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alolowrites · 4 years ago

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A Beautiful Blessing

Summary: Someone leaves a mysterious box outside your apartment in the middle of the storm. Fortunately, no one gets hurt.

Author’s Note: This is my first story for @bnhabookclub‘s Hero Camp Bingo event happening right now! It officially runs from June 5th until August 15th and I received my very own bingo card to fill out. Fun fact, I wrote this story prior to the bingo event happening (lol), so I’m glad it worked out!

I posted my bingo card below. Each time I submit a story for this event, I will cross off the prompt I used as well. The first prompt I crossed off was Adopt a Pet! Please enjoy!

Word Count: 1.5K

A powerful storm rages through your neighborhood.

It is the perfect excuse to stay inside and watch random Netflix movies with your favorite person by your side. You snuggle closer to Shinsou, resting your head on his shoulder; his arm comfortably holds you and acts like a weighted blanket that nearly puts you to sleep. You suppress a yawn as an impromptu lullaby emerges from the raindrops pelting against the glass window.

The movie ends, and you stretch forward, “Pick the next one.”

Shinsou reaches for the remote, moving the bowl of popcorn sitting in the middle. You snatch it before the snack falls, avoiding a great tragedy. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for last week’s popcorn mess; the couch wouldn’t stop crunching up a song that night. Shaking your head, you shove a handful of the buttery goodness into your mouth and check some text messages. Your ears perk when a distinct sound rings outside.

“Did you hear that?” You glance at the window. A ray of lightning scatters across the dark clouds, which looms above the apartment building, “It sounded like a high-pitch mewl.”

Shinsou shrugs, “Probably your thought process at work.”

You whack his stomach. He snickers and continues scrolling through the selection.

“Very funny,” you dryly remark. The wind howls as the storm picks up its strength. A bright, white sheet temporarily blinds the entire sky, followed by a ferocious thunder that shakes the apartment complex. Through your munches, you hear the high-pitch noise return. With narrowed eyes, you stand up from your couch, “I’m gonna go check it out.”

“I’ll start the movie without you if you take too long.”

“Pfft, sure.” You stride toward the door, but regret opening it when the rain rudely greets your face. Groaning, you rapidly scan around until something catches your eye. An odd, medium-sized cardboard box sits near the door, a raggedy shirt flapping on top; you become suspicious.

“Hitoshi!” His eyes immediately peel away from the TV at the sound of your worried voice. You look over your shoulders, “There’s a random box outside.”

Shinsou springs into action, “Don’t touch it and get away from the door!”

He snatches his scarf and rushes to the entrance. Just as you turn around, the same mewl cries from inside the box; it sounds like a baby animal. Your curiosity ultimately wins as you kneel to inspect the package. Shinsou screams out your name, but you ignore him like an idiot. Tossing the torn cloth aside, you gasp at the sight below—it’s a little kitten.

“Oh, you poor thing!”

The frightened animal shivers in the farthest corner from you. It helplessly cries like a broken record, and your hands reach inside to comfort the wet bundle. Shinsou arrives with his scarf ready to protect you from an attack. His defensive stance weakens when he sees a black kitten in your grasp.

You shield the animal from the rain, “Let’s get inside! Find me a towel!”

A trail of water droplets follows you to the kitchen. Shinsou hands you a towel before heading outside again to inspect the box. The kitten meows as they get dried, their head twisting nonstop and body squirming around. You couldn’t blame the innocent feline for being petrified. After a few minutes, you uncover the kitten and scratch behind their ears to calm them down; it works like a charm.

Cradling the fur baby in your arms, you search for a warm blanket and head to the couch. Shinsou finally joins you with a puzzled expression. His eyes land on the kitten comically wrapped up like a burrito. The animal sneezes and owlishly blinks at Shinsou; the hero fights back a snort.

“Was there anything else inside?”

“Nothing. Not even a single note.”

You frown, stroking the kitten’s forehead, “Who the hell left this poor baby outside in that dirty box? Especially in the middle of this horrible storm! What if we weren’t home to save them? I don’t even want to imagine how much this fur ball would have suffered.”

“I’m wondering why they chose our apartment,” Shinsou mutters, his mind trying to remember anyone who might know his address. He tries to keep his personal life under wraps, even if he works more as an underground hero. Only his closest friends know where he lives, but they never would do something like this. Shinsou didn’t find any explosives or deadly chemicals inside the box, ruling out a villain. Maybe a crazed fan? He’s had a few run-ins with them before. Your giggles interrupt his brooding thoughts.

Lilac eyes shift down and watch as the kitten chews on your finger. A small grin curves on Shinsou’s lips at the adorable sight. You loosen the blanket so the kitten can move more freely. Little paws press on your thighs as its button nose sniff your clothes.

Shinsou tilts his head, “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Good question,” you hum and inspect the kitten’s behind, “It’s a girl!”

“We need to take her to the vet tomorrow,” Shinsou’s hand immediately gets attacked by the kitten’s paws and he chuckles while playing along. The exuberant fur ball distracts him from his thoughts, nipping the hero’s fingers with their sharp teeth. It does not hurt Shinsou one bit; if anything, the bite feels more like a small prick. He then grins, “Got to get this little rascal properly checked out for any injuries and see if she’s a lost pet.”

“I doubt she’s a missing pet.” An annoyed thumb jerks behind you, “This little angel was left outside our doorstep in a wet cardboard box. If anything, I want to find the person who abandoned her like this and kick their ass.”

A meow squeaks below. You gesture at the kitten and chirp, “See? Even she agrees with the idea!”

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” Shinsou smirks before searching for the nearest veterinary office on his phone. You roll your eyes and continue to play with the energetic kitten. Shinsou does not react when you reach for his scarf to entertain your new guest. Dangling the fabric in the air, you squeak when the kitten jumps and grabs it; the scarf quickly engulfs the fur ball’s tiny frame. After a few shuffles, her head pops out, and you laugh.

“Got the address,” Shinsou takes a screenshot of one location. He glances at the kitten who endearingly tilts her head at him; he shakes his own, but a faint smile creeps on his face, “I guess we’ll create a make-shift bed for her in our room.”

“Ooooh, yes! I got some old clothes we can use.” You scoop the kitten in your hands and jump off the sofa. Heading to the bedroom, you cry out, “C’mon! She needs some rest; poor baby has been through a lot for one night.”

Shinsou doesn’t argue with you as he snatches his scarf off the couch and follows closely behind.

༛༛ ༛ ༛༺༻༛ ༛ ༛༛

“Well,” the veterinarian does a quick once-over at her patient. You wait with bated breath for the doctor’s results. Shinsou stands beside you with arms crossed, “Despite missing some vaccinations, she appears to be a healthy three-month-old kitten. I gave her a couple of shots, but she will need to come back in a few weeks for the next doses, though.”

You are relieved, “Thank you, Dr. Sasaki!”

“You’re welcome,” she smiles, bopping the animal’s nose, “The kitten also has no prior owner since I did not detect a microchip. She’s all yours!”

The curious kitten almost falls off the exam table, but you grab her with lightning speed. As soon as the doctor leaves, you face Shinsou and slice the air with your hand, “We have to keep her!”

“Huh?”

“I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer. She has no home, and I don’t want her ending up in a shelter. Besides, look at her!” You raise the kitten to his eye level and pout to strengthen your case. Shinsou arches an amused eyebrow. “How can you say no to that itty-bitty face?”

On instinct, the kitten meows and instantly melts the hero’s heart. He scratches the back of his neck while saying, “Okay, fine. We’ll keep her.”

You squeal, cradling the bundle of joy closer to your chest; she purrs softly in your arms. Shinsou enjoys seeing you this happy. Unbeknownst to you, he already made his decision after yesterday’s events. You and Shinsou played with the kitten all night long, laughing as she eagerly swatted a piece of yarn dangling mid-air. Once the mini tigress tired herself out, Shinsou tucked her into her make-shift bed.

Your smile brings him back to the present, “We still need a name for our little girl.”

“How about Emi?”

“Emi…” You test out the name and your eyes sparkle, “It’s perfect!”

Shinsou wraps an arm around your waist and fondly looks at his new child while grinning, “Welcome to the family, Emi.”

She is indeed a beautiful blessing.

Which prompt will be crossed off next? Who knows, depends on what my brain comes up with lmao.

As always, thank you for reading!

Hero Camp Bingo Masterlist

#shinsou hitoshi x reader #shinsou hitoshi #shinsou x reader #shinsou imagines #bnhabookclub #bnha imagines #bnha x reader #hero camp bingo #adopt a pet #fluff #kittens are ADORABLE

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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But police violence, and Trump’s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who’d made politically “problematic” editorial or social media decisions.

…

In the most discussed incident, Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton entitled, “Send in the troops.”

I’m no fan of Cotton, but as was the case with Michael Moore’s documentary and many other controversial speech episodes, it’s not clear that many of the people angriest about the piece in question even read it. In classic Times fashion, the paper has already scrubbed a mistake they made misreporting what their own editorial said, in an article about Bennet’s ouster.

…

As Cotton points out in the piece, he was advancing a view arguably held by a majority of the country. A Morning Consult poll showed 58% of Americans either strongly or somewhat supported the idea of “calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces.” That survey included 40% of self-described “liberals” and 37% of African-Americans. To declare a point of view held by that many people not only not worthy of discussion, but so toxic that publication of it without even necessarily agreeing requires dismissal, is a dramatic reversal for a newspaper that long cast itself as the national paper of record.

Incidentally, that same poll cited by Cotton showed that 73% of Americans described protecting property as “very important,” while an additional 16% considered it “somewhat important.” This means the Philadelphia Inquirer editor was fired for running a headline – “Buildings matter, too” – that the poll said expressed a view held by 89% of the population, including 64% of African-Americans.

…

The main thing accomplished by removing those types of editorials from newspapers — apart from scaring the hell out of editors — is to shield readers from knowledge of what a major segment of American society is thinking.

It also guarantees that opinion writers and editors alike will shape views to avoid upsetting colleagues, which means that instead of hearing what our differences are and how we might address those issues, newspaper readers will instead be presented with page after page of people professing to agree with one another. That’s not agitation, that’s misinformation.

The instinct to shield audiences from views or facts deemed politically uncomfortable has been in evidence since Trump became a national phenomenon. We saw it when reporters told audiences Hillary Clinton’s small crowds were a “wholly intentional” campaign decision. I listened to colleagues that summer of 2016 talk about ignoring poll results, or anecdotes about Hillary’s troubled campaign, on the grounds that doing otherwise might “help Trump” (or, worse, be perceived that way).

…

All these episodes sent a signal to everyone in a business already shedding jobs at an extraordinary rate that failure to toe certain editorial lines can and will result in the loss of your job. Perhaps additionally, you could face a public shaming campaign in which you will be denounced as a racist and rendered unemployable.

…

Even people who try to keep up with protest goals find themselves denounced the moment they fail to submit to some new tenet of ever-evolving doctrine, via a surprisingly consistent stream of retorts: fuck you, shut up, send money, do better, check yourself, I’m tired and racist.

…

Each passing day sees more scenes that recall something closer to cult religion than politics. White protesters in Floyd’s Houston hometown kneeling and praying to black residents for “forgiveness… for years and years of racism” are one thing, but what are we to make of white police in Cary, North Carolina, kneeling and washing the feet of Black pastors? What about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling while dressed in “African kente cloth scarves”?

There is symbolism here that goes beyond frustration with police or even with racism: these are orgiastic, quasi-religious, and most of all, deeply weird scenes, and the press is too paralyzed to wonder at it. In a business where the first job requirement was once the willingness to ask tough questions, we’ve become afraid to ask obvious ones.

On CNN, Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was asked a hypothetical question about a future without police: “What if in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?” When Bender, who is white, answered, “I know that comes from a place of privilege,” questions popped to mind. Does privilege mean one should let someone break into one’s home, or that one shouldn’t ask that hypothetical question? (I was genuinely confused). In any other situation, a media person pounces on a provocative response to dig out its meaning, but an increasingly long list of words and topics are deemed too dangerous to discuss.

The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comey’s firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence “whistleblowers,” all those interminable months of Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.

It’s been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the political goal is righteous. It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because Trump is scum. MSNBC could put Michael Avenatti on live TV to air a gang rape allegation without vetting, because who cared about Brett Kavanaugh – except press airing of that wild story ended up being a crucial factor in convincing key swing voter Maine Senator Susan Collins the anti-Kavanaugh campaign was a political hit job (the allegation illustrated, “why the presumption of innocence is so important,” she said). Reporters who were anxious to prevent Kavanaugh’s appointment, in other words, ended up helping it happen through overzealousness.

…

The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of “balance,” i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader’s judgment as the routes to positive social change.

For all our infamous failings, journalists once had some toughness to them. We were supposed to be willing to go to jail for sources we might not even like, and fly off to war zones or disaster areas without question when editors asked. It was also once considered a virtue to flout the disapproval of colleagues to fight for stories we believed in (Watergate, for instance).

Today no one with a salary will stand up for colleagues like Lee Fang. Our brave truth-tellers make great shows of shaking fists at our parody president, but not one of them will talk honestly about the fear running through their own newsrooms. People depend on us to tell them what we see, not what we think. What good are we if we’re afraid to do it?

#matt taibbi #journalism in action #new progressive orthodoxy #unofficial official religion #great awokening #purging the heretics and unbelievers #freeze peach is not just an ice cream flavor

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emerald-studies · 4 years ago

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The charming Harry Belafonte

Who Is Harry Belafonte?

Harry Belafonte struggled with poverty and turbulent family life as a child. His professional career took off with the musical Carmen Jones, and soon he was burning up the charts with hits like "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" and "Jump in the Line." Belafonte has also championed many social and political causes, and earned such prestigious accolades as the National Medal of Arts.

Early Life

Harold George Belafonte Jr. was born on March 1, 1927, in New York City, to Caribbean immigrants. His mother worked as a dressmaker and a house cleaner, and his father served as a cook on merchant ships, before leaving the family when Belafonte was a young boy.

Belafonte also spent much of his early years in Jamaica, his mother's native country. There, he saw firsthand the oppression of blacks by the English authorities, which left a lasting impression on him.

Belafonte returned to New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1940 to live with his mother. They struggled in poverty, and Belafonte was often cared for by others while his mother worked. "The most difficult time in my life was when I was a kid," he later told People magazine. "My mother gave me affection, but, because I was left on my own, also a lot of anguish."

Early Career

Dropping out of high school, Belafonte enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944. He returned to New York City after his discharge and was working as a janitor's assistant when he first attended a production at the American Negro Theater (AMT). Mesmerized by the performance, the young Navy vet volunteered to work for the AMT as a stagehand, eventually deciding to become an actor.

Belafonte studied drama at the Dramatic Workshop run by Erwin Piscator, where his classmates included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Bea Arthur. Along with appearing in AMT productions, he caught the eye of music agent Monte Kay, who offered Belafonte the opportunity to perform at a jazz club called the Royal Roost. Backed by such talented musicians as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, Belafonte became a popular act at the club. In 1949 he landed his first recording deal.

By the early 1950s, Belafonte had dropped popular music from his repertoire in favor of folk. He became an avid student of traditional folk songs from around the world and performed in such New York City clubs as the Village Vanguard.

Movies

During this time, Belafonte was finding success as an actor: Debuting on Broadway in 1953, he won a Tony Award the following year for his work in John Murray Anderson's Almanac, in which he performed several of his own songs. Belafonte also appeared in another well-received musical revue, 3 for Tonight, in 1955.

Around this time, Belafonte launched his film career. He played a school principal opposite Dorothy Dandridge in his first movie, Bright Road (1953). The pair reunited the following year for Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones, a film adaptation of the Broadway musical (itself an adaptation of the Georges Bizet opera Carmen), with Belafonte starring as Joe alongside the Oscar-nominated Dandridge.

Belafonte enjoyed some success through his collaborations with longtime friend Sidney Poitier, including 1972's Buck and the Preacher and 1974's Uptown Saturday Night. He also made numerous television appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, including a guest spot on The Muppet Show, on which he sang some of his most popular songs. Belafonte also worked with Marlo Thomas on the 1974 children's special Free To Be... You and Me.

Belafonte returned to the big screen in the 1990s, first playing himself in the Hollywood-insider flick The Player (1992). White Man's Burden (1995), which co-starred John Travolta, was a commercial and critical disappointment, but Belafonte fared better in Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996), playing against type as a heartless gangster. He later starred in the 1999 political drama Swing Vote, and appeared in 2006's Bobby, about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Music

The success of Carmen Jones in 1954 made Belafonte a star, and soon he became a music sensation. With RCA Victor Records, he released Calypso (1956), an album featuring his take on traditional Caribbean folk music. "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" proved to be a huge hit. More than just a popular tune, it also held special meaning for Belafonte: "That song is a way of life," Belafonte later told The New York Times. "It's a song about my father, my mother, my uncles, the men and women who toil in the banana fields, the cane fields of Jamaica."

Introducing America to a new genre of music, Calypso became the first full-length album to sell 1 million copies, and led to Belafonte being nicknamed the "King of Calypso." The singer also worked with other folk artists, including Bob Dylan and Odetta, with whom he recorded a version of the traditional children's song "There's a Hole in My Bucket." In 1961, Belafonte had another big hit with "Jump in the Line."

Belafonte was the first African American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959), and the first African American television producer. In 1970, he teamed up with singer Lena Horne for a one-hour TV special that showcased their talents. Belafonte continued to release albums into the 1970s, though his output slowed by the middle of the decade.

Social and Political Activism

Always outspoken, Belafonte found inspiration for his activism from such figures as singer Paul Robeson and writer and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. After meeting civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s, the two became good friends, and Belafonte emerged as a strong voice for the movement. He provided financial backing for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participated in numerous rallies and protests. Belafonte helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, in which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech and met with the civil rights leader shortly before he was assassinated in 1968.

During the mid-1960s, Belafonte also began supporting new African artists. He first met exiled South African artist Miriam Makeba, known as “Mama Africa,” in London in 1958, and together they won a Grammy for Best Folk Recording for their 1965 album, An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. He helped introduce her to international audiences and called attention to life under apartheid in South Africa.

In the 1980s, Belafonte led an effort to help people in Africa. He came up with the idea of recording a song with other celebrities, which would be sold to raise funds to provide famine relief in Ethiopia. Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, "We Are the World" featured vocals by such music greats as Ray Charles, Diana Ross and Bruce Springsteen. The song was released in 1985, raising millions of dollars and becoming an international hit.

Over the years, Belafonte has supported many other causes as well. In addition to his role as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, he has campaigned to end the practice of apartheid in South Africa and has spoken out against U.S. military actions in Iraq.

Belafonte has sometimes landed in hot water for his candidly expressed opinions. In 2006 he made headlines when he referred to President George W. Bush as "the greatest terrorist in the world" for launching the war in Iraq. He also insulted two prominent African American members of the Bush administration, General Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, referring to them as "house slaves." Despite media pressure, he steadfastly refused to apologize for his remarks. In regards to Powell and Rice, Belafonte said they were "serving those who continue to design our oppression."

Awards

Belafonte has achieved some of the highest honors possible over more than a half-century in the public eye. He was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Additionally, in 2014 he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Governors Awards.

