#guys please i beg if it IS OVER 150 NOTES DO NOT PRESS | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

severetimetravelnerd · 4 years ago

Text

We’ve got this (ft. G Dragon)

Your’s and Jiyong’s journey welcoming someone into your family.

(I don’t own any of the images used. All credit goes to the original owners.)

Taglist:

@unabashedturkeytreeslime

@happiestgirlontheeastcoast

@kwonnansi

Word count : 5501

If there is anyone else who would like to be tagged, you can comment or leave me a message :))

I only write on this blog on tumblr, so if you see my work on any other platform, please let me know immediately.

This is slightly angsty, but is mostly an overload of fluff. It’s also to celebrate 150 followers!! Thanks you guys!:)) Please continue to support me :)) Always grateful:)

Features appearances from Taeyang and Hyorin.

Warnings: cursing, pregnancy, smut, fingering, unprotected sex(use protection y’all) .

————————————————————————–

“Jiyong? Babe? I’m home. Sorry I’m late. Youngbae called for help with picking tampons and it took a while to get him to calm down. Where are you?”

You walked in, looking for your boyfriend. You were a little grumpy because he was leaving for a tour the next day, you wanted to spend as much time as possible with him, and your time with him was getting cut short. You wouldn’t be seeing him for five months. You had just entered your kitchen when you felt his hands cover your eyes. His lips were so close to your ear that it sent a shiver down your spine.

“Shhh love. Relax. I’ve got you.”

You did not relax. There were goosebumps all over your body. No matter how long you had been together, Jiyong always had that effect on you. He led you to your bedroom, removing his hands to leave you there, with only a box and a small handwritten note for guidance. Smiling, you picked up the note.

“I got you a little something. It’s your favourite colour :)”

Excited, you opened up the box to find some beautiful maroon lace lingerie. It was scandalous, but so oh beautiful. Buried in them was a note you found saying,

“Go look at the mirror after putting these on.”

Blushing, you turned around and found a small post it stuck to the mirror.

“I knew you’d look stunning in these.”

Still with a smile you knew would not leave your face for the night, you went back to the box and found a gorgeous black dress. It was floor length and sleeveless, with a plunging neckline, and in classic Jiyong fashion, perfectly accessorised from head to two in tones of gold and maroon. At the bottom of the box, there was another note.

“When you’re done, follow the fairy lights.”

Feeling emotional already, you opened the door and found fairy lights leading you towards the balcony. Wiping away a tear of happiness, you followed them and nearly cried when you saw Jiyong standing there with his arms open, a perfectly laid out table and the rest of the balcony lined with fairy lights stuffed in glass bottles behind him. You were so overwhelmed. Only when Jiyong walked up to you and lifted your hand to kiss it did you snap out of it. And when you looked at Jiyong, your knees nearly gave way then and there. In perfectly snug black slacks, an oversized maroon shirt showing an unholy amount of his chest and collarbones and all the right earrings, he left you breathless. Sometimes, you just couldn’t believe you were dating that man. Out of nowhere, music started playing and Jiyong wrapped his arms around your waist, swaying along to the music. You wrapped your arms around him and looked up at him smiling with that gummy smile.

“What is this Jiyong?”

Twirling you around once, he placed a light kiss on your lips before saying,

“Well, I know I’m not the best boyfriend in the world, but I wanted our evening to be perfect tonight.”

You were melting. He was wrong. He was definitely the best boyfriend in the world. You pulled him down by the collar into a deep kiss, wanting to just stay there in his arms and freeze that moment in time. He pulled away after a while, with his eyebrows raised.

“Wow. If you loved that, wait till you see what I’ve cooked.”

You laughed.

“You? Cooking? Ji, are you sure you didn’t just order some pizza?”

He beamed at you.

“Nope. I didn’t. I took the day off, facetimed your mom and got your favourite food right.”

You gasped.

“Ji, are you saying-”

Grinning, he said,

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And it tastes fucking amazing.”

“Oh Ji…”

He smirked.

“Yes, I know. I’m amazing.”

You rolled your eyes but you didn’t disagree.

You and Jiyong had an amazing dinner. He was right. He had made your favourite meal really well and you were mind blown. You tried not to think about how you wouldn’t see him for the next five months, but he did a good job of making sure you weren’t dwelling on it and were happy. At the end of dinner, he pushed the table out of the way, filled two wine glasses up to the brim, started playing music and held out a glass for you with a smirk on his face. Jiyong’s playlist was pretty innocent, but your thoughts were anything but. As the two of you playfully danced around to the music, you slowly wrapped your arms around his neck and drew him closer to you, taking a few minutes to absorb that familiar scent and feel. He hummed along to the music, gently taking both your now empty glasses and put them down on the table and came back, wrapping his arms back around you. He smiled gently at you and slowly swayed to the music. You let your hands slide down to his chest, playing with his chain for a while before finally unbuttoning his shirt a little more. Immediately, his smile was replaced by that sinful smirk. You knew from that moment on it was about who would give in first and you were determined to make him. He let his hands slide down from your waist, letting them rest upon your butt. You suppressed the moan rising in your throat and rested your head against his chest, letting your lips rest against his collar bones. He pulled you closer, allowing you to feel the bulge against you. You smirked. He had made a mistake. You pressed yourself into him, with your boobs flush against his arm and your hips rocking against his now prominent bulge. You heard him hiss but he persevered. One of his hands came up to play with the one knot holding up your dress as he leaned down to whisper,

“Come on Y/N. You know you want this.”

You moved your lips to his ear.

“Don’t act like you don’t Ji. You’re a bad liar.”

He pulled you even closer, pressing his erection into you, but that backfired, because you couldn’t hold on to that moan any longer. You let out a long, breathy moan of his name against his ear and with that, he lost it. He picked you up and kissed you, wrapping your legs around his waist while he moved towards the bedroom.

You wanted to laugh and gloat, but you couldn’t, because he had you in his arms, wrapped in a deep, toe curling kiss, and very soon, you lost the ability to think at all. You wanted him. He threw you on the bed, pushing off the box haphazardly. He smirked at the flushed, breathless you he had left on the bed. He stripped and climbed on top of you. His hands reached for your face and he held you gently, kissing you yet again, memorising everything about you. After a few minutes, his hands finally strayed down, undid the knot by your waist and threw the dress off you. And when he saw you, he had to stop for a minute. He had stopped everything and was just staring at you, drinking in the sight of you. You squirmed feeling his hands leave your body, but after that, you felt a little shy. Blushing, you asked him,

“What are you doing?”

Not taking his eyes off you for even a second, he replied.

“You’re just so goddamn beautiful.”

Leaving you speechless, he dropped down to your belly, dropping light kisses there, slowly making his way upwards, letting his hands wrap around your thighs and draw you closer to him. He gently traced patterns onto your thigh, slowly making his way up, enjoying the way you were squirming. Not wanting to let go of you for even a second, he reached around and kissed your back before unhooking your bra with his teeth, making you gasp at the cold air. Your nipples were already hard but he couldn’t help it. He flattened his tongue against your right nipple before swirling his tongue around, making your nipple harden even more. He switched to the other, the cold air on your wet nipple making you gasp and grab his hair. He played with your nipple until you were begging him and writhing beneath him.

“Jiyong please.”

And he finally listened, coming up to pull you into another kiss. His hands slid your panties off and he gently dipped his fingers into your folds, smirking when he realised how wet you were. He let his lips trail over your neck, murmuring,

“Oh love, all this for me?”

before latching down on the spot above your left collarbone and sucking. At the same time, he let his fingers circle around your clit, gently tapping on it. Your back arched and his other hand came up to play with the nipple you had so helpfully pressed against him. he looked down at you. God, you were beautiful. He had to memorise this. With that, he let his lips trail further down to just beneath your boobs before sucking down there. His fingers gently increased the speed and moved closer to your clit. He slowly increased the pressure he was putting on your clit and that was it. You were close. So close. And when he lightly spanked your clit before rubbing down on it, you came. You let out a breathy moan, pulling Jiyong close and collapsing. He looked at you, a flushed moaning mess with marks blossoming all over your chest and neck, smirked and collapsed next to you, pulling you into his arms, getting ready to snuggle when you interrupted him.

“Ji?”

“Yes, my love?”

“I want you in me.”

Surprised, he turned to look at you.

“Princess, I wanted to make this all about you tonight.”

You turned to look at him smiling, but with a tear running down your face.

“I know Ji, but I really, really need you in me.”

Your lip was trembling, but before that dam could break, Jiyong kissed you again, gently moving on top of you. He pulled away for a second to cup your face.

“Y/N, I love you. I love you so much.”

Still a little teary-eyed, you kissed his hands and replied.

“I love you too Jiyong. So, so much.”

