him and looking forward to what might come next. With or without him.

You hold up your shot towards them, grinning big. “Here’s to moving forward, and making memories that’ll last a lifetime!”

Clinking your glass against all of theirs, you throw back the clear liquid as smoothly as you can, only wincing a little bit at the burn of it going down your throat. It isn’t your usual drink of choice, but change has to start somewhere, right?

-------

As far as bars go, this one isn’t the worst one you’ve been to tonight, but the fun has started to wear off for you. You’d stopped drinking around bar number two, the buzz of your much tamer drink choices after those first few shots starting to die down bit by bit. On the other hand, your friends are still going full steam ahead. You’ve honestly lost track of how many drinks they’ve had at the bars you’ve hit tonight, but they’re holding on pretty well.

“Fuck boys!” Samira exclaims, slamming another shot glass down onto the table with gusto. Maren and Camille agree wholeheartedly with identical slurred ‘yeah, fuck ‘em!’s that make you chuckle into your glass of water.

You know they’re just trying to make you feel better about your decision, and in a way, it helps. You’d finally been able to talk about what went down that afternoon without feeling an indescribable rush of guilt, and although they were disappointed at first, it became less when you’d told them why. They’re your best friends, and they know you better than anyone, so they know for a fact Lando’s lifestyle was not the one for you.

Tonight was supposed to be all about forgetting your feelings, but as the night went on longer and your inhibitions became lower, you still couldn’t help but think about Lando. That mental box you’d put him has burst wide open already.

You’re a little embarrassed to admit it, but you’d done a little research on him after getting home, which turned into a deep dive of his career, his life, anything that piqued your interest in him. You were curious to know what a guy like him saw in someone like you.

It felt a little weird to see him outside the Lando you’ve gotten to know him as, because he seemed…different. He’s still the same sweet guy you know, but on video he’s a more tame version of himself.

Carefully chosen words and shy smiles, he wears his confidence like a suit of armor on camera, to protect himself against the world. Here, he’s all bursting grins and loud belly laughs, unfiltered and so, so happy. He seems so normal, it’s hard to remember that he’s not just your everyday guy. Lando is one of the best and well known racing drivers in the whole world.

Making sure to separate the two is important if you want to stay firm in your decision.

Somehow it hits nearly four in the morning, and it’s about high time you make the executive decision to call it quits and go home. The only problem is, you’re the only semi-sober one out of the four of you. You have the car, but you don’t trust yourself to drive in this state. None of your friends are in any shape to be of any help either, not when Maren is nearly passed out on the tabletop, and Camille and Samira drunkenly swaying with each other right next to you.

You don’t really trust any rideshares at this time of night in an unfamiliar place, and even then, there’s no way you can get them all home by yourself. There’s only one other thing you can think of, one other person you can call to help you out. The one person you were hoping to not have to call.

The moment your finger hits Lando’s number, you have half a mind to hang up. You’re about to, but then the line connects.

“Yeah, what?” Lando’s voice is gravelly, thick with sleep. A little grumpy. Of course he’s grumpy, it’s nearing three in the morning and he was probably asleep. You feel bad that you've woken him up, but you couldn't think of anything else.

“Lando? I’m so sorry to be calling you this late, I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Immediately, he sounds more alert when your name leaves his lips. “Is everything alright? What’s up?”

You gnaw on your lip in contemplation until he says your name again, gentler this time. “We’re at a bar in town and the girls are really drunk and we need to get home, but I had a few drinks too so I didn't think I should drive. And I tried to call an Uber but at this time of night I don’t—”

“Hey, no, it’s okay. I can come pick you up.” He interrupts your rambling and you're grateful for it, because the more you talk the more you think this was a bad idea. You’re asking him for too much, you're stretching the limits of an already awkward friendship too far, you're— “Just tell me where you are, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Drop me your location and stay there.” You can hear rustling on his end of the line, pounding on a door, someone’s groggy voice saying something you can’t make out. Then Lando’s voice fills your ear again, soft yet firm. “Hang tight, ‘kay? Be there soon.”

“Thank you so much,” You breath, truly grateful. He hangs up, and you can finally let out a breath of relief. Lando is coming. You won’t be stranded here.

Lando jumps out of the car as soon as it pulls to a stop in front. He’s got on some nondescript jumper with the hood pulled up over his head and a random pair of joggers, and he definitely doesn’t look like he’d just been roused from his sleep. In fact, seeing him all disheveled with worry like this is kind of doing it for you.

You’re in the middle of apologizing again when Lando crashes into you, arms wrapping around you tighter than you’re expecting, nearly squeezing the breath out of you. You meet Max’s eyes over his shoulder, who you’d just realized was also here, and he doesn’t look surprised at all. He looks rather smug, actually.

“Are you okay?” Lando holds you at arms length, worried eyes scanning you for anything out of place, any injury. Other than your pride, you remain unharmed. Though that pesky fluttery feeling in your stomach is back again, as is the warmth in your chest, and it isn’t from the alcohol.

His hood has fallen off from the force of his hug to reveal the tornado of curls on his head, flat on one side from his pillow most likely, as are the lines on his face from what was probably a good night’s sleep. Until you called, that is.

You blink at him, caught off guard by the amount of care he still seems to have for you. It feels like an impossible feat to tear your gaze away from his. “Yes? I mean, yeah, I’m fine. You—wow, you got here fast.”

“I thought maybe something—nevermind.” He cranes his neck around you to glance at your half asleep friends on the bench. “Are…they okay?”

“Yeah, they’re fine. Tequila, y’know?” You shrug.

Max lets out a snort of laughter from where he’s wandered over to check on them, waving a hand in front of Samira’s face. She swats at him halfheartedly, mumbling a sleepy, “Fuck off, Fewtrell.”

“Sorry to wake you too, Max.”

“Oh no, you didn’t wake me. He did.” He juts his chin over at Lando, who still has a hand around your elbow. You can’t help but let your eyes drop down to it, and Lando does too, inhaling sharply before letting go. Still, the warmth from his grip lingers. “And not very nicely might I add.”

“I had to get you up quick!”

“You nearly took my head off with a pillow, you dickhead!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want a kiss on the forehead?” Lando snorts.

“Not from you!”

“Come off it already, won’t you?” Lando turns his attention back to you instead, rolling his eyes playfully when he finds you stifling a giggle behind your palm. “You said you had your car?”

“Um, yeah, it’s around the corner. We can just leave it here, I’ll circle back and pick it up in the morning.”

Lando clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “It’ll probably be stripped for parts by tomorrow. How bout we split up? Two and two?”

“Well, we all know who you want,” Max says knowingly. It makes your cheeks flame hot and Lando’s flush pink, but Max doesn’t waver in his shit eating grin. For some reason, you find his candid bluntness refreshing, even if it is poking fun at what’s going on (or not going on) between Lando and yourself. “You guys take Maren in your car, I’ll take these two and meet you at your house.”

Max manages to coax Camille and Samira to their feet with little trouble, and before you know it they’re off, leaving you alone with Lando and a very sleepy Maren. He rocks back on his heels, biting the inside of his cheek awkwardly, like he’s not sure what to do.

“Should we—”

“I think—” Lando bites back a laugh, gesturing for you to speak first.

“We should probably get going.”

“Right. Let’s get her in the car then, yeah?”

You couldn’t be less well versed in cars if you tried, but even you know the one Lando came to your rescue in is expensive. You’re almost too reluctant to even sit in it. But then Lando’s hand touches softly against the small of your back as he pulls open the door without hesitation, and you have no choice but to help Maren in.

Not like you had much of a choice anyways, what with him being the knight in shining armor to your damsel in distress call.

“Did you have fun? Before having to play mum to the girls, I mean.” Lando asks a little while later, not taking his eyes off the road.

You blow out a deep breath, sinking back into the plush leather of the passenger seat. The soft smoothness is heaven on your skin. “Kinda. The first few drinks, at least. Felt a little out of place, honestly.”

“What, you didn't charm some guy the same way you charmed me?” Silence fills the car like cement as soon as the words leave his mouth. A pang of something sharp shoots through you, something akin to hurt that flashes through your chest but is gone a second later.

No, you shouldn’t feel hurt. You’re the one who hurt him. Even though he’s told you over and over that it’s okay, it’s fine, he understands your decision, Lando has every right to express his true feelings, no matter how it makes you feel.

“Sorry, that was—that came out wrong. I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” You say quietly. He wants to know if you met someone else, and the answer is no. No, you didn't meet another guy, because all you could think about was him. But you’re just friends. You’d made certain of it. So why did you feel like you’d done something wrong? “I didn’t meet anyone else.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Is it?”

A muscle in his jaw clenches as he swallows thickly, nodding. “Yeah. I mean, if that’s what you want. What you’re looking for.”

“I don’t think I’m looking for anything right now,” Your voice is soft, nearly a whisper.

I’m not looking for something that isn’t you, you could add. You don’t. It wouldn’t do anything other than hurt him, and yourself, even more.

The rest of the ride home is basically silent, and Max is waiting on the sofa with the other two when you finally get there, entertaining a story that Camille is telling not unlike one would with a child, uh huh-ing and wow, that’s so cool-ing until he realizes you’re finally here.

You take over from then, thank him profusely yet again when he says he’s going to head home, before corralling all three girls into the bathroom like a zookeeper with their animals.

One by one, you help each of your friends through an abridged version of their night routines until they’re all ready for bed, and then you tuck them into the same bed as best you can. You’ve relegated yourself to the floor with a littering of pillows for the night. It’ll be easier to get to them if they need anything during the night if you’re all in the same room.

You’re surprised to see Lando in the doorway once you’ve gotten them all settled in for the night. You thought he'd left with Max, but apparently not.

He glances up as he hears you approach, frowning. “You’re gonna sleep on the floor?”

You shrug. “Yeah, it’s fine. I can keep an eye on them that way. You can, erm, you can go home now. Go back to sleep.”

“No offense, but I’m pretty sure they’ll sleep through the night. Plus, you must be knackered too. You should get some rest, yeah?” You want to say no, but your body’s response betrays you in that moment, because you yawn big, and it makes him chuckle. “Come on. Sleep in your own bed. I’ll watch over them.”

“No way.” You shake your head insistently, despite the enticing offer. “You’ve already done more than enough, Lando, I can’t ask you to stay up all night. I’ve got them covered.”

“You shouldn’t either.” He shoots back, chin tilting up in challenge. You match him as best you can with your eyes growing heavier and heavier by the moment, and eventually, he backs down, hands up in mock surrender. “How ‘bout we take shifts? The living room’s right across the hall, if we camp out there and anyone makes a racket, whoever’s up will be able to hear them.”

You twist your lips to the side in thought. “Deal. I call first watch though.”

“I can live with that. Why don’t you go freshen up, or something?”

“Is that your way of telling me I stink?”

Lando’s eyes glint with mirth, teasing smile curling his lips. “Maybe.”

“Well, maybe you don’t smell too good either!” That’s a total lie. He actually smells really nice, a mixture of remnants of his heady cologne from the day and something fresher, a little citrusy. His soap, maybe?

A hot shower certainly does wonders to sober you up the rest of the way, and as you’re toweling your hair dry enough to where it won’t be dripping water down your shirt, you take a good look at yourself in the fogged up mirror.

This is fine. You can spend a night alone with Lando without feeling anything towards him. You can do this. You’ve done harder things than this.

Lando’s frowning at something on his phone when you make your way back into the living room, scowling like whatever’s on the screen has personally wronged him. It isn’t the first time you've noticed his demeanor turn sour like this, and your concern is piqued each time.

You clear your throat as if to announce your presence, offering him a small smile when his head whips up. “Hi. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just work.” He tosses his phone on the coffee table, dragging a hand forward through his curls, mussing up the front before raking them back. It doesn’t seem to do anything but make them messier, but you suspect it’s more of a nervous habit than anything.

He smiles back at you as you sit a respectable distance away from him on the sofa, though even that looks entirely forced. Something is wrong, and it’s eating away at him.

“Look, I know things aren't how they used to be with us, but I hope you know I’m still here for you. You can always talk to me if you need to.”

Lando gnaws on his bottom lip, head tilting from side to side like he's unsure. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

“Friends are there for each other.”

He blows out a deep sigh, sinking back against the pillows like a deflated balloon. “Yeah? You’re sure?”

“I’m a good listener, remember?” You nudge his knee with yours gently. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m all ears.”

He isn’t ready right away. For a little while, you sit in silence. You get the feeling Lando doesn’t have much experience with letting people in very easily, but it's okay. You’ll sit here as long as he needs to get his thoughts together.

Finally he speaks, but even then, his tone holds hesitance.

“I feel like everything is going to shit. The car is great this season, it’s better than it's ever been before, so that’s not the problem. It’s me, I’m the problem, I keep fucking everything up," He sighs, shoulders slumping. "And my team work so hard for me to be able to perform and deliver and I feel like I’m just letting everyone down, y’know? They deserve someone who can give them better than the shit stuff I’ve been putting out these past few races.”

Lando as a person is impossibly hard on himself, you’ve come to learn—always thinks he could’ve done better, even if what he’s already done is enough. The same is true when it comes to his job.

You’d know—you checked. In your uninformed opinion, the results he’s been achieving in the races are great. To be finishing high in the top five out of twenty of the best drivers in the world in almost every single race recently, it’s enough to make anyone proud.

But when you think about it from a competition perspective, a cutthroat drive with everything you’ve got, put everything on the line perspective, you get a sense of why he’s beating himself up.

To know he can win and still fall short, race after race…god, you can’t even imagine how he must be feeling.

You might be clueless still, but at the very basis of it all, you understand. Lando has worked so hard for so many years, put in blood, sweat, and tears, and he feels like he’s not living up to expectations.

You know what it’s like to have such high expectations placed on your shoulders and nearly be crushed by the weight of everyone counting on you. Surely not on a scale as large as his, but you understand the struggle.

Then he goes into the race in Hungary a few weeks back, and you can tell there’s some lingering hurt in him about what happened.

“It’s like they were guilt tripping me or something. Telling me I’ll need the team in the championship fight, that I should do the right thing and give up my position. Call me crazy, but that just didn’t sit right with me at all. They want me to be a team player and that’s fine, I’m happy to, but I dunno…” Lando trails off, nose wrinkling like the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth.

You notice him picking at the skin below his nail and move without thinking, closing the distance between the two of you and redirecting his fiddling fingers by linking them with your own.

It gets him to stop picking, but it also makes him stop talking. Whatever words are about to come out of his mouth die into a drawn out exhale, eyes drawn to your joined hands like a magnet.

“Yeah? Keep going, I’m still listening,” You urge gently, nodding. Lando blinks at you, as if he’s lost his train of thought. “Hungary? The team?”