Personal Life

Belafonte lives in New York City with his third wife, photographer Pamela Frank. The couple wed in 2008. Belafonte had two children with second wife, dancer Julie Robinson, as well as two other children from his first marriage, to Marguerite Byrd. (source)

#harry belafonte #blm #black activists #black artists

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yorit1 · 5 years ago

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New Beginnings

Prologue

When Chas was 14 going on 15 she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, named Aaron. His biological father was much older and wanted nothing to do with the baby. Her brother Cain, who had a baby girl the previous year with their cousin had a plan. Their parents were no good, one was an abusive drunk, the other kept abandoning them. He and Charity would gather them some money and they would go to Emmerdale village. That was where their uncle lived. Hopefully, they can build their lives and have a fresh start there.

Aaron was a month old when they moved to Emmerdale. Cain who had just turned 18 was legally in charge of all of them with the help of uncle Zac, so that social would not take Chas, Charity, Aaron, and Debbie away. Cain gave Chas 5 grand to use for her and Aaron, with another 5 for the future. Cain used his money to buy into the garage. Charity conned a rich man so that she could get the three of them somewhere to live.

Chas worked at the pub, she greatly impressed the pub landlady. When Aaron was 2 years old she let them move into the pub permanently. She was a nice elderly lady that did not have a family of her own. Chas began to take over more of the day to day responsibilities of running the pub. She also bought a share of the pub to ensure that she and her baby boy would always have a place to stay. Chas’s number one priority was always her son. When she was not working she was spending her time with him. She did date at times but most people wanted her for her body and not much else.

When Aaron was 6 years old a nice vet moved to the town named Paddy. He loved Aaron and took him in as if he was his own. He got Aaron a dog named Clive that Aaron could look after. She liked that Paddy did not have an issue that she had a child and that he was more interested in her as a person. A platonic relationship formed between them. They did not date until Aaron was 10.

When Aaron was 6 Chas got a phone call from the police. Aaron’s horrible biological father had murdered his ex who was 8 months pregnant with a baby girl. She luckily was able to call the police before he shot her. The police shot and killed him on sight. She was still alive when the paramedics took her to hospital, but they couldn't save her. They did emergency surgery to get the baby out, and she was mostly fine. Social services found that her only living relative was Aaron. Gordon also had half a million pounds that would be divided equally between them. Charity took her in and raised her as if she was her own. Aaron picked the name Liv for her and that was what they called her. She would make sure that no one would ever harm her children.

That same year Aaron also met his best friend Victoria. She was part of the Sugden family. Her family owned some land and a couple of the farms in the village. She had an older brother that would sometimes hang out with them. He was nine and Aaron thought he was cool.

When Aaron was ten his parents got together properly and that made him happy. A new family moved into one of the farms. And he made new friends, Holly, Adam, and Hanna. Hanna told them that he was a boy and wanted to be called Matty. He loved spending time with them on the farm. Vic’s parents also got divorced and he saw her less. Robert was around even less and Aaron did not like that he wasn't around as much. He was the cool older brother like Holly was the cool older sister. Aaron also loved that he had his cousin that was a year older than him. He had a nice group of friends to play with and his dog. He also had the best mum who would do anything for him. His little baby sister was always trying to follow him around.

When Aaron was twelve the pub landlady died and she left it all to his mum. This was good as she was pregnant. Aaron was excited to have another sibling. Vic now spent the school year with them and was in the village her mum lived in when there was no school. Robert did not come over at all, and his dad acted like he never existed. His mum gave birth to a baby that died the same day she was born.

When Aaron was fourteen he was discovering his sexuality. He tried kissing Holly but it did nothing to him. He also thought guys were better looking than girls. Adam’s cousin came over and he kissed Aaron. While Aaron didn't like him he did like the feeling of kissing a guy. The only people he told about this were Vic and Adam. He would tell his mum and dad soon. His mum was pregnant again and Aaron wanted the baby to be healthy. Liv was also recently diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors figured out what the damage that was caused when she was born was. He can tell them later it's not like he wants to date. When Aaron did tell them it was no big deal. They had Matty who was trans, and CHarity and Debbie were both bi. Aaron successfully finished his GCSEs, he loved working with his uncle in his garage so he decided he would go to 6 form and try to study automotive engineering at uni.

When Sarah was 40 years old she started her life over. She was divorced and she found a new passion. She decided to enter the great British bake off and somehow out of nowhere she won the competition. She met a confectioner Rishi who she started a cakery/confectionary with. The village she lived in was in North Yorkshire and was not far from Emmerdale. She still saw her children all the time. A year later Robert came to her in the middle of the night. She fought him for sole custody of Robert and Vic was still living part-time. Had he laid a hand on him she would have taken both but he only kicked him out for his sexuality and that made it harder to get her full time. She had her most of the weeks and the summer. Because the school was close to where they lived she was still in the same school. She would spend time with them in Emmerdale her friends never came over to visit. Her beautiful son found a life long friend in Priya and knew that they would be best friends forever. They were able to help each other with their struggles and overcome them together.

When Sara was 46 she moved back to Emmerdale VIllage with her son. Jack had died and Vic wanted to live where her friends were. Robert was in uni studying business. He only came home on weekends or when he needed something. He told her honestly that he had no bad memories of the village. Hopefully, the village will bring them good memories.

Summer 2015

It was the summer before Aaron was due to start 6 form. His best friend Vic was moving back to the village full time. Her mum and older brother were moving back as well. Aaron remembered a little of Vic’s brother. Mostly that he had not come back to visit since they were 12. He was so excited to see her. It was nice to have all of his friends and family close together.

When Aaron saw Vic he ran up to her and hugged her tightly. He saw Robert come up to them. He walked confidently toward them and held his hand out, he had a confident smirk on.

“I'm Robert, I don't know if you remember me. It is nice to be back here. Beautiful place.” Robert said in a confident and cocky tone. Aaron hated him. He was one of those people who knew how good looking he was and just acted smug. Aaron scowled at him. Robert lowered his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck nervously. Vic and he went to the pub to go see the others.

Aaron was sitting at the pub with Vic and their group of friends. When suddenly Robert walked in. Everyone looked at him and were interested in this Sugden boy who is back for the first time in four years. He also had a beautiful woman who he walked in with. A bunch of Debbie’s friends were interested in him. Wow, he has the whole village wrapped around his finger. He has a girlfriend and he is still going around and trying it on with everyone. Although Aaron didn't have that much bad luck with guys. He had his first boyfriend Jackson who helped him out when he first came out. The two of them realized that they were interested in different things and split up amicably. A few others have asked him out. There was Ed, a star rugby player, and Alex, a first-year med student. Aaron was happy that he had his options. Maybe he should text Ed so that they could go out tomorrow night. Aaron decides to go back to the conversation.

“Vic how's it being back here full time?” Adam asked.

“It's great being back. Although it looks like Holly, Debbie and their friends are all very into Robert. It's like he is new blood here, even though our family has been here for generations. But hey I want him to be happy here. Hopefully mum will be as well. And spending all my time with my fave person.” She said as she leaned her head on Aaron’s shoulder.

“Well good luck with Holly there, She is used to getting what she wants,” Adam said, mocking his sister.

Robert and the girl came by and sat with them. Robert said he wanted to get to know Vic’s friends.

“Hi I’m Priya.” Robert’s friend introduced herself. She seemed really nice.

“Adam, some of our friends were over there.”

“I'm Ellis.”

Aaron stayed quiet and maintained the frown. Robert was smiling this friendly but confident smirk and he was not amused.

“Aaron.” He finally said.

“Aaron all grown up. I remember when you and Vic used to get into trouble running around. Well it looks like you grew up well.” Robert said. Aaron was wondering what that meant. He could be more than that trouble maker. Aaron frowned in his direction, not at all impressed by Robert.

Things were quiet for a few seconds, then Ellis and Adam started the conversation back up again. A few minutes later Sarah walked in and was talking to her children. Aaron thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to go to the toilets.

Aaron was washing his hands when Robert walked in.

“I ugh don't know what I did to offend you, I do want us to get on, be mates. You and my sister grew up together and are really close and I would like to get on.” Robert said. Aaron just shrugged him away. Robert lightly grabbed his hand so Aaron could face him. Aaron felt electricity go through him. “Just think about it okay.” Aaron just shrugged and ran away. Robert was straight and had a girlfriend and was his best friend's older brother, nothing could ever happen between them.

Aaron was at Vic’s hanging out. He was going out with Ed later that night. He was not sure if he wanted a boyfriend now. He was only 16 and he already had one serious relationship. But Ed seemed nice, and he liked him, so Aaron was willing to go on a date with him. On his way to Vic’s room he passed by Robert’s room. He caught him only half-dressed, he was in the middle of putting his shirt on. Aaron quickly went to Vic’s room so that Robert would not catch him and think he was watching him. He will try and get along with him since he will be over a lot.

The first movie they watch is Rocky. Vic knew it was his favourite and wanted to do something nice for him. While he was watching the movie he was thinking of Robert. Aaron had liked what he had seen. Robert was good looking. Aaron knew nothing could happen between them, but nothing wrong with admitting that he found him fit. He will try to be friendly with him from now on.

After the first movie, Aaron goes to the bathroom and then decides to talk to Robert. He knocks on Robert’s door. “It’s Aaron.”

“Come in.”

Aaron walks in and sees Robert was sitting at his desk reading something. Robert gets up and turns around to greet Aaron. Aaron walks towards him and gets caught on something, he falls on top of Robert. Aaron feels like his whole body is alive, he could feel every nerve ending and could feel Robert everywhere. Aaron was now looking at Robert who was looking directly at him. They had been looking at each other for a few seconds breathing heavily. Robert suddenly goes in and kisses him. Aaron responds immediately and kisses Robert back. Aaron gets caught up in the moment and is enjoying the kiss. This kiss is the best one he has ever had. Then Aaron realises what is happening and jumps off of Robert and starts to run away.

“Aaron, Aaron,” Robert calls out after him. Aaron ignores him and continues to go. He had a date tonight, and it was someone who it wasn't complicated as they were not their best friend’s brother, did not have a girlfriend, and was not confused about his sexuality.

Aaron was ready for the date. Vic decided to help him with the outfit. While Aaron did not care what he wore, Vic wanted Ed to see that Aaron was the best person ever, and he was lucky to have a date with Aaron. It was not that big of a deal, it would be a movie and then hanging out at this cool cafe in town. Aaron was only interested in something casual. When Aaron saw Ed when he picked him up, he saw his smile and how good looking he was. Aaron had a date with the rugby star.

They were going to see the new mission impossible movie. Aaron was excited to see it. He loved these types of movies. Ed seemed nice so far. They were both quiet individuals and that worked for him

“Aaron, fancy seeing you here.” Aaron turned around and saw Robert. “Priya and I came to watch the new movie vacation. Priya loves those types of movies. Plus we are both fans of Chris. How about you?” Aaron nodded towards Ed. “Oh, lucky guy. Have fun. Ill see you later.” Robert said and walked away.

Aaron saw Robert talking to Priya and laughing with her. They seemed really close. Robert seemed like he really loved her. Aaron did not get why he kept feeling like Robert was trying to start something with him if he was clearly happy with Priya. Whatever there was a nice rugby player who was interested in him. He was going to enjoy the night.

Ed drove them to the cafe after the movie. Aaron really enjoyed it. He could have seen himself be an action star in another life. Aaron walked into the cafe and liked it. It looked like a place for teens to hang out if they wanted some quiet or privacy, and a nice place away from home. (more)

Aaron walked into Vic’s house the next day. He heard Robert talking to Priya. It looked like Robert enjoyed spending his time with his girlfriend and they seemed quite close. Why was he pulling moves on others then?

“...guys liking guys. It’s stupid.” Aaron hears Robert tell her and let out a frustrated sigh. Aaron was so mad. Robert was kissing someone else behind her back, a guy no less, and then he complains about gay guys. Aaron was fuming and ran to the garage where his uncle had set a punching bag for him. Aaron let out all of his frustrations out on the punching bag. Aaron knew that he needed to stay away from him. Aaron did not want to get caught up in these games. He just wanted to enjoy his life. He would only be sixteen once.

He texted Vic to come over so that he could tell her all about his date with Ed. They were not boyfriends, but Aaron was open to the idea of going out on another date with him.

A few days later Aaron was sitting in the pub with his sisters. Sarah Vic and Robert came in for their dinner. Aaron smiled at Vic and caught Robert smiling at him he frowned at him and turned around. Liv was smiling and sharing a story, everyone was listening closely, happy that her spirits were back up after her difficulties with her illness.

“Bud then went up to the counselor and told her that he was a better dancer than her. He then went and started a dance battle between her and the kids to see who the best dancer was. Gabby, Jacob and I were laughing the whole time. Bud is a terrible dancer. But he does have confidence for days.”

Liv was thirsty after sharing stories, so she went up to get another drink. she was at the bar when she suddenly felt dizzy. She was trying to hold herself up but it was no use, Liv fell on the floor. Robert was right by her when she fell. He went to her to check what happened. He realized what was happening and turned her on her side. He signaled for someone to call 999. Aaron and Chas rushed to her. Aaron was holding Liv close to him until the seizure stopped. Robert was by Aaron the whole time making sure that they were both okay. He put his hand on Aaron’s back to reassure him that she will be okay. When the ambulance was there Robert smiled a reassuring smile in his direction.

At the hospital, Aaron was freaking out. Liv seemed to be in healthy spirits and was happy, the seizure suddenly came from nowhere. This will crush Liv. She was 12 years old, she must have been so scared to be there fin one moment and then on the floor the next. Lif was so short. Robert was so good with her. Aaron was tired of the mixed messages and signals he was getting from him.

Robert drove Vic over so that she could be there with Aaron. Robert saw that Aaron was down, he decided to get Aaron some tea as a peace offering. He really did want to be friends with Aaron.

Aaron suddenly saw Robert come up to him and hand him a cup of something. Aaron looked up at him and gave him a face, one that meant what are you doing?

“Its tea. I just thought you can use it. Help to relax until you can see her. It will be fine. She seems like a fighter. Vic and I are always here if you want to talk.”

Aaron took the drink and sat down next to Robert. Aaron was sitting quietly, Robbert was sitting there with him as well. Aaron felt comfort at that moment knowing that he could sit there in quiet. THat he was not expected to talk and that was okay.

“Family of Olivia Dingle.”

Chas stood up immediately and listened to what her doctor said. They were allowed to see her family only. Vic and Robert said that they would wait for them here. Robert would be able to give Aaron and Vic a ride home after.

Aaron saw Liv lying in bed, she was frightened but also trying to put on a brave smile for everyone. Chas went up to her and reassured her that she was okay. That she would stay there with her until she was released from hospital. Aaron went up to her as well. He gave her a fist bump. The two of them smiled. His little sister had a special place in his heart. He was so happy that she was going to be okay.

On the ride back things were quiet. Vic was sitting close to him and keeping an eye on him. Aaron was so lucky that she was his best friend. When they got to the house they decided to play some video games.

“I can beat you,” Robert said confidentially.

“In your dreams.” Aaron responded. Aaron so far had won all the games. Robert was not very good at it. Vic even tried to help him but it was no use.

“One more game, I know I can win this time,” Robert said. He then got a text from Priya and he smiled at what it said. Aaron did not see what it said but saw that it was from Priya.

“I don’t want to be keeping you, you clearly have better things to do than play video games with two sixteen-year-olds.”

“Not really. It’s nice to have a break from university and work. I know I can beat you this time.”

Maybe Robert really did want to be friends with him. He did spend the day with him in hospital, drove him home, and was now playing video games with him. While Robert was bad at that he could see that he was trying to lift his spirits. Liv will be okay. Maybe the two of them can be friends. He is Vic’s brother. He liked her, so there should be no problem liking him. Nothing wrong with him having another friend.

“Yes I knew I could win one. I am not that bad at this am I?” Robert said proudly. Aaron genuinely had fun. He really was a good friend.

The next day Aaron went back to hospital. His mum said that Liv could come home today. While there Aaron ran into Alex, the med student who had asked him out.

“Aaron, what are you doing here?”

“My sister had another seizure.”

“Is there anything I can do to help. I’m a good listener and I do know my medicine.”

“Maybe another time. Ill text you.”

“I will be looking forward to it.”

Aaron saw that Liv was in happy spirits. He brought Liv a special treat, her fave chocolate. She deserved to have a smile on her face. Aaron hugged Liv and his mum tightly.

“She said that I won’t even have a mark this time. I also didn’t bight my tongue this time. I can eat all of these now. None are for you. These are all mine.” Liv said and then took the chocolates. She was just joking about not sharing and let her mum and brother have some as well.

Aaron was going to spend the evening at home. He would watch Liv’s favourite movie with her. He was just getting the popcorn and snacks ready, the film was all set on Netflix. He heard the doorbell ring. Aaron saw Vic, Adam, and Robert there.

“We thought we could spend some time with Liv. Remind her that we all love her. We made her favourites,” Vic said as she handed him a box of baked goods. Aaron let them into the house.

“I brought these for you. I noticed that they were your favourite.” Robert said and handed Aaron his favourite treat, sweet and sour gummies. Aaron smiled at him. He didn’t think Robert would notice that they were his fave to eat.

“Vic we are going to watch the best movie. I’m so happy that you are here to watch it with us.” Liv said and then hugged Vic close. Vic sat next to Liv and Adam sat on the other side of Vic. That left Aaron and Robert the love seat. Aaron sat down and Robert sat down next to him.

Aaron was not a massive fan of this movie, but Liv loved it and it was her turn to pick the film.

“Not really your fave is it. Not mine either. But little sisters are great and they like when they get their way.” Robert said and handed him some sweets. Aaron smiled in thanks. Aaron found that the two of them sitting together the conversation flowed seamlessly between them. It was as if they had been friends for years and not weeks. Aaron felt his heartbeat quicken and his cheeks flush. Robert handed him another sweet as he told him another funny story. Aaron felt himself become tired after the last few days and fell asleep. When Aaron woke up he realised that the movie was over. The only ones in the room where Robert and him. The others must have left. Robert looked down at him and saw that he was awake.

“Morning Sleeping Beauty, you sleep well.” Robert asked Aaron and smiled down at him.Robert looked down at Aaron and Aaron looked up at him they moved closer to each other when suddenly Aaron heard a loud bang. Aaron jumped up immediately and ran away.

Aaron had been ignoring Robert for the last few days. He had gone on another date with Ed and he had a date with Alex as well. His sister was also feeling better. Aaron was so confused about his feelings. He liked Ed, but he wasn’t sure if they had a future together. He was heading downstairs as Alex would be in the pub soon to pick him up. Aaron went out to the pub and saw Robert.

Robert went up to Aaron, he was full of nervous anxious energy. “Aaron can I talk to you for a second.”

“Make it quick I have a date.”

“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about, would you like to go out with me on Friday night?”

Aaron saw Priya smiling at both of them a friendly smile. He saw Alex come in as well. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.

The date with Alex was boring. Well mostly Alex was boring and Aaron did not really like him. He did not think that he would go out with him again. There was only one week left of August he was going to try and enjoy it the best he could.

The next day Aaron went over to Vic’s house to tell her about his date. Robert was there as well. He was sitting on the sofa with Priya and Vic.