Jiyong pulled you back into a kiss and entered you. You wrapped your arms around him, holding on to his arms and back for support. He also had tears streaming down his face while he thrusted into you, slow and steady, both of you taking your time to savour every second. The two of you continued like that for a while, both pressed flush against each other, enjoying the intimacy. You came first and a few minutes later, with one long thrust, so did Jiyong. He slowly lay beside you, wrapping his arms around you and you snuggled into his chest, as close as you could get. Your voice was a little shaky when you said,

“I’ll miss you.”

He rubbed your shoulders, leaning down to kiss your forehead.

“I know love. So will I. But I will be back. It’ll be over before we know it.”

Both of you knew that wasn’t true but neither of you wanted to say it. You broke the silence.

“I love you Jiyong.”

“I love you too Y/N.”

And then, he turned towards you, pulled you even closer, wrapped both his arms around you and kissed you lightly. You snuggled into his neck, enjoying the warmth and comfort of his arms. The two of you fell asleep like that. And when he left early the next morning, both of you pretended like you were asleep. You just let him press a light kiss on your forehead and leave, not wanting to let him see you cry and Jiyong left, not wanting you to cry.

-----

One month later, you were staring at your doctor in disbelief. You froze and then you burst out laughing.

“Ah, good one Unnie. Nothing popped up on my report, right?”

She smiled at you, let your laughter subside, and with that same calm smile, she said,

“Nope. I’m not kidding Y/N. You’re pregnant. Congratulations!”

Your head was spinning. You were pregnant. You were pregnant?! What? Oh. That’s a lot to take in. You slowly started to smile. You were pregnant. You were finally starting a family with Jiyong. There might be a mini you or a mini Jiyong in you. You were so, so happy. You were a little nervous, because you knew Jiyong loved kids, but you weren’t sure whether he wanted them right then, but you were pretty sure he’d be happy. You sat there for the next five minutes with a stupidly happy grin on your face before your doctor snapped you out of it to make sure you’d listen to all the important stuff about pregnancy.

As soon as you stepped out of the clinic, you called Hyorin and Youngbae. You were so excited. A little nervous. But super excited. They both picked up at the same time.

“Why’re you calling both of us at the same time Y/N?”

“I have news. But, and this is specifically for Youngbae, you cannot tell Jiyong. It’s a surprise. Promise.”

Hyorin immediately agreed. Youngbae seemed unsure.

“I don’t know Y/N. Does it have to be a surprise?”

You rolled your eyes.

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

He groaned.

“Fine. I promise I won’t tell him.”

“I’m pregnant.”

You pulled the phone away from your ears a little, anticipating both Hyorin and Youngbae yelling, which did happen. You interrupted their questioning.

“Wait you guys. I’ll drive over to your place right now. We can talk there. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

Hyorin squealed, but you could still hear Youngbae deadpan,

“Please don’t.”

-----

Jiyong was walking down the street in Paris, lonely, but still enjoying the weather and the vibe. But fate had other plans for him. as he was walking down the street, something in the window caught his eye. It was a flashy, ostentatious ring. Gold band studded with diamonds throughout. But he wanted it. Not that specific ring, but at that moment, he knew the first thing he had to do when he got back home was to ask you to marry him and take you ring shopping. It was time to pick an engagement ring.

-----

Four months later, and you were getting big, and fast. As you sat there watching Jiyong’s old performances, your mind wandered. You hated the new pregnancy diet you were on. You really missed your wine and your tea. The morning sickness and the constant aches and pains were really bad. You had a headache that was increasing with every second. None of your clothes fit right. You were nervous about telling Jiyong. But most of all, you missed him. You wished he was with you, helping you when your back hurt too much or just cuddling with you when you got sad, but not only did you want to surprise him, but you also knew that he would be miserable that he couldn’t be with you. You rubbed your belly, smiling.

“It’s just you and me for now, tiny.”

You quickly glanced at the clock.

“But appa will be here next week, so don’t worry. I know he’ll love you.”

You stretched behind you to get the bottle of water when you saw someone open the front door. Jiyong slowly walked in, wheeling in, or at least trying to wheel in, his suitcase quietly. He looked up when he heard you drop the bottle. He smiled sheepishly.

“I was hoping you’d be asleep so I could surprise you properly in the morning. Why’re you up so late anyway?”

You couldn’t process what was happening. Jiyong’s smile widened and he opened his arms.

“Surprise!”

Finally, things began to sink in. You smiled too, slowly getting up and holding your belly.

“Surprise, Ji.”

His eyes widened and before you knew it, he was next to you. His voice was shaky when he said,

“Y/N, you’re pregnant?”

You started tearing up. You nodded, and gently guided his hand over to your belly.

“Meet tiny, Jiyong.”

You leaned closer to your belly.

“Tiny, that’s appa.”

He was teary eyed when he asked,

“So I’m going to be a father?”

“Yes, Jiyong. Yes, you are.”

He left his hand on your belly, being very gentle when he pulled you closer and kissed you. He pulled away, letting his forehead rest against yours as he whispered,

“I love you Y/N.”

You held his face and gently wiped away the stray tears.

“I love you too Jiyong.”

-----

Later that night, the two of you lay curled up in bed, all wrapped up in a blanket. He had his arm around you as you rested your head on his chest. He couldn’t take his eyes off you, unable to believe the news he had just received. He stroked your hair and kissed your hand before asking,

“When Y/N?”

“The night before you left.”

“So, it’s been five months?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you known?”

“Four months.”

“Who else knows?”

“Just Hyorin, Youngbae and my sister.”

He pouted.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

You smiled and kissed his nose.

“Because I wanted to surprise you with good news when you got back. Also, you’d have wanted to come home but wouldn’t have been able to and that would have killed you.”

Jiyong looked so heartbroken.

“But I missed so much!”

You hated that he was feeling that way. You took his face in your hands and said,

“Listen to me Jiyong. I know this is awful but even if I had told you earlier, there’s nothing you would have been able to do. I knew you’d feel this way, so…”

His eyes lit up.

“You’ve planned something?”

“Open your drawer. You’ll find flash drives full of pictures and videos from every month of pregnancy in there for you.”

“God, I love you. Y/N, will you marry me?”

Suddenly, you felt both emotional and annoyed.

“Are you serious? You asked me to marry you when I’m bloated and pimply?”

He quickly kissed you before replying,

“Yes, because no matter how bloated or pimply you are, you are always going to be the most beautiful woman in the world to me and I’ll always want to be married to you. Now will you please stop me from panicking and answer my question?”

All your annoyance and anger dissipated. Nodding happily, you replied,

“Yes, yes I will.”

You went ring shopping the next day. Both you and Jiyong picked pale gold rings with a single, clear emerald in the middle.

-----

A week later, the two of you were sitting at the table, glaring at each other suspiciously. You cleared your throat and began.

“Okay, so let’s start the negotiation.”

He nodded.

“First off, I want you to do the pregnancy diet with me.”

“What?! Nooo.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s horrible.”

“Yes, it is. But I’m doing it. And who got me here?”

Sounding so awfully resigned, he said,

“Me.”

“So, you’ll do it then?”

“Can I break it if you’re not around?”

Your eyes narrowed.

“Pregnant women don’t get to break it Jiyong.”

He shivered under your gaze.

“God, you’re scary.”

He mumbled later, almost as an afterthought.

“Is it weird that I find that hot?”

You winked at him.

“We’ll see about that later. Now your turn.”

He took a deep breath and started.

“I want Youngbae and Hyorin to be tiny’s godparents.”

“Agreed.”

“I think so because-Wait what?”

“I agree.”

“Oh okay. Great!”

And he grinned a stunningly disarming grin at you, making you grin back unwittingly. You shook your head, brain clouded with thoughts of Jiyong and his stupid, charming grin, and said,

“I want to get married after the baby.”

He paused and nodded.

“Okay Y/N. Why?”

“I don’t want to make too many changes at once. Let’s have our baby, get used to everything and then get married.”

He took a few minutes to think about it.

“Okay. Let’s do that. I’m happy with that too.”

He paused to hold your hand. He could tell you were nervous about how he would react to that.

“Listen Y/N. I meant what I said. I will always want to marry you and it doesn’t matter if it’s a little later as long as we’re together.”

You squeezed his hand, grateful that he was in your life. He continued.

“Okay. I want to make the pregnancy public.”

You were shocked. Your relationship wasn’t even public. You weren’t married. And you knew what kind of reactions things would get. Jiyong saw the look on your face and squeezed your hand again, reassuring you.

“Y/N, this is big. And you know how the media gets. They’ll find out anyway. It’s better if we tell them that we’re expecting and then keep things private.”

“Ji, but the backlash, the hate, how are we going to handle that?”

“We will tell them we want it to be private and my manager will handle the hate. This is our life. These are our choices. And they don’t get a say in them.”

You still looked kind of unsure.

“Y/N, trust me on this.”