“Uh…yeah. Right. I was—I guess I just didn’t think they’d pull all that crap over the radio. Like, everyone could hear what they were saying—other teams, the commentators. It was on live broadcast too!” His fingers tighten around yours ever so slightly, dark brows knit with frustration.

Even though you know close to nothing about the sport, what his team pulled seems like a dick move. You understand wanting to put their drivers in the best position possible, but airing things out on a radio where everyone can hear it feels wrong to you. Then again, you have no idea what goes on within a team at this type of performance level.

“It’s like, they knew I’d do what they wanted me to do and I did, but for a moment, I almost didn’t. I almost went against team orders, and that’s…” He laughs humorlessly, shaking his head. “You don’t do that. You can’t. You listen to what your team says and you do it, and that’s the end. My boss has been calling every now and then, trying to get me to talk and shit, and I just don’t really wanna talk about work right now. I don’t even wanna think about it.”

“Oh, Lando…” You sigh. Your thumb rubs circles over the prominent ridges of his knuckles, hoping it brings him some sort of comfort.

“I know I probably sound like such a brat right now, but I’ve given everything I have to McLaren and it still doesn't feel like enough. They want more, and right now…I’m not sure how much more I’ve got in me.”

“Can I be completely and totally honest with you right now?”

“Yeah, please.”

You hesitate, taking a beat to reply. You don’t want him to take your response the wrong way. “I’m not gonna sit and pretend like I have any clue what it’s like to be in your situation, because I don’t. But I do think you’re being too hard on yourself. Yeah, sometimes you might not get the results you’d hoped for, but you’re doing the best you can, and that’s all you need to be doing.”

Lando doesn’t need your advice, and you’re in no place to be giving any in the first place. He just needs someone in his corner, someone who cares about him to tell him that it’s okay to not be perfect. You want to be that person, even though you’re both still trying to settle into this new dynamic with each other.

Thankfully, your words seem to soak in, easing the tension in his shoulders just a little bit. “Thank you. I think I really needed that.”

“Glad I could help,” You say warmly, squeezing his hand.

“Y’know, I just realized that I’ve never said any of that out loud to anyone.”

“Do you feel better?”

Lando chuckles, and somehow, he even seems better. Like whatever was weighing him down was gone. “Yeah, I do. I feel…lighter, actually? Is that weird?”

“Not at all. That’s what letting things out will do for you.”

“Maybe. But maybe it’s more than that, maybe it’s…you.”

Your breath hitches in your chest. “Me?”

“You make me feel like I can be myself around you. Like, the real me, not the me the rest of the world knows me as. I feel genuinely happy around you, and I—I can’t just sit here and ignore it any longer. I still really like you. And I know what you said about us, and I know why, but I can’t help the way I feel around you. The way I feel about you.”

“Lando, I—”

“I swear I’m not trying to change your mind or make you feel guilty, or anything like that! I just had to say it before it made me explode,” He adds, exhaling shakily. “In the spirit of letting things out.”

You’d be lying to yourself if you said you hadn’t been starting to question whether or not you’d made the right choice by deciding to walk away from Lando, because the more you get to know him, the more it chips away at your resolve. He’s kind and sweet and funny, and he gets you like nobody else has before. It’s been hell these past few days, tiptoeing around each other when all you want to do is kiss him senseless.

Right now, you want to kiss him senseless. He’s right here in front of you, holding your hand, looking at you with those stupid sparkly eyes. You want to say it’s the leftover alcohol buzzing in your veins making you feel this way, but that would be a lie too.

Fuck it.

You cross the already dwindling space between the two of you, sliding a hand around the back of his neck, and kissing him softly. Lando freezes for a split second, but before you know it, he’s kissing you back, guiding you closer until you’re nearly on his lap. His hands roam your back, curling into the material of your shirt, thumbing under it just a tiny bit to stroke at the warm skin there.

It isn’t at all like the first time you kissed. He lets you set the tone, following your slow lead without question.

You’re not sure how long you keep at it—lazy, gentle kisses punctuated with hushed giggles and tiny satisfied noises from the both of you.

Lando takes a pause every so often, pulling back just enough to look at you, take in the sight of you breathless from his doing, and every time, his mouth curls into a squinty, close mouthed smile. You can only bear the fondness in his expression for a few seconds before growing too aware of the way he looks at you and kissing him again.

Your brain doesn’t want to stop, but apparently your body decides you’ve had enough action for a day, because at some point you feel your eyes start to droop, chin following.

As if sensing your exhaustion, Lando pulls away, chest rising and falling heavily. He’s breathless, lips kiss-swollen as they curve into a soft smile. “We should stop. You need to get some sleep.”

“No! We should talk about this. Us.”

“I agree, but I don’t think you’re really in the right headspace to do it right now.”

“I’m fine! I’m okay, I swear.”

“You just nearly fell asleep whilst we were making out.”

“For a second!” You whine, letting your head thunk against his chest. A chuckle vibrates through him. “Don’t laugh at me, I’m tired.”

“Then go to sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning,” He insists, lips pressed to the crown of your head. You sigh through your nose. You’d argue a little more, but Lando is right again. All you want to do is go to sleep. “I’m not going anywhere, alright? I’ll be here when you wake up, we can figure it out then.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

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moondirti · 1 year ago

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animalic (2)

← chapter 1 // series masterlist

pairing: Miguel O'Hara x F!Reader rating: mature word count: 2.2k summary: a game of cat and mouse warnings: enemies to lovers, canon typical violence, guns, death, blood, angst, no use of y/n (reader is referred to as ‘wraith’) notes: remember when i said part 2 would take a while? i lied. the next chapter is fun as all hell so i wanted to churn this one out as build up. teehee i hope yall like it regardless

He let you go.

No matter how Miguel tries to vindicate it, he rounds back to the same conclusion. You weren’t subtle, regardless of what you’d have yourself believe; he’d seen the calculations glaze over your eyes the instant he pinned you to the wall. He knew what was coming, how your heavy breathing was a cover for the clicks of his watch – of which he heard regardless – and your squirming a diversion from the movement of your busy fingers. He had a goddamn plan too, a fail safe in case you decided to attack instead of listening to reason.

(One he’d settled on for the duration of your lost consciousness, for knowledge that you would.)

So, there is no dismissing it. You’re obnoxious and lack precision, and he could have had you halfway back home by now, which isn’t the case – because he let you go.

The frigid air of his office thrums with irritation, weighing down on his shoulders until they collapse inwards, his hands coming up to rub the weariness off his expression. HQ has been unsettlingly quiet as of late – occupied by only a fraction of its regular population – and the peace worries him. History betrays its status as the precursor to havoc; lulls in the past have fooled him into believing his mission was drawing to a close, only for another anomaly, another mess, to spin that naivety on its head.

You were one such instance. A year ago, you’d popped up on an Earth that wasn’t your own, and didn’t leave until you’d drawn all that you could from it. It’s an empty husk now, lacking land to propagate its agriculture. Thousands – millions – dead, from the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

Parasite. A fucking parasite who just won’t quit.

The mantra surges through him, festering from the base of his gut to the cap of his tongue. It bursts out with a roar right then, the sudden violence finding monitors thrown across the room, smashed to bits of orange light and static. It does nothing to sate him, though, the heady anger filtering out like molasses. His back hunches as he draws in thin breaths. He doesn’t count, nor does he attempt to. Instead, he looks for his only real decompressor.

The video of Gabriella flickers at him from a distant floor, the transparent tablet wrecked with four distinct claw marks. He exhales, pulling it back to the platform with an extended web.

“Boss,”

His mija smiles toothily down at his digital self, winding her small palms in his hair for balance as he carries her. He recalls helping with hers, tying it back into shabby ponytails the mornings before a big game. How she wouldn’t let anyone fix it afterwards, not until her elastic slipped off the ends and her bangs hindered her playing. And she’d run to him, whenever, to get it fixed again.

“Boss.”

Her jokes resonate still, echoing laughter from when she’d poke fun at how bad he’d gotten at it, amused by the sudden decline in ability. To Miguel, it was one more reminder that the life he led wasn’t his own.

“Oh Miguel!”

So much for calming down.

“Lyla.” He looks up at the virtual assistant, her corporeal character a little fuzzy around the edges. She chooses to ignore his dissociative episode, rather projecting a map of the arachno-humanoid poly-multiverse, a point off centre highlighted in red. His heart skips. Placing the tablet down on his desk, he takes a step closer to survey the pin.

“Managed to track the Wraith down using the day pass you’d given her. Currently stationed on Earth-15, no signs of jumping anytime soon.”

Parasitic, and stupid enough to forgo destroying a potential tracking device.

Lyla snickers, seemingly able to read the sneer pulling at his cheeks.

“Seems like she’s afraid of glitching more so than she is you, Boss.”

His glare snaps to meet her heart shaped sunglasses.

“Funny.” His assistant shrugs at his admonishment. “Pull up the anomaly cam.”

A second later, your figure blinks into sight.

You’re crouched atop a tiled floor, the grout darkened to near-black with grime. In front of you lies a sparse spread of medical supplies; gauze, scissors, and miniature packets of disinfectant wipes. Miguel can’t help but wonder what you think you’re doing, treating your wounds in a bathroom as unsanitary as the one that cramps you. Graffiti littered walls, nests of used paper towels in every corner. You spring up to wash your hands after undoing the old bandages that hugged your forearm, but all that comes out is an inconsistent splutter of grey water.

His chest twinges, a tug of intrinsic sympathy playing against him. It worsens at the sight of your injury, the consequences of his talons’ assault on you, the puncture points brimming yellow and blackening closer to their middles. He can’t tell whether it’s gotten any better, whether you were good and had it treated by a professional, or made the common mistake of relying too much on your enhanced healing.

“Gave her a harsh gig there. You always that rough?”

“When I need to be.” Miguel murmurs, skimming over the conspicuous innuendo.

“Right. Until it comes to finishing the job, that is.” And, despite the offence taken to Lyla’s jest, he can hardly disagree. Newfound resolve hardens within him, sympathy fleeting at its failure to deter him.

“Set coordinates for Earth-15.” He rumbles, gesturing to his wrist as he walks away. The assistant does as she’s told, shrinking back to an icon on his watch. While waiting for the portal to configure, Miguel cocks his head, taking one last look at your oblivious form.

“I won't let her get away this time.”

“Put the money in the fucking bag or she gets it!”

Of all the spider-people you’ve met, you don’t believe any have been the hostage in an armed robbery situation. You imagine that they’d come in at the last minute, valiantly swinging through the window, accentuating their arrival in a shower of shattered glass. They’d demand the money be remitted, and all’s well that ends well. But – of course – there’s got to be a first for everything; your record just so happens to be the lamest of the bunch.

The masked man presses the gun further into your temple, bursting capillaries until the spot starts to ache with a raw tenderness. His body wraps around you, other arm waving wildly outwards, extending a plastic bag to the poor soul behind the register. You take a great gulp of air, staring at the buzzing fluorescents above, and pray.

Lord, now would be a really good time to phase out.

“P-Please, leave her be.” The owner throws a potful of crumpled fives into the bag, as if to punctuate her plea. The man is dismissive in face, urging her for more, shaking the receptacle with comedic insistence. You purse your lips, blinking up at the ceiling once more.

Or make this more exciting, at the very least.

“And you!” You’re jolted out of being a passive observer, rattled when the man diverts his attention to you. His gun thrusts harder against your forming bruise, adding to the list of damages sustained in the past week alone. You peer at him from the corner of your eye. His roll incredulously, pointing to the bill in your grip. “The twenty!”

“Is that a real gun?”

“Wha– Of course it’s a real fucking gun! Put the money–”

“In the bag. I know.”

His hold on you slackens, expectant. By contrast, you ball your fist and punch him square in the nose. The hit sends him reeling farther than it should for the amount of space you had in winding back, the feat prompting a deluge of pride to wash over you. It’s bolstered when he drops the spoils in the process, toppling into a rack of chips and cup noodles that consequently cushion his fall.

Your first save.

Filled with bravado, you snatch and pass over the bag to the cashier.

“Here you go, ma’am.”

But she doesn’t look at you. Rather, her stare remains trained on the man you’d just disabled. Nerves maturating, you join her line of vision, only to be met with the barrel end of his weapon. You catch the vicious conclusion in the way his hand trembles, veins protruding from the pale skin, supplying courage to the finger hovering right over the trigger. You process it all, aware of the ways it can end, at how fast it can sour.

Before you can so much as act on it, he shoots.

Your skin prickles.

You’ve heard stories of people who don’t realise when a bullet strikes them. Their bodies take time to catch up to the pain, cells stuck in paralytic shock, stimulus signals held somewhere between the existential and a will to delay the inevitable. You think you understand what they mean, your mind dragging in a rare bout of silence. Things slow, for a perennial moment, and you wonder how fast the blood loss will kill you.

You can do nothing but follow the man, who scrambles to a stand, letting him take the money – with whatever else – and watching as he runs out onto the street.

And even still, the pain hasn’t caught up to you.

Looking down, the case starts piecing itself together. No blood sticks to your shirt, the fabric still as pristine as it had been upon purchase. You check your arms, then your legs, then reach up to smooth over your head. Nothing. You’re okay.

The relief is short-lived when the morbid sound of gurgling meets your ears. Slowly, you turn, bracing for what you knew you’d find.

The scene unfolds with a distressing intensity as crimson liquid blooms from the cashier’s throat. The torrent is never-ending, every gush of ichor bringing forth a new momentum, splattering its macabre scene over the register. Her eyes gloss over with an unshed panel of tears, and she looks to you for help.

She looks to you.

(You don’t admit it to yourself, but it’s the novelty of that fact that pushes you into action.)

With a swift leap over the counter, you intercept her mid-fall, carefully cradling her weight as you guide her down to the ground. Scanning your surroundings, you search for a means to call for help. A rotary phone catches your recognition, situated a ways off by the back exit. Despite the inconvenient placement, it stands as your sole option at this stage.

In a split second decision, you sling your backpack off, hastily rummaging through its contents. You find solace in your hoodie, gathering its folds to tightly bunch it up, converting it into a makeshift compress. Knowing she lacks the strength to apply pressure to the wound, you move to wrap it around her neck, hopeful that it’s tight enough to stem the bleeding while leaving enough room for air.

Urgency fuelling your every step, you leave her side for a fleeting moment, dashing over to call an ambulance. Your medical knowledge only extends so far, and some selfish part of you itches to pass on the responsibility to someone more competent. It’s an impulse that derives from an innate acceptance, that resoundingly insightful voice in your head telling you it's too late. That she’s already dead, had been from the moment the bullet – that was meant for you – missed.

Perhaps your help isn’t really helpful at all, then. Perhaps it’s your attempt to wash your hands of the sin. You think back to the grey water in the bathroom, how exasperated you had been at your inability to stay clean.