“Hey, Aaron have you thought about my question?”

“Oh yes, I’m not sure if I have your number.”

“I’ll text you now so you have it. Want to play a game?”

“I came to talk to Vic actually. You and Priya have fun.”

Aaron and Vic went upstairs and he told her about the date. When Aaron was done he saw that there was a funny message from Robert. He smiled and texted him back.

“Whos that Ed, Alex?”

“Robert.”

“A yes quite the charmer he is.”

They went downstairs, Robert was there with Priya still and a bottle of wine. There were also a couple of unopened cans of beer.

“Do you guys want some. I figured a can each wouldn’t be bad.” Robert said and handed Aaron a can of beer. Aaron sat next to him and started drinking. It wasn’t every day that he was able to easily drink alcohol for free. Aaron took the controller and they played in teams. First, it was Priya and Robert vs Aaron and Vic. Vic then thought it would be fun if she played with Priya. That left Aaron on the same team as Robert. Robert was trying to help Aaron with the controllers and by doing so he put his arms around Aaron. Aaron had felt alive. He could feel every part of his body that was touching Robert’s. Robert was whispering in his ear where to go next and what to do. Aaron then heard Robert laughing and could feel it and thought that up close it was the most beautiful sound in the world. Thinking of that distracted Aaron momentarily and he crashed the car into a mountain and it then fell into a valley. Aaron laughed and Robert laughed with him. He was having so much fun.

“Yous are so cute. Arent they Priya?”

“The cutest. I think they are the cutest duo from the group. I’m jealous.”

Shit, shit, shit. Priya was his girlfriend. She was right there. Aaron forgot that she was there. He would not make that mistake again.

Over the next few days, Aaron and Robert were texting effortlessly. Conversations just flowed naturally between them. He always felt like they were in a little bubble. Whenever Robert asked him about going out, Aaron swerved the conversation in another direction. It was the second to last day of August and Robert asked him to come to meet him at a barn. Hanging out at Robert’s house was safe. He did like Robert and he wished that whatever was happening between them was clearer.

It was the end of August. Robert had texted him to come to one of the barns, he wanted to show him something. When Aaron got there he saw that Priya was hugging Robert goodbye and was smiling at Aaron before she left. Aaron was really confused by their relationship. Aaron saw that there was a blanket set up, with a bunch of different types of breads and sandwiches.

“I thought if I did this it would make my intentions clear, that I want to go out on dates with you, that I would love us to be boyfriends some point in the future. I just want you to know that I like you. I think you feel the same. I do like being friends with you but I want to be more.” Aaron frowned at him. “Oh god. I read this wrong, you aren’t interested. I am so stupid. I just thought I saw something when you looked at me. I thought you felt that spark to when we kissed, and when we touched. I’m sorry. I get it I won’t bother you.” Robert said dejectedly.

“What about Priya?” Aaron asks.

“Priya likes you, she thinks that you are good for me.”

“I don’t want to be in this open relationship that yous two have. I don’t share.”

“What?” Robert asks confused.

“You and Priya.” Aaron clarifies.

“Priya isn’t my girlfriend. She is my best friend. She is my Vic. We are really close but that is all we are. I don’t like Priya that way.”

“I don’t want to be a secret. I heard what you said to her about guys liking guys is stupid.”

“I’m bisexual. Something that I don’t hide from people. My family and Priya all know. I was telling her how when I kissed you in there it was the first time I kissed someone since Paul. My dad caught us together and freaked out. He kicked me out because I liked guys. I was saying it was stupid that my dad had an issue that guys liking guys, and I couldn’t let that keep haunting me. It was time for new beginnings. I was hoping to make new memories with you.”

“What about Vic. She is my best friend and you are her brother. This has got to be weird for her.”

“Vic noticed that I liked you, and she said that she thinks you liked me too. She said that I should go for it. That she wants us to be happy. As long as we are not all over each other she has no problem.”

Robert went closer to Aaron. He softly took his hand and held it in his. He looked at Aaron and he gave him a nod. Robert took Aaron into his arms and held him close. “Any other objections?” Robert asked.

“Shut up,” Aaron said and then did just that. Aaron and Robert shared a kiss and then another one. This kiss was even better than the first one. Now that there was no confusion or misunderstandings and their feelings were clear. The kiss felt like coming home. It felt like a new beginning.

Valentine’s day 2020

Robert had something special planned for Valentine’s day. He and Aaron had been dating for four and a half years. Aaron was in uni going strong. He would make a fine auto engineer soon. Robert and Priya had started up their business. He was excited about Valentine’s day. Since he and Aaron had started dating they have a few traditions for Valentine’s day. Robert hoped that the surprise this year went really well.

He and Aaron moved into a place in the village that was close to the university. It was important for Aaron to live close to his family and his home. He lived on campus for the first two years. After that, he said that that was enough experience. Since the village was close enough to the university, Aaron had decided to ask Robert to move into a place together. They were able to use Aaron’s inheritance money and money from Robert’s savings to buy the mill cottage. Robert had it all set up tonight so that they could enjoy their evening.

Aaron came back home. He saw that Robert had set up a table full of all their favourite foods. Aaron loved Robert’s cooking. He was so lucky to be dating someone who was excellent in the kitchen. He was definitely way more lucky than most university students.

After dinner, Robert and Aaron sat down on the sofa. Robert had a photo album he had made, and a box of Sarah’s cupcakes. Robert said that he wanted to look at the photos first. The photos were their story. From their birth, their family. Growing up, meeting each other, dating. It had their whole story. Aaron saw a picture from their first date. Aaron successfully finishing his exams, Robert’s graduation from uni. Aaron starting Uni. Them moving into their new place. Aaron smiled as he relived all of their memories. On the last page, Robert had written, ‘What will the future bring, to new beginnings.’

Robert opened the box of cupcakes. Each cupcake had one of the letters of Marry me spelled out on it. Aaron looked up and saw that Robert was holding a ring out for Aaron.

“Aaron, when my mum said we were moving back to Emmerdale after my dad died, I was unsure of that. I had so many nightmares. My mum said that every opportunity is a new beginning, and maybe I would be able to feel at home there. My mum was right, I met you and it changed everything. I’m the biggest flirt in high school, I can get anyone with a few well-placed words. And then you walked in and I became a stuttering mess and I can’t control myself anymore. I can’t even flirt with other people. You understand me in a way very few have understood me before. I can be myself who I really am, This awkward mess and I know that you won’t judge me. My mum was right about Emmerdale becoming my home again. I found my home with you. I am excited about our life to continue here in this home. Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” Robert slipped the ring on Aaron’s finger. He got another box out with an identical ring. Aaron slipped the ring on Robert’s finger. He hugged Robert close. Aaron then started kissing him. Aaron was excited to christen the house as an engaged couple. This place really did bring them new beginnings.

#robron #robron fanfic #aaron dingle #robert sugden #emmerdale

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robronvalentineexchange · 5 years ago

Text

New Beginnings

For @lizzzzoo

Prologue

When Aaron was 6 Chas got a phone call from the police. Aaron’s horrible biological father had murdered his ex who was 8 months pregnant with a baby girl. She luckily was able to call the police before he shot her. The police shot and killed him on sight. She was still alive when the paramedics took her to hospital, but they couldn’t save her. They did emergency surgery to get the baby out, and she was mostly fine. Social services found that her only living relative was Aaron. Gordon also had half a million pounds that would be divided equally between them. Charity took her in and raised her as if she was her own. Aaron picked the name Liv for her and that was what they called her. She would make sure that no one would ever harm her children.

When Aaron was ten his parents got together properly and that made him happy. A new family moved into one of the farms. And he made new friends, Holly, Adam, and Hanna. Hanna told them that he was a boy and wanted to be called Matty. He loved spending time with them on the farm. Vic’s parents also got divorced and he saw her less. Robert was around even less and Aaron did not like that he wasn’t around as much. He was the cool older brother like Holly was the cool older sister. Aaron also loved that he had his cousin that was a year older than him. He had a nice group of friends to play with and his dog. He also had the best mum who would do anything for him. His little baby sister was always trying to follow him around.

When Aaron was fourteen he was discovering his sexuality. He tried kissing Holly but it did nothing to him. He also thought guys were better looking than girls. Adam’s cousin came over and he kissed Aaron. While Aaron didn’t like him he did like the feeling of kissing a guy. The only people he told about this were Vic and Adam. He would tell his mum and dad soon. His mum was pregnant again and Aaron wanted the baby to be healthy. Liv was also recently diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors figured out what the damage that was caused when she was born was. He can tell them later it’s not like he wants to date. When Aaron did tell them it was no big deal. They had Matty who was trans, and CHarity and Debbie were both bi. Aaron successfully finished his GCSEs, he loved working with his uncle in his garage so he decided he would go to 6 form and try to study automotive engineering at uni.

Summer 2015

When Aaron saw Vic he ran up to her and hugged her tightly. He saw Robert come up to them. He walked confidently toward them and held his hand out, he had a confident smirk on.

“I’m Robert, I don’t know if you remember me. It is nice to be back here. Beautiful place.” Robert said in a confident and cocky tone. Aaron hated him. He was one of those people who knew how good looking he was and just acted smug. Aaron scowled at him. Robert lowered his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck nervously. Vic and he went to the pub to go see the others.

Aaron was sitting at the pub with Vic and their group of friends. When suddenly Robert walked in. Everyone looked at him and were interested in this Sugden boy who is back for the first time in four years. He also had a beautiful woman who he walked in with. A bunch of Debbie’s friends were interested in him. Wow, he has the whole village wrapped around his finger. He has a girlfriend and he is still going around and trying it on with everyone. Although Aaron didn’t have that much bad luck with guys. He had his first boyfriend Jackson who helped him out when he first came out. The two of them realized that they were interested in different things and split up amicably. A few others have asked him out. There was Ed, a star rugby player, and Alex, a first-year med student. Aaron was happy that he had his options. Maybe he should text Ed so that they could go out tomorrow night. Aaron decides to go back to the conversation.

“Vic how’s it being back here full time?” Adam asked.

“It’s great being back. Although it looks like Holly, Debbie and their friends are all very into Robert. It’s like he is new blood here, even though our family has been here for generations. But hey I want him to be happy here. Hopefully mum will be as well. And spending all my time with my fave person.” She said as she leaned her head on Aaron’s shoulder.

“Well good luck with Holly there, She is used to getting what she wants,” Adam said, mocking his sister.

Robert and the girl came by and sat with them. Robert said he wanted to get to know Vic’s friends.

“Hi I’m Priya.” Robert’s friend introduced herself. She seemed really nice.

“Adam, some of our friends were over there.”

“I’m Ellis.”

Aaron stayed quiet and maintained the frown. Robert was smiling this friendly but confident smirk and he was not amused.

“Aaron.” He finally said.

Aaron was washing his hands when Robert walked in.

“I ugh don’t know what I did to offend you, I do want us to get on, be mates. You and my sister grew up together and are really close and I would like to get on.” Robert said. Aaron just shrugged him away. Robert lightly grabbed his hand so Aaron could face him. Aaron felt electricity go through him. “Just think about it okay.” Aaron just shrugged and ran away. Robert was straight and had a girlfriend and was his best friend’s older brother, nothing could ever happen between them.

After the first movie, Aaron goes to the bathroom and then decides to talk to Robert. He knocks on Robert’s door. “It’s Aaron.”

“Come in.”

“Aaron, Aaron,” Robert calls out after him. Aaron ignores him and continues to go. He had a date tonight, and it was someone who it wasn’t complicated as they were not their best friend’s brother, did not have a girlfriend, and was not confused about his sexuality.

They were going to see the new mission impossible movie. Aaron was excited to see it. He loved these types of movies. Ed seemed nice so far. They were both quiet individuals and that worked for him

“…guys liking guys. It’s stupid.” Aaron hears Robert tell her and let out a frustrated sigh. Aaron was so mad. Robert was kissing someone else behind her back, a guy no less, and then he complains about gay guys. Aaron was fuming and ran to the garage where his uncle had set a punching bag for him. Aaron let out all of his frustrations out on the punching bag. Aaron knew that he needed to stay away from him. Aaron did not want to get caught up in these games. He just wanted to enjoy his life. He would only be sixteen once.

He texted Vic to come over so that he could tell her all about his date with Ed. They were not boyfriends, but Aaron was open to the idea of going out on another date with him.

Robert drove Vic over so that she could be there with Aaron. Robert saw that Aaron was down, he decided to get Aaron some tea as a peace offering. He really did want to be friends with Aaron.

Aaron suddenly saw Robert come up to him and hand him a cup of something. Aaron looked up at him and gave him a face, one that meant what are you doing?

“Its tea. I just thought you can use it. Help to relax until you can see her. It will be fine. She seems like a fighter. Vic and I are always here if you want to talk.”

“Family of Olivia Dingle.”

“I can beat you,” Robert said confidentially.

“In your dreams.” Aaron responded. Aaron so far had won all the games. Robert was not very good at it. Vic even tried to help him but it was no use.

“One more game, I know I can win this time,” Robert said. He then got a text from Priya and he smiled at what it said. Aaron did not see what it said but saw that it was from Priya.

“I don’t want to be keeping you, you clearly have better things to do than play video games with two sixteen-year-olds.”

“Not really. It’s nice to have a break from university and work. I know I can beat you this time.”

“Yes I knew I could win one. I am not that bad at this am I?” Robert said proudly. Aaron genuinely had fun. He really was a good friend.

The next day Aaron went back to hospital. His mum said that Liv could come home today. While there Aaron ran into Alex, the med student who had asked him out.

“Aaron, what are you doing here?”

“My sister had another seizure.”

“Is there anything I can do to help. I’m a good listener and I do know my medicine.”

“Maybe another time. Ill text you.”

“I will be looking forward to it.”

Aaron saw that Liv was in happy spirits. He brought Liv a special treat, her fave chocolate. She deserved to have a smile on her face. Aaron hugged Liv and his mum tightly.

“We thought we could spend some time with Liv. Remind her that we all love her. We made her favourites,” Vic said as she handed him a box of baked goods. Aaron let them into the house.

Aaron was not a massive fan of this movie, but Liv loved it and it was her turn to pick the film.

Robert went up to Aaron, he was full of nervous anxious energy. “Aaron can I talk to you for a second.”

“Make it quick I have a date.”

“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about, would you like to go out with me on Friday night?”

Aaron saw Priya smiling at both of them a friendly smile. He saw Alex come in as well. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.

The next day Aaron went over to Vic’s house to tell her about his date. Robert was there as well. He was sitting on the sofa with Priya and Vic.

“Hey, Aaron have you thought about my question?”

“Oh yes, I’m not sure if I have your number.”

“I’ll text you now so you have it. Want to play a game?”

“I came to talk to Vic actually. You and Priya have fun.”

Aaron and Vic went upstairs and he told her about the date. When Aaron was done he saw that there was a funny message from Robert. He smiled and texted him back.

“Whos that Ed, Alex?”

“Robert.”

“A yes quite the charmer he is.”

They went downstairs, Robert was there with Priya still and a bottle of wine. There were also a couple of unopened cans of beer.

“Yous are so cute. Arent they Priya?”

“The cutest. I think they are the cutest duo from the group. I’m jealous.”

Shit, shit, shit. Priya was his girlfriend. She was right there. Aaron forgot that she was there. He would not make that mistake again.

“What about Priya?” Aaron asks.

“Priya likes you, she thinks that you are good for me.”

“I don’t want to be in this open relationship that yous two have. I don’t share.”

“What?” Robert asks confused.

“You and Priya.” Aaron clarifies.

“Priya isn’t my girlfriend. She is my best friend. She is my Vic. We are really close but that is all we are. I don’t like Priya that way.”

“I don’t want to be a secret. I heard what you said to her about guys liking guys is stupid.”

“What about Vic. She is my best friend and you are her brother. This has got to be weird for her.”

Valentine’s day 2020

Robert opened the box of cupcakes. Each cupcake had one of the letters of Marry me spelled out on it. Aaron looked up and saw that Robert was holding a ring out for Aaron.

#lizzzzoo #robron #robron valentine exchange #robronvalentines

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drferox · 5 years ago

Text

Job advert red flags

Boy oh boy did I spot a doozy of an advert the other day.

At first it might not look so bad for an optimistic recent graduate, but I know this place and I can read between the lines to understand what sort of storm is brewing over there. Let me provide you some excerpts.

Full-Time/Part-Time/Casual Emergency Vet

Read this as: We want full time, but we will take basically anything because we’re really, really desperate and need to fill the rosters ASAP because we’re all understaffed and overworked and desperate for fresh blood.

We are looking for experienced clinicians or motivated recent graduates to join our growing ICU team. New graduates are considered and we do provide 24/7 hour on-call support.

So you want an experienced vet, really, but as we noted already you will scrape the bottom of the barrel and take anything you can get. Anything at all. You might want an experienced emergency vet to take those sole charge overnight shifts, but you have decided somehow that a new graduate will do, with support over the phone. On-call support, not support in the clinic, but on the phone. Alone. In the middle of the night. As a new grad. In an emergency and intensive care center.

Emergency shifts can range from evenings to overnights, on weekdays and alternate weekends. Wages will be negotiated during the interview and dependent on experience levels.

Read as: No set roster. Varies from week to week. Working emergency every other weekend. If you haven’t done emergency before we will pay you peanuts and make you so stressed out that you wont dare ask for a pay rise, ever.

Looking for 38 hrs/week or more

Uh, excuse me? You had casual and part time advertised at the top of the add. What’s this ‘38 hours per week or more’ business? That’s not part time, that’s not casual.

That is definitely going to pressure candidates to commit to full time if they weren’t planning to.

And the ‘Or More’ part? Or more hours than full time?

Yeah, that’s bad. That’s desperate for staff.

An emergency clinic that wants experienced overnight vets but will hire new graduates to work on their own with phone support only? At more than full time hours?

Oh no. Run.

#veterinarian #vetblr #career advice #vet school #full disclosure #I worked there #It destroyed everyone eventually

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god-hunter · 5 years ago

Text

Things Have Changed Too Much

It’s only been a month since I moved in and already so much has changed. Too much has changed! Remember how I said last time that by the end of this, we’re gonna come out in a completely different place? Well... I’m in the different place. And I hate everything about this Future/Now.

Almost everything... There are Silver Linings. And an Orange little ball of light that entered my life, 3 weeks ago. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to balance the good with the bad, and run you week by week as best as possible.

Forget dates, but we’re ranging from 4/12 - 5/11.

In that first week of living in my new pad, I’ve been owning the whole single bachelor lifestyle. After the pizza ran out, I had a well-stocked fridge full of frozen meat and other basic essentials, thanks to Mom. I needed to buy more pans and stuff though, so off to Target, I was.

Within those first 2 weeks, I was going to Target like, every other day. Always thinking of something new, or buying something that caught my eye. I’ll spare the details, but I will bring up furniture.

As I brought up in the last entry, I didn’t have a couch anymore... So I tried to rock that Amazon Prime, and order a quick comfy chair to get the job done, while I take my time to research and order a good couch with the correct Dimensions to get through my narrow door...

Well, ordering that fucking chair was a mistake, because it took forever to come through. So long, in fact, that I found a better thing at Target for less money and just picked that up instead.