You looked at him, staring at his determination for a few seconds before giving in.

“Okay fine. I trust you. We can do this.”

You took a deep breath and started.

“Okay, I need you to be in the room with me every step of the way for the birth. And I need you to attend all my birthing classes and do all of that with me.”

Jiyong looked shocked. He got up from his seat, knelt before you and hugged you.

“Y/N, why is that even a demand? Of course I’ll be there. I would never not be there. Why would you have to ask me?”

You bit your lip.

“Nothing. It’s just that in my family, no one ever did that. It was considered ‘unmanly’. I just needed to make sure.”

“Love, I will always be there, every step of the way. Fuck what they said about it being ‘unmanly’. That’s horrible. I could never let you do that alone.”

You smiled, feeling a weight off your chest. Jiyong hugged you and sat back down. He looked nervous, and when he opened his mouth, you understood why

“I want you to work for shorter hours.”

Immediately, you were on edge.

“Jiyong, I run my own event planning company. I can’t work less.”

“You know you can. You could just ask Natasha to take over for a while. You are partners.”

“But she does better with the finance of it. And I can work! It’s not strenuous or anything.”

Jiyong’s eyebrows shot up.

“Sweetheart, look me in the eyes and tell me that’s true. I’ve seen the way you pull all nighters and stress yourself out to get the perfect event. You always do, but you can’t risk messing up your health now. You need rest.”

You knew he was right, but you hated it. You pouted and got whiny.

“Nooo Jiyong.”

“Y/N, I’m not telling you to stop working completely. I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t undertake any new projects and oversee them personally for a while. Do what Natasha does. Check in from time to time and make sure the final product is good. You have some really great people working with you. They can handle this.”

You sighed. You knew he was right. once you started, you loved to deep dive into things. It was better if you stayed away from a bunch of projects for a while.

“Okay fine. You’re right. I’ll talk to Natasha tomorrow.”

He hugged you, bombarding you with kisses.

“I know. Now, you wanna go switch things up in the bedroom?”

And as you laughed, he carried you to the bedroom, whispering things into your ear that made you blush.

-----

You held his hand as you walked into the clinic together. It was Jiyong’s first visit to the clinic and you were going to find out the gender of your baby. He was so nervous and it was adorable. You had shown him all the sonograms you had but nothing ever truly explains it like being there in person. You were in the waiting room, amused, watching him freak out reading all the birth magazines there.

“Y/N, oh god. We’re not prepared. We’re not ready for this at all. Do we want a water birth? What is a doula? Why do I not know any of this?!”

You let him ramble for a few minutes before grabbing his face and kissing him.

“Jiyong. Listen to me. We’ve got this. We’ll figure this out. It’s okay.”

You smiled at him, watching his face relax into a smile too. It was just then that the nurse called you in.

You lay there, watching him with rapt eyes as the doctor showed him your baby. Tiny. Jiyong was hearing your baby’s heartbeat for the first time. And your eyes filled up with tears looking at the way Jiyong was crying. You reached for his hand, pulling him a little closer to wipe some of the tears away. Your doctor coughed softly, making both of you turn to look at her.

“Your tiny is a girl. Congratulations!”

Jiyong sat down next to you, crying as he rested his hands over your belly. He looked at you, wide-eyed.

“Our daughter.”

“Yes Jiyong, our daughter. Our baby.”

-----

You were hungry, you were grumpy and you felt like crying. You couldn’t see your feet anymore. It was 4 in the morning, you were waiting alone at home for Jiyong to get back. Why was he taking so long? All he had to do was get you your favourite crepes and come back home so that you could cuddle and not be hangry any more. You groaned. You were so annoyed. At the back of your head, a small voice reminded you that you did just wake up Jiyong at 3 and forced him to go get you, a terrifyingly pregnant woman, crepes from a place that was probably closed. Your anger melted a little and you started to feel bad for waking him up. So bad that in a few minutes, you were biting your lips and curled up in a bed under a blanket, a cocoon of sadness. You were about to delve deeper into your sadness when you heard him walk in. a tired, sleepy voice called out,

“Y/N, my love, I got you your crepes.”

As he walked into the bedroom with the crepes in one hand, you pulled him into a hug. Sounding very apologetic, you said,

“Sorry for this Ji. You must be tired.”

He ruffled your hair before starting to feed you the crepes.

“No no Y/N, don’t apologise. I should always be doing this. Besides, I would have been much more annoyed if the owner didn’t take pity on me and make me some crepes after all my begging.”

-----

You were now thirty-five weeks pregnant and everything hurt. Your stomach was huge. Your back hadn’t stopped hurting in months. Your feet were aching. And most importantly, your head was killing you. it hurt so much that you couldn’t sleep. When you tossed and turned for the millionth time, Jiyong finally sat up with a sigh.

“What’s wrong love?”

You could barely manage to mumble,

“My head hurts. A lot. Jiyong, would you mind speaking softly?”

Jiyong sighed again and got up from bed. Again, you managed to mumble,

“Are you going to sleep somewhere else?”

But he was too far away to hear. He came back five minutes later with a cup of peppermint tea. He gently helped you up and gave it to you, shooting you a tired smile.

“Drink it. It’ll help.”

You mumbled a grateful thanks but he could barely hear you. You were about to crawl back into bed to deal with the pain as usual, but he stopped you.

“Wait. Hold on, let’s try something.”

He climbed in first and helped you into bed, positioning himself just a tad bit higher than you so that you could curl into him. As soon as you got comfortable, he gently began massaging your head, easing the tension in your temples. Before you could mumble a confused bunch of questions, he rubbed your back, comforting you.

“Shhh love. I got this.”

-----

You were in the hospital, staring up at the ceiling while Jiyong held your hand, hissing through the pain of those damn contractions. Why, oh why did you not get an epidural? Oh yeah, you were scared of needles. There was ‘calming’ music playing in the background, a nervous move by Jiyong to try and make things better, which was only annoying you. Birds chirping was not calming if you had developed a newfound hatred for birds. And so much pain. Oh god, so much pain. You breathed heavily when they stopped, grateful for the small release. Just as you managed to calm down, they started again. You squeezed Jiyong’s hand so hard, it was white. You could see him wincing, but you couldn’t help it. When they stopped again, you were out of it. You felt Jiyong lightly wipe your forehead clean of sweat. You turned to him, surprised to find him crying.

“Why’re you crying Ji?”

“Because you’re in pain, love.”

“Aww Jiyong – Nope, they’re starting again. Jiyong, this is all your fault.”

-----

Seven hours later, you were exhausted, but you lay there with Jiyong standing beside you, staring down at the tiny bundle against your chest, her small hand holding his finger. You could barely move, but you turned towards Jiyong and your baby, your tiny, who was finally here. You and Jiyong looked each other and nodded. Jieun was home.

#kpop scenarios #g dragon scenarios #kpop fluff #g dragon fluff #kpop smut #g dragon smut #kpop angst #g dragon angst #kpop #fluff #smut #angst #pregnancy scenarios #bigbang scenarios #gdragon #kwon jiyong #fanfiction

136 notes · View notes

shhhlikeme · 4 years ago

Text

“Losty Aone” / “Losty Mountain Man🏔” Series:

Outtake Collection #12:

———————————

A/N: I miss you guys so much! Thank you for over 150 notes on my last outtake 🤯! If you haven’t read my life update already, please do and know that it’s hard for me to prioritize school and work before this blog. This outtake collection was originally supposed to be a multiple posting like the previous ones, but I reckon I was taking too long and thought to just post at least the part that was complete. Love y’all

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Songs for this outtake:

———————————

8 Days After The Breakup ⛓🥀

💤 😴 💤

“Leave her be. She’s having fun.”

Aone watched as the class-snitch Tsume Lian handed in his paper and hurriedly left the classroom.

I didn’t mean to scare him, thought Mountain Man. He shrugged it off, looking down to concentrate on his own assignment, going through the questions easily. I only have 3 left now, and the answers are fairly simple because-

“Hi! Thanks so much for defending me a little while ago!”

An angelic voice startled Aone out of his academic train of thought. As soon as the sound vibrations reached his ear drums all the nerves in Aone’s body stood at attention.

Is that......?! he questioned, but received his answer when he felt the magnetic pull to the voice as he always did—his eyes having a mind of their own and following the sound. Aone felt his heart halt when he lifted his head from his paper to be graced with something much, much, more beautiful. His crush, you, were standing next to him. Aone’s entire body and brain went out of commission when he looked up to see you, standing so close he could feel your body heat, your beautiful manicured hands pressed on his desk. Your grateful eyes were staring into his for quite possibly the first time in his entire life.

The eyes he dreams about.

Your Apple scent invaded his nostrils and Aone breathed in as deeply as he could subconsciously. He never wanted to smell anything else.

The scent that he dreams about.