(You don’t think you’ll ever rid yourself of this.)

“911, what’s your emergency?” The question crackles through the receiver.

The bell by the entrance jingles, the chime accompanied by heavy footsteps. You press yourself against the wall, the concept of the robber returning filling you with such dread that you feel your stomach tighten and congeal. It’s a heavy lump, icy cold and slippery, and it seems to weigh a hundred pounds.

“Hello?” The operator says.

But if it was the man, then he'd have to have changed into a navy and red suit. Somehow, your terror worsens.

“Hijo de la chingada…” The whisper is barely legible, but the deep baritone is discernible enough to validate the assumption pulled from your brief glimpse. You’d recognise him anywhere.

Shrinking in on yourself, you cup your palm over your mouth. “Hello,”

“Ma’am? Can you describe your emergency?”

“There was an armed robbery at the convenience off sixth and Third. Someone’s hurt.” You hardly register the words as they escape you, eyeing Miguel when he crouches over the lady. You’re propelled back to the conclusion of your last meeting; how his claws tore into you, how his persistence didn't falter until you pressed yourself onto him.

That kiss.

He runs a finger over your hoodie-turned-compress, wavering, like he can’t quite place where he’d seen it before.

Or, maybe he can, for he spins to meet your wide-eyed stare.

You drop the phone, bolting out the back door, charged on a paroxysm of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated panic.

chapter 3 →

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xxepherr · 15 days ago

Text

.ೃ࿐ELECTION DAY | HP

summary — in which austin accidentally lets it slip that hasan’s faceless (yet public) girlfriend is the woman they’re currently watching analyse the maps on CNN.

pairings — hasan piker x politicalcorrespondent!girlfriend!reader

pronouns — she/her

word count — 1893

note — i personally would have “6’4 jacked boyfriend” as his contact name so that whenever weird men try to hit on me they see that but thats just me (and this reader insert ofc) (also this is nothing special just me rambling tbh — what’s to say this political!reader doesn’t become a mini series)

THE DAY WAS HERE. election day. not only was it the day your boyfriend had spent hours upon hours preparing for for weeks, but you, too. you were a political journalist and correspondent currently working the map for CNN during the weeks in the lead up to the election.

it was a big day for you. four years ago you were streaming your own map coverage to fifteen thousand people on twitch, accessing your sources across multiple states to provide statements on what was going on nationwide. being asked a couple months ago to run the maps in front of millions was certainly a step up, but it gave you control to speak objectively without bias unlike most of the other news anchors and correspondents that were pushing right-wing sentiment over any other coverage.

you hadn’t seen hasan in a few weeks now unless you counted facetimes and tuning into his streams. you’d get texts while he was streaming and the occasional kaya video ( because apparently she’d been whining with your leave ). it wasn’t the same, but you were both incredibly career-driven people, so being hours apart by plane wasn’t as daunting as it probably should’ve been.

“you’re gonna be late to stream,” you laughed softly, fiddling with the cap of the bottle of water someone had gotten you. endless tabs were open on your laptop in front of you, following aspects of every state because there was still hours to go before the polls closed, so you were only needed in short segments for now to go over 2020 and 2016 county votes in particular states at a time.

“you’re right,” hasan’s voice was slightly staticky through the phone. “i might have to focus on kornacki or fox news so that i don’t spend too long staring at you.”

“aw,” you let go of your phone, holding it between your ear and shoulder to screw the cap back on the bottle. one of the directors caught your attention across the room, holding up his hand to say that she had five minutes before they were back on air again. “i’m back on in a few . . . i’ll have your stream open on my laptop, though!”

“good luck today,” hasan said softly as he started his stream, leaving it on his opening scene while his mic was muted. people were already flooding in by the thousands. “i’ll talk to you in, what, twelve hours? i love you.”

“twelve hours,” you hummed in agreement, “i love you more,” you sighed softly, noticing that the twitch tab was reloading to take her to his ‘starting soon’ overlay. “good luck.” you ended the phone call first, quickly putting it back on do not disturb and placing it over on the table that was full of analytical notes. the board that now had the map of the united states of america was lit up again, an empty canvas waiting for you to load up the old votes to load up projected blue and red areas.

TOO MANY HOURS TO count and three hundred thousand viewers into the election, hasan was still going strong. despite the pull to watching CNN more than he probably should, he managed to force himself to switch between fox news to laugh at republican propaganda and msnbc. though, he would one hundred percent lying if he said he didn’t have CNN up on his second monitor.

things were steadily climbing, and josh ( ettingermentum ) was back after mike from PA left the call. josh, who had been raging on ( no seriously, no one had really heard him be that loud all day ) about how the democrats fucked up was finally broken up when austin joined the call, the atmosphere shifting.

christmas sign in full view and a cold slab of a slice of pizza being shoved into his mouth, austin’s discussion on if he was being sent to prison if the republicans dominated was dwindled until josh left the call to analyse the polls for twitter.

“ugh, can we watch something else?” austin asked, barely swallowing his mouthful of pizza first. “all i’ve done is watch fox today.”

“yeah,” hasan chucked humourlessly, clicking around mindlessly between tabs as he tried to find msnbc’s coverage. because the tabs were so small thanks to the fifty million twitter tabs he had open, he almost groaned in frustration when he accidentally clicked on the CNN tab.

the tab where you were conveniently fiddling with the data of state of pennsylvania. it was already a dangerous game having you on screen when the chat knew what the silhouettes of you looked like — photos from behind of you walking with hasan, photos of your eyes after he tried to do your makeup, mirror fit checks with your face covered by the phone . . . chat only needed to be railroaded enough to work it out.

just as he was about to switch tabs again, austin opened his mouth. “oh, man, i miss her,” there was a shift in his tone, more than just him speaking without thinking. familiarity shone through. from the way he casually uttered your nickname to the sigh, it was probably worse than railroading. it was the train forgetting to slam the brakes on worthy.

hasan wisely kept his mouth shut as he switched to fox news — anything was better than CNN currently — and his eyes slowly zeroed in on the chat. question marks upon question marks until it eventually morphed into ‘holy shit she looks familiar’ and ‘girlfriend reveal????’ to ‘omg face reveal’ and his breathing faltered.

someone switched the chat to emote only mode in the few moments he was silent for, austin thankfully following suit. glancing at his second monitor, you were still doing your thing, this time discussing the iowa flip from blue to red, completely oblivious.

“austin,” hasan finally said, tone flat. there was no use making a big fuss out of denying it — that would just make it more obvious.

austin chuckled nervously, awkwardly. “uh . . . sorry, hasan. i didn’t think about it . . . awkward.”

“clearly,” he grumbled, digging his fingers into his hair for a moment as he thought. the election was put on hold in his mind for a moment as he switched the screen to the full facecam. he wasn’t going to directly deny or confirm anything, so instead he said, “take what you will from what austin said. in saying that, don’t go harass her, clearly she was faceless for a reason. anyway,” hasan cleared his throat, “moving on, back to the election . . .” and he swiftly moved on like nothing ever happened ( while the mods were timing out anyone who asked about it for an entire week ).

“PENNSYLVANIA AND NEVADA ARE expected to be the closest as of currently,” you gestured to the map that demonstrated the slight wave from the blue shift. “we’re looking at about half a percent, but election night is full of surprises so . . . we’ll continue to keep an eye on that for now.” the directors in the back signalled that the camera was no longer live, and you nodded and took a deep breath. the polls weren’t looking as good as everyone had expected it would look for the democrats.

finally off the air for a much needed break, you wandered back over to your little table off to the side. notes were piling up, but upon noticing the spam of notifications flashing across your phone. weird, you thought, your notifications usually not showing up unless it came from verified accounts across all social media platforms . . . until you noticed that it was coming from your private instagram and twitter account. super weird.

and then the text from hasan.

6’4 SUPER JACKED BOYFRIEND: uhhh so austin accidentally told 300k people we’re dating

6’4 SUPER JACKED BOYFRIEND: call me when ur done? so sorry

oh. on one hand the first part was exciting. three hundred thousand? it was a new viewership record for him. on the other? that means a shit ton of people knew the secret you guys had spent almost two years safeguarding. you’d wanted to keep your face out of everything because you had your own career and didn’t want his to intertwine with it. a healthy work-life balance was keeping that shit separate, but it was only really time until people found out anyway. it wasn’t the best kept secret, anyway.

still, you weren’t mad. you sent off a quick text saying ‘it’s alr’ with a smiley face emoji and shut your phone off completely, shoving it off to the side and turning your laptop back on. you’d be back in california tomorrow, anyway, it could be dealt with then.

THE AIRPORT WASN’T AS secretive anymore. tired after only getting a couple hours of sleep because you got back to your hotel at some god awful hour this morning, it was an instant relief to see hasan waiting for you, dresses comfortably to not draw too much attention to himself — which was difficult because he was fucking huge.

either way, you had no energy to do anything but collapse into his waiting arms, letting him engulf you until you were suffocating. “this is nice,” you mumbled. “sorry i didn’t call, was so tired.”

“you’re fine,” he promised, pulling you back slightly to look at him. “i missed you,” he slipped his hand into yours, and he took your suitcase with his other hand. it was nice to be able to publicly be in his presence without worrying, so much so that you leant into his arm, tiredness dragging your feet.

“missed you more,” you said honestly, but there was more on your mind than just small talk. “where’s austin? motherfucker’s been blowing up my phone.”

hasan chuckled, “if i hear him apologise one more time i’m gonna commit a hate crime.” he then shook his head, “he wanted to stay at the house but i told him to come ‘round tomorrow . . . want you to myself first.”

you knew what that was code for, so you shook your head with a silent laugh. “let me sleep first, god.”

and sleep you did. the house was silent thankfully so you were content tucked up in hasan’s arms, stealing him from clocking in with his twitch chat for ten hours in a fit of selfishness that you were entitled too.

“austin might’ve saved our relationship,” you teased, trailing your fingers up his arm that was tightly wrapped around you, both on the verge of falling into dreamland. “now we can go out on proper dates again.”

“you can tell him yourself,” hasan’s arms tightened around her a little bit more, so full of warmth that the blanket was starting to render useless. “when he knocks our door down tomorrow morning.”

“aw, come on,” you tapped his arm a little harder, fighting the urge to gnaw on his forearm. “you love him.”

“i love you, he’s just my side piece,” he kissed the side of your neck tenderly, “night, baby.”

“g’night,” you mumbled back with a soft smile, the world drifting away for just that little bit longer until tomorrow rolled around. you could deal with your very public relationship then.

#hasanabi x reader #hasan piker x reader #hasanabi fic #hoping this doesn’t land in the laps of hasan antis #xeph writes about hasan

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fallstaticexit · 2 months ago

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Prev / Next / Beginning / Pillowfort

Geoffrey and Bob Karaoke selection- Creep - Radiohead

AN: A little more insight on Nancy and her major: Nancy is majoring in architecture. The Landgraabs are famously known for owning land and property- both residential and commercial- and Nancy will eventually operate the part of family business that will allow her to design houses, buildings and other structures in addition to leasing. (Geoffrey comes from a family of doctors but he decided to get a business degree- as he knows this would likely please Nancy's parents)

Transcript under the cut

Siobhan: Think about it, Nancy! Making your mark on this university—on the world—begins with Theta!

Becca: Nice one, you two.

Nancy: They only want me to join their organization because it’ll benefit them. All they care about is money -Ouch!

Geoffrey: [winces] Sorry. Your knees are completely raw.

Geoffrey: They’ve only got as far as knowing your name. If you give them a chance to get to know the real you-

Nancy: There’s nothing to know! Why do you think I had my parents make arrangements so I’d have my own room? I don’t want roommates. I don’t want friends! I just want to do my time so I can-

Geoffrey: Get away, I know...but what if you just take the next four years to have fun? It’s ok to just enjoy it for what it is. Isn’t that what college is all about?

Nancy: [scoffs] Sure, for you. You don’t have the same expectations as me.

Nancy: You can be anything you want. You can join any sports team; you can switch your major a million times if you want to. I have to excel at everything I do, whether I want to or not, and I cannot come out of this a failure. I have to be ready to start working along with my parents the moment I graduate.

Geoffrey: I just want you to be happy. I want you to take care of yourself. Be kinder to yourself. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You’re a good person. You’re an amazing person, Nancy. Anyone would be lucky to be apart of your life.

Geoffrey: Does this hurt?

Nancy: Yes. It hurts.

Nancy: You’re too good for me.

Geoffrey: Don’t say that.

Geoffrey: It’s Karaoke night at Tab’s. Bobby and I wanted to check it out. Did you want to go?

Nancy: I think I’ll pass. I should get started on this project for Munch. I want to get ahead.

Geoffrey: If you change your mind, come down and unwind a bit. Have fun. Eat. Ok?

Nancy: Ok.

Geoffrey: I love you, Nance.

[door shuts]

Nancy Narrates: [I’m holding him back. A selfish part of me knows it, but I can’t fathom the thought of losing someone else]

[distant laughter]

Nancy: Heavenly Father, help me to find peace in Your love and wisdom-

Geoffrey and Bob Karaoke Pick: Creep by Radiohead I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doin' here? I don't belong here

[crowd whistles and cheers]

I don't care if it hurts I wanna have control

I want a perfect body I want a perfect soul

Morgan: [hums] Upright High Priestess. That’s twice now. Once again, my intuition is being called forth.

I want you to notice When I'm not around

Morgan: My appetite is off. I can’t focus. If I weren’t on the pill, I’d think I was knocked up. So. What does that leave me with? I can almost bet this is all connected to-

Morgan: You! You have something to do with this.

Nancy: [frowns] Do with...what, exactly?

You're so fuckin' special I wish I was special

But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo

Morgan: Rich Christian girl with walls as high as Berlin stumbles on campus and taps my shoulder. I had a dream the night before that I placed an injured dove back into its nest. I think this is fate. Sit. I’ll do your reading. Free of charge, of course.

Nancy Narrates: [I didn’t know it then, how right she was. About fate. About everything]

What the hell am I doin' here? I don't belong here

#the art of being seen #the landgraabs #nancy landgraab #morgan fyres #geoffrey landgraab #siobhan fyres #becca clarke #sims 4 stories #ts4 simblr #sims 4 simblr #sims 4

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nap-thym3 · 4 months ago

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Sebastian Solace(Pressure) x Reader/Self-Insert, Pt. 2

I actually turned that one-shot into a fic, so If you’d like to see more, I’ll be posting new updates on my ao3 :)

____________

The churning of the ocean, once a peaceful melody you may’ve played as white-noise, is now something that haunts your every waking breath. You can hear it even now. The whooshing of the currents, the bellowing of unseen gargantuan beasts, and the creaks and groans of the facility around you bending and bowing to the pressure of the torrential waters right outside.

