#he lost another half pound while I was in Texas

[pumpkin-belly]

old man in the sun 🥲

[nonagesimus]

For birthday prompts the sastiel summer between season 9 and 10?

this loosely takes part in touch verse (though all you really need to know is that they're in an established relationship). If you want something less established then I cannot recommend Kettering (I Was Checking Vitals) by Fabella more. (It hurts, tho. It hurts so good).

(AO3 link)

--

“Sam?”

One breath Sam had just turned to see Cas, one hand outstretched, a concerned look on his face, and the next he was in his arms. He’d been keeping a tight grip on his panic – Cas had been gone, and then Dean had been dead, and then Dean had been gone – but all of a sudden it was overflowing. He was shaking, every muscle held taught, the shoulder of Cas’ coat turning damp where he’d buried his face into it.

“Cas,” he managed, voice ragged, arms squeezing tighter.

One of Cas’ hands was fisted in his shirt at the small of his back, the other pressed hard between his shoulder blades, holding him close. Sam tried to focus on that, on the breath on the side of his neck, on anything but the out of control race of his heart.

“Dean’s gone,” he choked out, and Cas’ arms tightened.

Eventually, eventually he got control of himself. Got the whole story out, heard Castiel’s.

Cas stroked a hand through his hair, pulled back far enough to look him in the eye. “We’ll find him, Sam,” he said, solemn and sure.

Steadied by Cas’ warm hand on his shoulder, Sam set up an alert for traffic incidents involving a black ‘67 Impala and then another for the plate number. Whoever took Dean, if they were smart, would’ve changed out the plates. But there was a chance they weren’t smart.

There was no way to tell what direction they drove when they left the bunker - but they went looking anyway. Sam drove. He wasn’t too sure on the hour count since he’d last slept, but he wouldn’t be able to if he tried anyway. Too keyed up, running his thumbnail back and forth the vinyl of the starting wheel, blinking hard when his visions blurred.

Three gas stations who didn’t think they’d seen an Impala and Sam was gunning for the fourth cardinal direction, but Cas put a hand on his arm and said his name, and-

He was shaking again, he dimly realised. And Cas looked exhausted too - guilt curdled in his stomach for a moment, and he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

(He lay with Cas pressed up against his spine and his heart pounding for hours before he fell asleep).

In the morning there was a traffic report for a car matching the Impala’s description running a red in Dallas. Another in Atlanta. A hit and run in Nashville. They covered the ground - thankful that the worst injury was a broken arm.

No good shots of who had been driving.

No more leads.

They picked up news of what sounded like a poltergeist on their way out of Nashville and Sam - he didn’t want to. He wanted to keep looking for Dean. Even without a direction he just wanted to keep driving, and Cas wasn’t going to judge him from the passenger seat. He took the job, and Cas’ hand covered his on the seat between them.

They stopped for the night in a motel. Cas ran interference while Sam got the bags planted to expel the ghost.

There was a moment of relief they’d done it that way when a heating unit wrenched itself off the wall and launched itself towards Cas’ head in an arc of dust - a flash of light knocked it back the way it came. Sam pushed the last bag into place, ready for silence.

Instead Cas launched into a fit of wracking coughs. Relief turned to worry - Sam went to him laid a hand on his back, felt the fit subside slowly. Cas straightened from where he’d doubled over, wiping at streaming eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “I inhaled at the worst possible time.”

He’d phrased it like a joke, but Sam’s laugh was hollow. “Are you alright? I’ve never seen you do that before.”

Cas forced a smile, pressed a little closer before stepping away. “I’m fine.”

More police reports. Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago. Then nothing for a while until a man matching Dean’s description held up a liquor store outside of Vegas. No sign of him by the time they got there - plus the store’s CCTV had been on the fritz. But it had apparently been on the fritz for weeks, so nothing specific to the robbery. They took statements, the found a motel. Sam checked his laptop and found a new parking ticket for a ’67 Chevy Impala in Reno.

“Do you think it’s really him?” Sam said.

Cas said, “I don’t know.”

They drove to the bunker, for another fruitless search into the Mark, knocked out a murderous shapeshifter on the way. Sam kept his hands braced on the steering wheel so they didn’t shake. Cas watched him.

Days turned to weeks, turned to a month, turned into two.

Jody got a tip off about someone that sounded like Dean in Montana, they drove there and found stories about an asshole who’d broken three chairs and won a four-against-one bar fight, but again no proof - a man with a black eye and a split lip cottoned on to them maybe knowing the victor, and while they managed to avoid him getting hurt more, they didn’t manage to avoid Sam getting a bottle to the head.

Cas healed it in the car, grace sealing the cut, clearing up what felt like the beginning of a concussion.

They got a room there, too tired to keep moving, and Sam fell asleep curled into Cas’ chest.

Sam woke up and Cas - Cas was breathing even. Eyes closed, face slack, and Sam was used to Cas’ eyes opening as soon as he sat up. He didn’t need sleep, he stayed in Sam’s bed for the contact, and for Sam’s sake. But this. This was sleep. Real sleep.

Unnerved, Sam gently pulled himself free of Cas’ arms, of the tangle of sheets. Went to the bathroom to get ready for the day.

When he emerged, Cas was blinking awake, eyebrows knitting in confusion. “Sam?” he said, grogginess adding an unfamiliar tone to his voice. His eyes sought out Sam in the doorway to the bathroom.

“You were sleeping,” Sam said. “I didn’t know you needed to.”

“I don’t,” Cas said, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard. “I- I didn’t.”

Sam sat on the bed, facing him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, too quickly.

Sam shut his eyes. He heard Cas sigh.

“It’s nothing you should concern yourself over.” A hand covered his. He opened his eyes to see Cas watching him intently. “Sam, you have enough to worry about.”

Sam reached out to cup Cas’ jaw, leaned in to press their foreheads together. There were arguments he could make, there was logic, there was reasoning, there was a banked but still burning ember of anger, but all that came out of his choked-up throat was a small, petulant, “Are you lying to me?”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said.

It wasn’t an answer. They went back to the hunt.

When Dean had been missing for three months Jody made them drop in for dinner. Alex and Claire, and a couple of bottles of wine with dinner, and it was domestic in a way Sam had never had. He’d pretended to, with Amelia, when Dean and Cas had both been gone. The reminder felt bitter. The house, the conversation, the rapport, it was all warm, and it felt like there was glass around Sam keeping that warmth from reaching him.

He washed the dishes, focussed on the hot water and the suds, got lost in it for a while until Jody came over and started to dry.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said. “I was going to once I finished.”

“Maybe I don’t trust you to know where to put things,” Jody said. He managed a laugh, and they worked in silence for a little while, before she asked softly, “How are you really going?”

“I’m going,” he said. “It’s-“ He looked at his hands in the water. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll find him,” she said, sure and steady. “If he’s out there, you’ll find him.”

If he was out there. Sam nodded, made an attempt at a smile. Scrubbed at a stubborn scrap of food burnt onto the side of a casserole dish.

“That angel of yours is taking care of you?” she asked.

“He’s trying,” Sam said. “I’m not that easy to take care of.”

He got the distinct impression she was seeing through all the bravado when she said, “You let me know if there’s anything I can help with, ok?”

“Of course,” he said, knowing he was never going to take her up on it.

Sam still felt sober, but he’d had enough of the wine that Cas drove. He dozed in the passenger seat. Woke up as the car pulled over. Blinked to see a stretch of road in the headlights - turned to see Cas leaning forward, braced on the steering wheel, digging his hands into his eyes. Turned away to cough into his elbow.

He reached out to brush his fingers against Cas’ arm. “You ok?”

Cas looked at him. Apologetic. Maybe ashamed. “Tired,” he admitted.

Sam nodded, rubbed a hand over his face, sat up further. “I’ll drive the rest of the way.”

Cas clearly wanted to protest, but he didn’t. They got back to the bunker. To their bed, and Sam pulled Cas against him, arms wrapped around him, face pressed firmly into his hair.

“Will you tell me yet?” he whispered, into the back of Cas’ neck.

Cas took his hands, pulled them more firmly together. He didn’t say a word.

Month five.

Cas tried to hide but the cough was getting worse. He was sleeping more often. Leads for Dean would come in a rush, all of sudden, and then all turn out to be useless. They got some hunting done, when they could. A werewolf in Nebraska. A nest of vampires in Texas.

They were in Seattle.

A rumour that could’ve been Dean turned into a rumour about kelpies turned into a very real water hag, and they had the damn birch stakes blessed with salt and the blood of a fresh slain calf - and that had been a bitch and a half to get - but that didn’t make fighting it any easier. They were both exhausted, both running on empty but still running, and Sam-

Sam saw Cas go down and go down hard. Saw him lying still while the hag raised two spindly but heavy fists over it’s head and he- and he.