You reached over to touch Aone’s arm in his uniform, shooting him an endearing smile. Aone’s eyes widened. Y/N IS TOUCHING ME, he thought. His heart tightened and he really thought he was at risk for a heart attack. The only thing that kept him from having that heart attack, in fact, was seeing you smile a second later. He wouldn’t be graced with that smile if he fainted now🥵. To Aone, when you smiled, oh god, when you smiled—You weren’t just beautiful like he always found you: you were unreal. It was your smile on top of the cheerleading pyramid that made him initially lock onto you, and it was your smile with your friends at school that made Mountain Man stop in his tracks every time just to take it in. It is captivating.

Aone couldn’t help but stare at your lips when the vibrations of your melodic cheerful voice reached his ears again.

“I’m Y/N! It’s nice to meet you!”

Nice to.....? What? Losty Aone connected the dots a bit, realizing that you were introducing yourself to him. He wanted to laugh. It is almost a comical quiet-boy-meets-his-crush scene, right? The fact that the female he spends most of his day thinking about, the female outside of the Takanobu’s that he probably knows most about, the female that he has spent the better part of the last two years pining after, was introducing herself—that she deemed it necessary to make him aware of who she is—is comical.

Dark Comedy.

Honestly, Aone couldn’t even stop for too long to feel bad for how pathetic this seemed for him: as he was too busy basking in your light. Whether you were introducing yourself or reciting the Arabic alphabet to him— he’d want to hear you over and over, no matter what, unable to think of anything else he’d want more.

Aone wanted to say something back to you, he obviously did. But he was just too in shock that the girl he wishes he could marry, the girl that is so completely out of his league that she doesn’t even notice his existence, is speaking him unexpectedly. It was like a dream. Aone’s throat was drier than the Sahara desert.

It was TOO MUCH. Your simple greeting made him TOO HAPPY—he was unable to respond.

Aone felt severe loss of sweet tingling skin nerves when you removed your hand from his burning arm. If he was thinking clearly he might have pouted. He mentally kicked himself for being too star-struck by you to dedicate one part of his mind to memorize what it felt like to have you touch him.

“Sorry.”

You said shyly, gifting Aone’s eardrums again. You looked down sheepishly, then met his serious expression again, appearing God-sent with the thankful expression you gave him. If Aone could speak, he would bloody PROPOSE.

“Um....”

Still frozen, Aone couldn’t tear his eyes away from you as you spoke.

“You probably don’t know this but you getting that pervert to leave me alone is quite possibly the sweetest thing anyone has done for me. And you did it for a stranger, no less. And ummm.........”

You tucked your hair cutely behind your ear, obviously wanting to say something else. Aone was eager to hear it. He loved hearing your voice! After all, witnessing your usually bubbly cheerleader-self so demure and cute-looking made his heart skip a beat. Or dozens of beats. All he could think of when he watched you was:

She’s Unreal.

She’s Perfect.

She’s a Dream.

Long shot, but she’s my desired Future wife.

He wanted to beg you to keep speaking. Your voice was his favourite sound... it has been ever since he first heard it.

“Ummmm........ also I wanted to say.....”

Aone put an effort to mentally block out all the white noise of the chatty classroom so that he could hear your beautiful voice more clearly. He wanted to remember this. He wanted to memorize every second of this, since you approaching his desk has unpredictably turned today in to one of the best days of his life. Please keep talking to me Y/N. Please.

Aone’s heart tightened again as your expressive eyes pierced into his serious ones. You took a deep breath before saying what you wanted to say next.

......Yes? Aone wish he could say. You can tell me anything, Y/N.

“....and.....”

you pushed on, leaning in closer so that Aone had an even clearer close up of your gorgeous face and your scent was even stronger. Yep, absolutely the best day of my life.

And......? Aone wanted to hurry you, but then he saw you opening your mouth:

“And do you mind not doing that again? It’s obvious you have a really intense crush on me obviously—but I don’t feel the same way. I don’t even know who you are. It’ll never work out in the long run because I’m in this league and you’re...in that one.”

Aone hearing what you said was like a knife—no, A SWORD stabbing through his heart. He literally felt wounded. He looked at his beautiful crush—still putting you first even in a state of pain like this— feeling terrible for making you uncomfortable due to his romantic hopes.

“I’m s-sorry, Y/N...” Aone was about to stutter out,

💤😴💤

But his eyes opened before then, kicking him out of his dream.

Takanobu’s heart ached as he stared up at his bedroom ceiling in the dark. Aone checked with his hand to make sure that he really hadn’t been stabbed through the chest, because that’s what he felt right now. Breathing heavily through his nose when he felt his actual hard chest there like normal, he wondered how the pain there could be so insufferable then?

Takanobu hasn’t been able to avoid these terrible dreams since several nights ago, when you had broken up with him on the Ferris wheel. He knows you are not as cruel as you are in his dreams but his depressive state of mind obviously only knows how to make him feel worse about everything. He doesn’t really remember much after you had called him your friend in the Ferris Wheel lot; shattering what was left of his heart by that word combined with walking away. Though, he does remember hearing his mom at dinner 2 nights ago talking to him about how it was Futakuchi who had to come get him, but he wasn’t sure.

To be honest, ever since the night on the Ferris Wheel, Aone has become a shell of a man that lost a lot of care for things he used to care about.

He can’t recall what his mom said at dinner or what Kenji said in the car or what really happened the days after you decided to leave him: The only feeling he could register is the overbearing heavy feeling in his heart. The only thing that captured his attention is the aching in his chest. The sound of his heart’s continuous shattering whenever he thought of you was louder than any words he heard and the all encompassing gnawing of heartache, was more tangible than anything else he could possibly feel.

If Aone had to describe in words how he has felt since that moment 🎡 (but he wouldn’t because he has subconsciously retreated back to his mute lifestyle), he would say his heart feels like it is encompassed by the heaviest chains known to man with an anchor on the end, hanging low and weighing down his whole heart.

If that wasn’t bad enough, whenever you crossed his mind, the chains would tighten and squeeze his heart. Therefore, since you basically never left his mind, that means his heart is continuously being squeezed by hefty anchorage. It is an awful feeling to say the least.

Sitting up on the side of his bed, Aone checked his phone for the time and date.

8 days since the anniversary...? He stated to himself.

Had I attended school in between? He doesn’t even remember.

All that was clearly registered is the feeling of loss.

Aone sighed. Must have, because knowing Futakuchi, he likely wouldn’t let him skip. Aone can now recall going to school and not seeing you there....no wonder it’s deemed insignificant in his brain.

When Mountain Man had gotten too worried about your absence on the second day and was about to check on you, his friends had asked your friends, discovering that you were currently sick and on bed rest.

Mountain Man felt terrible. You probably got ill from walking in the snow after the Ferris Wheel ride. If he hadn’t brought you there you wouldn’t be sick. You’d only had on a thin jacket that night...

Should I text Y/N? Ask her if there’s anything I can bring her so she can feel better? What would Futakuchi say?

‘ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT.‘ Is what he would say, Aone thought, practically able to hear his friend’s voice.

In bed, Mountain Man sighed. Even if he did text you, you didn’t want to hear from him anymore. That’s the purpose of a breakup, no matter how much it gutted him. You were entitled to your space.

Through impenetrable mental torment, Aone rubbed his eyes and peeped at the time. While Aone would describe himself as a militant person, who always wakes up on time for school, leaves his house on time for everything; practically the most dependable human, and was very orderly his entire life—things have changed drastically as of 8 days ago. Not that he cared since time wasn’t really something he could focus on, but Aone now awoke several times a night, walked in late to class and cancelled his attendance to any and all social events he was going to go to.

He and Futakuchi were supposed to help Karasuno with blocking yesterday, but Aone just went straight home. He hasn’t even seen his friends for quite some time....or maybe he has, but the memory isn’t registering.

Broken-hearted Mountain Man would just avoid everyone in class (staring out of the window, looking incredibly unapproachable), and outside of class: opting to eat lunch alone (and by eating, it means just toying with whatever he was going to eat). Every lunch hour, this depresssed polar bear would find some corner outdoors to sit by himself: Sometimes it was at the bus stop down the street from the school where he’d sit and watch the passerbyers, his gaze staying a bit longer on the couples that passed by, wishing you still wanted that with him. Yesterday, he found a spot under a big tree and counted the grass patches. Even though you weren’t at school, as soon as the Date Teko cheerleaders came outside to practice a bit for the snowboarding team, Aone picked up his stuff and finished his lunch in an empty classroom...

6:38am.

So Aone had over 20 minutes till he needed to get up and get ready for school.

Usually, this white-haired man would use that time to do something productive: either review his homework, try to make breakfast for his mom or dad, read a book to his turtle, research new volleyball drills to help his team.............