Cautiously, you turn to survey the room surrounding yourself. The constant, oppressive darkness outside the thick windows doesn’t help your ramping unease. The idea that anything can be lurking in the inky depths, laying in wait for you to lower your guard. Watching, surveying. Hunting. Your palms sweat as your finger nails dig crescent imprints into your flesh. Every shuddering groan of the structure feels like another nail in your coffin. Darkly, you wonder just how many rooms- no, entire floors, have completely succumbed to the will of the sea by now. You can’t help but feel helpless, every avenue of your mind overtaken by the countless ways your life can be so quickly and effortlessly snuffed out.

What’s there not to be terrified of?

You scoff quietly. When you’d signed up for this gig, there was nowhere in the contracts explaining where exactly you’d be going. If you’d known the horrors residing in these waters, of being helplessly trapped thousands of feet where not even the sun can reach… you may’ve been a touch more hesitant to apply. Or who knows, maybe being confined to the same four-walled cell would’ve drove you here regardless. There was no point on dwelling on the millions of ‘what-ifs’. Your life was already considered forfeit, UrbanShade knew it, Sebastian knew it- hell, even the monsters knew so! It was only a matter of time before you were either swallowed whole, imploded, or drowned. The only one who seemed unable to get the memo was you.

You sigh, massaging your temples in a circular motion in an attempt to mitigate the encroaching migraine. There was no point in marinating in your own existential dread, you wouldn’t give UrbanShade nor its residents the satisfaction of breaking you. You’ve spent near your entire life bottling feelings up, old habits were hard to kick and you certainly weren’t going to try stopping them now.

A little more put together than a moment prior, you continue your journey. You were going to die soon. Maybe not right this second, but your chances of survival were incredibly slim, and you’d never considered yourself lucky or partial to gambling. The truth was plain and simple, inevitable. You were expendable and that was okay. It had to be. It must be. It will be.

Yawning, you passed through yet another sad-beige room. You must’ve opened twenty- no, maybe more like thirty doors?? Possibly??? Anyhow, point was, it was quiet. Disconcertingly so. The ambient hum of the overhead lights droning on had been slowly chipping away at your resolve. It was worrying how long you’ve gone without encountering any threats. Suspicious, even. Not once had you needed to make a detour, or find a key-card to progress. Rifling through the numerous desks in this zone hadn’t provided anything particularly useful either. Aside from the occasional ‘loose asset’ or two that you know The Merchant would be glad to take off of your hands. Oh, and a flash beacon! Though it was all-in-all a pretty lukewarm score. Regardless, you clipped the light-source onto your utility belt. You doubt you’d ever actually need it- not when you have your trusty flashlight and more batteries on hand than you could possibly ever need( Sebastian had given you an exponentially cheap price for those. Claiming it was more profitable to ‘sell them in bulk’ ). The monotonous repetition of pilfering office cubicles was mind-numbing, and you were sick of it.

Feeling frustrated, your pace quickens to that of a jog. Logically, you know you should be conserving your energy. It was reckless to be blindly racing through these halls, but you just couldn’t stand it anymore. If you had to die soon, so be it. But you weren’t going to just sit there like an appetizing bucket of chum and wait for death to come to you. You’d go down kicking and screaming.

Without you noticing it in your rising panic, your modest jog had turned into a run, and before you knew it, you were flying through rooms. Each one a never ending blur of the same layout. Cubicle, desk, door. Cubicle, desk, door. Cubicle, desk- chair? Chair!

Abruptly, you’re sent careening off-balance by an errant swivel-seat. When had that got there?Thankfully, you land on your side, the brunt force of your tumble distributing throughout your body evenly instead of in one specific location. Your expiration date could’ve been that much sooner if you’d somehow managed to break a bone. Stunned(kind of like how toddlers freeze before realizing if the situation calls for a meltdown or not), you remain curled in a fetal position on the floor, chest heaving with exertion. Remember when you said you weren’t an athletic individual? Yeah, that wasn’t an exaggeration.

A strangled wheeze erupts as you inch your hands up to your face, muffling your sounds of misery as pain ricochet’s throughout your body. It’d be one thing to land on carpet- but fuckity fuck, concrete?? Yeowch. God, you were so pathetic. This isn’t even the worst pain you’ve endured during your stay at the black-site. Maybe it was just your exhaustion, but all that big inner-monologuing over accepting your fate on your own terms and all that other melodramatic bogus- only to epically face-plant so soon afterwards? Ugh. Embarrassing. You lay motionless in a limp pile of limbs on the floor, gasping for air like a fish on land.

Slowly, you drag a palm down over your sweat-slicked face, before you rolling onto your front. Your ribcage digs into your organs, but you endure for the moment. Now that you’re not actively moving, you have a moment to catch your breath and scatter the panicked, adrenaline-filled haze that had clouded your mind.

As you lay there on the steadily, increasingly uncomfortable, hard floor; chin perched on your crossed arms, and epiphany strikes through you. This whole time, you’d been brainlessly pressing forward. Assuming there to be only the one way through. But when had this place ever been so simple? Perhaps all you needed was a new matter of perspective.

Just as the thought crossed your mind, your gaze snags on a vent-grille a little ways ahead of you. Similar in design to that of the ones you usually traverse through to visit Sebastian. Oh. Sebastian.

Thinking of the fish-man now, you’re filled with melancholy. Would he be upset if you just… didn’t return? The idea of Sebastian waiting for you to visit again but you never returning leaves a heavy feeling in your stomach. No, you couldn’t imagine him being so easily rattled by your disappearance, no matter how much you’d selfishly hope him to be. The more likely scenario, on the other hand? He probably wouldn’t even notice. The constant ebb and flow of UrbanShade volunteers was sure to prevent people like you from occupying his mind for any longer than necessary. And yet, even still knowing that the shopkeep realistically didn’t hold you in the same regard… you crave to be curled by his side. Goofing off and trading quips, stealing a few precious moments to yourself to pretend that everything was okay. Your brows up-turn, features scrunching not only in physical pain, but internal pain too. You had it bad. Whether it was a case of simply pack-bonding to the nearest individual, or (hopefully) something more akin to genuine connection remained yet to be seen.

Heartbeat no longer thudding in your chest, you rise up on scuffed knees, mildly cringing at the bloodied and torn fabric of your wetsuit. Without anymore fanfare, you crawl into the vent. Through a few winding turns you’re quickly spat out into, finally, a new room. Bouncing onto your feet, the heavy blast-door slides open, and you’re greeted by your typical scene rather than the looping office-space. You don’t waste anytime jumping through the frame, only twisting around in surprise when the door hurriedly slams closed. Well that’s odd, the doors normally stay open, no?

Confused, you watch as the screen, typically presenting the previous room’s number, is instead displaying a pixelated “>:(“

You incredulously snort, unsure how to proceed.

Deciding to err on the side of caution, you timidly shuffle before the entry-way.

“Hello?” You greet, yet it sounds more like a question. Honestly, you felt pretty ridiculous calling out to a door of all things.

The screen goes blank, nothing but a red, blinking cursor remaining stationary. What the fuck? Was someone actively hacking the screens? But why? How?? Were they friend or foe? Unsure, you wave a hand before the display. The cursor doesn’t move, nor do any new messages appear. A little perturbed, you rub your weary eyes. Was it a trick of the light? Or maybe a malfunction? Whatever the case may be, your intuition doesn’t like it. So far, it hasn’t led you astray. Wearily, you turn away from the peculiar door.

Walking down the corridor, you’re surrounded once again by thick plexiglass-glass. This time, however, it doesn’t just stop at little viewing windows. No, everything but the floor beneath your feet and the ceiling above was made of the same reinforced glass. You sway on your feet, suddenly nauseous and feeling entirely too exposed. You can feel your vision tunneling, everything except for the door ahead of you blurring out of focus like a low-resolution camera.

You feel as if you’re walking on a tight-rope, one step away from falling into the oppressive darkness on either side of you. Shakily, you try to focus your breathing. In and out. Concentrate on pulling oxygen. In and out .

So focused on what’s in front of you, you fail to notice as a sickly green light begins filter through the darkness.

Behind yourself, the odd little screen flickers back to life.

“Goodbye :)” It reads.

Sebastian, ever on the move, didn’t stay in one place for too long. Sure, there were a few, self-made outposts he frequented where he felt confident no friends would interrupt his business dealings. But he couldn’t rely entirely on the bumbling ex-convicts UrbanShade ‘hired’ to retrieve the information he sought. No, it was best that if he wanted things to get done right , he shouldn’t shuck the entirety of the workload onto the fools who didn’t even care for their cause. Which was exactly what he was doing.

His frequent routes through the complex weren’t typically above-ground. Neither did he rely too heavily on traversing through water. He was sore to admit it, but despite his genetic ‘enhancements’, there were much bigger fish than him lurking about the complex. Ones that didn’t bargain, nor were they nearly as susceptible to the ways of persuasion as humans were. No, just like him, his fellow test-subjects were nearly all carnivorous in nature. They all hungered so deeply, so ravenously that they rarely deigned to even take a moment to consider before lunging. No amount of shared trauma or sympathies were greater than the hollow of their stomachs. Sebastian’s expression sours.

His current path took him through the utility tunnels, a labyrinth of narrow, concrete halls that he had mapped out over countless excursions. Here, he was less likely to encounter any unwelcome reunions that roamed the more typical halls. His movements were swift and silent, honed by years of surviving in this underwater hellscape.

Body on auto-pilot, Sebastian’s thoughts drifted to you, as they so often did these days. Especially so since your last visit. Sebastian’s chest warms as he recalls the way you’d looked(admired, really) at him. As if he were anything but a monster. Of how you had called him pretty. How stupidly sincere you were, refusing to backtrack as any other sane person in your shoes would do- even as he gave you ample time to do so. He curses his tender heart, maybe the only part of him left that was well and truly human. Most days he wishes that the scientists who swapped his organs and irreparably altered his body would’ve taken his heart too. It certainly would’ve made things a lot easier.

As his mind circles back to you, a small flicker of concern breaches through the current of his thoughts. You were stubborn, he’d give you that, but how long could you really last down here? He knew UrbanShade’s plans, their blatant disregard for human life- er, life in general. Everyone down here was expendable, a pawn in their grand plan. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had grown… accustomed, of your visits. Of your banter and your resilience. It’s been so long since someone’s looked at him and seen anything else other than a ghastly experiment. You spoke with him, really spoke with him, not just at him. Plus, you didn’t even mind his crass attitude- hell! You even matched it more often than not. Most others in your place wouldn’t dare to rebuke his snark. In a cruel place devoid of connection, you were a rare exception.

He shook his head, clearing away any residual gooey ‘sentiments’. Sentimentality was a weakness he couldn’t afford. He had a mission, and attachments would only complicate things. Still, as he navigated the dark passageways, he couldn’t shake the tentative hope of being able to see you again. Wouldn’t that be nice?

There’s a great bellow somewhere above, undoubtedly from that of the ‘eyefestation’. It was one of the more ‘tame’ byproducts of the black-site’s experiments. Well, as tame as anything down here could be. It was sentient, for a start. Sebastian wasn’t sure by how much exactly, and didn’t particularly care- nor had the time to find out. What was important was that it was free of its enclosure now, all thanks to him.

Poor thing, it’s always been easily picked on by the humans. With a long, suffering sigh, Sebastian once again curses his bleeding heart. Soundlessly, he makes a detour to the upper levels.

#roblox #pressure #Sebastian Solace #sebastian solace x reader #fanfiction

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noonesgaylikegatson · 4 months ago

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Here's the thing: Republicans are the party of the rich, but policies that help the rich fuck everyone else up, so they are inherently unpopular. Republicans hitch their wagons to white supremacists and religious fanatics who will gladly vote for them in hopes of bringing their own agenda. Rich people believe that their money is able to keep them unaffected by their social policies that harm mostly minorities.

Present day: Religious Fanatics and White Supremacists have gone too far. Their plans are so corrosive that they will actually affect the rich; Not to mention, there are a lot of nouveau rich who are also these fanatics.

So now, these rich people, "never-trumpers" want to join the democratic party and make it into a party for them. They are anti-progressive because they don't want to pay more taxes and they don't want more regulations. They want a milquetoast white democrat leader, and not one like Joe Biden who has embraced progressive policies and is now further left than 2008.

They don't want Kamala or Pete Buttigieg or Corey Booker or that skater boi from texas. They were to the left of Biden when they ran in the 2019 primary. They want someone to the right of Biden. A more corporate friendly democrat.

And keep in mind, these republicans have always been racist. And have always been white supremacist for them. This departure from the republican party is not a moral one. It's because the oppression that these Trump Republicans want isn't profitable.

These republicans were fine with rounding up Black people on bullshit charges and sending them to prison to do make them money on prison labor. (Biden ended the use of private prisons on a Federal Level fyi). They're not fine with rounding up 20 million undocumented people and putting them in internment camps and deporting them, that would cost so much money that would be better spent giving to them via tax cuts. (I bet you they'll get on board when someone touts the idea of using the undocumented people for unpaid labor)

They're okay with banning abortions or just limiting. They're not okay with stripping all of woman's freedoms (because many of them are women and like to spend the money they have) because women going back into the homes, means the spending power of the economy shrinks.

Less Women and Men of color going to college means less student loan payments. Not to mention, the policies that Trump will enact with Project 2025, would just wreck the economy. Government workers would lose their jobs. Facilities and infrastructure would crumble. The middle class would all but disappear, the gap between the poor and rich would grow, to the point where there is just no more money to extract from anyone in the lower classes. The money would have to come from them.

If trump gets in office by 2028 there will be so many evictions, its impossible to keep up. The rich would have to bribe police officers (made legal by the supreme court btw) to get people evicted. Not all rich people are rich equally. Those who can afford to bribe will be new upper class, those who can't will be suckers.

FDIC will be gone. So imagine you're one of those rich suckers, and the bank you have your money goes belly up cause the new upper class used it to fund their next yacht?

You can't be a tech mogul in a country with poor infrastructure. All that AI requires massive amount of electricity. How can you have any developments if your company shuts off the power every few weeks and there is no policy in place to keep it going, to fix it. Look at texas? Every hurricane gets rid of the power for weeks. Imagine when Project 2025 gets in and there really is no regulation at all.

What is the point of all this? Biden is the correct choice. He is the incumbent, he won the primary, and the election is less than four months away. This talk about replacing him is a bunch of rich assholes trying to take over the democratic party and making it into the new republican party. The literal worst night mare: socially liberal, financially conservative. They are antagonist towards the democrat's base: Black voters, because black voting population support centralized government, regulations, higher taxes, and a robust social safety network (because its literally the best way to govern)

Focus on getting people to vote for Biden or just not vote for Trump.