He gave up all pretence of strategy and just charged - got the stake up underneath the hag’s ribs, even as one of it’s claws stabbed solidly through the underside of his arm. The hag dropped, the stake pulled out of his hand, but the claw in his arm was stuck fast and it wrenched and-

His vision went white for a moment, cleared with him on his knees in the filthy water. Dead hag. Arm useless - caught. Cas still not moving.

The claw came out with a rush of blood, black spots in his vision, he blinked them away, scrambled over to where Cas was lying, his name falling out of Sam’s mouth in a desperate sob. He was breathing, Sam realised, and even as he slid his fingers to check his pulse, his eyes were opening.

“Sam,” he gasped, reaching - his fingers dug into Sam’s useless arm and Sam choked back a pained noise. Still enough for Cas to realise something was wrong - his eyes rolled wildly down to see the blood, see the arm dangling from the shoulder - within seconds he was pushing himself up, reaching out more deliberately, power cracking at his fingertips and-

“No,” Sam shook his head, “Just help me keep pressure, don’t-“

“Sam,” Cas said.

“Cas, every time you use your grace you get worse,” Sam said, and Cas flinched.

But he didn’t heal Sam.

Later, when they’d gotten to the motel, when Sam had gotten Cas to help pop his shoulder back into place, when he’d stitched up the wound from the water hag, that was when he made an ultimatum.

“I’m gonna keep looking for Dean,” he said. “But you shouldn’t.”

“Sam,” Cas protested, but he just shook his head.

“You’re not on your game,” he said. “And, I’m not- I’m not losing you.”

Cas drew him in with one hand tight in his hair, the other splayed on his back. “I’m not losing you either,” he said, fierce and hoarse.

Sam shut his eyes, and listened to the wheeze in Cas’ chest, and held him close.

[thisisawonderfulusername]

carry me

diego hargreeves x reader

requested: anon

summary: diego has been dating the person who teaches karate down the street for a while. after meeting the family at reginald’s funeral, they end up helping to stop the end of the world... twice.

trigger warnings: cursing, unedited

word count: 2.3k

a/n: i’m so sorry to anon that this took so long to come out, i’ve been in and out of writing and i was busy so it was sitting in my drafts, half finished for a while lmao. but here it is! i hope it was worth the wait. i wasn’t able to fit everything that you wanted in, but i got the basics lol.

you take slow steps around the room, watching as your most advanced students spar, taking hits from their opponents that land on the padded gear they wore with loud thuds. this was something you watched every day, but these students were your favorite because they were never afraid to give or take a packed punch.

there’s a tap at the window that forms the wall to your left, but you ignore it, assuming it to be a bird or something that hit the glass. when it returns, this time much more insistent on getting someone’s attention, you turn your head to look and you see diego standing outside of the dojo. sighing softly, you look towards your assistant, “i have to attend to something, take over for a few.”

as the slightly younger man nods, you exit the room and make your way out of the building after slipping your shoes on, rounding to where your boyfriend waits. “i hope this is important.” you tell him with a small grin, “i don’t leave my students for just anything, you know.” he doesn’t smile or anything, his face set into hard stone, and your eyebrows furrow. “is everything okay?”

“my dad died.” he tells you simply, and your lips part in surprise, stepping towards him, ready to comfort him, but he shakes his head. “i don’t care about him. it’s the funeral that i care about. i’m only going to see pogo and grace, but my family will be there and i don’t know if i can tolerate them alone.”

you glance through the window at your students, “are you saying what i think you’re saying?”

he nods, “if what you’re thinking is that i want you to come with me, then yes, i am.”

you purse your lips, taking a deep breath as you think it over for a moment. “when?” you question, raising an eyebrow in his direction.

“uh... now?”

you’re too surprised to think for a moment, just gaping at him at the suddenness of it all. after a few seconds, you regain yourself, shaking your head, “right now? you’re serious?”

diego gives another slow nod, looking at you like a lost puppy. you sigh heavily, looking away from him into the dojo, before running your fingers through your hair. “alright.” he smiles at that, and you hold a finger up, “let me send out a few emails. i can’t just dip out without an explanation.”

-

when you met his family, they loved you, much to his annoyance. that week was a crazy one, and you ended up having to help save the world- which didn’t work at all.

and then you landed in dallas, texas, in the year 1963, only a few weeks after diego did. when you found the newspaper that told you where you were, it also gave you some very interesting information on what your boyfriend had been up to when he landed before you.

that’s how you ended up at the mental institution that he was being held, watching as he was escorted into the small visiting room. the smile on his face when he saw you was contagious, though you tried to hold yours back.

“hargreeves, what the hell did you do?” you question with a chuckle as the guards moved to stand nearby, ready to step in if anything happened. too bad they wouldn’t be able to stop what you had planned. there were only two of them. really, a mistake on their part.

taking your hands as he sat down, the man leaned forward onto the table. his hair had grown out a lot since he had gotten here, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t think that he looked good. “i missed you.” he doesn’t answer your question, and you roll your eyes, raising your eyebrow to get him to tell you. “okay, i’m going to save the president. and you’re going to help.”

your lips part for a second, and when you have fully processed what he said, you let out a bewildered laugh. “no,” you tell him, “no i’m not. you’re not going to do that.”

his eyebrows furrow in confusion and you can tell that he had gone a little crazy in his time here. “why not?”

shaking your head, you run your thumb over his knuckles. “because, that’s just a stupid idea.” you grin as you watch him deflate slightly, “do you have any idea how that would change the timeline? it’s going to change everything, and if five ever finds us, he’ll kill you for it.”

when he doesn’t say anything, almost seeming like a toddler with how he looked at you, you sigh, leaning forward slightly. “but i’ll tell you what we are doing,” you start, the volume of your voice dropping, “we’re getting you out of here.”

the smile comes back, and he leans towards you, sneaking in a quick kiss. “i’ll get the one at the door.” he whispers, and you nod, already bracing yourself for the fight ahead of you. “on three.”

“one... two... three!” with the raise in your voice, you jump up from where you sit, and so does diego, jumping the guard at the door before he can even realize what’s going on.

you managed to barrel over the table and get your guard, landing a kick right in his chest that knocks him back into the wall behind him. the impact doesn’t allow him to recover in enough time to fight back, and with a punch to the face (one that had definitely broken his nose), he was out like a light, slumping to the ground.

turning, you see that diego had no trouble getting the other guy, and just as you were about to leave the room, you’re surprised by the sudden appearance of a red light that flashes in time with the alarm ringing through the place.

“let’s get the hell out of here before we’re both stuck in here.” you grab his arm, beginning to run down the hall towards what you hope is an exit, and not a dead end that lead to guard detaining you.

as you run, diego keeps a good hold on your hand. “you know,” he breathes, looking behind the two of you to be sure nobody was following, “it’s hot when you fight like that.”

you can’t help but laugh, but shake your head. “we don’t have time for your flirting, diego.” you tell him, taking a sharp turn down another hall. you suddenly stop when you come face to face with another woman, diego nearly bumping into your back but stopping just in time.

“i knew you were crazy enough to plot an escape.” the woman chuckles, and you’re surprised that she knows him.

you look to him in silent question, and he lets out a breath. “no time. we’re still in a pit of guards, if you’ve forgotten.” he’s already beginning to move forward, “let’s go!”

with his shout, you’re running again, the woman right beside you. you’re not sure who she is, but introductions can be made later, when you’re not in danger of being locked up.

-

you had really thought that she was an okay person. diego seemed to like her enough to keep her around, and she seemed harmless (other than her knowledge in combat).

yet there she was, standing in the middle of the empty field ahead of you, the handler at her side. five and diego had gone out to meet them and see what they wanted while you, klaus, allison, and luther stood near the barn in the snow, squinting to try and get a peek at what was happening.

you didn’t get much time to wonder, however, because with blue flashes- literally everywhere- people started popping up all around them, equipped with briefcases and a gun.

“oh, my god.” you hear luther breathe out from next to you, the four of you looking out as they continue to pop up. they filled the field behind lila and the handler, and you began to realize what this was.