So in week 1, in my living room, I was rocking two kitchen chairs. One served as my sitting chair and the other was a make-shift table... In week 2, I got a tufted comfy chair from Target, which was the shit. It absolutely did the job, as my back was KILLING me, once again. [This happened during my last move as well]. I’d be on the phone with my parents pretty much nightly, and my Mom told me that I’m probably doing so much without realizing it. I did do a lot within just 3 days alone. I definitely recall taking a break to recuperate.

That make-shift bed was a disaster too. My Dad pulled out the mattress from their couch and let me borrow it to give myself more back-support when I sleep. So now I had a couch and a bed to research, but I was not up for it yet.

In week 3, the original comfy chair I ordered from Amazon came, and it was.. mediocre. But paired right next to the Target chair made for an interesting make-shift Loveseat, while the other two kitchen chairs buffed around the sides to serve as end tables, almost. Soon enough, I bought an inexpensive leather ottoman from Target as well and my Living Room was starting to get a little cozy. I might have ordered my couch at that point and I was just waiting for it to come in. In another day or so, I was finally ready to look into getting a proper bed delivered. That process was a train wreck in itself, but... I found something I really liked. I took a gamble on a hybrid mattress. Half memory foam, half spring coils. Time would tell if this was a good choice, but at the very least, I was very happy with the bed frame and box spring.

That same week, something magical happened. This one merits a date. On Wednesday 4/22, I got a Kitten! It wasn’t planned, but the Ex caught word from her sister that an Orange Cat needed a home and I hit her up instantly. That day Fate intervened man. Suddenly I was a Cat Dad for real, and I couldn’t be happier in that regard. But... we’re not done...

The next day, my parents were really excited to meet my Kitty cat and see the apartment for the first time. A couch was still on its way, unfortunately. We were even half-expecting it to arrive that day, but that didn’t happen. Well... After my Mom walked up a flight of stairs to my 2nd floor apartment, she was winded and needed to sit down. This surprised us, as she didn’t look well. She was kind of gasping and didn’t even take her coat off.

After asking if she was alright, she said, “No...” and explained that she felt faint last night. She’d been having trouble breathing since the night before. This made me really worried. She didn’t think it was Covid though. Just something we’d all keep our eye on.

I got her water, and in 10 minutes she felt better. Good enough to walk around and check out my rooms. And hold the baby kitty cat. We went to his 1st Vet appointment together, which entailed a lot of sitting around and waiting in the car, since they don’t let you in. It was good to chill in the car with them while my little boy was getting taken care of.

We got back in the apartment and AGAIN, she was winded. This was bad... When they left, I felt really bad and I was really worried about Mom. Our phone calls became daily from that point on. It was definitely somewhere in this period that I was calling her and updating her about my bed purchase, which was a pain in the ass. I was definitely yelling, and upset, because my online order didn’t go through and I hadn’t figured it out yet. That next morning I was able to update her with good news that I was able to place the order on the phone and it even cost less. She was so happy for me. It was a really good conversation. She even went over all these changes I’ve been through since February, and how bit by bit I’ve been taking each of them on like a champ. She expressed how proud she was of me, which wasn’t unlike her. But... sometimes I wonder if this was precautionary... I think... I had the couch delivered, I just didn’t put it together yet. I think she knew about that. She also knew that I had a bed coming that week on Thursday that was going to be fully put together and set up for me. I remember her feeling really good about that.

Well, it was absolutely on Tuesday morning - 4/28 that I put together my couch, with minor issues, but I got it done. I was SO happy. The kitty cat was playing with the giant box and foam stuff that it came in. I filmed it for FB. It was really cute. I went to the bathroom, and I was washing my hands, I got a call from the house phone. I was really excited, because I was just about to call her!

Only... it was Dad, and he had terrible news.

That morning at 5AM, Mom had another breathing fit. [One of 3, which I had not known about!!!]. My Dad decided enough was enough. He was calling the Ambulance. She agreed. This was an Emergency and needed to be looked at.

The ambulance got there within half an hour and gave her oxygen. She immediately felt better as they took her away. My Dad was not allowed to go with her. He kissed her on the forehead and told her that he’d see her later.

My Dad received 3 phone calls that day. I think I’ll just spare the details and say that on the 3rd call, they told him that she didn’t make it...

The rest of my week was a nightmare. Nothing mattered anymore...

My Middle Brother took on the role of calling up the Hospital for as much information as possible and organizing the Funeral Arrangements for her. I was the emotional support for my Dad and Oldest Brother, who was a pain in the ass this whole time. My Middle Brother mostly had it together, but I was there for him too of course. There were a lot of Zoom phone calls late at night now. With both Family and Friends. The Cousins reached out and really made us feel better, simply by talking about it. We weren’t alone or so distant, despite our vastly different locations. We were connected.

I Zoomed a lot that week, and that’s important, but we’re not done yet.

My Mom’s Funeral Service was put on Zoom, for my friends and family to attend. The Service was limited to 10 people only. Everything sucked.

The same day we put my Mom in the Ground, the Honeymoon was officially over at the Apartment. My Landlord’s Brother took it upon himself that day to complain for a 2nd TIME that I had been zooming at night with phone calls that are so loud that its as if I’m in the same room with him.

I apologized and explained my situation. But I was more put off and upset at this. How fucking dare he!? Does he have ANY IDEA what I’ve been through!??? The short answer is no, but also... he doesn’t care. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve kept him from sleeping for at least 3 nights in a row.

For that I apologize, but these 2 go to bed at 10PM!! I’m sorry, but even when I’m working, I go to bed at Midnight. We’re under Quarantine, dude... I get tired between 12 & 3 now...

I told my Landlord that I don’t want his brother knocking on my door to complain to me anymore. I’m standing up for myself. But the other part of that discussion was that they’re going to Soundproof the Ceiling of his room so he doesn’t have to hear me. I am taking it upon myself to do the same to the room above him, which is my studio. It was a project I was going to take on anyway, but... I never would have worked on this right after my Mother’s death...

GOD! Are you fucking KIDDING ME!!!?

These emotions are raw, folks... I’m still so perturbed by the fact that the 1st two Zoom calls were in my LIVING room. I was talking NORMALLY. I wasn’t yelling. Yes I was laughing at 2 AM. 100%. The third time was even with Headphones on!!! But again, we’re under quarantine and we’re all adults. You gotta be fucking kidding me. So that’s what I said to my Landlord in a very respectful text. We need to respect each other’s lifestyles.

That bed came in by the way... 2 days after my Mother had perished. I was numb the whole time. Here I was getting this beautiful gift and I was no longer in any mood to receive it. I couldn’t tell her about it... Same goes for the couch. Right after I set up that couch, I got the bad news, so I didn’t enjoy it at all.

Now it’s a little better. I’ve gotten over it. It’s quite comfortable actually, albeit a little small for me. I’ve definitely passed out on it a bunch already. Which is exactly what I was TRYING to do, when the Landlord’s fucking brother came at me a 2nd time about the Zoom calls. The 1st time was enough! No new information was exchanged. I already knew they were gonna do the soundproofing thing!! He was probably really trying to impress upon me that it’s disturbing and to try to not do that, but guess what. You’re not my Dad Motherfucker. In fact, you’re not even my Landlord. And then I came to find that he doesn’t even fucking pay RENT. So his Say, is NOTHING...

FUCK THIS GUY. Absolutely. Whole-heartedly.. Fuck Him.

There’s more reasons why I am saying that, which are none of my business, let alone yours. I found out a lot about him from my old Co-Worker - the very same one who hooked me up with this apartment. Which almost segues perfectly into the latest development in my life. This Co-Worker tried to set me up with a new girl that she knows. This one’s a 32 year old Single Mom, and she’s got a cute face. I don’t know the rest of her body, but I know she’s a bigger Woman. That doesn’t really bother me, but after my Ex, that kind of thing is important to me. Because if you don’t have your Health... I can’t really take care of you...

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is truly, the newest development since about 4 or 5 days ago. My Mom has passed... I’ve been working on this Fucking Soundproofing project.. and something came over me, that... I think I’m ready to meet new people.

On paper it’s only 3 months since we broke up, but it feels like longer, because week:month ratios are funny like that.

On the Female Front, I haven’t really been trying. I had mentioned before that things have gone cold with almost all parties. When I was living alone, I fell into a pattern of playing WatchDogs2, watching Wrestling Reviews and even enjoying Manga Readings of DragonBall Super. It was becoming a reliable little routine, before the kitty came into my life. I was it’s savior, but then a week later when my Mom died... this little guy is my savior.

I never thought about it, but I really do believe that animals come into our lives for a reason now. Exactly when they’re meant to. Someone or something knew I was going to need this comfort in my life... And I’m so grateful for that. This is the sort of thing that could even get me to believe in God. But... I already believe in a higher power, so that’s enough...

::sigh::

This entire Era, really fucking sucks. Now I’m my Dad’s emotional support partner. Who counts on me and asks me to visit all the time. And... that’d be fine if he wasn’t so hard to talk to. All he wants to do is talk about himself. When she was alive, he talked about how lucky he was to have met Mom...

So now those stories are just grating, frustrating and Exhausting!

But... he needs me. And I guess I need him... The brothers need to be united too. My Oldest Brother I’m worried about. He’s always been the angriest amongst the 3 of us. And most reliant on my Mother for help.

But I was talking about Women for a second...

Like I said, most of the novelty of keeping in touch has faded. My Social Distancer, might still want to go on that catch up date when this is all over, but when we talk, I don’t feel the warmest of vibes from her. I feel like I annoy her, which is the worst thing to ever bring up to a girl you’re talking to. Almost the same goes for Canada Girl. She’s practically off my radar, we talk so infrequently. The vibe is definitely cooler, and fuck knows if she’ll ever want to really come over like she said she did. Zombie Mama is really sweet, but we barely talk. She receives my messages very warmly and has definitely still expressed interest in getting me out of the house when this is all over. So I love it. I’ll absolutely take her up on that. In the exact contrast, you won’t be hearing about Bakery Girl anymore... I decided to hit her up again for the first time since she found out about the news. I tried to have a normal conversation/re-ignite flirting, but Nope. It was a short conversation that dwindled fast. And when I brought up that I’d like to stay in better touch and text more if that’s okay, she absolutely said, “Aww that’s sweet, but I’m such a terrible texter. I’m not the one, lol.” That terminology was so weird. Did she catch my vibe? Was she politely letting me down?? I caught that vibe and didn’t make it a conflict. But I did say, “In other words don’t count on you?” And she was like, “Yup, lol.” ::shaking my head:: What the fuck ever... [I also looked it up and that’s absolutely a thing that girl’s say when they’re not interested, so... fuck it.]

I actually shared that with Original Crush Twin, who was surprised, but also reassured me that she wasn’t looking for anything and always just sort of did her own thing anyway. I’m not broken up about it. It’s just annoying. If anything it’s given me more of a direction.

I can pretty much forget about everyone else. Gamer Girl is just a friend, Green is a bad idea and way too Polyamorous... Significant Party has had their own problems with the other half and I’ve stayed out of it. I’m there, but it’s none of my business. When they found out my Mom died, they were very supportive and told me to call whenever I needed. I haven’t needed to vent at 6 AM, although the gesture was really sweet. However, one night of flirting wasn’t really received due to bad timing from their own drama and... I just can’t with that right now. That’s the type of shit that fucked up this relationship last time. But they know how I feel and we’ve been in touch a lot this week. We’ve definitely been naughty in other ways, so... I think our Open Friendship is just fine But now I have other things going on. And I need to start focussing on moving on.

Which brings me to new girl. We’ll call her Mama Girl. Its too soon to tell how much chemistry we actually have. This person has a 3 year old and Dad is out of the picture, although it’s not without its own drama apparently. I’m still learning her. As my Co-worker said, she’s definitely sweet and silly. She laughs at basically everything, so she seems easy going enough. But as she is a Mother, she’s busy for most of the day. At around 9:30 the kid goes to bed, and that’s when it’s go-time to talk. We have a window until about 11. Sometimes she’ll push to midnight to stay up, but she’s already shot by that point and is quick to excuse herself for the night. One thing that I like about her is that I know when the conversation is over... But last night, I found out that this bitch is moving in 2 years! Like Away, not to another town. So should I even bother???

Right now I’m taking it with a grain of salt. She’s a new person to talk to, is a self-proclaimed open book, has a million stories and is happy to hear mine. She knows about Mom thanks to good old Facebook... She apologized for the news and said she’d never mention it again unless I wanted to talk about it. She’s really sweet. And she sends little hearts when I say things she likes, or even when she says goodnight. Last night she used the emoticon with all the hearts around it when saying goodnight, so... I guess that's something, lol.

So not only does she like my pictures, but I guess she likes me. She definitely likes the company and talking to another adult. I can only imagine what it’s like to deal with a 3 year old all day.

But I can certainly say that waiting for 9:30 for whatever minimal conversation we can squeeze out is a fucking drag. So... I’m trying to take it in stride. It’s not like we can actually go out anyway... This Social Distancing World we live in is indefinitely prolonged until further notice.

But... Today is a new week. I’m on my 7th week of Unemployment, I’ll have had my kitten for 3 weeks this Wednesday, my Mom hasn’t been with us for 2 weeks - tomorrow, and I’ve been split from my Ex-girlfriend for 3 months. I’ve had a place of my own for 1 month, and soon I’ll have known this new girl for a week...

Who knows what the future will hold...?

I’m not excited for it. At all...

Finances are no longer a Fear... My Mom’s investments had investments... She is leaving us Well Off!

But that is hardly a silver lining at this time...

My New Normal is going to suck. The World is in peril. And I swear to God, every time I actually think about it, I swear I want to just crack. I feel fucking defeated man...

But, it’s not over. And each day, I remind myself that too. And somehow I find it in me to move on. One fucking moment at a time...

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bonniebird · 6 years ago

Photo

Theo x Reader

Requested by Anon

Theo was not happy. To say that he was bitterly angry was an understatement. “You want me to do what?” Theo asked with a ridiculing scowl.

“Go over to the witches house and ask for your soul mate.” Stiles said as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“What?” Theo said as if it was the first time he’d been told the plan. “These are the same witches that threatened Deaton because he is working with werewolves and the alpha in town. Which would be us.”

“But it’s your soul mate.” Stiles said as if that meant the witches were any less likely to attack him.

“Did we all just forget how they set Peter in fire with their minds and we had to put him out by dunking him in the swimming pool?” Theo grumbled and frowned when everyone exchanged looks. “I’m pretty sure I’m not fireproof, why don’t you send Parrish?”

“Or. You could go and see the witches and we see how long Charmiras burn for?” Malia offered.

“You’re not helping.” Stiles muttered to her and slapped a hand on his shoulder.

“I just. Why do I have to go? Can’t you send Melissa to talk to them because everyone likes her.” Theo asked. When he glanced at the rest of the car and only received blank looks so he sighed. He slowly climbed out of the Jeep and trudged into the woods and towards the witches house.

**********************************************

“So you’ve decided to emerge.” You said when Theo finally dawdled out of the forest and approached the large woodland house.

“Thought it’d be rude to arrive in the middle of the night.” Theo grumbled as he stood at the foot of the porch steps, he hadn’t spotted you at first.

“And lurking in the woods outside our home isn't equally rude?” You said and smirked when he sighed.

“Well…” he started but stopped when he realised he didn’t really have a good enough excuse.

“You fear the witches. Sensible. Given what you are, if I were you I’d head in to speak to the head of the coven about that meeting with your alpha before she isn’t in a mood to play fairly.” You smiled like a pleased cat but it put Theo on edge.

“She’s the head of your coven why wouldn't she play fairly with other supernaturals that live in the same territory, surely she’d want to make a pact?” Theo asked and you shook your head.

“Yes but I don’t like you, or this soulmate business. So I am certainly not helping sway her opinion in your favour.” You smirked again before getting up from your seat and heading round the back of the house.

“What is it with witches being assholes?” Theo grumbled as he knocked on the door.

*************************************

“You’re sure they agreed to meet us?” Scott asked Theo who was pouting in the corner.

“He said they were meeting us here, perhaps they’re just running late?” Lydia said in hopes of calming Scott who looked like he might explode with nerves.

“You didn’t offend any of them?” Derek asked with a blank scowl. Theo bristled at the thought of Derek thinking he’d failed as they had both assumed he would.

“I didn’t offend any of them. Besides we’ll be fine unless…” He trailed off as his head snapped to look at the door.

“Unless what. Please say you didn’t start some kind of supernatural war because I could really use a personal day.” Stiles grumbled as he leant on the metal table everyone had gathered around after Deaton agreed to mediate the meeting.

“Unless they send (Y/N)”. Theo said and backed up behind Derek who was utterly confused by the submission.

“Wonderful a room full of dogs and odd ends. This certainly isn’t a waste of my time is it?” You said and barged into the back of the vets and looked over the pack, a withering glanced spared on Lydia for a moment before moving on. “Well now, get on with whatever I’ve been sent to disagree with. If you even think about bringing up this soulmate nonsense your human existent will not be much of an existence.” You said, finishing by pointing at Stiles who failed as you mention exactly what he’d been about to bring up.

“We brought you here to make a peaceful arrangement.” Deaton explained.

“Yes, I’m aware.” You huffed out and pointed at Derek who raised his eyebrows. “You can start by banning whatever kind of wolf knock off you’ve conducted from our territory.” Realised who you meant Derek moved to reveal a sheepish looking Theo who’d been perfectly concealed from your sight.

#theo raeken x reader #theo raekan imagine #bonniebird #theo raeken

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adorkemis · 5 years ago

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My farm has some unusual occurrences...

With Halloween coming up I thought I'd post some stories that happened here at my little co-op farm. Its a small farm I bought with my best friend and her husband that we run and take in unwanted animals, that is when we aren't working our day jobs, charity-volunteer, or Search and Rescue cases.

So in the spirit of the season I'll start with the unusual events leading up to our first Halloween. On the night of the Autumn Equinox we built a bonfire and poured ourselves a few drinks- some family recipe Appalachian home brew.

Now, I take bonfires very seriously and had been preparing for weeks, carefully selecting the best branches and tinder, even going so far as to collect and dry out large bundles of late summer flowers and herbs to add to the top of the fire. In my family, we have a long standing tradition of welcoming in each new season with a bonfire and an important component of those seasonal bonfires are the flowers and herbs. So for weeks I had been going out to cut the necessary plants and dry them in the barn.

Now they were blazing brightly with the cut grass, weeds, and branches from our months of hard work setting up and renovating our new home and the surrounding acers.

I don't normally dance, but when I do, it is not pretty I am very, very intoxicated. So I flail happily around my fire, taking turns dancing with my friends under the bright stars and just enjoying myself free from big cities and a nice break from all our hard work.

As the night progressed the fire finally began to die down and after a few drinks I felt myself beginning to tire.

Ty, the husband of my friends asked me question that I wasn't quite able hear over the music. I thought he asked if I wanted more to drink, so I said yes. Being deaf in one ear I often mishear people.