#gmadi #politics

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reasonsforhope · 6 months ago

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"Nasir Mansoor has spent 40 years fighting for Pakistan’s workers. Whether demanding compensation on behalf of the hundreds of people who died in a devastating 2012 factory fire in Karachi or demonstrating against Pakistani suppliers to global fashion brands violating minimum wage rules, he’s battled many of the country’s widespread labor injustices.

Yet so far, little has improved, said Mansoor, who heads Pakistan’s National Trade Union Federation in Karachi... Regulations and trade protocols look good on paper, but they rarely trickle down to the factory level. “Nobody cares,” Mansoor said. “Not the government who makes commitments, not the brands, and not the suppliers. The workers are suffering.”

Change on the Horizon

But change might finally be on the horizon after Germany’s new Supply Chain Act came into force last year. As Europe’s largest economy and importer of clothing, Germany now requires certain companies to put risk-management systems in place to prevent, minimize, and eliminate human rights violations for workers across their entire global value chains. Signed into law by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January 2023, the law covers issues such as forced labor, union-busting, and inadequate wages, for the first time giving legal power to protections that were previously based on voluntary commitments. Companies that violate the rules face fines of up to 8 million euros ($8.7 million)...

...As governments come to realize that a purely voluntary regimen produces limited results, there is now a growing global movement to ensure that companies are legally required to protect the people working at all stages of their supply chains.

The German law is just the latest example of these new due diligence rules—and it’s the one with the highest impact, given the size of the country’s market. A number of other Western countries have also adopted similar legislation in recent years, including France and Norway. A landmark European Union law that would mandate all member states to implement similar regulation is in the final stages of being greenlighted.

Although the United States has legislation to prevent forced labor in its global supply chains, such as the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, there are no federal laws that protect workers in other countries from abuses that fall short of forced labor. That said, a proposed New York state bill, the Fashion Act, would legally require most major U.S. and international brands to identify, prevent, and remediate human rights violations in their supply chain if passed, with noncompliance subject to fines. Since major fashion brands could hardly avoid selling their products in New York, the law would effectively put the United States on a similar legal level as Germany and France...

The Results So Far

As of January, Germany’s new law applies to any company with at least 1,000 employees in the country, which covers many of the world’s best-known fast fashion retailers, such as Zara and Primark. Since last January [Jan 2023], German authorities say they have received 71 complaints or notices of violations and conducted 650 of their own assessments, including evaluating companies’ risk management.

In Pakistan, the very existence of the German law was enough to spark action. Last year, Mansoor and other union representatives reached out to fashion brands that sourced some of their clothing in Pakistan to raise concerns about severe labor violations in garment factories. Just four months later, he and his colleagues found themselves in face-to-face meetings with several of those brands—a first in his 40-year career. “This is a big achievement,” he said. “Otherwise, [the brands] never sit with us. Even when the workers died in the factory fire, the brand never sat with us.” ...

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

Article continues below, with more action-based results, including one factory that "complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses"

With the help of Mansoor and Zehra Khan, the general secretary of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation, interviews with more than 350 garment workers revealed the severity of long-known issues.

Nearly all workers interviewed were paid less than a living wage, which was 67,200 Pakistan rupees (roughly $243) per month in 2022, according to the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Nearly 30 percent were even paid below the legal minimum wage of 25,000 Pakistani rupees per month (roughly $90) for unskilled workers. Almost 100 percent had not been given a written employment contract, while more than three-quarters were either not registered with the social security system—a legal requirement—or didn’t know if they were.

When Mansoor, Khan, and some of the organizations raised the violations with seven global fashion brands implicated, they were pleasantly surprised. One German retailer reacted swiftly, asking its supplier where the violations had occurred to sign a 14-point memorandum of understanding to address the issues. (We’re unable to name the companies involved because negotiations are ongoing.) The factory complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses.

In February [2024], the factory registered an additional 400 workers with the social security system (up from roughly 100) and will continue to enroll more, according to Khan. “That is a huge number for us,” she said.

It’s had a knock-on effect, too. Four of the German brand’s other Pakistani suppliers are also willing to sign the memorandum, Khan noted, which could impact another 2,000 workers or so. “The law is opening up space for [the unions] to negotiate, to be heard, and to be taken seriously,” said Miriam Saage-Maass, the legal director at ECCHR.

Looking Forward with the EU

...Last month [in March 2024], EU member states finally approved a due diligence directive after long delays, during which the original draft was watered down. As it moves to the next stage—a vote in the European Parliament—before taking effect, critics argue that the rules are now too diluted and cover too few companies to be truly effective. Still, the fact that the EU is acting at all has been described as an important moment, and unionists such as Mansoor and Khan wait thousands of miles away with bated breath for the final outcome.

Solidarity from Europe is important, Khan said, and could change the lives of Pakistan’s workers. “The eyes and the ears of the people are looking to [the brands],” Mansoor said. “And they are being made accountable for their mistakes.”"

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

#pakistan #fashion #fashion industry #fast fashion #labor #labor unions #labor rights #unions #workers rights #capitalism #european union #germany #united states #new york #garment industry #garment manufacturing #supply chain #good news #hope

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equallyshaw · 10 months ago

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call your mom | q. hughes. ↠ based off the song by noah kahan! ↠ best friend duo! sunny is her nickname! ↠ warnings: talks of anxiety, depression and an attempt. (not shown) also, some grammatical errors ! ↠ word count: 2k

quinn knew it all, and had known about it since their first frat party they attended when she ended up drunk which resulted in an anxiety attack; during their freshman year at michigan. yet, he never let that get in the way of their budding friendship and hadn't let it over the past almost 7 years of knowing one another. the longest friendship, she'd had outside her other best friend sadie. he would pick up at every 3 am call she'd make to him, he would call her when the ghosting she did began or would figure out where she was when he'd come home during the summer & she wouldn't come to the lake house while not letting him know. or most importantly he wanted to say everything he felt too, when all the times he would catch her telling her true feelings for him, but then she would make a sarcastic and dark-humored joke about it, before changing the subject.

she was his best friend, throughout all of his shit too. she'd go above and beyond for him, and quinn felt less than at times about it. how much compensation she'd do for him when she was hurting and in need of a hug or a pep talk. when she needed warmth and safety. so when she proposed staying in detroit after four years at michigan, for a business degree, he jumped at the prospect. selfishly, at least a little part for quinn, was that he'd know that she was safe at all times- albeit his brothers, their shared groups of friends from michigan, or his parents. to which she'd made a joke of it, "how do its feel to be behind mama hughes on my emergency contact list?"

❂

Oh, you're spiralin' again The moment right before it ends, you're most afraid of But, don't you cancel any plans 'Cause I won't let you get the chance to never make them

❂

it was a rainy, torrential downpour, july friday evening in the detroit - ann arbor area. it was around 9 pm when she'd just gotten out work due to a project that blew up in her and her colleague's faces- so the five of them were stuck there until it was done. she knew that this was her breaking point, and it seemed like once a quarter she'd simply lose it. start ghosting everybody she loved, canceling plans or not even bothering to show up to them without a word. so now here she was, sitting in her townhouse garage and sobbing. she'd been denying each and every call that quinn had been making, the duration of the drive home. she'd promised to call him after she got out to discuss her flight in the morning, to toronto where he was with his brothers and a few friends and girlfriends. she couldn't pull herself to bring herself inside after shutting her car off. she couldn't pull herself together to shower, to eat or to even finish packing for her flight. she couldn't even pull herself to wipe her cheeks that were molten red and drenched with salty tears.

all the way in toronto, quinn was panicking. freaking out outside of the restaurant they were all at. why wasn't she picking up? his mind ran with soulless ideas and thoughts, one's that made him think the worst and on the verge of throwing up. after the 20th call (i know) he called his mom, who said she hadn't heard from her since the previous sunday when they went to brunch, despite her telling his mom that she'd text her something that week. and then once ellen had said that it had been pouring the whole day and hadn't let up, his anxiety surged. what if she slid into a ditch? what if she skidded into another car? lost her vision through the windshield? a million thoughts echoed throughout his mind, as he tried to calm himself down. "if you cannot get ahold of her before 12, i will go over there to make sure she is ok." ellen offered, and that made quinn breathe a bit. that was the first thing he thought of when she said she'd be staying in detroit, that his mom would be nearby at all times. as selfishly as that was, quinn thought.

❂

Don't let this darkness fool you All lights turned off can be turned on I'll drive, I'll drive all night I'll call your mom

❂

she pushed her garage door open into the mud room, sliding her purse and shoes off. she slowly made her way towards the kitchen, grabbing the water canister from the fridge and pouring herself a tall glass. her phone continued to buzz with messages from quinn, and now luke and jack, who were overly concerned for the one person they saw as an older sister. she peered down at it, and saw a text from quinn stating: please text, call, anything please. im gonna drive home tonight - rn. she sighed, pulling her phone into her hands and typing, "don't." and quinn pressed his head down on the restaurant table, he had just sat back down at. she pressed the button to call him and he picked up on the second ring, "don't do that quinn, im fine." she lied through gritted teeth. he shook his head, heading back outside. "sunny...please." he begged, as his voice broke. a thick crack with emotion bubbling underneath. "i promise, im ok." she lied again, and now her body was betraying her. "sunny?" he asked softly, and then he heard her sobs. "sunny?" he questioned again, as her sobs got heavier. "im sorry. im sorry quinine.....god, i wish-" she paused as she realized what she was gonna say, something she'd wanted to say for years when he'd be there to comfort her. "i wish i'd never met you quinnie, you have never deserved any of this and do not deserve it." she sobbed, breaking quinn's heart in the process. "no! you don't get to say that, or believe that. because i sure as hell don't." he argued and she shook her head. "no, you don't deserve a friend that doesn't see the good in the world. who doesn't look towards tomorrow with a mindset of, that things are gonna be better. tomorrow's a new day. you don't deserve that, your family, my family- nobody deserves it." she croaked, wiping her tears roughly off of her cheeks.

quinn's heart broke, "i promise sunny- this time its gonna be different. we will get you better help, ill take you wherever we need to go to get you the help you need. were not giving up, ok? im not nor ever going to give up. you're my best friend sunny, we will work through this. there's so much good about you and the way you treat everybody around you. everything is gonna be ok sunny, ok?" he pleaded, and she heard her sniffles. "i promise that everything will be made new, sunny. let me - let me drive home right now, ill call your mom- ill call my mom, everything will be ok!" he said more so to trick himself into thinking it, but he was terrified. she shook her head, "no its quinnie, im just gonna go to sleep." she said before hanging up.

❂

Waiting room, no place to stand His greatest fears and wringing hands and the loudest silence If you could see yourself like this If you could see yourself like this, you'd have never tried it

❂

as quinn was just getting his bags together from the hotel room, and waiting on the delivery of a rental car - he got the call from his mom. he was with his brothers when he got it. he called her after sunny had hung up, asking her to go be with her until he could get there. about 2 hours later because of flooding and how bad the vision was that evening, ellen had made it to her townhouse right outside of detroit. and the moment she got off the phone with 911, she called quinn. whose world was rightfully, broken in half.

quinn stood in the waiting room after driving back with his brothers, and so the three of them stood there silently. ellen was the only one with sunny at that moment, now - 6 am. ellen had been with sunny since 1 am, that morning after her and jim drove to check on her. jack called sunny's mom, who lived in Indianapolis with her step father, who instantly got in the car and drove up to detroit. who were nearing their arrival any minute. all three of the boy's minds ran wild with thoughts and feelings, but quinns. his were lethal at this point, and filled with guilt, more than anything. quinn's head whipped up when he saw jim walking from the elevator and nodded towards quinn, and then his two other sons. "come with me." jim said before he took them with him upstairs. she'd been taken to the psych floor after she had arrived.

"she is ok quinn." jim said placing a hand on his shoulder to try to comfort him. quinn nodded softly, the look on his face of somebody who was mentally gone. jim and the three boys, stepped out and towards her room. ellen turned her head when the door opened, "your dad and i are gonna head downstairs to wait for her parents, we will be downstairs." ellen said standing up and quinn nodded, "we'll go with you." jack said referring to him and luke, who nodded as well. "let us know if you need anything q." ellen said comfortingly and he nodded, still looking towards sunny. the family walked out, leaving quinn who sat down next to the girl. she was sleeping peacefully and soundly, not flinching or stirring the dark haired girl after he grabbed her hands softly. his hands eclipsed hers, as he did so. he brought their hands to his lips, as he sat forward with his elbows on knees. "fucking a sunny." he mumbled to himself, "i thought i'd lost you for good this time." he added as silent tears poured out thinking about the last time, this almost happened.

Stayed on the line with you the entire night 'Til you told me that you had to go

"i dont want to do it anymore quinnie." she sobbed. her final semester of senior year was getting to her, and she was stressed beyond the max with work, her internship and life in general. and what made it harder, was that quinn was in vancouver while she was in ann arbor.

"what can i do for you, sunny? please tell me what i can do."

"you can't do anything q, there's nothing stopping me or in my way anymore." she cried.

quinn shook his head, "dont say that. you know that isn't true. you've got your mom, sister, brother, sadie, my family and, and me. and you're whole future ahead of you." he said through a scratchy voice.

"sunny, please stay on the line with me until you fall asleep. i don't care how late it is." he said - no pleaded.

"i gotta go quinnie. ill call you tomorrow morning." she said before hanging up, before heading over to the hughes' residence.

❂

Oh, dear, don't be discouraged I've been exactly where you are

❂

sure, quinn could not totally relate to sunny. but he had had his moments. when his first season ended, the off season between the 2022-2023 season and 2023-2024. where the team had been god awful. he'd had moments of unclarity, throughout their friendship. but certainly, never on the level of her's. but there were moments where the two could bond on a different level, and where the two could feel exactly how the other felt.

he'd come out on the other side every single time, and did not let it discourage him. he knew it was a part of life, and the career that he chose. he hoped at some point, before it was too late, that she'd come out on top on the other side.

that she'd finally be able to get some peace in life.

she woke up around 7:30 am, with her parents in the hallway with ellen and jim, talking quietly over everything. quinn sat next to her, while his brothers went to go get coffee and small breakfast items for everybody. when the girl awoke, she did not expect to be there in the hospital. she didn't expect to see quinn beside her, looking past her out the window. she didn't expect to be alive, to be quite honest. she shifted a little bit as tears formed in her eyes, as she felt guilt wash over her. and a bit of frustration, that it hadn't worked.