“this can’t be good.” you mumble, your heart beginning to race.

sure, you could fight. you had trained in karate since you were seven, but that didn’t seem to be of much importance right now, when they were all pointing guns at you and you had nothing to protect yourself with.

in the distance, you see the woman pulling something out of the pocket of her jacket as the two boys begin to turn and run, causing the rest of you to do the same.

the next thing you know, you can hear the pounding of hundreds of feet against the frosted ground, too caught up in trying to save your ass to look back and see everything. you just hoped that diego was okay.

then, the gun shots begin. all around you, bullets crashed into the ground as you ran for cover, and just as you were about to dive behind carts of hay with the other three, you feel the sharp stinging pain in your leg. you fall to the ground just behind the hay, and when you look down to see what the pain was, the snow is stained with your blood.

breath becoming shallow, your eyes widen at the sight. “fuck,” you breathe shakily, hands waving wildly in the air as you try to think of what to do, “what the fuck.”

you’re too busy worrying about the blood pouring out of your thigh to see what everyone else sees- vanya floating in the air, a white glow surrounding her- until the fire raining down on you ceases.

you look up from the red snow, shifting your body to look past the side of the cart while the others stood to look, seeing lila beginning to do the same as vanya had done.

allison, klaus, and luther begin to run- apparently not taking notice of your situation- just as the force from the power begins to move over the field, and you try to push away from it before it can get to you, but you’re too late. the cart is knocked over by the force, trapping you under it as you hit your head against the ground, effectively being knocked out.

-

“where’s y/n?” diego questions the moment he’s on his feet, looking around at all of his siblings who had helped him get out from under the tractor that had trapped his leg.

the three that had been with you look to each other, silently asking if you had been with them, and when nobody seems to say anything about it, klaus looks to the cart that they had left you at. “last time i saw her...” he says, pointing towards where you were trapped.

the man’s eyebrows furrow as he immediately turns on his heel to run to the cart, seeing the blood when he gets to it and quickly dropping to the ground beside your unconscious body. everyone else had followed and when they saw the sight, luther jumped to lift the hay that trapped you as diego pulled you out.

“god, no!” he pants, looking to your leg that had slowed down a bit in it’s bleeding, his eyes widening as he quickly checks for your pulse. he lets out a relieved sigh when you’re alive, looking to the others. “i’ll take care of her,” he tells them with a nod, “go find five, get rid of lila.”

they all split away from the two of you with the command, going to defeat the enemy that is the crazy lady you had met at the asylum.

-

she had been dealt with. mostly. the handler was dead and lila had disappeared with the suitcase she arrived with, off to who knows where to do who knows what.

you shoot up from the ground when you wake up, groaning from the pain the shot up your leg. “ah, shit!”

diego quickly looks up when he hears you, “oh, thank god you’re up.” he lets out a huff of breath, shaking his head. “how did this happen?” he questions, motioning to your thigh, where a piece of your shirt had been wrapped around the wound, already bleeding through.

“well, i got shot.” you state the obvious, picking at the shirt and gritting your teeth as you feel the pain.

he breathes in sharply, “okay, you’ll be okay.” he nods, and you think he may be telling that to himself rather than you. “we took care of lila and the handler-”

“i really thought she would be an alright person,” you shake your head as you prepare yourself to stand up, but diego quickly stops you.

“i don’t think that’s a good idea.” he warns, his hand held up to keep you from doing it, “i’ll just... carry you.”

you grin at the proposition. “a real knight in shining armor.” you chuckle, “i guess i’ll allow it.”

“yeah, yeah.” he smiles as he loops his arm under your knees, careful to not move your thigh too much to avoid pain, before putting the other on your back. you put an arm around his shoulder, and he lifts you slowly, trying his hardest not to hurt you.

you squeeze your eyes shut at the pain that courses through your leg, but you try to tough it out. “did five find a way to get back home?” you question, opening your eyes to look up at him.

“yeah,” he tells you, “we had an array of briefcases to choose from.” he chuckles, bringing you around the front of the house. “grace will be able to fix you up.”

“oh, thank god.” you giggle, “i thought i’d need you to carry me around everywhere.” you joke, curling a piece of his hair around your finger. “i wouldn’t mind it, though.”

“neither would i.”

-

taglists

main: @horrorklaus @megasimpleplan4ever

tua: @rasberrymay @noodlextrash @atomicpillar @malfovs​

diego hargreeves: none yet

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Flashback Friday || Morgan & Luis

TIMING: Distant past, in the days of yee-haw

LOCATION: The Magick Cauldron, Houston, Texas

PARTIES: @ontheluis & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Luis wanders into a magic shop looking for some herbs, Morgan spies an opportunity, and the cards know more than either of them reckon. 

CONTAINS: Mellow yee-haw vibes

“Welcome, traveler, to the Magick Cauldron! Browse at your pleasure and inquire if you have any questions!” Morgan had given the scripted greeting so many times, it came out of her in full customer service cheer every time the shop door opened. She didn’t even look up from the book she had open under the cash register anymore, but flipped another page and let the customers let her know if there was something worth talking about by shouting ‘lady!’ or coming into her peripheral view.

The Magick Cauldron was the only occult shop still standing West Houston after the Y2K stress fads had died away and the first bout of shiny, corporate development had found its way into Montrose and bulldozed a crystal shop, a Greek deli, and one of the few ladies-only gay bars in favor of a mixed use building that so far only housed a nail salon and a Jamba Juice. Ralf, the fine proprietor of the Cauldron as he called himself, said that this space was protected. As the door chimed open again and Morgan made her welcome speech, bright and shiny as the plastic plate armor hanging in the kid’s section, she wondered if he was right. She never seemed to serve more than a dozen or so customers during her shifts, but the lights stayed on, day after sweltering day. If Ralf was right, it might just be the one piece of real magic in the place, not that she could say that to anyone’s face.

The warped outline of a boy rippled over the glass counter and Morgan blinked up from her book. “Is there something I can help you with, weary traveler?” She asked wryly.

“Sorry ma’am,” Luis assured, “didn’t mean to bring the stray in here,”

Evening had fallen outside, heat from the blistering still wafting off the pavement. Telephone poles and streetlights were thin black columns that stood stark against the blazing orange and wane blues of sunset.  

“Go on, git!”

At the Magick Cauldron’s threshold was an enormous black dog. Even while quietly sitting on its haunches the shaggy canine was easily as tall as the teenage boy snapped at it. Pupiless red eyes regarded Luis impassively, only an ear twitch showing that the dog wasn’t just a statue.

When the black dog gave no indication of actually entering the store nor stopping its scrutiny of Luis, the young man cut his losses and regarded the woman at the counter again.

“Here,” Luis reached into a pocket of his jeans and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it on the counter. The names of herbs and powders were written in someone else’s prime neat handwriting. “I uh don’t know what any of this is…,” he confessed.

Morgan took the paper carefully between her fingers, trying not to let her discomfort at how damp and sweaty it was show too much. It didn’t take much to figure out she was looking at an herbalist mixture for anxiety and sleeplessness. She looked up and the boy, and down to the list again. “We’ve got everything you need over here,” she said. She lead the boy over to the bulk aisle where the dried herbs and bottled oils were kept and alphabetized. “Did you want these bagged separate or together? Or--you probably don’t know how these work huh? We’ll do separate, so you can use any excess as you wish. But fair warning, we have a purchase minimum of one ounce for each item.” She put a small paper bag on the shelf in the middle of the display and started shovelling the herbs in. As she worked, she glanded sidelong at the kid and the dog that had decided to become instantly fond of him. Someone cared about them, to throw together this recipe, and he looked embarrassed enough for a kid his age to seem like he needed help. Would it be wrong to squeeze a few more dollars out of him if it so happened to brighten his day or give him some direction? Sure, he was scruffy, but not so much as to be desperate. He could afford a few extra bucks, right?

“Hey, you okay there?” Morgan asked him. “You seem a little lost. I’m getting some ‘needs direction’ vibes from you.” She gestured vaguely. “If you’re looking for Niko Niko’s, it’s just further down the street. You’re not supposed to leave your car here while you go over there, but I won’t tell. And if you need something a little less literal, I might be able to help you with that.” She nodded toward the oracle room at the back of the shop, with its hand painted sign hanging crooked from a nail and entryway draped with lavender beads. “I do have sliding scale rates, if it helps you make up your mind.”

The great black dog continued to watch Luis in silent stillness, the Barghest’s posture poised as if waiting for something.

“No offense ma’am but I don’t believe in…,” the teenager half-turned but caught sight of the enormous stray waiting for him in the darkening sunset. Those pupiless red eyes immediately filled Luis with a nameless dread. Cold sweat stained the back of his T-shirt as Luis’ skin went clammy despite the Texan heat. Luis couldn’t process why some random big-ass dog would wig him out so much. He wasn’t even afraid of it biting him or even the dog itself.

So why was his heart pounding in his temples?

“Yeah uh..s-seperate would be great,” Luis reaffirmed to Morgan needlessly. The labels on the tinctures and herbal selections blurred in his vision as Luis tried to get a handle on his thoughts. “Direction like, oh you mean to the interstate,” Luis replied in a misinterpretation of Morgan’s broader meaning. “I’m alright thanks, yeah merging on that triple hairpin by Foster is a pain in the ass but it's chill.”