But this morning was different. Of course it was. In the extra time he had this morning, all Aone could do in these minutes is sit up, propping his elbows on his knees and cradle his head in his hands, willing his heart to stop hurting so much. He had zero tears to cry, he isn’t a crier but they were probably all out after the first night that he tear stained his pillow...... So instead of crying, now Aone just spent his extra time in this position, thinking about you—the greatest girl he would ever know—and how he failed to make you happy enough that you’d choose to stay with him.

Aone:

He has no idea why he got his hopes up. Why did he think someone like you would want him? Of course you’d come to your senses eventually.

Faded beautiful black and white images of your moments together flashed through his depressed mind like a movie reel: triggering his heart to weigh his body down even more:

He saw you playing with Perdu on the floor of his room, trying to teach the reptile how to fetch.

He saw you cling onto his arm and hide your face in his shoulder when a jump scare hit the screen at the movie theatre.

In slow motion, He saw you waving and smiling at the supporters in the bleachers as you were cheerleading with your teammates, looking breathtaking

He saw you giving his best friends the middle finger and sticking your tongue out at them because they were teasing him

He saw you throw your head back and laugh as you sat next to him at the lunch table, leaning on him for support because you were laughing so hard

He saw you flip your hair back as you actually listening to his tutoring in his room... then he saw your face brighten, clapping when he told you your answer was correct

He saw you—

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The sound of Aone’s weekday alarm jolted him out of his heart wrenching slideshow... He rubbed his temples for a moment in his dark room before turning the alarm off. He stood up slowly and took a deep breath before forcing himself to go through the motions again— slipping on his house slippers and making his way to his bathroom. He flicked on the bathroom light and Aone dared to look at himself briefly in the mirror: though what greeted his eyes made him instinctively turn the fucking light off.

Pathetic, anguished Mountain thought.

I look even scarier now. He tore his eyes away from the mirror display of his tired eyes and overall broken demeanour.

No wonder Y/N doesn’t want me.

Hearing your name in his mind for the first time since he had promised himself he wouldn’t mention it, sent a wave of immense devastation through this man’s entire body. It was so strong it caused this middle blocker to hang his head and use both strong hands to grip his bathroom counter so he wouldn’t collapse under the metaphorical pain in his chest.

He never knew it was possible to feel such emotional pain so physically.

He deliberated staying home, but that would worry his parents and friends even more, which is the last thing he wanted.

It’s almost the end of the week. Just keep getting ready for school, he told himself. It is only 4 hours until lunch, when you can be alone again.

Aone brushed his teeth while sitting on the edge of his bathtub, finding it easier to avoid his reflection in the mirror this way. He spat and rinsed, then reached for his floss, but realized it was empty.

Sighing, baby boy dragged his feet from his ensuite to one of his house’s main bathrooms where his mom left the extra toiletries.

Aone began flossing in his quiet bathroom. He heard the faint sound of the front door closing and locking since his mother usually left for work at this time. Takanobu finished flossing and washed his hands. He took a few floss containers and exited the main bathroom, shutting off the light and briskly turning the corner—before running right into another man.

“Shit!” The other voice yelled as their body fell backwards from the impact.

Completely startled because he thought he was home alone, Aone’s eyes widened but his fast reflexes caught the man’s arm before he fell to the ground. Aone’s eyes went back to normal realizing who he caught.

“Dude! Are you a fucking ghost?! You make zero sound when you walk around the house! How is that even possible for a man your size!?!”

Takanobu looked down at his best friend dressed in pyjamas like: ⁉️

Not uttering a word, he gave Kenji a monotone look as to say: What are you doing here?

Kenji—understanding his best friend without him needing to use words like he always did, answered him.

“What am I doing here?” Kenji chuckled. “Well, it’s been days and you won’t answer my texts or calls, big guy! I have no idea where you go during lunch, it’s cold as shit outside and we spend the entire time looking for you.... and then you go straight home when the last bell rings! You seem dead at school: like a zombie. So fuck, you forced my lazy ass to get creative. 💥 Boom. Now I’m here. Your mom said I can move in stay for the time being, basically. I’m sleeping in the first guest room and—“

Aone turned on his heels to peek into the first guest room beside the bathroom. Sure enough, he saw one big suitcase Futakuchi had used when he had come on a vacation with his dads side 4 years ago.

Aone turned back to his friend, grunting as if to say: 🤨 this is a lot....

“—No, it is not a lot. I’m worried about my best friend, man. Either way, I’m not asking you permission.” Kenji crosses his arms in response to his friend’s silent communication. “I told you it’s me and you.”

Aone frowned at his friend. He was pretty astonished by everything Kenji just said. First, Kenji is right about his own self analysis: Kenji is lazy. Which made this all the more alarming, because was Aone really that bad that his best friend felt obligated to move in temporarily?! Futakuchi was always welcome here and stayed over often, but nothing this drastic.

Second, Aone knew he was possibly moving around like a shell of a man—that’s why he avoided people unless it was in class regarding group work—but to be described as a zombie by his brutally honest friend? Ouch. What would Y/N think? Aone doubted you would regret dumping a guy like that if you were in good health and saw him at school.

Hearing your name again in his mind; Aone’s heart panged.

Takanobu’s gaze fell and shoulders sunk and Futakuchi noticed the drop. He knew his middle blocker was going through it like crazy.... and it made him sick. Kenji knew right then and there that he was right to come here.

“I know you don’t want to talk about her, Aone-san. We don’t have to until you’re ready. But I’m here, alright? Just two doors down when you want advice or you just want to watch a movie or play some volleyball. Okay?”

Still looking at his turtle slippers, Aone nodded. In his state, he couldn’t help but feel a bit better because his best friend cared so much about him.

Just then, Aone felt a sharp slap on his back that couldn’t have come from Kenji and an excited voice next to his ear.

“MORNING!!!!!! WHERE CAN I FIND THE FLOSS— OH! BOTH OF YOU ARE AWAKE!”

Koganegawa‘s eyes were barely open as he joined the two boys in the hallway, yawning in the midst of his loud greeting.

Startled that Kogane was in his house too, Aone gave him the same alarmed expression he’d initially given Futakuchi.

Kanji looked confused, so he nudged Futakuchi. “I’m not as good as you yet, dad. What does that look on Aone-senpai mean?” He asked, stretching his arms in fatigue.

In response, Kenji reached up to pinch his ear, yanking it down.

“OI! ITAI!” The setter cried.

Kenji spoke calmly.

“Takanobu-san is wondering what you’re doing here. And I’m wondering why you’re so loud in the mornings!!” Futakuchi let go and Kogane rubbed his now red ear, fully awake now. He glared at Kenji for a moment😡before his eyes met the middle blocker’s and softened.

“Hey, Mom. That abusive parent 👈🏻 mentioned something about staying here for a few days or weeks, and I begged him to let me come. I worry about you, too, you’re like a big brother to me, and I’m here for you just as much as he is.” Kanji smiled brightly at his older friend.

For the first time since you’d broken up with him, Aone felt his heart tighten for a different reason other than heartache. For one brief moment, Aone felt a few links in the heavy chain wrapped around his heart fall off. Albeit minimally, his friend’s endearing actions made him feel lighter.

————————————

Outtake #13: CLICK HERE

Sneak Preview of the next dramatic Outtakes:

A pissed off Kenji Futakuchi confronts Y/N upon your return to school 👁👄👁

Aone and Y/N must work together for a school project....... 💔 awkward, or an opportunity? The answer may surprise you.

Taglist: @crushzone @galagcica @chaichai-the-weeb @nairobiisqueen @bisasterrr @juminly @simply-not-the-same

115 notes · View notes

arcticdementor · 3 years ago

Link

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

#matt taibbi #substack #long #read the whole thing #student loans #student loan debt

2 notes · View notes

drunk-onsunlight · 4 years ago

Text

Day #11 of Promptmas

Chapter 11: Gosh, your lips look delicious!

Summary:

Fancy family dinner. Peter asks MJ why she is stealing money and MJ tells him about a little guy involved in her superhero adventures.

Notes:

This chapter is the reason this whole fic exists! I had a very clear image of a conversation between MJ and Peter about their alter-egos and this huge fic started there. It's almost the end and I have to thank again to @spiderman-homecomeme and @elbris for all your kind and lovely comments! To all of you reading this fic, have a Happy Christmas Eve, have some fun with your families and let's hope the next year brings us all health and lots of success :D

(Read on Ao3 for more notes)

Concept: Mistletoe kisses

Dialogue: “Usually it’s just a kiss under the mistletoe” & “It’s that… mistletoe?”

December 24th

After a few minutes making snow angels, they decided it was a good time to grab something to eat so they got inside the house to change clothes, warm up a little and eat with the rest of the group. MJ and Peter entered their room while Ned and Betty did the same.