"sunny.." quinn began trailing off, as he felt her hand pull from his and saw her shift in the bed. she looked at him with the biggest puppy eyes he'd ever seen, and then her lips began to quiver. he quickly hopped into the hospital bed, pulling her into him as she began to sob. her throat dry and scratchy as she began to speak, "why?" she begged. "why me?" she added, as quinn kissed her head. "why am i so broken?" she sobbed into the warmth of his chest, as he began to cry with her. "i don't deserve you quinnie, i don't. i never have and never will." she croaked, and he frowned. he pulled back a bit and brought his hands to her cheeks, to make her look at him. he shook his head, "i don't deserve you my sunny." he began, before swallowing. "from the moment i met you, in that god awful english course, you showed me that a person can be relentlessly kind, incredibly unselfish, and even if you don't realize it - you find the good in everything and everyone." he paused, "and now you need to find that goodness in yourself. because it is there." he finished, his brown eyes pouring into hers.

both of their eyes filled with tears, and their bodies full of nerves.

she nodded softly, "and if you couldn't tell through that thick skull of yours- that's my way of telling you i love you." he quickly diffused the situation, "and how much love i have for you." he added quickly. she smiled softly, "i love you too, quinnie. thankyou for pointing out my thick skull." she hummed, before leaning into his left hand.

❂

Throw a punch, fall in love, give yourself a reason Don't wanna drive another mile wonderin' if you're breathin' So, won't you stay, won't you stay, won't you stay with me?

❂

it was now early august, and between therapy and time away from work- the girl was finally beginning to understand what quinn had meant when the two spoke that early morning at the hospital. he'd been there every day with her since then, making sure she got the appropriate help alongside her mom. he'd made sure he kept her schedule in order, making sure she went to her in-person therapy sessions, made sure that she was eating enough, drinking enough water, and made sure to take her mind off of it all. this was one of their final full weeks together, and quinn wanted to make the most of it.

he drove the two from ann arbor down to new buffalo michigan, on lake michigan about two in a half hours outside of chicago. he rented the two a small beach house on a private beach for the getaway. this morning the girl rose around 5:04 am, right before sunrise. she quickly got out of the shared bed (which wasn't a shared bed in the beginning, but after a night staying up to talk it naturally became one.) and headed out towards the beach that was a foot off of the back deck. she made her way down the beach, after slipping on a one piece and submerged herself quickly into the lukewarm water.

she dunked herself underneath the water, before swimming back to the surface. she hadn't realized that quinn had followed her out, after feeling the bed shift and then a cold spot in her wake. she turned behind her after quinn had snapped a pic, and she smiled. "morning q." she smiled, now swimming on her back. he smiled, sitting down on the deck and putting his legs in the water.

"will I be subject to a pep talk today?" she teased with a grin, as quinn chuckled. he shrugged, "maybe." he mused. "let me guess its gonna include punching somebody, giving myself a reason to do things and possible falling in love? two topics of which haven't been talked about?" she quipped, pulling herself up the deck to sit next to him on it. she leaned her head that was soaked on his shoulder, and he smiled softly resting his on hers.

"why dont you come back to vancouver with me?" he questioned out loudly, a few minutes later. she felt her breathe hitch in her throat, before removing her head from his. "you don't have to say yes right now but...i don't know if i can go without seeing you. i don't think i can handle you ghosting me and shutting the world out. after that night, i don't want to wake up and fear that you arent breathing anymore. but ofcourse, if you won't come with me- ill stay here. ill take some time off, and we can work on things." he offered and she shook her head. "you you cant do that for me." she pleaded and he now shook his head, "id do anything for you sunny, don't you understand that?" he paused to gauge her reaction, "id do everything in my power and simply - my existence for you. you have been such a light in my life despite everything, since the moment you walked into it. and i frankly, am never letting you walk out of it." he said as she began to feel overwhelmed. she'd never thought about how quinn felt about her, through everything. especially through the short term girlfriend he'd had and the talking stages that went nowhere with girls.

"dont say what it is i think you're going to say." she begged, as she began to cry. more so, happy tears. he wiped them quickly, looking into her eyes. "i love you, and have always loved you. even from the sidelines and through my own shit i have loved you from that first damn and god-awful frat party, and from the moment you said hi." he said rubbing his thumbs across her cheeks. she clasped her eyes shut and shook her head, "look at me pretty girl." he whispered and she reopened them. "back in the hospital room, you said it then, why did you try to run it back? why did you try to neutralize it?" she questioned, "because you didn't deserve it in that moment. you deserved better." he answered. she nodded, "i would have said it back quinnie. i would have said it if you hadn't shut up." she said with a small grin. his head cocked to the side just a bit. "i love you quinn, and i have always. i've loved you through everything. your dedication to never giving up on me, has shown me some of the greatest love in life. and in turn, has made me fall so deeply in love with you." she confessed and quinn smiled. he smiled widely before leaning in slowly, but it was too slow for the girl. she connected the two's lips and melted into his body.

she pulled away, "oh and before we move on for the day, id love to come to come to van with you. i miss brock." she teased before he pulled the girl up and towards the lake house.

and now here we are !!!! i hope you enjoyed, especially if you made it to this point🫶🏻

#quinn hughes #quinn hughes x oc #quinn hughes x reader #quinn hughes x y/n #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes blurb #quinn hughes imagine #vancouver canucks #luke hughes #jack hughes #new jersey devils #nhl #hockey #nhl blurb #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #hockey fic #nhl fic #hockey blurb

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ender--slime · 3 months ago

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AAAAAAAND PREORDERS ARE CLOSED!

holy shit!! thank you all four million bajillion times THANK YOU for the overwhelming support!! the total order count came tooooo…

FIVE HUNDRED ORDERS!! 500!! EXACTLY FIVE HUNDRED!

WAYGH!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!! THATS CRAZY!! Thank you so much!!! This is so much more than I could have ever imagined!! I’m so so happy and grateful for the support!

SO!! What now?

GETTING THE BAGS MADE

It will take about TWO MONTHS to get every bag made, and then they get to be shipped to my house where i will…ship them all out to YOU. Um. Yeah. Nearly 500 bags. in my house. to ship out. one by one. i feel like markiplier with his tasteful calendar years ago. except he had to sign fifty THOUSAND and i’m only packing 500. so. actually it’s nothing like that and i get to SUCK IT UP!!! and look at the calendar in question on my wall for emotional support....please be patient with me while i do this!!! this will take me probably another couple of months just to get every single one out there!! but it will be done!! one day i’ll probably pay like. a fulfillment center? to do this for me? i’m kinda new to this. if that wasn’t super obvious… and then, after that…

Some changes moving forward:

PRICE INCREASE

Boo sound effect, tomatos, i know. But i got such overwhelming support for this project that um…well, i have to pay taxes on it! Essentially this became my real life job in a very short amount of time! I have to make myself an LLC now?!? I’m incredibly grateful for the support, but this does mean I need to make sure I can actually afford to keep doing this. or else the IRS will fucking GET ME. Like seriously. It could get really messy really fast. I have to pay taxes all by myself now. And this means a slight price increase for future editions of the bag. The base price will increase from $40 to $50! Shipping will stay the same. This does not come without some slight upgrades, though!

BAG UPGRADES

The strap is going to be longer in future editions (by what measurement i’m not sure yet- i will do some experimenting and figure out an ideal length!) and I will also see if I can order straps separately so that any Pink and Purple bag owners who would like an even longer strap can buy an extra one without having to buy a new bag! The bag strap length is okay right now, but I got quite a few requests to make them even longer- so I will do so!!

The inside pocket will be slightly modified to be looser fabric instead of the super tight zipper pocket. Can’t fit much in there. It will hopefully still have a zipper, though! I’ll workshop this a bit before I do the next batch!

If anyone has any more suggestions for future batches of the bag, please do let me know! If it’s within my (and the manufacturer’s) power to do, I definitely want to try!!

NEXT BATCH?

The next batch will be YELLOW and BLUE!! Hash fans unite!! You got your poll win eventually!! After yellow and blue, I’m planning some funky ones! Black, and…well. something else!! i’ll come up with one to go with it!

The black ones are pretty fuckin cool, and I can’t wait to show you all! I have two ideas for Black bags that i simply cannot decide between so i’ll probably have to put it up for a vote next summer!!

Okay, that’s all for announcements today!! Thank you all so, so, SO much for the support, and thank you in advance for your patience!!

WHERE DOIN THIS MAN… WHEre makin this hapen :)

#funtime speaks #captchalogue card bag #homestuck

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justinspoliticalcorner · 15 days ago

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Jay Kuo for Think Big Picture:

We’re all still grieving the electoral loss and feeling queasy about the prospect of Trump returning to the White House in January. But in response to the giddy pronouncements from the GOP and the Trump campaign, some have already begun to think about an effective political resistance to Trump and Trumpism.

Democrats need to make these plans knowing full well that Trump will be backed by a sycophantic GOP Congress and blank check-writing SCOTUS. And this time around, there won’t be any adults in the room, including White House counsel who during his first term would quietly shelve Trump’s most outrageous requests, or chiefs of staff like John Kelly who would struggle to moderate, educate and soften his most extreme positions. No, this time around Trump will be surrounded by people even further to the right of him. They will seek to implement the most dangerous and destructive of policies, many drawn from the Project 2025 blueprint. And they will encourage Trump to issue Executive Orders that could reshape American democracy, insert our armed forces deeply into civil affairs, hurtle our economy into an abyss, and upend the lives of millions of minorities.

This is a thought piece, an early stab (and work in progress) about how Democrats (and the lawyers who are aligned with them) can ready themselves to resist Trump. We’re in very new territory here, but the ideas are based on what we’ve learned about Trump from both his first term and the four years he’s been more or less idle when he wasn’t sitting in courtrooms or stumping on the campaign trail. They play into both his ego and the worst aspects of his character and leadership style. I hope you find this early exploration a good starting point for how the next four years could go if Democrats play their cards smartly, even if the strategy seems highly unorthodox. Note that I won’t be discussing what average citizens might consider doing. This, for now, is the beginning of a political and legal strategy. Others involved in grassroots organizing may have ideas for direct resistance by citizens, but that is for another discussion.

[...]

Hit ‘em with lawfare

One of the most effective weapons against Trump’s policies during his first term was the slew of lawsuits that his executive orders met when they were first announced. Remember the Muslim ban? That bounced up and down the courts for years before it could finally go into effect in a watered-down form.

Lawyers from every non-profit walk of life should be readying civil complaints today, just as people like Russ Vought are already preparing horrific executive orders for Trump to sign. The minute Trump announces his Day One policy to deport millions of undocumented migrants, for example, lawyers everywhere should file suit. It shouldn’t just be one suit; it should be several. Tie up the White House lawyers and the Trump Justice Department with as many cognizable claims as they can think of. More than the sheer number, they should file these cases before judges in jurisdictions where the appellate courts will be more friendly, such as in the Ninth Circuit. This is the inverse of what MAGA and Christian Nationalist legal counsel have been doing now for years by picking a single court near Amarillo, Texas to ensure their cases are heard before radical judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Once those cases are filed, judges (and their clerks) should slow-walk them. Act like the nun in The Sound Of Music, opening the gate as slowly as she can so the Nazis are delayed. Then, after issuing temporary restraining orders, set the hearings out as far as possible. Have the lawyers demand extensions. File motions that could receive interlocutory appeals, to further gum things up. In short, drag things out as long as possible to prevent his policies from going into effect. Governors in blue border states could also get involved. California and Arizona both have Democratic governors, after all. And they also have Democratic state attorneys general. These states could move to intervene in suits or file them on their own, just as the red states have done to block Biden’s policies like student debt relief. Sure, this will eventually get up to the Supreme Court and get overturned, but the point is delay. Run out the clock, run out the clock, run out the clock. Trump only gets four years, two before the midterms. [...]

These are but a few broad-stroke ideas, but it’s time everyone who will be part of the resistance start thinking about how they can play a vital part in pushing back. Some of these tactics are admittedly unorthodox, others quite petty. Still others are variations on what has worked well before. Together, they could bog down or distract Trump and the White House just long enough for the midterms to give Democrats a chance to regain control of one or both chambers and really turn up the heat.

It may make many quite uncomfortable to consider deploying these kinds of strategies. They make Democrats into obstructionists, even political saboteurs, much as the GOP has been for the few cycles when Democrats have been in charge. But here there is a difference, though it’s one MAGA Republicans will never acknowledge: When actual fascists have taken control of the government and are trying to destroy democracy, patriotic opponents must use every peaceful means at their disposal to prevent them. Indeed, it is a moral imperative, because millions of lives are on the line. We cannot act as if the world has not changed, and Democrats must grow far more accustomed to acting outside the box and getting creative in their approaches.

It’s time for Democrats to play rough by delaying and gumming up Donald Trump’s tyrannical proposals to run the clock down.

#Democratic Party #Resist 47 #Resist Trump #The Resistance #Trumpism #Trump Administration #Lawfare #Trump Administration II

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strniohoeee · 9 months ago

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Hidden In The Shadows

Part 2 Here

Pairing: Matt Sturniolo X Female Reader

Synopsis: Following a lesson about this town that seemed to suddenly vanish, Y/N is intrigued to figure out what truly happened. However she might’ve bitten off more than she can chew….

Warnings⚠️: Nothing crazy, talks of/explanations of a cult, creepy rural town. This was from a Drabble about matt based on a type of horror movie he’d be done by @gamermattsgf she’s wifey and I had to adapt this into an imagine😫 @st7rnioiossblog

Song for imagine: Oblivion- Grimes

I never walk about after dark

It’s my point of view

Cause someone could break your neck

Coming up behind you

Always coming and you’d never have a clue

Moving out of my hometown wasn’t on my bingo cards for this year and moving out of my hometown for a research project was 1000 percent not on my bingo cards. Yet somehow I was packed up and on the road within three months of starting my project.

I’ve always had a weird niche for all things history, but especially history that just seems to vanish into thin air. I began to become extremely interested in towns that are no longer on the map due to poverty, weather change or even these people becoming hunters and gathers. Packing up and moving out in an instant. It all started in my senior year of college. I was studying geography at my local four year college in my hometown of Nevada.

Honestly I hated college all the long hours, all the homework and also having a full time job on top of that, but I had a full ride so I decided to suck it up. My very last year I had some space for a filler class that got me extra credits so I landed on the study of United States Lands focusing on increase and decrease of population throughout the recent centuries.

Personally I thought the class was going to suck, but to my surprise my professor was amazing. Towards the end of my final semester we began to learn about Pleasant Town Oklahoma. A once booming town immediately vanished off the face of the earth.