Luis looked over to the oracle room with the dubiety of someone for whom the occult was just a vague ‘other’ mentioned at Mass or when abuela suggested a Sonora Market cure for whatever new cold was going around. He seemed about to decline again until the creeping skin-crawl of Barghest’s glare boring into his back made Luis amenable to any distraction.

“Yeah uh sure,” he said, taking a step towards the beaded shroud. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Morgan followed the boy’s eyes to the dog. He was looking pretty well fed for a stray, and his eyes--red, alert, sharp with an uncommon intelligence--made her shiver. Definitely supernatural. She didn’t know, how, or what, but it didn’t look good. “And I mean--” How to put this in just the right way? Or at least the more convincing way? “I mean your spirit, your chakras. Believe in your connection to the universe or not, but are you really going to say to my face that you know how you’re going to make your life worthwhile to yourself? That you know how to reach your greatest good?” No one did. Heck, she was a devout wiccan most days out of the year and even she didn’t know what her highest, greatest good looked like. “And if you’ve got the cash, I’ll throw in a cleansing, something to make--” she gestured at him vaguely, “Whatever negative heavy energy this is that’s stuck to you. Seriously, do you ever feel tired out of nowhere?” It was summer and the sun was exhausting; everyone got tired out of nowhere.

Maybe she was laying it on a little thick, but Morgan was tired of ordering off the dollar menu for dinner and she felt like she was taking her life into her own hands when she conjured money from school pens and laundry lint cotton. This kid’s money might get her a pot pie that didn’t come from the freezer, or enough tacos to last her a week, or maybe she’d blow it all on seafood, or a dress that hadn’t been worn by someone else. “I’ll ring you up first, and then we’ll see about getting the rest of you squared away.” Morgan did, and when that part of the transaction was over, she lead him into the oracle room.

In truth, the oracle room was an old storage closet with the door taken out. Morgan breezed through them and went to the antique flea market find armoire, where all the necessary items were kept. Morgan took out a small tray of tarot decks and took the one she liked best, a well loved Raider-Waite with stars on the backs and gold-gilt edges. “I’ll shuffle them myself, but you should tell me when to cut and start again and when to stop. When I’m done, you’ll spread them. You’re the one who needs to connect with the deck, after all.”

Rafael Martininez had given his son that smirking half-smile while Malia had given Luis the pale blue eyes watching Morgan shuffle cards. Sweaty light brown hair clung to his forehead beneath the Dallas Burn hat, stray strands dangling back his eyes. The lanky teenager sat awkwardly across from the cartomancer, doubting not only her veracity but that a term like destiny could even apply to someone like him.

Like many children who’re so profoundly blessed to grow up in a home of unconditional love, Luis had no idea that Rafael and Malia given him a protection rarer than talismans, weirds, or wards. Rafael had come to this country for a better life, and Malia had wanted a home that was safer then the hell she’d left. Together they’d given both dreams to their children, so Luis and his siblings would never have to go through what they had.

The freckled face that lifted to Morgan’s was innocent of hate, abuse, or fear of abandonment. Even in following a strange woman into a shrouded back room, it’d never occurred to Luis to worry about anything more sinister than carnival charlantry.

“So uh...like this ma’am,” Luis asked as he placed some cards face down on the table.

It was this very innocence in Louis that dulled the edge off Morgan’s guilt. It was wrong (if wrong was a real concept) to spoil something pure, but if she was really the worst thing that was going to happen to this kid in his teenage years, he was pretty darn lucky. At least he was getting some introspection out of the deal. Could he have gotten a tarot deck from the discount bookstore two blocks over for a quarter of what she was going to charge him, or thought everything out on his own for free? Yes. But he was also some bushy tailed high school kid; could happen wasn’t the same thing as would happen.

She’d had more instructions to give, some arbitrary waving of hands and maybe some visualization in what one of her co-workers called her ‘yoga voice’, but Louis, in his eagerness, had taken more than the requisite three cards she had planned on, wich just meant she had a ready-made excuse for the forty dollars she was going to take from him. “My, my, aren’t we eager?” She said. “What’s interesting to me already is that you have intuitively drawn out one of the more complex and energy taxing card spreads. Imperfectly, but--” She straightened them out at random until they made more of a geometric pattern. “See? I barely did anything at all. These cards must really like you. I don’t normally do something this involved, but it looks like there’s something here that wants to come out, and I’m not in the business of stifling anyone’s growth or energy.”

Morgan flipped the first card over to reveal The Fool and managed to keep her laughter light and soft. “Well, even if I hadn’t been doing this for so long, this is you, where you are right now. Don’t take the title personally, these are antiquated terms. He’s just young, and at the start of a great journey, not even begun, just on the precipice. He’s got his whole life ahead of him, and the sun, see? It’s shining on him to show that the universe is aligned with his desires. The world wants you to support you, wants to see you succeed.”

The second card. The Tower. Morgan’s eyes widened. Not really vibing with the story she’d been telling, but maybe the one after… Eight of Cups. Morgan flipped over the last ones. Death and The Moon. “Hmm...Fascinating...” Morgan said, stalling for a way to spin this. “The thing about the major arcana is the magnitude of forces. Forces like destiny and fate and the collective consciousness. These forces are bigger than a ten minute fight with your friends or what you want to do after graduation, these are ���beyond your control’. And you have four. The universe really does have plans for you, that’s kind of exciting, right?” She smiled, hoping to get some confirmation from him, or at least some more of his trust. “What does your intuition tell you about this journey, honey?”

Morgan’s performative coaxing elicited a dubious look, but the striking illustrations of the Tarot drew Luis’ attention regardless. The fool was poised with one foot over the cliff, smiling blissfully as the sun warmed his back. The tower’s blackened crenellations tumbled down the cliffside as the once indomitable edifice was battered into ruins by a storm. A haggard traveler slumped down in relief on a river bank as eight golden chalice stood resplendent over the churning rapids. Death rode on its pale horse, a scythe clutched in one skeletal hand while offering an exquisitely detailed rose. The Moon slept in the sky above a verdant shore. Wolves howled in its light while pelagic creatures breached on the lunar tide.

“Woah that art on these is something else,” admitted Luis as he squinted at the intricate illuminations, clearly sensitive to aesthetics but not the higher esoteric meaning.

Unfortunately intuition is only as good as the experiences which inform it and Luis Martinez had been sheltered from the world’s cruelty. It was a blessing to be sure, but it also made Luis unable to imagine that evil doesn’t need consent to claim you.

“My intuition is uh,” floundered the young man who had about as much affinity for divination as the average block of cedar. “The ranch’ll catch on fire, maybe a relative will die, but we’ll find like eight things that’ll make it better before the next full moon,” Luis posited.

Morgan’s stomach rumbled as the boy ogled the artwork on the cards. She was tempted to commend the kid on his ‘uncanny insight’ into the realm of the divine and take her money and run down the street for a hot stack of tacos. But the kid was so bright eyed and easily awed. She felt like she owed him at least some of her knowledge, even if she thought the tarot was psychological self-talk at best.

“Fortunately for your relatives, nothing here is quite that literal,” she said, laughing warmly. “But this journey you’re on, both within and without, is going to be perilous.” Perilous to the point of being seriously dangerous and traumatic, if this really was his subconscious sensing something on the horizon. But that wasn’t something she was going to say to his face. She wanted money without having to lie to her mother about where it came from later. “Even though your desires are upheld by the earth and stars, there will come a time when it feels as though you’ve been cast out and lost everything. But the key to staying your course is to…” What was a precious uplift-y way to spin this? “Hold fast to your sense of self. Remember the core of who you are and what you want. Because, if you do, then you will survive the upheavals, and you will be able to choose wisely what to keep, what to leave behind, and end up so strong, it’ll feel like you’ve been resurrected and leveled up into a new, better, cooler version of yourself!” She had no idea how to make sense of the moon card in a positive five star customer service rating sort of way, so she moved it underneath the spread, smiling like this had been her master plan all along.

“This card with the moon and the wolves isn’t your endgame, it’s an indicator of the vehicle, the thing that encompases the whole. All this massive change ahead of you isn’t necessarily going to be visible to everyone. It comes from within, sometimes hidden, like how you can only see the stars when it’s dark out and most of the world is asleep, and wolves howl when the world is in shadows. It’s like that. And it’s going to be amazing.”

Morgan checked her watch and slumped back in her chair as if she were exhausted. Not a hard thing to do when it was this hot out. “So, that’s gonna be forty dollars for the energy and the insight. Technically, with how many cards you pulled, it should be a little more, but I can tell you’re taking a risk on something new here and I want to honor that. But we can keep going if you have any more questions!”

“Vehicle huh...not sure dad’s gonna let me spraypaint moons and wolves on the truck,” Luis mused, perhaps taking the ‘vehicle’ thing a bit too literally or not wanting to think too hard about the possibility of his life changing.