“I’m going to take a bath, I’m freezing. You can change or shower here I’m using the bathroom from the hallway” Peter left before MJ could tell him they needed to talk

MJ took her time taking a hot shower. The snow angels were fun until you were totally wet and freezing wanting to drink something warm and have a huge fluffy blanket around you. Her jeans, white shirt, a blue coat, her underwear and converses were discarded on the bathroom’s floor. Every bathroom had at least one fluffy bathrobe and MJ loved hers. She turned off the shower and wrapped herself in the robe. She didn’t have clothes in the bathroom so she needed to grab some from her bag. When she opened the door Peter was already in the room. Apparently he forgot his clothes too.

“Oh! Sorry, I forgot my clothes before my shower” Peter apologized but MJ wasn’t sure about what

“It’s fine. I forgot mine too” MJ moved on her tiptoes to her bag. There was a tension in the room that wasn’t there a few days ago. Maybe because they never got inside each other’s rooms and now they were sharing one. Or maybe the fact they were just wrapped in fluffy white bath ropes and totally ignoring last night’s events

“I’m going to change in the bathroom, you can change here if you want” Peter offered MJ after he collected some clothes

“Yeah. That would be… nice. Thanks” Well, apparently her brain was on resting mode these days when she got close to Peter

MJ waited until Peter closed the bathroom door to change her clothes as fast as she could. She had a nice dress on her bag and decided to wear it. It was a beautiful white dress with floral designs. The dress was knee length and had a deep v neck on the front. The only problem was the zipper, she couldn’t close all of it. While she was trying to close the half top of the zipper on the dress, there was a knock on the bathroom door

“Are you ready? Can I go out?” Peter asked from inside the bathroom

“Am I ready? Kind of… Aammm… I’m struggling a little with a zipper, can you help me?” She took some white flat shoes and moved closer to the bathroom door but Peter didn’t open the door or answer her question “Peter?”

“Yeah?” MJ was sure she had imagined how deep his voice sounded with the question

“Can you help me?”

“Yeah” When he opened the door MJ had to take a look at Peter twice. He was wearing a light gray drill pants with a white shirt, he tried to make the outfit a little informal wearing black sneakers and left the shirt a little unbuttoned at the top. After a few seconds of MJ pretending to be perfectly good with Peter looking that good she turned around so he could help her pulling up the zipper from her dress

“I couldn't get the full zipper up” MJ knew she was tense. It wasn’t the first time she had seen Peter looking good on some drill pants or him helping her pulling up a zipper of a dress, but the circumstances were totally different from a few years, months and even weeks before. MJ tensed more when she felt Peter’s left hand on her waist, holding the dress in place to make easier pulling the zipper up.

A million years happened before the zipper got to her neck, or that’s what MJ felt. That and one of Peter’s fingers ran through her skin before getting covered for the dress. When Peter was done, he put both hands on her shoulders

“Now we are ready for the fancy dinner” MJ shook her head nodding a few times. She was speechless after so much contact and Peter looking like that on those stupid pants. Her hair was wet and her curls were framing her face. She wasn’t going to dry her hair, she was going to trust the hair conditioner to control the curls “Michelle, you look pretty”

“Therefore I have value?” MJ saw Peter’s face went from a slight blush to pale in two second after her comment

“No! That’s not what I meant…” He was trying to explain to her so she decided the joke was over

“I’m messing with you” MJ had a laugh a little at Peter’s face “You look… pretty, too. We should go, they are probably waiting for us” MJ opened the door that lead to the hallway followed by Peter. They got to the dining room on the kitchen and everyone cheered when they showed up.

“Finally!!! What were you guys doing that took you so long?” May went to hug MJ and Peter at the door of the kitchen. Stopping them from fully entering the room

“I don’t want to know what they were doing. Thank you” Ned answered May before they could.

“Ned! Leave them alone! They didn’t take that long. Maybe they were just chatting” Betty send some meaningful looks at MJ and she understood what she meant. The conversation they had pending. MJ looked at Betty and move her head trying to tell her that they haven’t talk yet

“Peter?” Morgan turned everyone’s attention to her calling her big brother

“Yes, peanut? Need anything?” Peter tried to move from MJ’s side but Morgan didn’t let him

“No! I’m good. Can you look at the top frame of the door, please?” MJ and Peter looked up after a small look between them

“It’s that… mistletoe?” Peter asked softly to MJ

“Yeap” MJ answered making a pop sound at the end. Maybe they could get rid of this situation without actually kissing

“Just get over it. I don’t know how that got there but every couple did it. You are the last ones” Happy told them like it was such an easy task. Maybe if they were together it could be easy. MJ looked at Betty begging for help

“Just a little peck, come on guys!” Betty said looking at MJ with an ‘It’s now or never’ kinda look

“Usually it’s just a kiss under the mistletoe. You don’t need the full ritual” Anthony was making fun of the situation. They probably looked terribly stressed for the situation

“Full ritual?”

“What ritual, dad?” Pepper and Morgan asked at the same time looking at Anthony

“Yeah. Different societies saw mistletoe as peace, fertility, love and even health. But I will tell you all the stories after those lovebirds kiss” Tony dismissed more questions about the history of mistletoe and now everyone was looking at them, waiting.

“Come on Peter. It’s not a big deal, just a little peck and they will let it go” MJ turned to look at Peter who looked totally pale. It was a big deal but they had to talk about many things and if that turned out well then maybe they were going to be able to do it again without all the baggage they had right now.

“Sure?” Peter whispered close to MJ and she was speechless once again. She nodded a little and felt Peter’s breathe on her face. Sometimes she forgot Peter grew up a few inches taller than her at some point so she found herself looking up at him, noses almost touching.

They moved forward at the same time, moving their heads to the right. MJ closed her eyes as soon as she felt Peter’s lips on hers. The kiss didn’t last more than three seconds. They backed a little and while MJ opened her eyes she heard everyone talking happily but she didn’t get the words they were saying. All she wanted was to feel Peter’s lips on her, but this time a little longer than before. So she did

She placed her hands on each side of Peter’s face to pull him closer. As soon as they lips met again he placed his hands gently on MJ’s waist. His lips were soft against hers, not fully pressing them together. She felt like he was waiting for her to do something she felt comfortable with, not to cross any lines she didn’t want to cross.

MJ decided to go all the way with the kiss, because maybe Betty was right, it was now or never, they could talk about it later. She opened her mouth a little, allowing Peter to taste her. When she was already putting the tip of her tongue in his bottom lip, someone shout at them

“Oh, for God’s sakes! Get a room!” Ned shouted at them and they jumped away from each other as far as the door frame allowed them.

“Shut up, dork!” MJ finally entered the room and found a free chair next to Betty. A few seconds after she sat, Peter sat down in front of her. Time to pretend that kiss was definitely not their first kiss between them, but MJ was too flustered to even talk to Betty

“Is everything ok? You look like you want to run away or maybe you want to pass out” Betty tried to call MJ’s attention but she couldn’t drive her eyes away from Peter. If she looked like she wanted to run away definitely was a running away with Peter if the way he was looking at her was a solid clue of what they both wanted.

“I’m good”

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

The diner was amazing. 150 minutes of pure torture and delicious food that some amazing chef did for all of them. MJ and Pepper found tasty options for them with vegan food while the others enjoyed their meals. When they were finishing the desserts, Morgan started to say they should go to sleep so they could wake up early to open their presents.

“You know what, Morgan? I totally agree with you! Let’s all go to our rooms and we can open the presents sooner” MJ tried not to laugh at Peter’s comment. She could feel his leg bouncing and she bet Ned, who was sitting next to Peter, could feel it too. Ned spoke softly in Peter’s ear and their postures changed, they were definitely up to something

MJ noticed that Ned was rubbing his hands on his pants nervously. Suddenly he stood up from his chair and looked at Betty. Peter smiled a little and his leg stopped bouncing, his hands were hidden under the wood table.

“Betty” Ned spoke with such security everybody turned to look at him and went silent

“Yeah?” Betty spoke softly and her back straightened

“We have been dating for so long someone can think the feelings have changed from the first time I saw you on school” Pepper gasped and placed her hand on his mouth, May started to tear up a little, Morgan pulled her phone and started recording and MJ looked at Peter asking him with her eyes if it was what she thought it was happening and Peter confirmed it with a little nod “I still remember seeing you every day on the hallways and some classes and one day I told Peter that you were the most beautiful girl in the world and that I would be the luckiest man alive if you spend a minute with me. Now we have been together so long but I can’t wait to see you every day and every morning and every night for the rest of my life. If you let me”

Ned opened his hand to Peter and he pulled his hands from under the table with a little red box. Ned took it carefully and rounded the table to get to Betty. He offered his hand to her to help her stand up. Betty was already covered in tears and had a red nose. Anyway, to MJ she looked adorable.