“Now class you may be asking yourself why was this town so rich? And I’m here to tell you it’s because the mayor at the time in the year 1915 had connections with our president. They hid money, fabrics, food and all types of expensive items within this small town” Mr Wayne stated

“I mean with hiding all this stuff how did they become so wealthy?” One guy had asked, my eyes darting to him

“They were being paid off for hiding these things, however the money was dirty money, so they created many businesses to get the cash flow moving. From one store to one man’s pocket to the next and then next thing you know that dirty money is in George's hand who lives in Virginia! It was all an amazing scheme, very smart. But as you can see it didn’t last long nor did it end well” He had stated as he clicked the laptop to show the next slide shown on the board

“Within three years of this operation this small town alone was bringing in about $100,000 a month which is over $2 million dollars in today's money. So then you ask yourself how does such a rich state with so much money just disappear? And all the money too?” He states scratching his chin

“So Professor Wayne….what exactly happened to them?” I asked after raising my hand

“No one really knows” he states uncrossing his arms and leaning off the desk

“I mean there has to be a reason right? That’s a lot of money to just disappear” I state as I jot down notes

“Well here’s the other thing, there are many rumors dating back to the creation of Oklahoma which was 1907. Sources have stated that Pleasant Town is evil and I’m talking demonic evil. People have said the reason the cash flow never stopped was because they were all a cult and seemingly used one another as sacrifice.” He stated clearing his throat

“Sacrifice?” I questioned raising my eyebrow

“Well yes! In many cultures it is stated if you do a blood sacrifice for the devil and/or sell your soul then your wishes shall come true. Their wishes were to stay wealthy. This came with problems however” he says as he sits down at his desk

The whole class was on the edge of their seats waiting for him to go on.

“Many of these men had short arms and deep pockets. Making it very easy for one man to kill the next out of greed” Wayne goes on

“And didn’t they get caught? I mean the president wouldn’t allow that” one classmate states

“Very true! The town was very small, only about 80 people now if 10 people suddenly die many eyebrows are raised. For a while they covered up the stories claiming a sickness like smallpox. The mayor decided to bring animals claiming this would make them richer since they produce meat, eggs and milk. Now he wasn’t wrong, but the animals were used in these blood sacrifices to hide their tracks” he says nodding his head

“God these people were ahead of their time” I blurt out and crossed my arms over their chest

“Oh they were, but that might’ve costed them their fortunes and their town” Professor Wayne states

“So that’s it? They just left? And what now?” I asked him

“It’s stated that they just separated, leaving most of the money to the whole state of Oklahoma. Afraid the president was after them or maybe they danced with the devil for too long and ended up paying the price” he states bluntly

“And the price is?” I asked him

“Death” he says frowning a bit which caused a chill to run up my spine

“But this is all speculation. About 30 years later Pleasant Town was rebuilt and supposedly none of that cult stuff was brought to that town. And till this day it’s still up and running. I believe the population is only about 200-250 people max?” He says rubbing his chin in thought

“I mean that’s just sad… we’ll never know the truth” I said to him shutting my notebook

“I mean you could always go and visit, spend the summer there. See what it’s like……anybody up for a challenge” he says laughing as the class shudders in fear and averts their eyes to the floor

I mean I was super interested in this lost town with such a dark history that suddenly reappeared 30 years after weird cult shit was happening. I could always take the summer off from work since I graduate in May….. take a road trip to Pleasant Town Oklahoma. Find the real history and report back to Professor Wayne.

My thoughts were interrupted when the bell rang and he bid his goodbyes to the class. Everyone was quick on their feet out of the door, but I stood back very interested in talking to him.

I trotted over to his desk as he shut his laptop, stuffing it into his book bag. His eyes darting up once he felt my presence

“Ahh Ms. Y/L/N…. You seemed very intrigued with today's lesson, planning a weekend getaway?” He asked me playfully

“Funny that you mention it because I was thinking more of a whole summer get away” I stated

“A whole summer?” He says brows lifting immediately

“I’m really interested in this town. I mean a mayor in on cult rituals to bring tons of cash in and the president not having a clue? And then they just vanished? This is like a movie sir” I state as I ramble on

“I mean it’s all just speculations Y/N” he says smiling at me

“I know sir, but is there any way I can get your research on this town so I can study it a bit more? I plan on building a whole case for this and figuring it out” I pleaded

“You’re really interested in this aren’t you?” He asks opening his bag up

“I really am Professor Wayne” I say back

“Here, but listen this is a tight knit community. Don’t go digging your nose where it doesn’t belong. Tread lightly this isn’t your turf, okay? In a town like that with such a small population and a dark history, you don’t want any enemies” he says handing me the folder titled “Pleasant Town”

“Yes, and thank you sir” I stated nodding my head

After that I finished my final semester two months later in May. Between work and classes I built up more of a file on this town jumping from a folder to two binders stacked with information.

Two days after my graduation I did some research on the town. This place had no hotels, no motels and for sure no air bnbs. That’s where I ran into my first problem, attempting to find a place to stay.

Searching on Zillow I had found a house for rent. In the middle of nowhere. One gravel road and corn fields. From the pictures it did seem there were few houses across and next to it, so I figured that was perfect. I'd make friends with neighbors.

I mean the house was decent for the area. Seemed to be a two bedroom two bathroom house. The bedrooms upstairs, one bathroom down stairs and one upstairs. Had a pretty average sized kitchen in the back of the house, a dining room to the right of the front door, a living room to the left of the front door, the stairs faced the front door, and then there were small hallways that lead to the kitchen. And there was a basement that seemed small, well kept and empty. It sucks to say I actually liked the place

My second problem began when I called the realtor a very old southern man by the name of Beaufort Smithson. I dialed him that morning and from the moment he heard my accent he seemed to turn a cold shoulder.

“Please sir” I pleaded with him

“Listen ma’am you sound young and not from these parts. What bring someone like you around this small town” he states deeply

“Well I’m from Nevada and it’s just so crazy here and I’ve been looking to stay somewhere a few states away that’s quiet and small” I state

“But you’re looking to rent from June 1st to August 31st…. We do 7 month rentals” he says bluntly

“Well I want to see it I like it first” I say lying through my teeth

“Can’t you see from the pictures if you like it or not” he says sucking on his tobacco tucked in his lip

“I can have the full rent for those three months ready for you in cash” I state desperately

“In cash you say” he says as I hear his chair squeak from underneath him

God these people really were money hungry till this day…

“Yes sir $800 a month for 3 months I can get you that $2,400 in cash June 1st” I state

“Well little lady you have yourself a deal. Now get yourself a pen and paper and jot this down. June 1st 12 in the afternoon we’re going to meet at the gas station in Pleasant Town” he states spitting his tobacco into a styrofoam cup

“Uhhh what gas station is that sir?” I ask as the pen dangled in my hand

“Sweetie we only got one gas station down yonder….you can’t miss it” he says chuckling

“Right…. Well thank you Mr. Smithson, my names Y/N Y/L/N, and I’ll be seeing you on June 1st” I state

“Well alright darling see you then” he says chuckling

“Oh by the way I look like-“ but I was cut off

“Oh trust me I’ll know what you look like…..safe travels” he whispers before hanging the phone up on me

That phone call made me slightly regret my choices of spending my summer with some shit kickers than on the Las Vegas strip…..

I spent the last two and a half weeks packing, purchasing what I know I won’t find in Oklahoma and doing more research.

I think I was on page 4,000 on google before I found a new article with information I hadn’t seen before. I placed my plate of pizza down as my eyes scanned the laptop screen quickly.

It was a newspaper clipping dating back to the year 1953. Only 70 years ago…. Interesting. The title stated “Farm owner questioned in the massive slaying of all his animals” my brows furrowed.

There’s no possible way that 70 years ago these cult killings continued? But my fingers scrolled down further as I began to whisper

“Confused and angry farm owner, Thomas Sturniolo was seen today yelling at cops as he was taken out of his small Pleasant Town home. After all his farm animals died and weird things happened around town he was suspected of killing his animals in a weird cult-like way. Demanding he be let loose, and that the town was crazy and out to get him because he is the wealthiest farmer. Insisting his competition killed his livestock and not him.”

My eyes couldn’t believe what I was reading…this was pretty recent honestly. This was happening around the time my grandparents were young children… I printed those news clippings out along with many other clippings of his arrest, his release and his disappearance…..

Adding them to my binder as I finished my pizza. This was so insane to me, and this would make a great conversation with professor Wayne after my studies.

I opened up my email and decided to email my professor.

Hello Professor Wayne! I hope your summer treats you well. In about three days I am off to study the lost town of Pleasant Town Oklahoma. That folder of information you gave me has grown into two large binders, and I found more information today. Down below you’ll find links to news articles dating back to the 50’s about weird cult animal killings! I think you’d find it fascinating! I’d like to update you here and there through my three month stay, and then maybe when I get back we can discuss all my findings over lunch! Thank you for your time! Hope to talk to you soon. -Sincerely, Y/N Y/L/N

Two days later I was all packed up into my car. About four large luggage and two duffel bags…. I was well prepared to say the least. Saying bye to my family and friends I began my venture to Pleasant Town.

My venture was a full day, and I made sure I counted for gas breaks, nap breaks and food breaks to make sure I got to Mr. Smithson at 12 on the dot.

June 1st 11:25 am- 35 min ETA Pleasant Town Gas Station

I was coming across the entrance to the town. I was jamming out to SZA, bobbing my head I looked over to my right smiling as I read the sign

“Welcome to Helltown….once you get in you’ll never get out!” It read

My smiled dropped, I snatched my sunglasses off my face and turned the radio down….. a cold sweat began to form on my back as I looked in the rear view mirror

What the fuck was that? I was becoming increasingly anxious and wondered if I just made the worst mistake of my life. I rubbed my lips together in anxiety as I gripped onto the steering wheel harder.

I chose to shake it off, there has to be a logical explanation for this I thought to myself. Putting my sunglasses back on, I turned my music up a little bit and continued down the silent road.

My map told me 1 minute, and slowly I pulled up to a very old and very dusty gas station. Coming to a stop as the gravel left a smoke trail ahead of my car.

I put the car in park and hopped out, stretching my back and cracking my neck. Suddenly an old man hopped out of his large red truck. Spitting tobacco on the ground as he waddled over

“You, young lady must be Y/N?” He asks as he sucks the tobacco

“Yes sir I am” I state as I smile and place my hand out to shake his

Looking down as he smacks his lips, he firmly shakes my hands.

“Good to met ya, welcome to Pleasant Town” he states coughing

“Thank you Mr. Smithson” I state smiling once again

“Well uhh” he states smiling at me

“Oh right” I say, eyes going wide as I walk over to the passenger side. Grabbing the envelope with all the money in it.

“Here you go, $2,400 cash” I state handing the envelope over to him

He grabs the envelope and takes the money out, beginning to count it

“300,400,500-“ he says flying through the money

“Uhh what’s with the welcome sign saying welcome to Helltown? Once you get in you’ll never get out?” I ask pointing over my shoulder

He immediately stops counting, sucks his teeth and looks up at me through his lashes

“Idiot teenagers who have nothing better to do than destroy property that isn’t theirs” he states as he goes back to counting

“Oh…” I state rocking back and forth on my heels

“Alright it’s all here! Thank you sweetheart. I’ll drive you to your house just follow behind me” he states stuffing the money back in the envelope

“Thank you sir” I state as he turns and walks back to his truck

I hop in mine and wait for him to go, following closely behind him I take in the surroundings. Trees, dirty roads, corn fields, farm houses, large stacks of hay and pretty decent sized homes. They were just super outdated.

It was only about a 15 minute drive, but man it felt like forever. I’d hate to get stuck with no gas on a road like this.

Pulling up to the house he pulls onto the gravel driveway as I do too. We both hop out and we walk towards the house. We walk up the steps and wait on the front porch as he digs around for the keys.

Looking around I take in the surroundings, there’s quite a bit of farms around here…. My thoughts are interrupted when he finds the keys and opens the door. Allowing me to walk in first

“I had my crew clean up the place for you” he states shutting the door

“Oh, do you own a cleaning company?” I ask looking at him

“No.. I get these young boys out here to do what needs to be done around these parts” he states bluntly

“Oh the young teenagers who mess around” I say laughing

“No, I send those boys to work the corn fields…. The older men do the hard work round here. The cleaning, the lifting, the shootin” he says sucking the tobacco

“Shooting?” I ask as I turn to face him

“Yup they shoot the ones for my man down under” he states looking me dead in my eyes

“What?” I ask as I began to get nervous

“Oh I’m sorry sweetheart I must be confusing you, you see my dad loved to hunt but he’s too old now and lives in my basement. He has me send out the young men to shoot for him and bring him back some animals” he states chuckling

“Ohhhh yeah” I say laughing awkwardly

“Well young lady this is your home now” he says handing me the keys.

“Thank you” I say meekly

“You got your dining room, living room, and kitchen all down here fully furnished as you can see. Bathroom down here one upstairs and both bedrooms upstairs. Oh uhh I’d suggest food shopping early in the day, you don’t want to be out late at night around here….that is due to the wild animals of course like bears and coyotes” he states looking at me

“Of course” I say nodding politely

“Make sure you lock your doors at night. Especially the back door….. animals in the kitchen are never a good thing” he says turning around to head to the front door

“Got it” I state

“And uhhh we’re a family here….youre house is my home….or whatever the saying is….my house is your house….ah you know what I mean” he says shaking his head

We bid our goodbye and I watched him drive off. My hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. This whole conversation was making me nervous and uneasy. One other thing I realized was I’d be having no WiFi here. However my phone had 5G and the service wasn’t awful here shockingly….. I immediately sent an email back to Professor Wayne

“Just got here! The house is actually super nice. It's very historical and artsy. The realtor is a total creep though. His name is Beaufort so that explains a lot! He said some weird things and made weird analogies. Making it seem like beyond the naked eye there’s more to this town…. I’ll keep you posted”

I hit send and slid my phone back into my pocket. I placed the keys in my front pocket and walked outside. The warm sun kissed my skin as I squinted. Walking over to my car I popped the trunk and began to take my luggage’s out.

Suddenly I felt like there were eyes on me. The way the area got super quiet. So quiet you could hear a pin drop. I looked over my shoulder in the least scared way possible. There was nobody there. I rubbed my forehead and let out a breath.

“Y/N relax” I whispered to myself as I took my last luggage out

However unbeknownst to Y/N, she was in fact being watched. A young man on the second floor of his parents house. He stood in his room peering at the young woman through his sheer curtains.

His gaze was dull as he stared out the window, sweat trickled down his forehead, his mouth hung open slightly and his breathing became deep. His fingers swirled and tugged at his red flannel.

She was like out of a movie. He had never seen a woman like that down here. Those are the ones his mom warned him about. The type who didn’t like boys like him, the type he should….hate. However when he looked at her he couldn’t hate her….she seemed precious….precious just like his horse Bertha.