Luis looked over the intricately illustrated cards, eyebrows wrinkling as he tried to parse through the profound chicanery Morgan had spouted. A bite of the lower lip hinted that Luis had never really encountered those who could appear to say everything while stating nothing particularly specific.

“Well shiiiii..,” the teenager breathed before glancing up at Morgan and catching himself with a small hssk of inhalation, as if some inner parental voice had scolded him about cursing in front of a lady. “That was pretty cool,” he amended, clearly at a loss before everything he’d been told, too polite to claim he didn’t believe any of it, but also too much a child of modernity to heed the weird feeling in his gut that recognized something...hit different...about this chance prophecy.

Luis grinned bashfully and unknowingly let fate’s final warning pass him by.

“Forty bucks huh, I’ll havta explain that somehow,” the young man noted with the mild consternation of someone blessed enough to just worry about a family member who’d be more peeved about gas money going to “fortuneteller” then the actual cash itself.

The bills slid across the table after some awkward wallet-riffling. “Thank you ma’am.”

Morgan snatched up the bills and shoved them down her shirt before the kid could change his mind. Whatever ominous feelings his subconscious were trying to air out was no concern for her. She had too many problems of her own to bother with anyone else’s. “It takes a long time to read the cards,” she drawled smugly. “And lots of energy, to open oneself and reach beyond the veil.” She waved her fingers as if to say tootles, and went back to fanning herself until he was gone.

She helped a lady find some yarrow and made up a policy about consultation fees to get another $10 in her pocket. She was using her agency to bridge the gap between minimum shop girl wage and living wage, working her will to get the right kind of energy flowing her way. Mostly, the energy of not-starving and not invoking the ire of darkness from using alchemy to get ahead. It didn’t line up with the rest of what she understood, neutral magic forces should be lining up to help her right her cosmic access and be less chronically miserable, but that was a problem to untangle another day.

At the end of her shift, Morgan shuffled the cards once again and lined them up on the cleansing plate the shopkeeper wanted the used decks put on. By chance, or so she told herself, she picked up the topmost card to see what was there for her. But it was just the death card, and Morgan knew the last thing that was gonna happen to her life was a hard reset. She stuck it back in the middle of the deck and slipped away into the long shadows that marked the summer evening.

[scribbling-stiks]

AAR - XLI - Snarky Comments and Staircases

Russia didn't remember falling asleep, but he's startled awake by soft whimpering from somewhere next to him. All the countries that could climb the stairs, were moved to stay on cots upstairs, leaving Russia and America on the larger couch and Egypt on one of the smaller couches in the living room.

Russia, disoriented, looks around. Looking to his side, he sees America curled up and quietly weeping. Russia pulls himself up and winces.

'I can't do anything to help.'

The thought is sobering, but Russia decides that he isn't going to leave America to suffer.

'Dixie can help. Must find Dixie.'

Russia forces himself to his feet and he muffles his yelp with his fist.

'Can't give up now.'

Russia stumbles to the stairs and takes a moment to breathe before staring up the staircase, his head spinning. Another whimper, louder this time catches his attention, and he steels himself over. Russia forces himself to his feet and up the first step. He claws at the handrail and collapses as soon as he makes it up the staircase.

Russia gasps. He stays on the floor for a second and tries to catch his breath before rolling onto his hands and pushes himself back up to his feet.

'Need to get help.'

Russia uses his shoulder to balance himself on the wall and he wanders down the hallway. His vision gets spotty and his peripheral vision has all but blacked out. He makes it to Dixie's door before his legs gave out on him and he crumbles like he was made of wet cardboard. He hits the floor with a heavy thump, and the snoring from in the room suddenly stops.

The door opens a moment later and Dixie stares down at Russia, the remnants of sleep and confusion in his eyes.

"Russia?" Dixie asks, sounding exhausted and baffled.

"Something wrong. America needs help," Russia explains through clenched teeth, propping himself up on his arms.

Dixie's eyes go wide before he rushes downstairs, his footsteps pounding against the wood. Russia pushes himself onto his hands until the pain in his right hand becomes excruciating. He falls back down, landing hard on his chest. He grunts at the impact but finds it's not as painful as he had expected. His eyelids begin to fall.

Strange footfalls echo through the hallway, and a set of feet, one real and one prosthetic, skid to a stop in front of Russia's nose.

"Russia? What are you doing? How did you get up here?" New York asks from above him, sounding perplexed.

"Something's wrong with Meri. Needed help," Russia says quietly.

Russia tries again to force himself up and off the cold ground. He hears another kid come running up through the hallway, and Russia looks up just in time to see New Jersey nearly tripping over him to get to New York.

"Woah!" New Jersey exclaims, "What the f*** is going on?"

"SHHH!" New York hisses, "and I think something's wrong with Dad."

"I'm gonna go get Tex," New Jersey says before running off.

"Wait!-" New York shouts before he cuts himself off and sighs.

New York crouches as much as his prosthetic would allow and looks at Russia in the eyes.

"Do you want to stay up here or do you want to go back downstairs?"

"Downstairs," Russia replies.

New York nods before looking back up.

"Tik," New York says, faint disdain in his tone, "we need your help."

"You need my help?" Texas asks smugly, a teasing undertone to his words.

"Shut the f*** up and get your a** over here. We need to get Russia back downstairs and check on Dad," New York says, his voice tight.

Texas begins heaving Russia off the ground while New Mexico and New Jersey rush back down the hallway to help. When they finally get back downstairs and enter the living room, America is gone and Dixie is nowhere to be seen. America's pile of blankets slowly falling off the edge of the couch.

Russia is deposited next to where America had been, and New York and New Jersey rush off to find America. New Mexico hands Russia the bottle of aloe that had fallen to the ground. Texas sits again the arm on the opposite edge of the couch and New Mexico whines.

"I want to go back to bed," New Mexico complains, throwing her arms to the sides.

Texas shrugs half-heartedly.

"I want to stay down here in case Dad needs any more help," Texas says.

New Mexico grumbles before stumbling around and ultimately curling up in a chair in the corner of the room, asleep again in seconds.

Russia lays his head back and closes his eyes, completely exhausted. Even still, he refuses to go to sleep completely until he knows America is back.

Russia's head pops up at the tell-tale footsteps of New York. He sees New York and New Jersey walking back in.

"Move over, you f***er," New York says softly, waving at Texas to move his legs off the sofa.

Texas complies and makes room for the two on the couch. New York falls back gracelessly and huffs as his back hits the pillows. New Jersey follows suit.

"So what's goin' on?" Texas asks.

"Dixie is in the bathroom with Dad," New York says with a sigh, "It doesn't look good. F***."

New York runs his hands through his hair and Texas sits up straighter, more attentive now.

"York?" Texas asks, reaching out a hand to put on New York's shoulder. New York dodges the attempt.

"Texas, I'm being serious. Dad is hacking up even more of that f***ing magic s*** than before. Dixie has it handled for now, but it's...I... F***!" New York spits before putting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands.

"Yorky, you gotta calm down," New Jersey says, leaning back with his arms in the air and his hands behind his head.

"I know Jerz, but I've never seen Dad this f***ing sick," New York retorts, sounding angry and scared.

Russia's heart sinks.

"Dad'll get through it. He always does," Texas asserts quietly, moving to stand, "Let's go make some coffee or something. Big A, you up to it?"

New York sighs but still gets up to follow. Russia watches them go before turning his attention to New Jersey, who stares blankly at the ceiling.

"Will he be okay?" Russia asks quietly.

New Jersey's head whips around to face Russia before he sighs with a soft laugh.

"Who? York? Yeah, he'll be fine. He just needs something to distract himself. Hopefully Tex gives him something noncaffeinated. He just gets panicky, ya know? Kinda wish he'd calm down a little and just sleep, but what can you do?" New Jersey adds with a shrug.

Russia nods before leaning his head back again. He stares up at the ceiling until he hears someone enter the room from one of the side hallways. Russia looks up and sees Dixie dragging America over to the couch. New Jersey gets up to help and together, they get America back on the couch where he had been before.

America lies down in the blankets and cuddles into them, shivering.

Dixie pulls the blankets over him before backing up and handing Russia a blanket as well. Dixie wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and sighs.

"All y'all okay?" Dixie asks.

"Yeah, we're good," Texas says, leaning his head against the doorway to the kitchen with crossed arms.

New York reenters the room a moment later with a mug and he paces around the room for a few moments before leaving the cup on the coffee table and tugs at Russia's blanket. Russia jolts a little.

"Havta examine your cuts and s*** to make sure you didn't  f*** anything up," New York mutters, lifting Russia's arm.

Russia relaxes a little, trusting that New York wouldn't hurt him.

Dixie yawns and stretches before hunching over, looking almost like he had fallen asleep where he's standing, swaying a little.