A few moments later, I hear Ty holler out "Move!" as a large pile of debris we had stripped from the house was hurled onto the dieing flames. Krystal (my friend and wife of the pair) and I jumped back just in time to avoid the cloud of ash and embers. As I stagger backwards trying to comprehend what I had just witnessed when he again yells out for us to move just in time for me to watch him throw a bucket onto the smoldering embers. In the next instant the embers have erupted into bright yellow flames roaring skyward. The blast of heat sends all three of us onto our asses and I watch in shock as my bonfire turns into a flaming trash heap.

Black smoke rolls off the inferno, choking my lungs and making my eyes water. I crawl away when I hear Ty laughing drunkenly as the collection of boards, plaster, vinyl and trash blacken and burn. "Whoooo!" He lets out hill billy hollar. "Look at it burn!"

Krystal is now screaming at him for nearly killing us all and I just and watch quietly (and inebriated) as all my weeks of planning go up in smoke.

For you see, when my ancestors started the first Farm centuries ago, at the birth of our bonfire traditions, it was not a way to simply celebrate the changing of the seasons. No, it was a way to show respect to the things that we do not see, the beings that dwell within the woods just outside our view. It was a way of making peace with the Good Nieghbors, or local spirits. The old stories say the tradition started with my earliest ancestors inviting the beings to celebrate with them, to thank them for their protection, and that the plants we used were a sign of respect toward that treaty. Of course as the generations go by that origin has become more of a legend, few of my extended family actually believes this ritual is anything more than a leftover from our pagan, superstitious roots. But me and my grandfather know the truth. We've seen the things that lurk at the edge of the forests, seen what they can do to livestock, livelihoods, or of course people.

So imagine, if you will, you are invited to a party. A party filled with wonderful cakes, treats, and beautiful decorations. Now imagine someone literally dumps a pile of garbage on top of it.

That essentially is what has happened.

So I sit there, unsure how to tell my arguing friends what has just happened, and finally decide to just go to bed.

The next morning I wake up in the predawn hours, hungover from our libations, I look out my window see the fire pit is still smoldering. The black smoke is now grey and I can see old wires birnt black and twisted with pits of melted plastic sticking to the stones I dug up and carried from the creek.

I sigh, put on a pair of pants and go to rhe kitchen to make the moring coffee.

As the smell of the black brew wafts through the house, my cohabints emerge from their room looking as good as I feel.

My throat feels tight and scratchy so I simply raise my mug to them in greeting and am met with simular responses.

"Sorry Ty tried the burn the house down," Krystal offers when she has her coffee prepared.

"Hey, I said move!" Ty tries to protest his actions were justified.

I sign to Krystal, who translates for Ty, that its all good. Even though it may not be.

Back at my family's old Farm we hold to our traditions very seriously, like an old woman to her purse. I don't expect my friends to understand the importance of these traditions just yet, and believe me, I know how it sounds to explain these.

But instead I finish my coffee and try to tell them I'm off to start the morning chores, but my vioce comes out in a raspy gravel, so again I sign to Krystal.

Morning chores are typically the bane of my existence, but as I have the day off from my day job so it's not as bad, and it gives me time to think. I obviously can't just write an apology letter or throw another bonfire, the next time to hold one won't be until Halloween- and thats just for fun, normally. No instead I'll just have to my Buck Moon ritual will be enough to protect us from any malevolent spirits we may have offended.

I will note the Buck Moon ritual is NOT one of family's ancient traditions (well, on the Farm its called the Hay Moon and we did use to do something for that) but one I deviced myself as a way protecting myself when away from the Farm and the protection of the Hay Moon rites.

Nothing exactly happened that day, though none of the chickens had laid any eggs (which wasn't too far out the norm) however as the weeks progressed I noticed a few things that hinted something might be wrong.

The milk turned sour, the bread molded, and the grass began to die while the weeds began to overtake the pasture and garden. The grain barrels (thick plastic and metal that were advertised as critter proof) in the barn were chewed through and no matter what type of traps or bait I used the elusive culprits were still at large.

The chickens continued to not lay eggs and we soon went from an overwhelming plethora of tradable goods to a tiny stock barely able to feed ourselves. Not to mention that my voice had still yet to return making my job at the animal hospital very difficult to perform properly. My manager had to pull me aside and ask when I would be seeing a doctor about. If I could have laughed I would have but instead I was sent home early.

When the third week started of me being continuously mute and down to my last 6 eggs I new something had to be done. But the final motivation was when one of the horses, Cowboy, got sick. Immediately I called one of my vets and began to put my plan into action.

Thankfully the horse that was sick wasn't my horse, Prince. My family use to breed and sell horses for generations and Prince was one of the last horses born there. Prince is also very important to the Buck Moon ritual. As an avid hunter I normally follow all the hunting laws to a T, however for the Buck Moon I can only hunt in the middle of the night on horseback. Prince is the only horse we have trained for hunting so he's my only hope.

The day of the hunt I set everything up. My saddlebags, bow and arrows, along with a few less than normal trinkets. And in the express interest of keeping this long story short, I'm just going to skip ahead to the part where Prince and I return just before dawn with yearling buck being dragged behind us. Maybe I'll get a chance to explain more about it. How finding the deer took all night and the other beasts we saw in those woods, Gas Mask Gary, and how when we finally made it back with an hour to complete the ritual I was covered in blood and exhausted but still I got it done.

Work was not fun that day but luckily my sore throat was better and I had fresh eggs for breakfast. Along with some venison steaks.

I believed that the ritual had worked and soon our fall vegetables would be ready to harvest and everything wouldnbe back to normal.

To my relief, it was. Our vegetables and eggs were taken to market and our horse, Cowboy, was better almost overnight. I could finally talk again and had almost forgotten everything until October 30, the night before Halloween.

Like I said earlier we are renovating the house and one of the last rooms is the Krystal and Ty's bathroom- the master bath. We had ripped out the old vinyl and redoing some of the plumbing which left a small hole in the floor. We had all pretty much gotten ready for bed and Ty and I were outside with our last cigarettes for the day when we heard Krystal scream from the bathroom. We tossed our cigs and both ran toward the bathroom, Ty rapping on the door. "Babe, you alright?" He called thrpugh the door. Inside we could hear quiet the cacophony of noise, like bull in a China shop type deal. When Krystal started yelling again Ty and I burst through the door.

Krystal was armed with broom like a lance 8n one hand and towel like a whip in the other. And emerging out the whole in the floor was a black eyed, foam spitting raccoon. Its little claws dug into the vinyl leaving deep grooves and a horrific coughing, gagging noice emitted from its throat.

"Its rabid!" She yelled and jabbed the broom at it.

I've seen a rabid raccoon before, and so has Krystal, we've both worked those kinds of cases but this raccoon was different. Yes they will try to run up and attack, but it looked different. Like its skin wasn't on right and the sounds it made weren't what I had heard from raccoons- rabid or not.

Finally the little beast pulled itself free from the whole and ran, on its hind legs toward. All three of screamed but Krystal armed with her trusty broom hit it with everything she had and smashed its head into the cabinet.

For a moment the raccoon wobbled a few steps before it fell over, the mishape of its body more pronounced but even more damning was the blood running out its eyes and nose. Thick, black, tar like blood oozed from its head and the smell of rot and shit filled the bathroom.

Ty and Krystal nearly gagged as the smell hit us.

"What the fuck is that?" I head Ty ask as he pulled his shirt over his noes.

"It tried to kill me!" Krstal yelled. "I was trying take a shit and it climped up with its little paws!" She made a hand motion mimicking the raccoon reaching threw the whole. "We patching that whole tonight."

"Why does it smell so bad" Ty asked. "I ain't touching it."

I was oy half listening (well, less so than I normally can) and took the broom from Krystal to poke the thing.

As soon as the bristles touched the body the raccoon jumped back up, making even more gagging noises. I slammed the broom immediately on top of it, screaming again.

I grabbed a glass sitting on the counter and threw it onto the writhing beast. As soon as the water splashed onto its patchy fur a hissing could bebheard and steam rose from its now thrashing body.

"Holy fuck!" They screamed while I simply responded "Thats where I put the Holy water!"

The demonic raccoon was screaming and convulsing on the floor infront of us as the water burned it.

Krystal turned to me. "Why was there holy water in my bathroom?!"

I shrugged. "Divine intervention? But now we know its a raccoon corpse possessed by a demon."

Krystal threw her hands up. "Oh that is wonderful! Demon coon in the house!"

I looked back at Ty. "Can you help me grab my things?"

He just nodded, somewhat dumbfounded. I guess this was his first possessed raccoon.

It only took a few minutes to gather the stuff I would use. However there was one last thing I needed.

"So, I can't really banish it without its name and raccoons don't have vocal cords so I need to put it something that can talk." I looked Krystal in the eyes with a pleading look.

She shook her head. "Oh hell no. We are not doing that. Can't we use my in-laws?"

"Hey!" Ty was not amused. "Why can't we use your family?"

"We're not using anyones family!" I was tired and the circle I had made for the demon wasn't going to hold forever. "Krys, please."

In defeat she sighed and left the room for few minutes. While she was gone I prepped Ty on what was about to occur. I handed him a blessed knife I had and told him "If it leaves the circle, no matter the vessel, stab it hard enough to pin it to the floor." He looked at the long blade and just nodded.

Krystal camd back in with her son's Tickle Me Elmo doll. That thing gave us all the creeps but now it would be put to some good use.

I made second circle with very specific symbols, not dissimilar to the first one that held the Satanic flailing beast and drew a kind of infinity like symbol touching each circle. Krystal placed the Elmo doll in the new circle and I began the ritual.

If you have only seen exorcisms in movies or tv you will think there has to a Bible, screaming, and lots of flailing along with green pea soup.

It's possible all of those things could happen if you are dealing with humans, especially eccentric ones. A raccoon corpse on the other hand, not so much. The only difficult part I have is not knowing the demons name and the time crunch I have on the circles. Once the water dries, I probably won't be able to hold it back. And yes, like I told Krystal I can banish it but it could just pop up right back. And then we could be in a loop trying to constantly send him back and forth back and forth. Instead, I can trap him in a body that doesn't have claws or teeth or rabies. Which is what I did.

The words don't matter so long as you believe them, so long as you give them power. Now that doesn't mean I can just say whatever I want. I have a long monologue I use that took me years to perfect. It's written in few languages most ancient Hebrew and Hellenistic Greek with a bit of Gaelic thrown in for that extra punch. These are the languages that are strongest to me.

Except I have to read them slowly, if I mess up a single syllable I have to start all over. And I have a mild speech impediment. And worse sometimes.

Carefully I pronounce each syllable, its still a race against time and if mispronounce anything I will have to start over.

The smell of rot and shit is getting worse and the demon-raccoon starts convulsing madly. The black blood is still flowing from its head but as it slamns it head and claws at its body the black tar leaves smoldering smudges in the bare floor.

I'm nearing the mid point of the ritual and motion to my roommates to leave the room. Krystal tries to get my attention, to tell me no she is staying there but I pour all my focus into the words I'm spewing. If anything goes wrong, and the demon doesn't go into the proper vessel it could easy posses my friends. And while a simple wooden door won't keep a demon from possessing a host, if there is only one visible option they typically take it.

I hear the soft click of the door behind me. I raise my voice and the raccoon is now actively ripping fur and flesh off itself. The most ear peircing scream emits from its maw of broken teeth, I can see black blood gurgling in the back of ots throat. My stomach almost feels sick but I push on.

I hold up my left hand and draw a second knife along my open palm. I didn't want my roommates to see the self mutilation that is part of this exorcism. I hold my bloody hand above the irate demon. I let the blood drip a new circle around the demon.

The smell of apple blossums, cedarwood, and salt water mixes with the demonic stench from the raccoon. Its enough to be overwhelming and for a brief moment I almost stumble over the final phrase but it comes out well articulated.

The sound of bones snapping fill the room as I watvh the raccoon literally brake in half, part of its spinal column protruding from the stomach. Black blood spew from its mouth, filling the circle.

In the neighboring circle I hear the little voice box of the doll come to life. "Elmo loves you!"

Stupid fucking demons.

I scoop up the now animate doll and hand it to Krystal. "I had one rule!" I yell as I stumble to my room. "No goddamn demons!"

The next day, Halloween, was like any other day. I went to work, did my chores, rode my horse. The new addition of locking Helmo wasn't too offsetting. He still gets out of his case and walks around, rather poorly, but so far he can't do much. Aside annoy us with his flailing and constant prerecorded chatter. "Hehehe. That tickles!"

"No shit, Helmo!"

"Fuck off, Helmo!"

Sometimes, when he is too much, we put him in shoebox. Other times we might even take a stab at him. He doesn't like that.

But the arrival of our wayward demon isn't what upset me. No, what upset the most was what happened Halloween night and the next morning.

As we sat around the bonfire Halloween night in our costumes with our drinks and smokes I glanced up. Through the flames, at the edge of the woods I could see a tall, lean figure in a hoody. The flames reflected off the lenses of the gasmask that covered his face and I felt a cold shutter run down my spine. Gas Mask Gary is the biggest enigma in the town, but his presence always means something strange and possibly dangerous is going to happen.

The next morning when I rose up to care the animals before getting ready for work, I saw something unusual in the extinguished firepit. In the predawn light I walked over closer to inspect it.

A door made of hard carved wood with a plain handle lay unmarked as if raising out the soot and ashes.

Fuck. A Door to Nowhere.

#Halloween #devils night #story #series #reddit #caliete #nosleep

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xboxdudett · 5 years ago

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Ok so I don't know what deity or spirit or entity or whatever I've pissed off, but this shit is getting ridiculous.

This has officially been the week from hell. Everything has gone wrong. And my family in general is known for its terrible luck, me especially (I mean, shit, I've literally been struck by lightning twice, that's pretty fucking unlucky) but the last few days have been terrible.

First, our cat Ash developed a terrible UTI that we had to rush him to the emergency vet for. It was terrifying for the fact that we woke up to him practically screaming and leaving literal puddles of blood all over the house. It's taken several rounds of different medications but it finally seems to be getting better, thankfully.

Next, my dad and I have been working on building a chicken run (just a large fenced in area for the chickens to live in without the fear of any predators getting them). The brilliance of our design is that it will back up to my little garden and in the fall and spring we can let them in it to scrounge around. SO, we have to dig two holes right next to the garden, which is enclosed by an old dog pen, so that no deer or anything eat the plants (we live in the middle of nowhere so it is actually a huge concern).

First hole went great. No problems. Post is leaning a little because of the dog kennel, but no big deal. Second hole?? ...........not so much. Posthole digger hit a stone when we were pulling it up and jumped over against the fence.

It ATE IT.

Literally wrapped it up around it and ate it.

We also had a shovel and a tamp leaning against the dog kennel when it was eaten (this tamp being a 1&1/2 in piece of steel that is 7ft long and weighs about 25lbs). The shovel was completely destroyed, with the handle being snapped into about 5 pieces and the tamp was bent.

I didn't know it could be bent.

After this all happened and we were cleaning up the mess, this abesolute bastard of a tool fell over and hit me on the right side of my chest, right beneath my collar bone. I've since developed a huge knot and bruise, plus it fucking hurts.

So, we wrap that day up and go to the store the next day to get a new dog kennel, since my precious plants are now exposed to the dangers of the world. There goes $300 that no one had AND it's too big to fit in our truck, so we have to drive the 20 minutes home to get a trailer to then go back and get it.

With the kennel in tow we head home and get lunch on the way. My dad proceeds to drop the food in the floor board when it's handed to him and then when we get home and he goes to get out, he manages to kick the bag of food out onto the ground. 😑

We go back to work on the chicken run after eating our slightly smashed lunch and it feels like nothing goes right. Nothing is lining up, we forgot to measure a post before we buried it so then we have to pull it up and do it again, I almost tripped and fell about 50 times, you know....the usual shit.

Next day, aka, today. Get a call from the VET; they've been reviewing Ash's records from his last visit and have found that he has hook worms. He's an indoor cat and gets regular preventative medicine but whatever. Fuck me, I guess. Have to go pick up his medicine.

My dad and I gather up all the trash and head to the dump. EXCEPT THE DUMP IS CLOSED BECAUSE IT'S GOOD FRIDAY. While turning around to head back home, my dad backs up against a short pole that was sticking up out of the ground and slashes the back right tire.

There is no patching that shit, ladies and gentlemen. So there goes another $400 🙃

And at some point in this last week of madness one of the cats was out in the garage and chewed through the wires on the garage door, so it has been out of commission for several days now. AND the same teething-bastard chewed through my headphone cord last night so I had to order a new set this morning. 😐

I'm done, y'all. I'm just done. I don't know if any of you can hook me up with someone to lift this curse, but please don't hesitate to help a girl out.

#fuck me I guess #oh and I've gotten 3 huge blisters on my hands #my back is KILLING me #and I got sunburned on day one of working on the chicken run #mine #me

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ninzied · 6 years ago

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in which karen becomes a reluctant cat owner. in a post-dds3 world with spoilers for tps2. written for kastle valentine 2019.

It wakes her up in the middle of the night.

She’d been dreaming of Fisk again – the cold hate in his eyes as he towered above her, so sharp he could snap her in two without even moving a finger. During the day, it’s easy to remind herself that he’s back behind bars where he belongs. That she’s safe. That even if that stops being the case, she’s still nowhere near helpless; she knows how to take care of herself.

The dreams are always another story.

She squints into the dark of her ceiling, things still trying to take some kind of shape in her mind. There’d been a gun this time, on the table between them. She’d been reaching, only to find her hands suddenly tied back behind her chair…

Karen’s dozing off when she hears it again.

Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch.

It’s louder this time, more insistent. Any notion of sleep has now left her, and she sits bolt upright in her bed, ears straining.

It’s coming from her window.

She’s halfway to the drawer with her gun when the scratching fades, and for a moment there’s nothing but wind, and the faint sounds of late-night traffic below. And then—

Mew.

[read more below or continue on ao3.]

It’s clear, and plaintive, and “You've got to be kidding me,” Karen groans, throwing on a robe before padding her way over to the windowsill.

There, perched on the other side, with slow-blinking grey orbs and a thick coat of black fur, is a cat staring back at her.

“Okay,” says Karen. “Hi, I guess.”

She’s always been more of a dog person. But the thing is so small and forlorn, it’s probably freezing outside, and who can hold her accountable for bad choices made after 2AM anyway, so she unlatches the window and cracks it half-open.

“Do you want to come in or not?” sighs Karen when the cat only sits there and blinks at her some more. “Going once…twice…” She steps away from the window to give it more room to decide. A breeze works its way in, and she shivers, firmly closing the front of her robe.

The cat gazes at her a second longer, and just when Karen’s about to give up and call it a night, it slinks a paw inside, patting around as though feeling things out, before leaping onto the floor. One of its hind legs, she notices, is shorter than the others, giving it an odd little sway as it walks, but its movements are otherwise steady, assured.

By the time Karen’s closed her window and turned back around, the cat is nowhere to be seen, save for a blur of possible movement near the foot of her coffee table.

“Please, make yourself at home,” she speaks into the semi-darkness. There’s a faint but unmistakably smug-sounding yowl from the general vicinity of her couch cushions, and Karen trudges back to her own bed, half-hoping that when she wakes up in the morning, this will all have turned out to be some very strange dream.

…

“You got a cat?” asks Matt the next day, and she curses his sense of super-smell, the hint of amusement as he quirks his head in her direction.