“Elizabeth Brant” After saying her full name, Ned got down on one knee and Betty sobbed harder “Will you marry me?” Ned dropped Betty’s hand to open the little box revealing a beautiful golden ring with little emeralds and a diamond in the center. MJ had to clean a single tear that escaped her right eye

“Of course I’ll marry you Edward!” Betty said right after Ned opened the box and she threw herself to his arms and kissed him on the lips.

Everyone around cheered while Tony and Happy offered some tissues to Pepper and May. Morgan was still filming while Ned stood up and putted the ring on Betty’s finger. Peter walked around the table and stood next to MJ.

“You knew about this” MJ wasn’t asking. She was sure they have planned all of this

“And you interrupted us while we were buying the ring” Peter whispered to MJ but she could tell he was half joking half serious

“What do you mean?”

“Let me remind you my little encounter with Rhino a few days ago. Where Prowler appeared to have a nice chat with you and then you took Ned out after a car almost crushed him. We were buying the ring that day” Peter took MJ’s hand to move her away from all the hugs and tears from the girls and the handshakes from the boys

“We seriously need to talk about that… and other things. I was chatting with Prowler but not in a friendly way, I needed information. Now I get why Ned was holding that little bag like his life depended on it” MJ wasn’t looking at Peter but she felt his eyes on her all the time

“We do need to talk. Let’s congratulate the couple, Betty can show you the ring we picked and we can go talk somewhere else” Peter didn’t wait for an answer. He took her hand and led her back to Ned and Betty. He went to hug Ned and they spoke for a while. In the meantime MJ hugged Betty and congratulated her

“I’m really happy for you Betty! We were talking about the possibility of all this and it was a still a surprise!” A few days ago while they were doing pizza, Betty told MJ about Ned and her talking about buying a cute house and maybe a wedding but they never thought it would be this fast

“Look at the beautiful ring!” Betty extender her delicate hand to MJ and she looked at the beautiful ring once again. It was a plain ring with a little braid on both sides of the diamond and six little emeralds completed the ring.

“It’s beautiful Betty. I can believe Ned and Peter actually picked this ring for you”

“Peter was there?” Betty was surprised too. The two losers picking jewelry? And nice jewelry? A total surprise

“Yeah, he just told me about that day”

“You are going to be my maid of honor, right Em?” Betty was looking at MJ with bright eyes and of course she was going to be there for her best friend on the most important day of her life

“No if you make me wear those awful pastel dresses that people use in weddings” MJ was joking and Betty knew it so they laughed at the comment

“I’m sorry ladies but we have to go. Betty, congratulations! I hope you guys keep having a very happy life together” Peter hugged Betty and give a little peck on her cheek and took MJ’s hand. He started moving away from everyone, saying their goodnights and telling Pepper that the menu was amazing and the food delicious and other formalities.

When they managed to get out of the kitchen Peter walked faster. MJ thought they were going to their room but apparently he had other plans

“Where are we going?”

“Rooftop”

“Of course” MJ had learned a lot from knowing that Peter is Spider-Man. His safe place was whatever rooftop he could get to and he definitely wasn’t a man of patience. Once they arrived he let MJ’s hand go and invited her to sit next to him on the edge of the cabin

“Where do we start?” Peter voiced what she was thinking. They needed to get the thing with Rhino, Prowler and Octopus out of the way first

“One day a kid appeared in the lawyer’s office and said something about his uncle having some weird tech and he was afraid he could get in trouble for that and wanted help in case it was illegal. Of course nobody payed attention but something made me go to him and I decided to invite him for something to eat so he could tell me this story about his uncle” It was the first time MJ talked about how she became Black Cat and it was easier that she thought, maybe because it was Peter “He lives with his parents, they are a lovely family. Rio and Jefferson take care of him like any other parent would, so I cut the possibility of him getting attention because they weren’t treating him correctly. He speaks so fondly of them it’s amazing to see. He remind me a little of you. He is a nerd, he cares too much, loves science, wants the world to be a better place for everyone. And that’s why he came to the office”

“How old is he?”

“He is older than Morgan but not much. He is 12. One day he was visiting his uncle, Aaron Davis, and found some kind of weapon along with some papers he didn’t quite understand but he knew they were important. He took a few photos and showed me the papers. They are trying to create clones from supers. They designed some formulas to make super soldiers like Capitan America but of course they turned out terribly wrong. You know most of them, Green Goblin, Rhino, Prowler, all of them just want power but while they do that, they hurt people.”

“I recognize the name of the kid’s uncle. I crossed paths with Aaron Davis like a year after I became Spider-Man and he did mentioned having a nephew. What’s the kid’s name?”

“Miles. His name is Miles Morales. And he was right, his uncle is doing illegal stuff but nobody wants to pay attention because there are big heads after all of them” It was the first time MJ talked about Miles with his name, she always protected him while exposing the case to different people

“Who?”

“Dr. Conrad Markus and Dr. Otto Octavius. Markus is behind the idea of clones and Octavius behind the obsession for supers. Aleksei Sytsevich aka Rhino and Aaron Davis aka Prowler, got involved with Markus and Octavius. Their idea of becoming more than regular citizens was all they needed to get involved. Now they have designed tech to cause massive damage wherever they are. So one day I was talking to Miles and he told me he wanted to be like those superheroes that dress up with a suit and stop the bad guys. So I did it”

“That’s how you became Black Cat”

“Exactly. I designed the leather suit and Miles came up with amazing ideas for me. The idea was to steal as much money and equipment as we could from them but I needed to be fast, agile, strong and the most important, imperceptible. I had claws to attach to walls, some mountaineering equipment, a very nice pair of lenses I stole from Markus that let me see far away and I actually can see different spectrums which is really cool”

“Why the name?” MJ had to laugh a little at how her name was born

“One day I was fully dressed in the leather suit with the wig and the mask and I found a few security wards on Markus lab and I turned off the cameras, the microphones and definitely kicked some asses there. The last one told me I looked like a black cat and he didn’t know how but I have managed to bring them enough bad luck for a year. I told Miles about it and he started calling me Black Cat. That’s how it started”

“He seems like a really nice kid”

“He is. Every time he risks going to his uncle's house it gets on my nerves. Aaron loves Miles but I don’t know what he would do if he finds out Miles is stealing information from him to help me steal money and equipment from them so I can frustrate their plans”

“What about a few days ago, the park and then the Rockefeller center?”

“They already know I exist but they don’t know I’m stealing from them. The information they have is basically what Spider-Man knew about me. Someone stealing money from time to time that maybe they can recruit for they little clan. I needed information about their plans, but you ruined it”

“Me? Why me?”

“Peter, they saw Black Cat and Spider-Man going away from a fight together. They are not going to trust me anymore with information about anything. They are probably thinking we work together but if they read the tabloids, they may be thinking we are together, as a couple”

“Aren’t we?” MJ covered her face with her hands and they laughed softly

“Like pretended or for real? Because I have no idea anymore” MJ was seeing her breathe become visible every time she spoke

“Ok. We have covered your secret identity subject. Which, I have to say, is amazing and I would love to meet Miles one day”

“He totally loves Spider-Man. You are gonna meet him, soon. I promise”

“Also what you do it’s amazing. I’m sorry for judging you, I freaked out a little with the whole situation. Now I can say I respect and admire you even more than I did a few minutes ago. And I would love to share with you how I became Spider-Man, but maybe when we get home. It’s a long story”

“Thanks loser. I would love to hear your story too, whenever you are ready to tell me, of course” Peter grabbed MJ’s hand one again. His hands were warm and they weren’t soft, she could picture him now, climbing up walls, holding his webs from building to building, punching villains every now and then “How on earth I never saw you beaten up? I have seen the news Peter, you got into pretty bad fights with Rhino lately” She haven’t noticed but she was caressing Peter’s hands between hers

“Remember I send you a few messages of me ‘getting out early’ or ‘having a last minute meeting with Tony’? Well, I was probably recovering in the Avengers Facilities after a fight”

“How is your investigation on Rhino going? I remember seeing some notes on your board the other day…” She couldn’t finish her sentence because Peter pulled her closer to him and kissed her. It wasn’t a soft kiss like the first one, it was filled with urgency, unspoken words and even lost time. After a few minutes they had to pull apart, damn the need of air.

“I really like you, Em”

“I really like you too, loser”

MJ felt like she was a teenager again. Her heart was beating fast and she was sure he could hear it, her hands were trembling a little and she didn’t know what to say. And apparently Peter didn’t know either, they were just looking at each other like it was the first time. After a moment they just started laughing. MJ turned her face away from Peter and looked at the ocean, it was a beautiful view.