"Dix, you're gonna fall over," Texas says with a chuckle.

Dixie jolts upright with wide eyes. He stumbling to a pile of linins left on the carpet and falls into it, asleep before he landed, snoring softly.

"God D***, I forgot how much he snores," New Jersey comments, snark painting his words.

New York snickers into his drink.

"Hush," Texas scolds lightly, sitting back down on the couch and cradling his own cup in his hands.

America groans quietly, and Russia whips his head around. America reaches forward blindly and latches onto Russia's good arm, pulling in Russia's hand and putting it against his face. Russia shifts a little to take the extra stress off his shoulder and smiles softly.

"That's a good sign," New York mutters.

Russia hums, completely distracted.

'So pretty.'

"What is?" New Jersey asks.

"Dad's moving," Texas answers, "prolly means he'll be waking up soon."

Russia smiles, and finally, his thoughts begin to calm from their panicked spiral. Russia sighs with a small smile.

'Don't scare me like that.'

Texas gets up to put his cup in the kitchen and when he gets back, he moves to the center corner of the large couch. Texas settles and tilts his hat over his face, relaxing into the pillows. New York and New Jersey quietly sign to each other in the moonlight from the windows. Russia lets the rest of the tension leave his muscles and he stares at America's features, trying to soak it in.

Russia feels his eyelids get heavier, but he tries his best to stay awake, afraid something else might happen, but having America holding his hand made enough of that worry fade for him to fall asleep.

The world grows calm and quiet as Russia gets lost in his dreams.

~

Next

Previous

Table of Contents

[mychemicalrachel]

Finally, Finally

Buck x Eddie.

My take on Abby coming back.

Part /3.

Part One. / Part Two.

Word count; 2040

Also on Ao3

Part Three: Eddie

“In case something happens…”

Those were the exact words Captain Nash had used nearly a year and a half ago when Eddie first joined the 118.

Exchanging keys was a small, simple way to say “I got your back” in case something happened on a call. It was no secret that they had a dangerous job and there was no use tiptoeing around the fact.

In case something happened.

In case you don’t make it out alive.

In case someone has to clean out your place and notify your next of kin.

It was morbid, in a way, but it was also a comfort.

On the ring that Eddie uses, there’s a little orange keychain that reads “Best Dad Ever” and a key to his truck, his house, his abuela’s house, and one dedicated to every one of the members of the 118.

They each had one for his house, too.

If pressed, Eddie would admit that he wasn’t sure what key fit what door. He thinks Hen’s might have been the silver key with the ridged top, and Chimney’s was probably the one that was marked with a messy H in Sharpie.

The only key he knew with absolute certainty was the gold key that showed more wear with each passing day. That one was Buck’s. It hung right between his own house key and the keychain Christopher had picked out for him two Christmases ago.

Then again, Buck gets enough use out of his copy of Eddie’s key to make it a fair trade.

When Abby had manifested like a mirage outside of Bucks’ door, Eddie had recognized her immediately. Not necessarily from look, as he’d only seen a photo of her one or two times, but from some weird sixth sense. Maybe it was her fading red hair or the way she held herself-- he had heard stories of her, fairy tale-like musings, from Buck and Carla alike. 

Until he stood face to face with her-- her just outside Buck’s apartment, Eddie inside-- he had sort of thought of her as a figment of imagination. Not that she wasn’t real, exactly, but more like the real her was lost somewhere amidst the memories. She had become a story, not a person.

And then she smiled quietly. “I’m looking for Buck.”

Eddie could see in the softness of her eyes and imagined the way Buck must have felt once upon a time; loving her, losing her.

Eddie hated her profusely.

He led her into the kitchen and left them alone to talk-- or not talk-- as they saw fit. It was none of his business, after all.

“Dad,” Christopher’s voice pulls him out of his own head. They’re eating leftover lasagna, just the two of them, in the living room. The couch is colder than it usually feels and he chalks it up to the coming winter. LA is warm, but it’s a change from Texas he’s still adapting to. Chris prods at his plate, mostly untouched. “Why did Buck want us to leave?”

“Oh, Bud, no.” Eddie feels guilty suddenly. “Buck didn’t want us to leave. The woman that showed up, she was a friend of his that he hadn’t seen in awhile. I just thought they needed some time alone.”

“Why?”

Eddie isn’t sure he can explain it to himself, let alone his son. “Well, they haven’t seen each other in a long time. They need to catch up.”

“But why did we have to leave?”

Eddie frowns.

Buck didn’t tell them to leave. He actively wanted them to stay.

It was Eddie that freaked out and fled.

Because the idea of listening to Buck catch up with his ex-girlfriend sounded like hell on earth.

Because he didn’t want to see Buck inevitably fall back in love with her.

Because of things he wasn’t quite ready to face in himself.

Eddie decides to sidestep the question. “We’ll see him tomorrow, I promise”

Christopher takes the non-answer as it is, and says, “Okay.”

Eddie forces himself to take another bite of food, though it tastes stale on his tongue and settles dry in his stomach.

Minutes tick by as both Christopher and Eddie stop pretending to eat and fall back on the couch together. They watch Big Hero 6 and laugh obligingly, but it feels forced.

It feels wrong.

This is how it’s been done for years, Eddie reminds himself. Just him and Christopher. This is normal. Still, the coldness of the couch seeps into his bones.

He hears the door close a second before he hears Buck’s voice. “Diazes!” he calls. “Where are you?”

“Buck!”

Chris struggles to sit up and manages to launch himself off the couch, making a beeline for the sound of the newcomers voice. Eddie follows suit and meets Buck in the dining room, where  he’s setting down a pizza box and scooping Christopher up into his arms.

“I hope I’m not too late,” Buck says, peering into the living room where two plates of cold lasagna sit, barely touched. “I promised you pizza, and I never break my promises.” He looks over at Eddie, a bit of uncertainty coloring his words. “I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s okay,” Christopher confirms, lifting the lid on the pizza box. He grabs a slice and disappears back in front of the TV.

“I would have called,” Buck says, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “But I was coming over whether you said yes or not.”

Eddie snorts. He retrieves a piece for himself, but leans against the table instead of joining his son. “You didn’t have to come over.”

“I wanted to.”

“I’m just saying,” Eddie stresses, trying to figure out for himself what exactly he is saying. “That I would have understood. You and Abby needed to catch up. I get it.”

“And we did,” Buck says, a shrug pulling at his shoulders while a smile tugs at his lips. “It was very cathartic.”

“Yeah?”

Eddie doesn’t want details. He does not want any details. He understands, as Buck’s best friend, that he should lend an ear. He should offer his congratulations. He chews quietly on his pizza and steels himself.

“She’s getting married.”

Oh.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Buck.”

Buck laughs and his entire face lights up. It’s a smile that’s always been contagious. “Why? I’m really happy for her.”

“You are?”

Buck nods. He leans against the table next to Eddie, their hands brushing together between them. Eddie does his best to ignore it.

“When she first said it, I was waiting for… I don’t know,” Buck shrugs with his entire torso, a gesture that jostles their shoulders together. Eddie curses silently. “I guess I was waiting on the pain. I expected it to hurt. But it didn’t. If she had told me that a year and a half ago, I would have been heartbroken.”

Buck sighs and intentionally presses his arm against Eddie’s, more than just an accidental brush of limbs. It remains there, skin to skin.

It’s almost as if he knows the sensation that the simple touch sends through Eddie, but he couldn’t possibly know. He couldn’t know the shiver that rolls up his spine, the goosebumps that arise on his forearm, the way his heart beats just a little bit faster.

Not unless Buck feels it, too.

He doesn’t move away.

“When Abby left,” Buck says, his voice quiet, meant for just the two of them to hear. Chris remains oblivious in the other room, mere yards away. Doesn’t he hear the static rushing in Eddie’s ears? Can he not hear the beating of Eddie’s heart pounding against his ribs?

“When I really accepted that she wasn’t planning on coming back,” Buck’s hands outstretch in front of him, grappling for something physical to hold onto. Some infinite emotion or thought that he’s trying his best to convey with spread fingers. Eddie wants to feel it, whatever it is that Buck is reaching for. “It was like there was this hole she left. An Abby-shaped hole that no one night stands or casual sex could fill. I loved her.”

It takes a long time for Eddie to find his voice. He watches the side of Buck’s face, outlining the curve of his nose and the shadow of his lips. He isn’t even sure he wants an answer when he asks, “And now? Do you still love her?”

Buck looks up and meets his gaze, steady and sure, as he shakes his head. “No. I don’t. Not the same way, at least.”

Eddie can’t breathe. He needs to look away before he does something stupid, but he can’t move.

Buck’s arm brushes his again and he closes his eyes so he doesn’t see Buck smile.