“More like the cat got me,” grumbles Karen, making a beeline for the kitchenette without bothering to dump her things off at her desk. All the coffee in the world isn’t going to wake her up from this nightmare, that apparently she’s become one of those people. Those people who give off the impression of owning a cat.

“I tried to get us a cat once,” Foggy pipes up. “But Marci said over her dead body, so I decided not to press the issue.”

“I would gladly let you take this one off my hands.” Karen sips her coffee, leaning into the wall for a moment. “Matt…you seem like a cat person.”

Matt’s face twitches with a smile. “I don’t know whether I should be insulted or flattered.”

“Oh, I do,” says Foggy helpfully, before turning back to Karen as she treks slowly over to her desk. “Why don’t you drop him off at a shelter or something? The cat, I mean. Not Matt. Of course.”

“Of course,” echoes Matt, with a shake of his head.

“Seriously, though. They could help find him a good home. One that doesn’t have to be yours, if you don’t want it to be.”

“Her,” Karen corrects absentmindedly. “It’s a her. I think.” She sets down her mug, picks up the day’s Bulletin that Foggy’s made a habit of bringing in for her. She should grab some more bread from the store on her way home. The cat had gone through her last loaf earlier that morning.

“So what do you have against them, anyway?” Matt’s thumbing through case files, still looking faintly entertained by the whole situation.

Karen turns to the crime beat section, her old stomping grounds. The headlines rush together, no particular names standing out. She breathes again, and shrugs to Matt, “Nothing against them. They just don’t happen to be dogs.”

“Fair enough,” says Foggy. “Though I had this one cat growing up and sometimes I swear you could not tell the difference.”

“They have zero loyalties to anything, apart from themselves. And they’ll walk all over you if you let them.” She frowns at the memory of trying to shoo the cat back outside that morning, the look of disdain she’d gotten in return before the cat jumped onto her bed and made herself comfortable there.

“Some might call that self-sufficient.”

“And I saw a study once suggesting that most cats recognize the sound of their owner’s voice over a stranger’s, but only ten percent of them actually bother to acknowledge it.” Not that she'd planned on naming the thing or testing out any part of this theory.

“Nothing against them, you said?” Matt asks her in an innocent tone.

“You know,” says Foggy, “if I were to die suddenly, just keel over in my living room one day, and my cat had to starve – let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Marci’s, I don’t know, she actually made good on her threat if I got one – I would not blame it for eventually needing to eat both of our bodies.”

“Cats wait on average fewer days than other pets do under those circumstances.”

“I thought we were on the same side here, Matt.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” groans Karen, dropping her forehead into her hands. “I can’t leave her at a shelter. She has this gimpy back leg. Nobody’s going to want to take her.”

“Shame,” Foggy says mildly. “Wonder how this story ends?”

…

She takes the cat to the vet. On the unlikely chance that the cat’s been chipped and belongs to someone (she doesn’t), and to get that leg checked out while they’re at it (healed from a bad break that had never been properly tended to).

She tells herself she’ll give it one week, max, to figure something out. Something more permanent, that doesn’t involve cat litter strewn all over her bathroom, claw marks on the sides of her couch, and more than one broken glass that she shouldn’t have left on the counter.

At least she has an excuse not to think about buying flowers for her windowsill anymore.

Karen tells herself all of this until they’ve left the vet a second time, with a schedule for catch-up vaccines and a two hundred dollar bill that’s telling her otherwise: this cat is now hers, whether she likes it or not.

She’s never been more grateful for Matt’s heightened senses, when it saves her the trouble of having to admit it out loud. To his credit, he breathes not a word, though she doesn’t miss the way his mouth turns up at the corner sometimes when she re-pockets her emergency lint roller, or starts cutting out coupons for Petco in the Bulletin ads.

And Foggy's only comment, after a few weeks of staying silent on the matter: “So when can I come meet your new girl?”

…

They fall into an easy routine.

The cat is the first thing she sees in the morning, sharp little paws kneading relentlessly into the blankets until Karen finally rolls out of bed with a groan. She’s stationed by the door when Karen returns from the office every late afternoon – sometimes late evening, depending – winding herself around Karen’s legs, tripping her up and loudly asking for food in the same breath.

She’ll never admit it, but it’s…kind of nice, to have this small ball of comfort, curled warmly beside her at night. Nudging a cold, wet nose in her ear when she falls asleep with the TV still on. Ignoring her, too, on days when she simply can’t be bothered, sitting by the window with a prowling gaze on the squirrels and pigeons instead.

It’s quiet, and the quiet is something Karen wants so badly to count on. To believe that the noise can be over, that maybe her ‘after’ can be something as simple as coming home to a stray that’s decided it belongs with her there.

The dreams come less frequently now, and it’s nice, to be able to sleep through the night again.

Karen still doesn’t know what to call her, which appalls Foggy more than anyone else. But none of the things he suggests sound quite right to her, and she keeps stalling, saying she’s sure the inspiration will come at some point.

“What are you waiting for?” Matt finally speaks up, without judgment, only a gentle curiosity to his tone, and Karen wishes she knew how to answer him.

…

When his name starts showing up in the papers again, Karen’s running late for work. The cat had hurled up a hairband at breakfast, and as an apology for showing up probably smelling like vomit, Karen had grabbed bagels on her way in.

Something’s wrong the moment she walks through the door. Matt’s back is to her, but it stiffens at unnaturally sharp angles before she’s even opened her mouth to greet them, Foggy doing his level best not to betray anything in his own expression.

“Did you know?” Matt asks without turning, an accusation in every word.

Karen shakes her head, bewildered. She’s still standing in the doorway, bag limp at her side. “Know what?”

Foggy meets her gaze from his desk in the corner. “Frank,” he says, and it feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room, her chest burning with things that she’d long thought snuffed out. “Frank Castle is back.”

…

His face is splashed all over news outlets, every bit as battered and bruised as Karen last saw it so long ago, as their bodies swayed together in that elevator stopped between moments in time. She wonders, in all the months that have passed since then, whether he’s known any peace – any healing – or if the bleeding’s never stopped.

He’s wearing the vest as he charges down streets on CCTV, and even with the volume on mute she can feel the ricochet of his gunfire, hear the ground-out fury of his voice every time his mouth curls on a snarl.

The cat has taken an interest in the news as well, looking alert as the camera goes blurry around Frank for a moment. Her tail thwips back forth, back again, and then she’s stretching over Karen’s leg, resting her chin on her two front paws. She lets out a low, rumbling purr when the edges of Frank begin to sharpen again, her eyes never leaving the screen.

“Not you, too,” sighs Karen, scratching behind her ears as the footage replays. Frank storms down the street one more time, face set in so much rage. She reaches for the remote, but can’t bring herself to shut it off.

She doesn’t sleep much that night.

When she does dream it’s short, fragmented. Impossible to piece together in a coherent way. Fisk pays her another visit, but in place of the gun this time it’s Frank on his rampage, his outline fuzzy with static, and no sound comes out when he's shouting at her.

“Frank,” she says, and her voice sounds strong as she reaches for him, each time he gets close enough to touch her. “Frank.” But then his footsteps rewind, and he’s running towards her only to backtrack again, over and over without closing any new distance between them.

Karen’s never been one to take stock in dreams, but it feels oddly like foreshadowing, when she un-cuffs him from his hospital bed a few days later.

So make it mean something.

Turns out it never meant anything at all.

…

Karen calls out of work for two days, after that. Hoping that’s enough time to get Frank’s scent out of her skin.

She needn’t have bothered. They would’ve put two and two together, after seeing the news. The shootout on the overpass. The TV reports of Sergeant Mahoney giving interviews from his own hospital bed, staying strangely tight-lipped on the matter of Frank Castle’s escape from his custody.

Karen wears flats to the office, and doesn’t say much under Matt’s own wordless scrutiny, the tight smiles that she knows don’t reach his eyes beneath those darkened frames.

There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said.

Poor Foggy’s left with the task of mediating the silence between them, telling stories, cracking flat but good-natured jokes about their clientele, finally resorting to asking after Karen’s “She Who Still Has No Name” cat.

“She’s fine,” says Karen, thinking of late nights watching the news, and the content little meow every time Frank’s scowling face appeared back onscreen.

Matt breaks his silence at last, uttering a quiet, “Was it worth it, Karen?” He speaks without slowing the speed of his fingers over the papers in front of him, and the blood floods up to her ears in one deafening rush.

Screw you, Matt.

But then the image of Frank is fighting to the surface again, stumbling forward without daring to touch her in any way before turning his back on her for the last time. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.

It’s impossible to say, in that moment, which of the two has disappointed her more.

Was it worth it, Karen?

“Always.” Her tone is perfectly even, but her heart is pressed tight to the walls of her chest, and she’s not sure even she knows the difference anymore, between the truth and the lie.

…

Karen tells herself a lot of things. That she can’t forgive him so easily this time – if he even gives her the chance not to. And perhaps that’s what burns her more than anything else, that he’s always the one who decides when to show up, with flowers or a burner phone (a broken-sounding Please, and a soft kiss to her cheek that she’d felt there for days afterward). He’s always the one who gets to say no. He’s always the one who does the leaving.

She tells herself it doesn’t matter. There is no more this time, or whatever comes next, not for them. He’d made it quite clear where he stood on the matter.

(At least one of these things is definitely a lie.)

Karen winds up so determined to make it mean nothing, on her own terms, that in retrospect she should have known.

Her cat – Karen’s tentatively started to call her different names in her head, just to get a feel for how they sound – should have clued her in too.

After the newscasters start to run low on fresh Punisher material, her cat takes to sitting by the window for long hours instead, as if he’ll just come strolling around the corner of her block next.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Karen mutters, turning away as a garbage compactor rolls down the street.

Mrrow, says her cat, unblinking.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t make the damn rules.” Karen sinks into the couch with coffee in hand, a book on something lighthearted in the other. She props her feet on the table, tosses a throw over her knees, and focuses on the forgetting of things for a while.

She starts back awake to a series of clattering sounds, blinking through a haze of sleep and the dim lighting of just-sunset to find her cat pawing animatedly at the window. She catches a flash of something dark in the periphery, so quick she thinks she might have imagined it.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake…” Karen wraps the blanket over her shoulders and drags herself across the room, sighing all the while. She crouches down over the cat, running a hand over her back to calm her. “What did you find, hmm? Was it a big bad raccoon?”

The cat makes a chirping noise, and Karen looks up.

“Definitely not a raccoon,” she breathes, heart slamming up against her rib cage as Frank eases himself down from her fire escape. He opens his mouth, the gravel in his voice smoothed out by the windowpane between them.

She would still know the sound of her name in that voice anywhere.

“Karen. Hey.”

…

She can feel his eyes on her as she moves around the kitchen, trying to remember where she’d last put her bottle opener. Two beers sit unattended on her kitchen island, a bead of sweat dripping down each neck, and when had it gotten so hot in here?

She grips the edge of the counter with both hands, forcing herself to breathe for a moment.

She still can’t bring herself to look at him.

The cat is purring up a storm at his feet, tail brushing over his legs, spine arching in a very clear demand to be picked up.

What did I tell them? Karen can’t help but sigh. No loyalty whatsoever.

“Ah,” grunts Frank, glancing down with a slightly bemused expression, and Karen finds herself holding her breath again, wondering. He’d always struck her as more of a dog person. “Hey, sweetheart.”

His gaze flicks back to hers, searching for any signs of disapproval before he’s bending over, scooping the cat up in one hand.

“Got yourself a guard dog, I take it?” He lets out a low chuckle, lower lip snagging between his teeth as the cat crawls over his chest, rubbing her forehead under his chin. God, what a traitor.

“Yeah.” Karen crosses her arms. “Something like that.”

Frank brings his other hand around to cradle the cat’s shortened back leg. Karen can hear her purring from all the way across the room. “She, uh. She’s a real friendly one, isn’t she.”

Karen’s tone is sharp, pointed. “She’s not that great at deterring intruders.”

Frank drops his head down, nodding to himself for a moment. “Look, I can go, if that’s what you want, Karen, I just. Had to see how you were doing.” The sentiment falls flat and they both know it, a cringe twitching across his features. He surveys the room, and she can see him measuring out the space in his head, all the things still standing between them. He nods again, giving the cat one last scratch to the chin before releasing her. “I’ll go.”

Karen shrugs a shoulder at him, shaking her head. “It’s what you do best, Frank.” The words are out of her mouth before she recognizes the dark place that they’d come from, and the shame of it stops her short.

It’s what you do best, Karen.

Frank knits his brow together, looking more somber than she’s ever seen him, and he turns to leave.

“Wait.” She uncrosses her arms, holds out a hand to him before letting it drop. “Just – wait.” She comes around to the side of the island and stops there, gazing at him, willing him to understand her. She can’t be the one always reaching for him. Not this time. Not anymore.

Frank closes his eyes for a second, draws in an audible breath like he’s searching deep within himself for something. When he looks at her again, he seems to have found it, his expression painfully bare, and she can see every one of his bruises, new cuts that have formed over half-healing scars.

Slowly, he makes his way over to her – less gingerly than he’d needed to at the hospital, but there’s still a carefulness to his movements, like she might decide not to let him any closer, and he wouldn’t blame her for it.

Karen swallows, gestures into the space between their bodies. “What is this, Frank?”

His breath shudders out. His voice is gruff, hoarse like he hasn’t used it in days, and maybe he hasn’t, not in this way. “You mean something. To me.” He redistributes his weight, nudging himself just a little bit closer. She still hasn’t moved.

“God, Karen, I—” Frank shakes his head, mouth pulling upward with a kind of disbelieving laugh. “I did some thinking, after, with the kid, okay, and it made me think, made me realize—”

He breaks off, gaze piercing through hers. His body goes perfectly still, and she knows the effort it’s taking him, knows that it can’t just be nothing, that it never was, after all.

“You might mean more than anything else that there is, and that – that scares me. That terrifies the shit out of me, yeah? That gonna be okay with you, Karen?”

His voice cracks on her name, and suddenly they’re swaying together, her arms coming up to his shoulders to steady him. To steady them both, and it’s messy, it doesn’t un-complicate all of the damaged pieces that don’t fit quite right with them yet, but it’s a start. It’s a start.

Her breathing evens out in time with his, and then she slides her fingers down to gently grasp around his wrists. His palms turn upward, dwarfing her own. He squeezes her back instead of letting go.

“Both hands, right?” she says to him, and he whispers her name like a kiss to her forehead.

…

He eventually falls asleep on the couch, with her copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up still splayed open over his lap. The cat is comfortably dozing away on his chest, his arm draped protectively around the side of her body. The furrow lines between his brows are smooth, relaxed, and there’s no movement behind his eyelids, no tossing and turning like she’d seen at the hospital.

It’s a disarming sight, and for a moment Karen can only stand there, watching the rise-fall-rise of their slumbering, before tucking a blanket over them both.

She lets a hand linger, brushing back some stray hair from Frank’s forehead. The top of it has gotten long, she thinks, with a feeling that she realizes is fondness, and it leaves her chest warm as she starts to tiptoe away from the couch.

Impulsively, she leans back over him before she’s out of range, pressing a light kiss to the square of his bruised-up jaw. He stirs without waking, but the cat blinks up at her for a second, stretching her paws and closing her eyes again when Karen gives her head a gentle little scratch.

“Night, my love,” she whispers, and they’re both shifting, curling into each other as Karen takes another step back. Frank’s nose is half-buried into the cat’s fur now, a deep, sleepy rumble sounding out of his throat, and it’s hard to look away from them, like this might all simply disappear if she does.

Karen forces herself into her bedroom, but she leaves the door open, and she falls asleep to the thought of what this new after could be – just Frank, and this cat, her two broken strays that have made a home out of her heart for good.

…

Fisk is there again, shouting things and threatening violence, but he’s started out farther away this time as he advances toward her, and from this distance, he almost seems small.

“Karen.”

She looks around, confused.

“Karen!”

Something warm closes over her wrist, a phantom touch that she can’t see, but she would recognize the sound of her name in that voice anywhere.

She puts the gun down.

Frank is hunkered over her when she opens her eyes, his gaze troubled and bright in the dark of her bedroom as his mouth forms over her name over and over. “Hey. Y’okay?” He rasps the words out, still bleary with the last remnants of sleep. His hair is standing at an angle on one end, and Karen resists the urge to run her fingers through it.

He helps her sit up, one hand palming the back of her skull, and it’s warm, he’s warm all over, as she leans an arm into the crook of his shoulder. The bed bounces slightly under their weight as he reaches with his other hand, sliding a rough thumb over her elbow, pressing the bridge of his nose to her temple and breathing in deep.

“It’s always the same dream,” she tells him, and she knows he must hear it, the echoing of his own previous words.

Frank licks his lips, hanging his head with something like shame for a moment, as though he wants to ask of her things that he has no right in asking.

“Listen, Karen, I…” He trails his fingers over the soft part of her forearm, before coming to linger down by her wrist. “You were there for me, always are, even when I don’t—” He breaks off again, watching the way their hands twine together. “Guess what I’m trying to say is, if I can be that for you, I’d. I’d really like to give it a shot, yeah?”

Frank looks at her now, face sculpted in moonlight, so vulnerable that Karen aches all over to look back at him. She tightens her grip on his hand. “I’d like that too,” she tells him.

He lands a kiss to her knuckles, tender and careful, warm with the promise of more. She can feel his breath shaking over her skin, cooling the spots his mouth had touched. She rests her head against the slope of his shoulder, eyes drifting closed as he brushes his fingers up and down the side of her arm before finally weaving into her hair again.

There’s movement at the foot of the bed, and a soft chirruping meow as the cat pads over to join them, tail grazing their hands where they’re joined.

“She got a name?”

“Work in progress,” hums Karen. “Kind of thought for a while she would just up and leave at some point, before I got something to stick.”

Frank’s quiet for a moment, mouth skimming back and forth over her hairline. She pictures those lines in his brow creasing again, deep in thought about what she’s said. “That right?”

“Mm.”

He comes to rest with his mouth by her ear, nuzzling a slow little kiss there. “Think it might be time to give her one, then.”

Karen stretches into him, head falling sideways, letting him find her pulse point next. “Think so?”

“Yeah,” Frank murmurs, heat tracking over her skin as he breathes her in like time has no meaning – like he wants to learn all that he can of her, and then keep on going, no end in sight, no war zones, just this. She thinks she’s never wanted anything more either. “Yeah, Karen. I do.”

#kastle #kastleff #kastle ff #kastlenetwork #kastlevalentine #disclaimer #i actually love cats so much

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lovebarnowl · 5 years ago

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It’s been a long time, Nestlings.

Life’s been really hard on me. Perhaps that was a given, seeing how many posts leading up to my disappearance revolve around depression and suicide awareness. I wish I could say I always made the right choices, but sometimes all you have is the ability to make a choice and there is no right or wrong to it.

I want to make light of the struggles I’ve been in, but that’s probably due to still being steeped in them. A home falling apart around me, an oppressive darkness everywhere I go within it, and the absence of someone I loved dearly -- it’s a weight that burdens me.