“You want to go to sleep? It’s getting late” Peter stood up from the edge of the rooftop and offered his hand to MJ

“Yeah. That would be nice. I like this dress but I’m freezing here” MJ forgot to bring a jacket or coat with her and now she was craving a warm blanket

“You look amazing” She stood up with Peter’s help and they started walking back to the inside of the house

“Thanks, again”

When they got to their room MJ took one of Peter’s shirts and went to the bathroom to change. She had a little bit of trouble with the zipper but managed to pull it down by her own. When she was ready she did the same Peter had done early. She knocked the door and asked him if he was ready. After she came out of the bathroom, she lay down on the bed next to Peter who was texting on his phone

“Karen tells me the investigation is going good. The formula I design for some webs can help with Rhino. The formula is basically chemicals that can affect his armor, the corrosion should do the magic once and for all” After he stopped talking MJ got close to him and placed her head on his chest

“Night loser” MJ whispered and Peter kissed her head softly. After a few seconds she was asleep in his arms

#spideychelle #spideychelle twelve days of promptmas #peter parker mcu #michelle jones mcu #ned leeds #betty brant #pepperony #pepper pots #tony stark #may parker #happy hogan

5 notes · View notes

twentyonetylerandjoshs · 8 years ago

Text

Bus Crash

Reader x Josh Dun

*Fluff*

Requested by this anon (sorry it took so long!)

Warnings: mentions of blood and injury, traumatic events

"Hey guys, we're almost at the venue," the bus driver shouted to us from the driver's pit.

Tyler, Jenna, and I cheered and all sat down on the couch. Josh, who I was dating, went to go talk to the driver.

Suddenly, there was a huge "CRASH!" and the bus screeched to an abrupt stop.

Jenna, Tyler, and I went to the driver's pit to investigate and we found way more than we expected.

The bus had crashed into a metal lamp pole, and the scene was gruesome. The bus driver' head had been flung into the windshield, his body somewhat limp in the driver's seat, head pressed firmly into, maybe even past, the windshield. Josh had been flung through the windshield and out onto the road. I gasped, horrified at the scene. I went to go get Josh while Tyler and Jenna called an ambulance.

Josh had been flung around 10 feet away from the lamp pole we had struck. He was somewhat conscious, luckily, but he was very bloody and had major wounds in his head.

I went to his body and shook him lightly to see if he was awake. His eyes were somewhat open, but were on the verge of closing.

"Josh? Josh, talk to me, please. I need to keep you awake until the ambulance gets here," I frantically said to him.

"I...I...I'm awake," he replied shakily.

I sighed in relief. "Okay, Josh, I'm gonna ask you some random questions to keep you awake. Okay?"

He did what looked like a nod, but he was so limp he couldn't do much.

"Okay, Josh....ummm...how long have we been dating?" I asked him.

"Uhmmm...around 2 months, right?" He replied shakily and breathlessly.

"Yes. Uhmm....where's your hometown?"

"Ohio...I think...my head hurts..." he groaned out, lifting a weak head up to touch his head.

"It's okay, just keep talking to me," you said to him.

Then, right after you said that, you heard ambulance sirens.

"Josh? Just stay awake for me. The ambulance is almost here," I spoke to him.

"Hey....Y/N?" Josh asked me, his voice small and meek.

"Yes, Josh?"

"I just wanted you to know, that if I don't make it...I love you," he said to me.

My heart fluttered.

"I love you too," I said, feeling tears fill my eyes, "But I'm gonna make sure you get through this. And Tyler and Jenna are gonna help too. Don't worry."

I heard the ambulance put up right beside the bus, and a few of them hurriedly got the bus driver, and the others came and put Josh onto a stretcher and wheeled him into the back of the ambulance.

"Excuse me? Are you Y/N?" A male responder asked me. I nodded.

"Well, since, from what Mr. and Mrs. Joseph told us, you're dating the patient, so would you like to ride in the ambulance alongside him?"

I nodded, and the man lead me into the back of the ambulance where I could see Josh's injuries clearly.

He had a giant hit on the side of his head, as well as many cuts from the glass all around his body. There was a lot of blood, but, even though I am a bit uneasy around the sight of blood, I stayed with him.

(A.N- It's okay if you aren't uneasy around blood, but I am so I just added this in.)

I held his hand tightly and he squeezed back somewhat to show me that he was still conscious.

*The Next Morning*

I had fallen asleep in the chair next to Josh's hospital bed and had woken up just as the bright sun was peaking through the windowsill beside his bed. He was still asleep, so I let him sleep and went into the hallway to tell Jenna and Tyler they could come visit him later today.

Josh had been here all night, and I've stayed by his side the whole time. He was induced yesterday afternoon, and we had to cancel the show that was supposed to be that night, and the next few shows over the course of a few weeks. Josh was supposed to get surgery done today to fix all his wounds. Apparently, he had a fractured arm, a broken nose, and a few broken ribs, which all needed to be repaired as soon as possible. From what Josh said to me, he wasn't in a lot of pain, but his eyes screamed out that he was. He's just trying to make me not worry as much.

I went back in Josh's room after I had called Tyler and Jenna and Josh was awake and sitting up.

"Josh? When did you wake up?" I asked him as I sat in one of the chairs.

Josh thought for a second, "I woke up at like 12pm, and it's 12:31 now, so I woke up, like, 30 minutes ago." His voice was a hushed whisper, audible only if you were longing to hear it.

I mentally facepalmed myself for taking so long on the phone and not checking to see if Josh was up.

"Well," I said, "Are you hungry or anything? Thirsty?" I asked him, standing by his bed.

He sighed, "No, not really."

"Well, have you already eaten yet?"

He shook his head again.

I sighed, and said, "Well, I haven't eaten, and I'm hungry. I'll be back." I left out the door to his room, closing the door with a small noise, then walking down the narrow, closed-in hallways to get to the hospital cafeteria.

The "I'm hungry" deploy had worked. Actually, all I had wanted to do was think. By myself. In (mostly) complete silence.

I sat down at one of the tables and my mind started to rage with questions and "what if"s. I tried to ignore them; tried to think happy thoughts, but I couldn't. So I just got back up and went back to see Josh.

When I arrived back at Josh's hospital room, he wasn't there. A note on the door said that he was in surgery. I sighed, and went to the waiting room to wait. I mean, what else would you do in a waiting room?

While I was waiting, I decided to check my phone. I had a text from Tyler that said that he and Jenna would be here around 2pm, and it was currently 1pm. I texted him back saying that it was fine, and that Josh was in surgery right now.

Then I checked social media. I had a whopping 200+ Instagram notifications, and around 150+ Twitter notifications. Most of them were worried fans asking me how Josh was. The other notifications were people liking and commenting on my stuff.

One comment of my latest picture on Instagram, which was a picture of me and Josh, stuck out to me.

It said:

"What a faker. She's only dating him for the fame and money. I mean, look at her, she has a fake smile all over her face. What a bitch."

Usually, hate comments don't get to me. But this one did for some reason. I felt the tears pricking and prodding at my eyes, begging to run down my face- to show I have emotions; that I am human.

I shook my head, trying to distract myself from that comment and others like it. I exited the Instagram app and just went to play a game on my phone.

A good hour of game-playing and rage-inducing losses later, Tyler and Jenna showed up. Tyler waved at me, and Jenna came rushing over and almost tackled me in a big bear hug.

"Dear god, Jenna, I gotta breathe, you know," I said sarcastically to her after she had released me from the hug.

She smiled, her bright, almost blindingly-white teeth catching the sunlight in a glare that caused me to squint. I guess she saw my expression because she stopped smiling soon after.

"So," Tyler said, "have you heard anything new about Josh's condition yet?"

I shook my head no. "He's supposed to be in surgery now. All we can do at the current moment is wait, really."

He nodded, then he and Jenna took a seat in the waiting chairs beside me.

I laid my head back on the head rest of my chair, and in just a few minutes, I was asleep.

I woke up to Tyler shaking me, mumbling something about Josh being out of surgery and awake. My eyes jolted open, and I practically jumped out of my chair. Tyler and Jenna were already up and we walking to his room, where his surgery had been successful and he was awake and in stable condition.

The room smelled like chemicals with a small, barely-there whiff of the cologne Josh had been wearing earlier. The time was now 1am in the morning of the next day. The sun had fallen down long ago.

Josh smiled weakly as we walked into the room. I sat on the edge of his bed, and Jenna and Tyler sat in the guest chairs in the corner of the room.

I glanced at them and smiled, trying to signal then to give me a minute alone with Josh. They nodded and walked outside.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, desperately trying to make sure he was there and he was real. He squeezed back and stared into my eyes.

I leaned in and kissed him once on the lips and once on the nose.

"I love you," I said.

"I know," he replied, kissing me unexpectedly on the lips.

#tøp #twenty one pilots #twenty one pilots fanfiction #twenty øne piløts #tyler joseph #josh dun imagine #josh dun #josh dun x reader #jenna joseph #tøp fanfic

44 notes · View notes