“You feel it, too,” Buck says, and then Eddie feels the hand on his arm, solid, tantalizing, and definitely not just a brush of skin. There’s an intent in his hands and Eddie feels it in that moment, the thing Buck had been reaching for a moment ago; The feeling, the sentiment, the something more just beyond words. 

“I didn’t know how to move on,” Buck admits. Eddie can feel his breath, but resolutely refuses to open his eyes. He’s afraid of what will happen if he does. “And I didn’t realize until I saw her again that I already had.”

Finally, finally, Eddie opens his eyes. “Buck--” he starts, but then there’s a mouth on his and he can’t focus to breathe, let alone find words to say whatever it was he was going to say.

It’s a short kiss that seems to last minutes or hours, and when Buck finally pulls away, Eddie’s head is swimming.

That just happened.

He kissed me.

I’d very much like it if he did it again.

Buck is watching him with doe eyes, big and blue and waiting.

Waiting, he realizes, for Eddie to say something.

Ultimately, in the haze that still fills his head, he blurts out, “I fill your hole.”

A beat passes and then Buck is clutching his stomach laughing. “Yeah,” he says. “You fill my hole.”

Eddie feels his face burn and he shoves Buck, but can’t stop himself from laughing, too. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant the-- Stop laughing. I meant the Abby-shaped hole.”

Buck catches his arm and pulls him back in close. Their noses bump and the laughter dissipates. Eddie moves slowly, feeling like if he moves too quick he could startle Buck away. Buck would come to his senses, or Eddie would wake up in a cold bed, alone, realizing this has all been a dream. He’s wanted this for so long, much longer than he ever even admitted to himself. He cannot mess this up now.

But when he kisses Buck, slow and sure, he feels more certain than he ever has. He whispers into the kiss, “You fill my hole, too.”

The feeling of Buck laughing against his lips is something he never wants to forget.

“Dad?”

A hand knocks on his back and he jumps away from Buck, nearly toppling over Christopher in the process.

Chris.

He forgot about Christopher for a second.

He’d been careless, too wrapped up in his own head to even think about how Chris would take to seeing his dad and Buck kiss.

But Christopher is just staring up at him, plate in hand. “Can you move, please? You’re in front of the pizza.”

Eddie shifts to the side, tangling himself further in Buck’s arms. They watch quietly as Chris helps himself to another piece of pizza and wanders again back into the living room without another word.

They wait, tense and silent, for something, anything, to happen. It can’t be this easy, Eddie thinks. Nothing is ever this easy. Nothing with Buck is ever this easy.

And yet, it is. The way he’d slotted himself perfectly into their lives, becoming a centerpiece in not only Eddie's but Christopher's routine. It’s the easiest thing they’ve ever done.

“We should go,” Buck says. He grabs a plate and shoves a few slices of pizza on before leading Eddie into the living room. They sit together, eating and watching the movie. It’s Buck’s first time seeing it so they start it over and if Buck happens to cry, no one mentions a thing. Eddie just hands him a tissue and leans back into the couch, letting the warmness of it all wash over him.

This, he thinks, feels normal. In fact, he can’t imagine a more rational next step in their friendship, their relationship. It feels right.

As he catches Buck’s eyes over the top of Christopher’s head, they share a smile that says all of this and more.

This is home.

This is us, our family, ourselves.

This is love.

The End.

[brightbeautifulthings]

MAYHEM BY ESTELLE LAURE BLOG TOUR & CHAPTER EXCERPT

The Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this supernatural feminist YA novel.

Available July 14th, 2020

It's 1987 and unfortunately it's not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy's constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem's own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren't like everyone else.

But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.

But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.

From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.

About the Author:

Estelle Laure, the author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back believes in love, magic, and the power of facing hard truths. She has a BA in Theatre Arts and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and she lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her family. Her work is translated widely around the world. 

Twitter | Instagram | Get Your Copy

Read on for a special chapter excerpt of Mayhem!

three Santa Maria

“Trouble,” Roxy says. She arches a brow at the kids by the van through the bug-spattered windshield, the ghost of a half-smile rippling across her face.

“You would know,” I shoot.

“So would you,” she snaps.

Maybe we’re a little on edge. We’ve been in the car so long the pattern on the vinyl seats is tattooed on the back of my thighs.

The kids my mother is talking about, the ones sitting on the white picket fence, look like they slithered up the hill out of the ocean, covered in seaweed, like the carnival music we heard coming from the boardwalk as we were driving into town plays in the air around them at all times. Two crows are on the posts beside them like they’re standing guard, and they caw at each other loudly as we come to a stop. I love every- thing about this place immediately and I think, ridiculously, that I am no longer alone.

The older girl, white but tan, curvaceous, and lean, has her arms around the boy and is lovely with her smudged eye makeup and her ripped clothes. The younger one pops some- thing made of bright colors into her mouth and watches us come up the drive. She is in a military-style jacket with a ton of buttons, her frizzy blond hair reaching in all directions, freckles slapped across her cheeks. And the boy? Thin, brown, hungry-looking. Not hungry in his stomach. Hungry with his eyes. He has a green bandana tied across his forehead and holes in the knees of his jeans. There’s an A in a circle drawn in marker across the front of his T-shirt.

Anarchy.

“Look!” Roxy points to the gas gauge. It’s just above the E. “You owe me five bucks, Cookie. I told you to trust we would make it, and see what happened? You should listen to your mama every once in a while.”

“Yeah, well, can I borrow the five bucks to pay you for the bet? I’m fresh out of cash at the moment.”

“Very funny.”

Roxy cranes out the window and wipes the sweat off her upper lip, careful not to smudge her red lipstick. She’s been having real bad aches the last two days, even aside from her bruises, and her appetite’s been worse than ever. The only thing she ever wants is sugar. After having been in the car for so long, you’d think we’d be falling all over each other to get out, but we’re still sitting in the car. In here we’re still us.

She sighs for the thousandth time and clutches at her belly. “I don’t know about this, May.”

California can’t be that different from West Texas.

I watch TV. I know how to say gag me with a spoon and grody to the max.

I fling open the door.

Roxy gathers her cigarettes and lighter, and drops them in- side her purse with a snap.

“Goddammit, Elle,” she mutters to herself, eyes flickering toward the kids again. Roxy looks at me over the rims of her sunglasses before shoving them back on her nose. “Mayhem, I’m counting on you to keep your head together here. Those kids are not the usual—”

“I know! You told me they’re foster kids.” 

“No, not that,” she says, but doesn’t clarify. “Okay, I guess.”

“I mean it. No more of that wild-child business.”

“I will keep my head together!” I’m so tired of her saying this. I never had any friends, never a boyfriend—all I have is what Grandmother calls my nasty mouth and the hair Lyle always said was ugly and whorish. And once or twice I might’ve got drunk on the roof, but it’s not like I ever did anything. Besides, no kid my age has ever liked me even once. I’m not the wild child in the family.

“Well, all right then.” Roxy messes with her hair in the rear- view mirror, then sprays herself with a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and runs her fingers over her gold necklace. It’s of a bird, not unlike the ones making a fuss by the house. She’s had it as long as I can remember, and over time it’s been worn smooth by her worrying fingers. It’s like she uses it to calm herself when she’s upset about something, and she’s been upset the whole way here, practically. Usually, she’d be good and buzzed by this time of day, but since she’s had to drive some, she’s only nipped from the tiny bottle of wine in her purse a few times and only taken a couple pills since we left Taylor. The with- drawal has turned her into a bit of a she-demon.

I try to look through her eyes, to see what she sees. Roxy hasn’t been back here since I was three years old, and in that time, her mother has died, her father has died, and like she said when she got the card with the picture enclosed that her twin sister, Elle, sent last Christmas, Everybody got old. After that, she spent a lot of time staring in the mirror, pinching at her neck skin. When I was younger, she passed long nights telling me about Santa Maria and the Brayburn Farm, about how it was good and evil in equal measure, about how it had desires that had to be satisfied.

Brayburns, she would say. In my town, we were the legends. 

These were the mumbled stories of my childhood, and they made everything about this place loom large. Now that we’re here, I realize I expected the house to have a gaping maw filled with spitty, frothy teeth, as much as I figured there would be fairies flitting around with wands granting wishes. I don’t want to take her vision away from her, but this place looks pretty normal to me, if run-down compared to our new house in Taylor, where there’s no dust anywhere, ever, and Lyle prac- tically keeps the cans of soup in alphabetical order. Maybe what’s not so normal is that this place was built by Brayburns, and here Brayburns matter. I know because the whole road is named after us and because flowers and ribbons and baskets of fruit sat at the entrance, gifts from the people in town, Roxy said. They leave offerings. She said it like it’s normal to be treated like some kind of low-rent goddess.