Our home has water damage in multiple rooms causing multiple instances of black mold and mildew. My man and I vacated my bedroom a year ago and have been sleeping on the concrete floor of the living room. We had a terrible bed bug infestation, so we tossed all the furniture. We had a mouse problem, so we moved all of our foods into a giant plastic tub in the center of our kitchen floor. We now have roaches from when our new landlords moved in next door and can’t seem to stem the tide. We are in the process of escape. Put in applications for an apartment nearby and are waiting as patiently as we can in a building where it feels like I’m constantly struggling to breathe.

In the middle of all of this, my sweet kitty who had turned sixteen in March, was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. We spent money we didn’t have (thanks to the magic of a credit card) to have fluid drained from around his heart and lungs. They removed a quarter of a liter of fluid. For two nights, my sweet furbaby was able to breathe easy again. I was giving him medicine daily, as required, always on schedule. I sacrificed time with friends and moments of precious sleep to monitor him. I would have held out for years if need be -- just to make sure he was safe. Over the years, Mose has been one of the main things that tethers me to this world. A reason to wake up. A reason to keep on living. I raised him every year of his life from the bottle to the bier.

After day two, I noticed he began to stop sleeping curled up in a ball again. He began sleeping stretched out as long as possible. He didn’t purr unless I was nearby and giving him constant pets, but they were soft and distant. His eyes just staring ahead into the void. On day 4 I took him to the vet. He’d had a bad case of sniffles since they’d drained all the fluid from his chest, but the vet told me he sounded great. He was proud of how I’d been caring for him and said that I had the “hard job” of giving him medicines daily. To me, it wasn’t necessarily hard, just frustrating because I wanted him to take his medicines without causing him too much stress or discomfort. He enjoyed all of the extra gravy at every meal, that’s for sure.

Four days after that impromptu vet visit where I was told I was doing everything right and that he was doing well we had a really bad morning. 10am is the first pill of the day - it’s half of what is already a very small pill. It’s supposed to help him keep the fluid off by urinating more often and drinking more water. He hates it so much that I finally had succumbed the last two days to simply pilling him myself and then giving him his food afterwards. But this morning he struggles more than usual. I try to be gentle, not wanting to hurt his back legs (he was diagnosed with arthritis earlier in the year and had also managed to crush part of his back hips) but it’s difficult with the squirming on a slippery wooden floor. After a minute or so, I finally get him to actually swallow the pill and offer him his food. He walks away from it. Casually. Returns to his bedding. I follow after him, used to this behavior, and offer him the bowl again. This time he gets up and he staggers. Falls over. I drop the bowl and hesitantly reach for him as he gets up and begins staggering again, and now I can see his mouth is agape.

He’s struggling to breathe. To stand. He can’t seem to move his back legs so when he falls over again, his back legs stay perfectly stretched out and he urinates himself. I start calling for my father, reaching to stabilize Mose, and help him off the floor to see he’s also defecated on the floor. He falls over onto his bedding, breaths per minute through the roof -- too fast to count -- and drool pours out one side of his mouth as I grab the pet carrier and put it as close to him as I can. I know there’s 100% no way in hell he’ll be able to walk into it unaided, so I gingerly tug the blanket he’s on inside the carrier. It takes a couple of minutes, but I manage it. We drive pell mell to the Emergency Vet in empty Sunday streets until we hit the city. Boyfriend rushes out of work and meets us at the vet office and takes the news with me that the fluid has already built up again. They’ll need to redrain his chest and keep him overnight for observation. We ask for an itemized bill, already preparing to just throw the credit card at it and pray for the best. But, like most things in America, if you don’t have a surplus of tiny pieces of green paper, you don’t get the choice to live or to even try fighting what ails you. With a bill passed to us of 5,000$ it’s 68$ over the limit of his credit card: we have to make a choice. We can let him suffer at home until he finally suffocates or we can be merciful and have him put to sleep.

We’ve spent two hours sobbing. Mose is in the back in an oxygen tank to help him calm down and breathe. As we sit there fighting with unseen cosmic forces, I’m remembering the hectic drive where my hand is stretched into the cat carrier, caressing his cheek until twenty minutes have passed. He slowly comes back to himself and realizes he isn’t on the living room floor anymore. He gently rests his head on my hand as a sign of thanks, but I can tell he’s still not fairing very well. His breaths per minute, when I count them on the drive, are in the 50s. I whisper to him that he’s okay, not to worry, that I’ll take care of him. He gives me a very small lick and I take it to mean he understands. He trusts me.

So sitting here in the room, deciding his fate without being able to consult him, feels beyond cruel. Because I know my baby. He can fight this. I know if we could afford to give him the chance to fight, he would live another 2 years at least. I want to give him giant windows filled with sunshine like I promised him. When I told him I would take care of him, I didn’t mean by taking his ability to live away. I meant that he could come home and snuggle with me and purr and have more gravy and just be himself. But the obscene amount of money printed on the paper looms. It mocks. It isn’t even an amount that contains what we would need to have him viewed by a cardiologist after the tap -- for they say something else is at work in his body. The fluid drawn from him was unnaturally thick. Could have been cancer, but they would have needed to confirm.

We literally cannot. I tell my boyfriend I can’t physically say it. If we go this route, I cannot speak the words aloud. With a deep breath and heavy sigh, he agrees to shoulder the burden. We compose ourselves long enough to summon the vet assistant and he asks the question that shatters me. I fall apart, sobbing into my hands, while she calmly says she will bring in the information we need.

Thousands of dollars to save a life. Only under five hundred to end it. The price totaled out around 460$ and only was so high given that they’d had him in the oxygen tank for so long and given him a couple of shots to help him breathe. A manageable price, but it leaves one feeling like Judas with unclean hands filled with silver. They bring him wrapped loosely in a brown blanket for us to spend some time together. He buries his head into the folds of fabric, clearly enjoying the warmth, and we all laugh together at how precious he is.

As I stare into his sweet eyes once he’s peeked back out of the cloth, I feel my throat ache with unshed tears. I refuse to cry in this moment. I want these last minutes to be as pleasant as I can make them. I want to see his sweet twitchy-whiskers and boopable snoot without eyes clouded with sadness. The longer I gaze at him, the more I realize that this isn’t a cat ready to give up. He isn’t in a state of just lay down and die. The guilt is crippling. What if we took him somewhere else? Got a different opinion? Got a cheaper option? But it’s a Sunday. The only things available are emergency clinics with prices roughly all the same. And I can’t handle the idea of him suffocating. With all of my lung problems, the worst form of torture and pain to me is having your own lungs fail you. I cannot bear to let him endure that. Aside from my own lung collapsing, I have no earthly idea how much pain and discomfort he was in. I don’t even remember it collapsing. But on my worst days when I struggle to inhale even the smallest of breaths, I feel that I had a better chance of struggling through it than his little lungs.

I apologize to him in whispers. I tell him how much I love him. Over and over. I give him his favorite neck scritches and ear rubs. I pet his little murder mittens. I run my fingers over the areas of skin they’ve shaved only a week ago in order to safely remove the fluid in his chest. It’s barely begun growing back in. We hold him close and give him all the kisses in the world. He gives me one very small kitty kiss and I feel tears welling up that I command to go away. Not yet.

From the moment the vet assistant brought him in to us to the moment she injected the needle that put him into slumber, he purred. He purred nonstop. Loudly. All eight cylinders firing. He was a wonder. With a single injection, his head falls into my hand and he keeps purring. Perfectly snoozing without a care in the world cuz momma’s here with him and she promised he’d be alright. And I feel my heart just plummet through my chest, watching her lift that second syringe. Watching her check for a heartbeat afterwards after I already know. His head lies heavier in my hand than before. The purrs have slowly tapered off into silence. Before she even confirms it, I know he’s gone.

The tears are allowed to flow now. Hot and heavy and unceasing. We hold each other and try to restrain our anger in turn. I find myself unable to remove my hand from underneath his head -- remembering that I do this at home so that he can sleep better. It’s so hard for him to get decent sleep so I’ve become accustomed to not moving in order for him to do so. Boyfriend makes a call once he’s composed himself an hour later. His father answers and agrees to help him dig a grave.

As they take him back to package him for travel, the alarm on my phone goes off. 2pm. It’s time to give Mose his second pill. I stare blankly at the phone screen with a piercing ache in my chest. I’ve set the alarms to repeat forever. Boyfriend gently reaches out and asks if I want him to turn them off for me. I shake my head and do it myself, hands shaking, heart pounding -- already the routine comes to an end.

The rest is rather uneventful. Our bodies struggle to cope with the loss while trying to pass as normal human beings in the presence of someone who may not fully understand why we are suffering so much. It takes them a couple of hours to dig since the chosen spot happened to be primarily bedrock. While they toil in the heat, I find myself curled up in boyfriend’s old bed with the box open beside me. Stroking Mosey’s fur and weeping in the silence. I had longed to one day cuddle him in a bed again, but not like this...not this way.

It’s been two weeks today. The house feels lifeless in a whole new way. I find myself waking up and reaching to pet him only to have my hand fall through empty air. I miss him stretching out to touch my feet with his paws while I play video games beside him. I long to feel him lying next to me, purring like mad, snuggling in against my chest for warmth. I catch myself looking for him while I’m cooking -- always interested in what the humans were eating and waiting for the sniff I always grant him to prove that he doesn’t want the food we’re going to have. I staggered through the house groggily earlier today after sleeping too late with ten minutes to go until 2pm. My sleepy mind had forgotten his loss and all I could think was I needed to make sure he took his heart medicine on time. And as I stared at the empty space on the heating pad and the empty dining room window, the memory hit me. Oh. Just oh.

During the years I spent dealing with an abusive mother, my Mose was there. When I struggled to breathe during bouts of pneumonia, Mose would come check on me when my coughing was prolonged. Just a few weeks ago, I’d had a bad bout of depression where I couldn’t bring myself to leave the blanket nest on the floor. My sweet kitty made sure to sit closer to me, in the cold path of the fan, just to make sure I was fine. Normally, when morning comes, he’ll follow my boyfriend around the house as he gets ready for work, but during that week he refused to leave my side even if he gazed pleadingly at boyfriend to give him goodbye pets. As much as I looked out for him, he returned the favor every time. This sweet furbaby loved me. I was, in every sense, his momma.

I miss him terribly. There’s an ache that’s different than when I lost Thomas in 2008. Somehow more poignant, but I can’t quite place it. I lost my best friend. I lost my son. I lost my pet. I’ve grown up with cats my entire life and know almost everything there is to know, but this was an entirely new experience for me. I’ve never lived with an older pet and Mose? He never showed his age once -- not until this year. Still ran around the house chasing toys, clawing apart the furniture, bounding into and out of boxes, attacking your ankles when you walked past his resting place if he felt particularly playful.

I could tell when he was annoyed so effortlessly and knew what things he did or didn’t like. I could typically predict if something would or wouldn’t intrigue him before he’d been introduced to it. His body language was second nature to me. Without words, I understood him and without me knowing at all what I meowed at him he understood me. If nothing else, I hope the little ferret dragon knew he was oh-so-loved.

Life is hard. Death is easy.

I remember the first thing that came to mind both when Thomas died and when Mose was put to sleep was, “It’s not fair.” but really... Death is the fairest thing there is. It’s the same across the board. No escape from it based on wealth, on health, on popularity -- it comes equally for all even if not in equal measure. It has no bias. It may hurt. It may be a loathsome time. But it is nothing if not just.

So while I suffer through this furnace for this period of my life, I cling to the fact that it was, in part, an inevitability. My anguish is no different than anyone else’s -- we all mourn for what could have been. It does not dull my anger at the “importance” of monetary means to preserve a life, but it soothes me that it would happen with or without those tiny pieces of green paper. I would only prolong something for an uncertain amount of time.

It boils down to I loved my baby. Mose meant so much more than I can ever convey through pixels on a screen. He was loved every moment and spoiled beyond belief. I did everything in my power and some things outside of my power in order to keep him happy, healthy, and here.

Go love your furbabies for me. Give them hugs, kisses, pets, sing them songs, whatever. Let them know they mean the world to you. And, just like you would do with anyone you care for, tell them just how very loved they are.

Love, Barn Owl

#Mose #loss #grief #depression #pets

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surveys-at-your-service · 6 years ago

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Survey #206

“have you ever wished for death and prayed all night for your last breath?”