“Young Man! What did I tell you about standing at that window” he heard from behind him, he jilted and turned around

“I’m sorry mama…I wasn’t doin nuffin” he states as he looks at her

“It is not polite to stare at people you aren’t a child anymore. You don’t do that” she says to him

“I wasn’t looking I swear” he says with pleading eyes

“Well you go on now. Your father and I are leaving for the afternoon” she says to the boy

After his mom leaves he pears out his window again. The young woman had stopped to talk on the phone. He was so fascinated by her he simply couldn’t look away.

I hung up the phone after saying bye to my mom and pulled out my second luggage. Rolling it into my house and coming back out to get my third luggage. I huffed out a breath of air and wiped the sweat off my forehead

I leaned over to get the third luggage but it was stuck on something. I sucked my teeth and began to tug on the handle harder.

“Need a hand ma’am?” I heard from behind me

“OH SHIT” I yelled turning around and grabbing my heart

“Oh im sorry darling I didn’t mean to scare you” the young man states backing up a bit

“No it’s okay, I’m new to town so I’m a bit jumpy” I state shaking my head

“My apologies for sneaking up behind you, may I help you?” He asks looking at my trunk

“Yeah please that would be great” I say smiling as I tried to control my breathing

The young man grabs both of my luggages for me and I grab my duffel bags. We walk to the house and he leads the way to my other two luggage’s.

“Thank you so much” I say placing my bags on the couch

“My pleasure sweetheart” he says nodding his head

“I’m Y/N” I say sticking my hand out

“I’m Matthew, but I go by Matt” he says wiping his forehead with the inside of his shirt. The shirt lifted just enough for me to get a perfect view of his lower stomach.

Damn…why were the shit kickers in a creepy town always so hot…. I guess the movies aren’t wrong..

“Well Matt thank you once again, can I offer you some water?” I ask him

“Water would be nice” he says smiling a bright smile

We walked to the kitchen and I found some old glasses left behind. I rinsed it with water and then gave him some water from the sink.

He drank the full cup, allowing the water to dribble down his chin and to his neck. My gaze ever so slightly following the head of water.

“So, what brings you to this part of town darling?” He asks, his accent so thick I couldn’t even focus

“I come from a busy town and I’ve always wanted to move to a small rural area. Pleasant Town seemed just right” I state licking my lips

“Once you see what this towns like you’ll go running for the hills” he says smirking darkly

“What do you mean by that?” I asked clearing my throat

“Well we hunt, we drink beer til we’re piss drunk and race in old cars for fun, we sneak into farms at night and tip over the sleeping cows…. Amongst many other things” he states handing the glass back over to me

“Oh that’s nothing compared to where I’m from” I say placing the glass in the sink

“And that is?” He asks crossing his legs as he leaned against the wall

“Las Vegas Nevada” I state nodding

“Never been” he states

“You should visit one day” I say

“If I ever leave this town” he states swallowing thickly

“If you ever leave?” I question once again

“Well you know this place is home I don’t know how I’d do in a big place like that” he says smiling at me

“I suppose you guys are pretty far behind on a lot” I say giggling

“Oh trust me aren’t we all” he says kicking himself off the wall

“Well uh thank you so much Matt I don’t mean to keep you” I say to him as I begin to walk out the kitchen

“Oh no worries darlin” he says as he follows behind me his thick cowboy boots hitting the wood in all the right places

He opened my front door and began to head out

“I’ll see you around neighbor” I state to him

“See you around, oh and if you ever feel like there’s eyes on you….that's because there is….you know small town haha we can’t escape each other” he says coldly before adding a laugh at the end

“Right…right” I state smiling at him and blinking quickly

I watch him walk across the street and head into the home. I lock my car doors and shut my front door. Locking the door before walking to the kitchen back door, locking that one as well.

I spent the rest of the day sweeping up, cleaning and setting up my room. I hadn’t realized how late it gotten or how hungry I was till my stomach growling woke me up from a small Power Nap.

I got up and realized it was 8pm, I wasn’t sure what food stores would be open, but it was worth the try. Ignoring the warning not to go out at night I grabbed my house keys and car keys.

Locking the front door, I got into my car. Turning it on I put it in reverse. I looked over my right shoulder and when I went to look over my left Matt was there and had banged on my window.

I jumped out of my skin and hit the breaks. Rolling my window down I was breathing heavy

“Sorry sweetie” he says as he looks down at me

“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked him genuinely curious

“Oh me? No no, but you, you shouldn’t be out at this hour” he states

“It’s 8pm though?” I say furrowing my brows

“Yeah well the bears and coyotes come out this time” he says tapping the hood of my car

“I’m just running to the local store” I say

“You shouldn’t be out at this hour” he says again a bit firmer

“Umm okay” I say to him, remember what Professor Wayne said “no enemies this isn’t my turf”

I placed the car back in park and got out. Shutting the door and locking it I looked at Matt, a shot gun in his right hand as my eyes darted up.

“Don’t worry darling this ain’t nothing special. I use this to hunt” he says to me as he moves the gun back a bit

“For uhh Mr. Smithson’s dad?” I ask as my eyes slowly track up to his

“Oh no I do a different type of hunting for him” he says clearing his throat

“Do you now” I say rocking on my heels

“I get the animals causing issues for us here, the ones eating up all our crops. We can’t have those round these parts” he states chuckling

“Yeah…yeah bad for business. I’m going to head in for the night then” I say pointing behind myself

“Well alright now! You have a great night” he says in a whisper while offering me a smile

I smile back before turning in my heels and heading back into the house. Locking the door immediately as I run up the stairs.

I decided to shower and eat some leftover snacks. By this point it was midnight and I decided to brush my teeth so I could lay down for the night.

Shutting the bathroom light off I walk into my dark room using the brightness of my screen to lead me to my bed. Shutting my bedroom door behind me I trot over to my bed. However something in my peripheral view catches my eye.

Through the little dent in the Venetian blinds I see a light on in the house across the street from me. Slowly walking over to the window I peak out the small dent and look across the street.

All I can see is the silhouette of a skinny man with a shotgun in hand standing at the window. Almost like he’s staring out the window….

Suddenly he slides out of view and the light goes out, but I stay looking and I get an uneasy feeling. It’s like he’s still by the window…hiding in the shadows…watching….waiting….

I scared myself by doing this, so I backed away from the window and decided to lay down. Listening to my heart thump in my ears as I focused on controlling my breathing. My mind was racing because I was so nervous about this town and whether or not I made the right decision…..

I attempted to clear my mind and doze off to sleep. I knew I had a full day of adventures the following day especially since I needed to find a supermarket of some sort here!

The End…. For now

Alright guys I know I’ve been GONE, but it feels good to be back! I hope you enjoyed this part. Can’t wait to start working on part 2 shortly 🤭🖤 we’re at 2,009 followers! I love yall soooo much 🥺

-J💅🏽

#sturniolo triplets #sturniolo x reader #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo triplets imagines #matt sturniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo imagines #matthew sturniolo imagines #Spotify

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whatevergreen · 5 months ago

Text

The positives of the UK election result include:

The Conservatives (Tories) gone from government and 100s out of parliament including such scum as Rees-Mogg, '15 minute' former PM Liz Truss, Coffey, Gullis, and Shapps.

There are no Tories left in Wales.

Former Tory MP Jonathan Gullis is not taking it well.

There's 3 new Green MPs, Diane Abbot retained her seat, Jeremy Corbyn retained his seat and is joined by four other pro-Gaza independent MPs.

Jonathan Ashworth (Labour) lost his seat to one of the pro-Gaza independents, Shockat Adam.

Right-wing Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting came within a few hundred votes of almost losing their seats to pro-Gaza independents.

The Paisley's (DUP) are gone from Northern Ireland (though his TUV replacement isn't any better)

Anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker lost her deposit (only 196 votes). The trans candidate Sophie Molly running for the same seat won more votes than Parker.

Also, some key anti-trans MPs have lost their seats:

The Reform Party (pretty much Nazis) did not win the 13 seats they were initially projected to win based on the exit polls (and some of the worst estimates before the election had them gaining up to 60+ seats)

The dubious Workers Party GB got nowhere, and lost their only seat (goodbye Galloway).

The negative results:

The SNP lost most of their seats.

The Reform Party (basically just Nazis) won 4 seats. This includes millionaire and Trump lover Nigel Farage, now MP for Clacton-on-Reich. So the frog faced fascist is going to parliament (apologies to actual frogs) after decades of failing to get in.

And it's no good anyone pretending that it's only 4 seats, it doesn't matter: the really disturbing part is that Reform - a party led by xenophobes, racists, and homophobes - received just over 4 million votes nationwide.

Taking down Reform and Farage needs to be an antifascist priority.

#politics #uk politics #election #gaza #labour

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fleurrreads · 10 months ago

Note

hi b!

i was wondering if maybe i could request something angsty w steve?

thinking maybe of something like … unrequited love? or you feel like it’s unrequited?

(i absolutely SUCK at requesting i apologize)

★ right person, wrong time

an: hi lovely! i went through it with this request lol. i hope you like it ♡

warnings: angst and some more angst

tick tick tick

The day is going excruciatingly slow. You’re counting down the minutes before the school day is over. Just ten more minutes. Ten more minutes until your life hopefully changes for the better.

The plan is simple. You’ll go to Family Video after school, ask Steve out on a date and then hopefully he’ll say yes and you’ll have the best day of your life.

You try to push away the lingering anxiety that he won’t reciprocate your feelings. Pushing all the contents on your desk in your bag when the bell signals the end of the day. Hands sweaty as you stop by your locker to gather some things for the weekend.

Your locker door gets pulled open abruptly, Robin facing you with a smile. “Soooo? How are we feeling? You ready to confess your undying love to Stevie boy?” She wiggles her eyebrows and you laugh nervously. “I’m ready. As ready as I’ll ever be at least.” You’re trying not to think too hard about it.

The walk to Family Video was probably the most tiring and nerve wracking that you’ve ever experienced. On the way you’ve been recalling all the times you’d tell Steve how you knew you fell in love with him.

‘That one time you were still working at Scoops Ahoy and you gave me that ice cream for free because you saw the look on my face and just wanted to see a smile on my face.’

‘And the time when we went camping as a group and my tent just wouldn’t cooperate and you set it up for me without any complaints.’

‘And then of course the countless times you call me ‘pretty girl’ when you pick me up from school.’ You feel confident that he has to feel the same. It can’t be a coincidence that he’s never helped Robin like that.

Your feet stop infront of the video store and your heart beats madly in your chest. Robin stops you and spins you around before you can spot Steve in the store. A panicked expression washing over her face. Your heart sinks. “What’s wrong Robin?” You try and turn around to face what she’s looking at but she turns you back to face her. “Nothing. Uhm- I just forgot to tell you that I needed your help on this project of mine. Maybe we should uh… maybe we should go to my place first and finish it. Yeah! That’s a great idea!” She’s rambling, she’s nervous. You shove her hands away from you lightly, turning around and looking into the shop.

Robin was right. We shouldn’t have been here now. My heart feels like it’s breaking in a million pieces.

Steve is stood infront of the counter, a blonde girl standing next to him — kissing him. You see Steve smile into the kiss, grabbing her by the back of her head. You feel funny, the world is spinning as you stumble away from the store. Robin’s grim expression makes you feel even more embarrassed. She was rooting for this to go successfully. Did she know about the girl?

“Who is she Robin?” your voice is wobbly from the tears threatening to spill. “Did you know he was seeing her?” your embarrassment is on an astronomical level as you recall all those moments you thought he was showing you he liked you. Pfft, what a joke.

The hesitation in Robin’s voice is the final straw. You don’t look at her as you turn on your heel and make your way home. You don’t notice Steve watching the whole thing unfold with the blonde now walking around the store. Robin yelling your name after you.

As soon as you get home in the comfort of your own space you break down. The sobs now racking your frame as you fall to the floor. After a few jagged breaths you throw your bag’s contents on your bed. The letter you wrote Steve being right on the top. You rip it into four before throwing it in the trash bin.

Your heartbreak turned into despair. You were a fool to think that he would ever like you. Why did you think he’d ever go for you? You should’ve known better.

You cried yourself to sleep that night.

You hadn’t contacted Robin the entire weekend. You couldn’t face her. So as Monday rolled around you dreaded going to school. You barely ate anything at all, your cheeks were hollow and eyes baggy. You’re tired.

Robin tries talking to you before your Chemistry class, but you ignore her — choosing to sit at the table furthest from her. Away from everyone.

At lunch you sit with Dustin and the Hellfire Club. No-one asked anything as you sat down, quietly eating your meal.

Last period rolls around and Robin finally gets the chance to talk to you. “Please, talk to me. I’m so sorry for what happened. I didn’t know he was fooling around with that girl. Please you have to believe me, I didn’t know.” Robin is pleading, desperate. She scolded Steve when you left that day. ‘How could you not tell me you were serious with her?’ to which Steve replied, ‘Who? The blonde? We’re not.’ Robin was just as mad as you were. Steve could be so oblivious sometimes. So she told you everything. What he said and how he was just desperate because he hasn’t had a girlfriend in months.

Your brows furrowed. Has he always been like that? Was that why he was nice to you? Because he was bored and desperate? Robin sighed, her frustration also evident on her face. “Please try the confession again, I hate seeing you like this.” You laugh sarcastically. “Are you serious right now? I can’t do that, no.”

Something flashes in Robin’s eye, and she nods, understanding that was a silly question. “Steve’s picking us up today by the way.” She says it hesitantly. You look down, your shoes giving you some silent encouragement that you’d be able to face him today.

You see his car before you even step foot out of the building. Robin walks you towards the car, holding your hand in reassurance. You stop dead in your tracks before you can open the car door. “I can’t do this. Pretend i’m okay. Pretend i’m not hurt. I don’t belong here. I don’t want you to have to choose between us, because that would be unfair towards you. He didn’t technically do anything wrong. Just tell him i’ve been sick or something. I’ll walk home from now on.” You breathe a relieved sigh and walk towards the school again, tears spilling from your eyes.

You were wrong. Your heart fell in love with someone it shouldn’t have.

Steve watches from the car as you wipe your eyes, as Robin gets in the car. “What was that? Is she not coming with us?” He hasn’t heard from you in three days which was unusual for you. Robin puts on her seatbelt, sighing sadly. “She won’t be driving with us anymore. She says she prefers walking now. Something about exercise.” Steve picks out on the obvious lie but chooses to ignore it for now.

Steve thinks of how he was going to ask you to watch a movie with him that previous friday when that stupid blonde came into the store and kissed him for a bet and ruined his plans. He saw the look in your eyes when you walked away that day.

His heart ached as he drove away. He blew his shot, the only one he seemed to really care about. This one shot with you, and now that was gone too.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington #steve harrington angst #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #stranger things x reader #stranger things x you #stranger things x y/n

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