Do you always read the book before you see a movie based on a book? No. When you’re out with friends, do they ever encourage you to spend money you should be saving? 1.) I don't hang out w/ anyone now, 2.) but even when I did, they all knew I didn't make money. Is there anything you’re trying to save up money for? What? Perpetually tattoos, I want a PS4 super badly to play a novel of games I've been dying to play (SotC and Spyro trilogy remaster, I'm @ing you so hard), I need a car soon as I plan to at least try and get my license in the near future, I'd love to always have enough to immediately go to Sara's in case of an emergency, a trip to South Africa... but those are gonna take a good while to complete. I have my priorities straight for when I get a job. Have you ever watched a movie you didn’t really want to see just because a friend asked you to? Yeah. Did you end up liking the movie, anyway? There's been many cases of the above situation, so I'm sure in some instances I have. Heard any great songs for the first time lately? What songs? Hmmm, quite a number. "Radio" by Rammstein is great, and I love "bury a friend" and "bad guy" by Billie Eilish. What is your favorite urban legend? m o t h m a n and the joysey devil. Probably top two. GAH I love so many though????????????? Like Skinwalkers?????????????? And WENDIGOS????????? Have you seen all the cool shit?????????????? Do you remember the last nightmare you had? What was it? No, thankfully. Have you ever hopped on any bandwagons? HAHA. Freshman year, high school... I "liked" screamo or alternative-type bands I'd barely ever listened to or even enjoyed to fit in with the emos aldkjfalkwejr. Are you an elitist (even a little bit) when it comes to anything? What? Definitely not a complete one, but I can get pretty annoyed if in WoW we're in a heroic dungeon and people don't know the mechanics you should have already learned + read new ones that're right there in the goddamn journal laksdjfaoweir and then some people just totally ignore your advice and alskdjfwleiruwqoeif x2. Then again I've been that confused asshole in a couple raiding situations BUT LOOK they're harder and I had too much to catch up on okay. Still no excuse by WHATEVER. Have elitists on a fansite ever intimidated or talked down to you? I don't believe so. Is there anything you swear you will never do again? A few things with certainty. How late do you usually stay awake? I can literally go to bed as early as 7 to as late as 11 or rarely later. I do NOT have a schedule. Started months ago, and at first it frustrated and stressed me out quite a bit, but by now, I've just accepted it for me. Do you have pets? If so, how did you choose their names? Teddy: sister named him, but I'm sure it was the "cute as a teddy bear" type thing; Bentley: no clue; Roman: it sounded majestic, cats are majestic; Venus: pretty, and her coloration is similar to the planet; Kaiju: totally badass for an iguana that's gonna grow to be a big 'ole scaly boy; and Mitsu: I had a theme of giving my rats cutesy "M" names. Do you ever buy special treats for your pets? Occasionally. Is just being fond of something enough, or does it take more than that to be a ‘real fan’? Did a middle school student write this? If you're pretty fond of something, there you go, you're a fan. Sure, some are more intense, but that doesn't make the more casual ones not "real." What type of fabric is most comfortable for clothing? Idk, I don't pay attention. If you wear one – bras with or without a wire? Christ, without. If you wear one – are you able to find cute bras in your size? HA. No. It is RARE I'll find a cute one, and that's always only online. Make pretty ones for plus-sized women a normal find, jfc. Idk why, but I am very picky with bras. Like good fucking luck seeing me without a shirt, so like,,,, why do I bother????? What length do you like your shorts to be? UM you will NOT see me in SHORTS. Have you ever cut off jeans or other pants and made them into shorts? Perhaps Mom has when I was a kid? But I have no memory of this ever happening. Have you cut the sleeves out of T-shirts to make tank tops? I don't think so. Have you ever modified a piece of clothing and hated how it turned out? ^ What was the last disappointing movie you saw? Ah jeez, what's the last time I even watched one. Idk. What was the last disappointing book you read? And I haven't read a book in even longer. Is there anything you’re really excited about? JOB. OPPORTUNITIES. Do you ever watch compilation videos? Of what? Vines, like shit dude. I can go on massive binges. What was the last thing you rolled your eyes about? I don't recall. What would you consider the greatest song ever recorded? Why? Yeesh, that's a big thing to decide. I recently discovered "A Reason to Fight" by Disturbed though, and it is. Incredible. Just read the lyrics to refresh my mind, and yeah, goosebumps. Do you like Hellboy? If so, do you prefer the old movies or the new one? Never seen any. Favorite Disney character who isn’t royalty? Dory, probably. But man, there's too many to choose from. Last thing you purchased just for fun? *shrugs* Do you even like behind-the-scenes stuff or does it ruin the magic for you? IF I'm real into the product, I love that stuff!! I've seen like every little BTS Silent Hill thing there is, probably, multiple hours' worth. What is your favorite thing about Mac computers? They're small and lightweight. What is your favorite thing about PCs? They generally hold much more memory. What are some errands you need to run soon? I don't have "errands" yet. Have your parents ever tried to convince people there was something wrong with you, when their “diagnosis” wasn’t accurate? No. List 3 of your best memories, times you wish you could go back and repeat. In no order, just as they come to me: 1.) First hug with Sara when we met at the airport; 2.) THE LOOK ON SARA'S FACE when she saw me in her room on her birthday (probably fave memory of all time, actually); 3.) seeing meerkats for the first time at the zoo. Ohhhh or maybe the true realization I was happy without Jason. But idk, that was SUCH a gradual process where I didn't feel ecstasy in like one moment. What color was your high school graduation gown? Ew, it was this obnoxious red. The majority apparently voted for it, while I was on the navy team. Are your parents’ dreams for your life different than your own? Mom's pretty dead-set on me being a vet, but she doesn't try to push me into it or anything. I know she just wants happiness for me. I haven't got a clue about Dad. Have your dreams for your life changed? Of course. What are your dreams now? HAPPY, stable job that I thoroughly enjoy, well-off financially (I don't aim to be rich, just "safe," you could say), healthy marriage, own my own home, travel to a few places, did y'all think I was gonna forget "meet Mark???"... stuff like that. What was your dream as a child? It changed plenty of times, but my earliest goal was to be a paleontologist. Do you feel safe in your country? Sure, I guess. Safer than most places. If applicable, do you feel safe at your school? N/A Would you ever want to learn sign language? It'd be cool, sure, but it's not something I'm interested in pursuing. How many meals do you eat a day? 2-3. Sometimes just one "real" meal. Do you own any succulents? No. What color are your walls? A hideous puke green. Why. What color were the walls in the bedroom you grew up in? I don't remember at all. What was the last song you listened to on repeat? "Love Falls" by HELLYEAH. What is your favorite style (or styles) of dance? Modern. Have you ever performed a solo dance in front of a crowd? No. Have you ever sung a solo? No. Which insects are you afraid of? Most, really. Do you think it’s silly to be afraid of an insect, when it’s so tiny? It depends on the insect, of course. Even if I do know what it is and it's "safe," I'll still typically freak if it surprises me. When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone? Hmmm. Sara, I believe? What are you waiting for? Jesus FUCKING Christ on a bike a job. What do you usually feel like doing the most at home? Stuff on the laptop. What grade were you in when you had your first crush? I don't remember... For "puppy dog love," I believe maybe the 4th grade, but I may be wrong. I'd say my first *real* crush was on a guy named Sebastian in my freshman year of high school. Shit man, did a lot go down my freshman year. I'm just reminiscing and crushes jumped between like five dudes 'til Jason won. At what age did you start experiencing sexual attraction, if any? Some time in middle school, I think? Like that's when I had my first bisexuality crisis: 6th or 7th grade. Have you ever split open a rock with a hammer, to see the glitter inside? No, but FUCK I WANNA. What type of tree do you see the most of where you live? There's a pine tree outside my window. Oh, and there's a pine tree in my back yard. Oh, what's that across the road? Woods of pine trees. Where do all birds in NC live? In pine trees. What does our air smell like? Pine trees. Where is your favorite place you’ve lived? My previous home as far as location; house itself, where I am now. It's got its issues, but it's cozy and a perfect size for just two people. What states have you lived in? Just 'ole North Carolina. Take me awaaaaaaaaaaaay- Do you wish you were someone else? Sometimes. What is your favorite thing about the month in which it is now? Literally just flowers. That's it. It. Everything else can suck a legion of dicks. Who were your best friends in high school? Hannia, Girt, Jason (if he counts), Alon, Maria... I had a few "best" ones. ^Are they still your best friends now? Girt is my closest thing to a "best friend" if you don't include my girlfriend. Do you live near the mountains? No, they're on the opposite end of the state. ;___; Do you live near a beach? We're like, two-ish hours away. What is your favorite beach that you’ve been to? Idk and idc, beaches aren't my thing. Do you collect seashells? Not seriously, but I'll keep a cool one if I find one. If you were to start a new collection, what would it be? If I was not ashamed of looking like a 23-y/o pre-teen in love with Just Bieber, I'd have more Markiplier merch than you'd fucking believe. (One of my biggest regrets in life was not buying the tasteful nudes calendar; I will eternally smite myself for being too embarrassed to have to explain why I would have that hanging above my bed rip.) If you had to pick one year and describe it as the best year of your life that you want to relive again, which year would it be? 2017 was fuckin litty titty. Is your world view the same as your parents’? In some ways with Mom, and I do know Dad and I differ on a few things. Well, if I learned more about his more political beliefs, I feel I'd probably disagree with most. What color are your glasses, if applicable? Black. Are you the person you thought you’d be when you were younger? No. Are you a confrontational person, or the peacekeeper? I'm a massive peacekeeper. I avoid confrontation like the PLAGUE. Do you like to read? Not nearly as much as I used to. Like all I ever read nowadays are RP posts as I obviously have to reply to them, but if they're long, it is common I procrastinate on reading it... ;_; Do you sleep too much or not enough? Probably too much, especially when I go to bed early. Although, I do wake up throughout the night and sometimes officially pretty early. Then some days I have a 1-2 hour nap, so that just adds to it. Who is your best friend? Sara. <3 How did you two meet? YouTube. How did you meet your current bf/gf? ^ How far away is your closest family member? Well I live with my mom, but she's at work atm. The last time you did something with BOTH of your parents was? BOY OH FUCKING BOY. My mom's the most bitter witch towards him, so even for family events, Dad usually only stops by to avoid creating a goddamn wreck, such as at birthday dinners. I think the last time they were in the same house was for my nephew's birthday half a year ago, I believe. What’s your favorite holiday? Halloween!!! Now that I have a niece and nephew who grasp the concept of Santa, Christmas is also really special to me. I don't want kids, but watching those sweethearts get so excited over their presents is magical. For me personally, the holiday has grown more and more about celebrating family, especially as we continue to branch out/go our own ways. So I guess I like the idea of Halloween better and would enjoy it more if I actually had something to do, but as far as joy goes, Christmas. Do you like pumpkin pie? I hate anything and everything pumpkin-flavored. The last time you went to the doctor, what were you there for? It was the see my psychiatrist. Do you take any medication regularly? Yeah. Is there any particular view you have on insane people? I see "insane" versus "sane" as far more of a gradient shift instead of a direct split; there're levels. I actually do legitimately think I at some juncture in the aftermath of the breakup qualified as slightly insane, yet I wasn't dangerous or entirely out of touch with reality. So if you tell me someone's actually insane, I'm going to fear them being the explosive, entirely unpredictable and loopy kind, but I know the person may be calm and somewhat stable on the outside, too. You gotta consider the severity. Do you believe in any conspiracies? 9/11 was orchestrated by the government and you cannot change my mind. I'm not totally sold on this one and lean more towards "nah" (I think), but the "we live in a simulation by a future civilization" is not that far-fetched at all if you actually look into it. It's very interesting, whether or not you're sold on it. Hell, Neil deGrasse Tyson firmly believes in it. Out of your friends, who is the funniest? Girt makes me laugh at the snap of his fingers, it seems. Anything you need to get rid of? I'm sure somewhere... Do you have any wasted talents? Animal knowledge and compassion, probably... I know I could make a fantastic rehabilitator for animals, among a plethora of other animal-related preservation and protection actions I could actively engage in. Well, I'm going back to school for zoology, but even now, I want to do more. There is a wildlife rehab place I may be able to volunteer at soon, tho! Mom's talking to a guy at work about me helping there. DAMN, livin a dream. Do you let the little things get to you? The issue could be as small as a single cell and it could still bother me. How often do you cry? Maybe once in a week, possibly longer. I don't know if you mean like really cry or just tear up/lightly cry. The latter is pretty common, but the other, not so much. Even if I want to cry, my jaw just entirely locks the hell up and I physically can't get it out. Is there anything you’re trying to prevent? I mean besides the common sense things everyone takes action to avoid, hm. I feel like there's so much, yet nothing is coming to me? Well, actually, it's usually a daily struggle to prevent at least one OCD cycle. When was the last time you were told you were cute? *shrug* When was the last time you were truly, completely happy with your life? It's been quite a while... At least over a year ago, when I began to get antsy with wanting a job and later going back to school. It just all started when I realized I was healed from the breakup and ready to move forward in life, but I wasn't. Do you miss the way things used to be between you and someone else? Multiple people. What colors has your hair been? Dirty blonde, brown, red, and purple. I've had red and purple highlights, and I naturally have blondish ones, too. I'm ready to dye it again, jfc. Most attempts are failures because my hair does NOT take color well whatsoever. It's only ever worked perfectly with the brand Splat, and my hair soaked in the dye for a LONG time before washing it out. Have you ever gotten burnt by a cigarette? No. Do you and your parents like any of the same bands/singers? We share interest in plenty of the same bands, Mom especially. Is there any food in your bedroom? What? No. Do you know anyone who has road rage? Who? MY LITTLE SISTER. Haven't seen the woman in three years, but I can promise you Jason's mom still has it to a legendary degree. How expensive is too expensive for a pair of shoes? I haven't looked for shoes in so long that I don't even know the average price. What kinds of cereal are in the cupboard? Honey Nut Cheerios, normal Cheerios I think, and we have a little bit of the chocolate chunk Special K cereal left over. It's got to be stale by now (it's not even closed fully); I need to remember to toss it. What’s the last thing you spent over $10 on? Ummm I'm not sure. Over $30? I think my tongue piercing was $40? Maybe even lower? Or slightly higher?? I don't remember. Do you know who lives three houses down from you? I think so. The one time I was locked out of my house in the snow with Teddy and I waited like a fucking hour until I broke down, absolutely freezing (I was in my pajamas, dude), and walked down the road to try and get help (I needed to call my mom, obviously, and I didn't have my phone), I believe it was the third neighbor who answered. Turned out being a retired deputy who was super intimidating yet kind at the same time; he let Teddy and me stay in his house (mind you, Teddy is incontinent and didn't have his diaper on, which I warned him about) while Mom was on her way home. He gave me a jacket and some water, even when I said I was fine, but you could tell he wasn't totally sure about trusting this random, sobbing girl at his door because he asked me a thousand questions about my story and quizzed if I really did live in this area. Obviously a good cop, but after a day like that, I was just terrified of an old man who appeared a bit gruff. But thankfully Mom got there to save the day and I am forever grateful for that guy. WOW what a story for a simple question. Is there a bulletin board in your room? No. Is your mom a big health freak or your dad? Or neither? "Health freak" seems a bit extreme for both of them, but Mom is more concerned about health in general. Do you know anyone who wants to be the president one day? No. What kinds of chips are in the cupboards? We just have tortilla chips, I think. I try to keep snacks out of the house to avoid temptation, and who eats plain tortilla chips. Do you have your mom's or dad's hair? Mom's. What’s the first thing you see when you walk into your bedroom? Most would probably notice my Nightmare Before Christmas poster first, being as big as it is and on the wall opposite the entrance. Do you prefer the truth, even if it’s harsh? YES. I NEED to know this kinda stuff, even if the truth is really hard to hear. Do you have any friends who have naturally red hair? I don't think so. Have you ever cried when a teacher retired? I think I did when my very first band teacher did. EVERYONE loved him. Like, the entire school. Does your kitchen look like it was designed in a completely different decade? No? When’s the last time you wore heels? Great question. Probably not since my sister's wedding in '16. Do you have your mom’s or dad’s eyes? My grampa's on Mom's side. What’s the best date movie? Probably a rom com? Have your parents ever been out of the country? No. How many pairs of jeans, all together, are in your house? Zero. Do you swear and yell while playing video games? I'll swear under my breath or seethe in frustration, but I never yell. Is there any alcohol in the fridge? No. Has a best friend ever ditched you for a girlfriend/boyfriend? Pretty much. Whenever she starts dating a guy, she dips, and whenever/if ever we talk, she rambles absolutely endlessly about him. Do you know anyone who has grossly skinny eyebrows? I couldn't possibly care less about how your eyebrows look. Do your pets chase after bugs? Roman and Bentley sure do. Bentley is a Professional Fly Moncher, specifically. When’s the last time you were so excited you couldn’t sleep? Why? Uhhh good question. Probs the night before Sara got here for my b-day. What is your mom’s favorite movie? Hm, good question! I'd ask her, but I don't want her to ask me why I am lmao. What TV family reminds you of your own family? Probably none. Did you ever really believe that the stork brought babies? No. I don't remember what I thought, but I know it wasn't that. Do you have any relatives who really spoil you? No, I think? Well Dad gives my sisters and me way too much money for Christmas and always tells us to ask him if we need anything, but I pretty much never ask him for said things, so I don't know the extent he'd go. Are there any drawers in your house that are just filled with junk? Pretty much. Is the last person you spoke to in love? That's my mom, so I doubt that with all I know. Do you know anyone who has security cameras in their house? I don't believe so. What was the last movie to make you cry? I think the last was Coco. Moana may have made me tear up, but I can't remember... Has anyone you know ever pulled the fire alarm in school, joking around? Not to my memory. What time do you usually go to sleep at sleepovers, if ever? I haven't been to a sleepover in God knows how long. Who was the main character in the last book you read? Alice Liddell. Who are the last people you saw kiss? Via YouTube, Jeffree and his boyfriend. Irl, I don't know. Have you ever posted a fan fiction on a website? No. Do you ever fantasize about your future wedding? Who’s the bride/groom? Not very much. Like I've had brief daydreams about it, sure, but it's not something that's on my mind a lot. Still got a long time before that happens. What was the last unpleasant thing to wake you up? My cat not knowing how to keep his mouth shut. Would you rather look at clouds or stars? Stars. Well, it depends; stars if we're in a completely isolated area where you can see them crystal clear or the clouds are boring, but otherwise, clouds if their design and colors are cool. Do you have any relatives who are expecting a baby really soon? No. Do you ever wonder what the opposite sex do at sleepovers? No. When you get married, who will be the maid of honor/best man? My mom, no questions asked. When’s the last time you broke plans? Why? I wasn't feeling well. I was supposed to see my VR coach that day. Have you ever been in a wedding? What were you? Yes, my sister's. I was a bridesmaid. It was an absolutely awful experience because I was hot as fuck, it was triggering as HELL with me still grieving Jason, and I felt positively hideous in a dress when I was at such a horrible weight. I wish so dearly I could redo that day; I fell like I put a serious damper on my sister's big day. Would you feel safer with an alarm system or security cameras? Hm, depends on the scenario... I guess an alarm system? Like security cameras will show a murderer climbing through my window, but they're not gonna wake me up to save my ass. Does it matter to you what kind of shampoo you use? So long it smells nice, isn't watery, and doesn't only add oil to my hair, I don't care much. Has a stray dog ever tried to bite you? No. When riding a bus, do you prefer to sit in front, in the back, or in the middle? Hm... idk. When I took the bus home with Jason, we always sat in the back, and that's really the only time I took a bus regularly. I think otherwise, I'd prefer the middle, closer to the front? I think I usually did that on occasions like band competitions and such. Have you ever been on a cross-country train ride? No. Are you normally a person to tell people off? No, that's rare. Is there any TV show that ended that you wish hadn’t? Meerkat Manor. Though I would hope they'd lessen down on the false story-telling. Stick to the true KMP events. When you feel stressed, do you take things out on the wrong people? Sometimes. Do you even wear any jeans other than skinny anymore? I don't wear jeans period. What did you talk about at lunch today with your friends? N/A Are you sensitive to caffeine? Definitely not. My system's too used to it, probably. How do you usually get around? Mom drives me. I'm 23. :^) Which languages do you wish you could speak fluently in? German. Have you ever been accused of being too clingy? SURPRISINGLY no, at least to my memory. Do you like Vitamin Water? Never tried, don't want to. What was the last thing you took a picture of? Dad and me on his birthday. Do you know anyone that uses Sprint as their phone carrier? Idk. Well, I think. When you go to McDonalds, what drink do you usually get? Coke. Do you have a Kindle or iPad or neither? Neither. Would you rather read or write? Write. When was the last time someone took a picture of you? Sometime during Bobby's visit literally days ago. I already forgot who took it... and who else was in it lmao. Do you own a pair of slippers? Yeah, two. A meerkat pair and then a far less extra pair that're closer to socks. I think they have cats on them? I got them for Christmas I think and haven't worn or seen them much. Would you rather see Taylor Swift or Carrie Underwood in concert? Not a fan of either, but Carrie Underwood is more tolerable and even has a couple songs I enjoy. Name something negative that you hate about yourself: I'll jump to a conclusion within .02 seconds of something negative happening. Or not even "negative" or something that's purely in my head. Is your house currently hot, cold or just right? The house itself is fine, and my room is just right because I have my fan on. Is there a Dead End road near where you live? I can't think of one off the top of my head, but it's likely, really. There's lots of those here. Growing up, did you see your cousins often? No. We live many states away on both parents' sides. Where was your first job at? GameStop. Who are you tired of seeing in the news a lot? (Celebrities) It's been like two days and I'm over seeing the James Charles/Tati drama everywhere. You can't be interested in the YouTube community without being drowned in that shit right now somehow someway on any YT-coverage page and YouTube itself. Have you ever had to call and complain about a product you bought? I personally haven't. Would you date someone who’s shorter than you? I very openly and severely judge you if fucking height means that much to you. Do you mind being the third wheel? Not really, no. I'd only feel uncomfortable if they were getting pretty intimate. Has a kiss ever made you weak in the knees? Um I didn't know that was actually a thing so no. Do you feel comfortable buying condoms? Never been in that position. Have you ever dated two people at once? No. Have you ever been tested for STDs? No. Well wait, that time I gave blood I probably was just out of safety protocol. Have you ever run into your ex with his/her new sweetie? No. Have you ever felt guilty after doing something sexual? When I was in that "wait does this break the abstinence rule" phase, yeah. God was I technical. Have you ever had a condom break during sex? N/A Do your parents know if you’re having sex? Well considering I'm with a girl and she lives states away, that answer's obvious. Do you eat chips or crackers more? Chips. Would you rather be a singer or a dancer? A dancer. Would you rather be a musician or a painter? A painter, maybe? If I could play the electric guitar, though... idk. What social media sites do you visit the most? Facebook. What did you hair look like in high school? Long, thick as fuck, brown (or dyed black) with some sort of highlight, and it was split to the left with the hair swooped over my right eye. Basically "I want the emo swoop but my hair is too fucking thick to obey hairspray." :^) Which dollar store do you shop at? Depends on what's closest, usually. We rarely ever stop at one unless it's for candy to bring into the movie theater, seriously lol. I think usually Dollar General? Do you prefer candy corn or conversation hearts? WE DON'T KNOW EITHER. Skeletons or scarecrows? s k e l l y b o y s Has anyone ever given you the silent treatment? Yep. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had in your mouth? I learned on that day I hate giving blowjobs. Has anyone ever threatened you with a knife? No, thankfully. (If you’re a girl) Has anyone ever called you ‘shortie’ instead of girl? BOY I would fucking cackle. I hate that word. No. Do you ever watch The Simpsons? No. Have you ever sent an embarrassing moment of yours into a mag to be printed? OH MY GOD I remember that!!! But no. What IS your most embarrassing moment? Too lazy to go through the novel of 'em to pick the worst. Do you think you’re more cute or sexy? You assume I find myself either. Do you own any mini skirts? I don't own any skirts period. Do you draw little hearts and stuff with eyeliner next to your eyes? No. What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever lost? Idk. Has your mom ever lied to you? I'm sure she has before. Do you have a deep voice? For a girl, yeah. When’s the last time someone made breakfast for you? *shrugs* Exclusively for me, probably never. Do you do something new with your hair practically every day? No, it's the same everyday. When someone knocks on the door, who do you think it is? Delivery guy. Has anyone ever licked your foot? Ew no. Do you play games with boys/girls, like ‘hard to get’? I'm not 15. Has a guy ever quoted a romantic Shakespeare line to you? No, and I'm glad, as I'd cringe into another realm. Is there a Sonic where you live? Yes, I LIVE- Do you smile with your teeth? Usually. I look less high, at least. What did you eat for lunch today? A pb&j. What do you like on your pizza? Pepperoni, jalapenos, or meat lovers. What is in the back seat of your car right now? I don't own a personal car. Mom has a a load of stuff in the back of hers, at least I think... That's super rare, but she's been so ungodly busy idk if she's had time to clean it out. I haven't paid attention so can't recall. What was the last thing you threw up? Idr. Menthol or regular cigarettes? I don't smoke and never have, so idk. What is your favorite episode of Friends? I don't watch it, and I haven't seen many episodes at all if for whatever reason I was in a room and it was on. Does anyone have any blackmail on you? No. Have you been to a strip club? No. What’s the last sporting event you watched? Hell if I remember. It had to either be my 16th birthday when Jason's family was all together watching the Super Bowl, or a hockey game with my dad. Last person’s house you were in? Besides my own, my sister's. Who is the last person you sent a message to on Facebook? Nicole. Ever go to camp? No. Were you an honor roll student in school? Yeah. Do you have a tan? HA no. How old do you want to be when you have kids? I don't want kids. Are you someone’s best friend? Yeah. Favorite gemstone? Dragon's breath opal. Do you go in at a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? Drive thru, almost always. Does your first memory involve your dad? No. When was the last time you went swimming? Last summer at the beach. Holy fuck the water was so perfect. Has your luggage ever gotten lost? No. Have you ever thought it would be cool to smash a guitar? No. Like... just why. Do you ever get flu shots? No.

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