Other than the van and the kids, there are trees here, rose- bushes, an old black Mercedes, and some bikes leaning against the porch that’s attached to the house. It’s splashed with fresh white paint that doesn’t quite cover up its wrinkles and scars. It’s three stories, so it cuts the sunset when I look up, and plants drape down to touch the dirt.

The front door swings open and a woman in bare feet races past the rosebushes toward us. It is those feet and the reckless way they pound against the earth that tells me this is my aunt Elle before her face does. My stomach gallops and there are bumps all over my arms, and I am more awake than I’ve been since.

I thought Roxy might do a lot of things when she saw her twin sister. Like she might get super quiet or chain-smoke, or maybe even get biting like she can when she’s feeling wrong about something. The last thing I would have ever imagined was them running toward each other and colliding in the driveway, Roxy wrapping her legs around Elle’s waist, and them twirling like that. 

This seems like something I shouldn’t be seeing, some- thing wounded and private that fills up my throat. I flip my- self around in my seat and start picking through the things we brought and chide myself yet again for the miserable packing job I did. Since I was basically out of my mind trying to get out of the house, I took a whole package of toothbrushes, an armful of books, my River Phoenix poster, plus I emptied out my underwear drawer, but totally forgot to pack any shoes, so all I have are some flip-flops I bought at the truck stop outside of Las Cruces after that man came to the window, slurring, You got nice legs. Tap, tap tap. You got such nice legs.

My flip-flops are covered in Cheeto dust from a bag that got upended. I slip them on anyway, watching Roxy take her sunglasses off and prop them on her head.

“Son of a bitch!” my aunt says, her voice tinny as she catches sight of Roxy’s eye. “Oh my God, that’s really bad, Rox. You made it sound like nothing. That’s not nothing.”

“Ellie,” Roxy says, trying to put laughter in her voice. “I’m here now. We’re here now.”

There’s a pause.

“You look the same,” Elle says. “Except the hair. You went full Marilyn Monroe.”

“What about you?” Roxy says, fussing at her platinum waves with her palm. “You go full granola warrior? When’s the last time you ate a burger?”

“You know I don’t do that. It’s no good for us. Definitely no good for the poor cows.”

“It’s fine for me.” Roxy lifts Elle’s arm and puckers her nose. “What’s going on with your armpits? May not eat meat but you got animals under there, looks like.”

“Shaving is subjugation.”

“Shaving is a mercy for all mankind.” 

They erupt into laughter and hug each other again.

“Well, where is she, my little baby niece?” Elle swings the car door open. “Oh, Mayhem.” She scoops me out with two strong arms. Right then I realize just how truly tired I am. She seems to know, squeezes extra hard for a second before letting me go. She smells like the sandalwood soap Roxy buys sometimes. “My baby girl,” Elle says, “you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to see you. How much I’ve missed you.”

Roxy circles her ear with a finger where Elle can’t see her.

Crazy, she mouths. I almost giggle.

[nazariolahela]

Best Beloved: Chapter 3

A/N: Hey y'all! This is a PM AU I’ve been working on. It’s a bit different than my previous fic series and I’m really excited to try something new. I hope y’all enjoy it. This story is told in dual first-person narrative, from Kaia (F!MC) and Damien’s POV. The first half of this story takes place during Kaia’s freshman year and Damien’s senior year of college. The second half is two years after Kaia graduates. There will be sprinklings of canon in this fic, but we’ll try to step out of the box for the most part. Thanks for reading, and please leave feedback, and/or if you would like to be tagged.

Catch up here

Series Tags: @burnsoslow​ @lady-calypso​ @irishwhiskys-blog​

This chapter contains scenes of underage drinking. Please read at your own risk.

Synopsis: What happens when you find yourself crushing on your best friend? For years, Damien and Kaia have been best friends, while secretly harboring feelings for one another. Everything changes one night after a little too much alcohol and years of pent up feelings. Can they control their emotions and salvage their friendship, or will the feelings they hold for one another destroy everything they have?

All characters are the property of Pixelberry Studios. Thanks for allowing me to borrow them.

Chapter Summary: The gang attends their first college football game and frat party.

Kaia

I laid back on my bed and threw my arm over my head, my phone pressed to my ear. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear to a college football game, Nadia. Can you please come over and help me?”

She laughed. “Just wear something with the school logo on it. You’re telling me you don’t have anything Bobcats in your closet?”

I sighed. “No, I forgot to run over to the bookstore and pick up a shirt. Do you think they’re still open?”

“You can grab one at the team store on the way to the game. They’re always open before kickoff. Just throw a cute tank top on and slip the shirt over it. Or change in the bathroom.”

I huffed and shoved a Twizzler in my mouth. “Fine. I gotta let you go so I can jump in the shower. Text me when you’re on your way.”

“Will do,” she singsonged and hung up the phone. I dropped mine on the mattress next to me and tried to work up the courage to get up. The mattress wasn’t the most comfortable, but after the crazy first week of classes I had, it was more tempting than getting up to go to a football game. Or a frat party. My roommate Victoria marched in, holding a bag under her arm.

“Just call me your fairy godmother,” she said, tossing the bag on my bed. I sat up and looked inside, seeing a Hartfeld Bobcats t-shirt inside.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Bought one last weekend, but it was the wrong size. I’ve been meaning to take it back, but I never got around to it. Try it on. If it fits, you can have it.”

I jumped off the bed and pulled the shirt from the bag, slipping it on over my black cami. I gasped when it fit like a glove. I stood in front of the floor-length mirror in our dorm room, checking myself out. Daaaamn, I looked fine!  I engulfed her in a hug. “You’re the best!”

“It was nothing really. Go have a great time at the game. And tell me all about it tomorrow.”

“You’re not going?” I asked.

“Nah. I met this guy the other night and we have our first date tonight. He’s taking me to this Italian restaurant the next town over. Apparently, the plates are bigger than your head.”

“Ooh! New guy? Dish,” I probed. I didn’t know much about my roommate’s love life. Mainly because she kept things like that to herself. Although, I did find out that first night we hung out that she lost her virginity to some guy named Spike. She told me he roared like a motorcycle when he came. We laughed about it for a good twenty minutes.

She turned crimson, hiding her face behind her long black locks. “Well...his name is Drake. He moved here for school from some foreign country named Cordonia, but he doesn’t have an accent. I think he said his family is from Texas, but he grew up overseas. He’s kind of brooding. Wears a lot of denim. I really like him.”

I squealed and pinched her cheeks. “Well, good luck. And if you bring him back to the dorm, put a sock over the doorknob so I know not to interrupt anything.” She blushed and I winked at her. “Okay, I gotta hit the shower. My cousin will be here shortly.” I grabbed my clothes, a towel, and my shower caddy and made my way down the hall to the shared bathroom in our dorm. Thankfully there wasn’t a line, so I took the first open stall.

After my shower, I slipped on my favorite pair of Levi’s jeans and the Bobcats shirt Victoria gave me. I applied neutral eyeshadow, false lashes, a light sweep of blush, and a swipe of nude lipstick on my lips, checked my reflection one last time, and headed back to my dorm. My phone chimed with a text from Nadia announcing that she was on her way, so I grabbed my crossbody and a hoodie in case it got chilly and headed downstairs. I saw Nadia and Sloane sitting in the cab of a royal blue 1990s Chevy Silverado pickup.

“What is this?” I asked, holding my hands out.

Nadia jumped out of the driver’s seat and rounded the vehicle, swinging her arms out like she was Vanna effing White and this truck was the grand prize. “You like? It’s Steve’s. He’s letting us borrow it to go to the game.”

I scrunched up my nose, examining the beat-up body of the pickup. Is...is that a racing stripe? 

Sloane remained in the truck, fiddling with the dials on the in-dash radio. “Come on, you two! We’re going to be late,” she shouted from the front seat. My eyes darted to Nadia, then back to Sloane. I sighed and moved over to the passenger’s side, crawling up onto the bench seat next to Sloane.

We drove the five minutes it took to get from the dorms to the Robert Q. Harris Memorial Stadium, going over our game plan for the night. As we pulled up in the parking lot, we noticed a tailgate in progress. 

“Ooh! This is going to be exciting! Your first tailgate, Sloane!” Nadia squealed. She pulled into a spot and put the truck in park. “Okay, girls. Here are your pom-poms,” she said, handing Sloane and I each a pom wand. We exited the truck and walked over to where some other students were playing beer pong.

“Oh, my gods! I’ve heard of this game, but I’ve never seen it played up-close,” Sloane said, clutching her hands to her chest. She moved toward the table and watched the two guys in Bobcats jerseys line up their shots. The first guy’s ball bounced off the rim of the red Solo cup, and his companions all groaned in frustration.

“I’m usually way better than this,” the guy protested as his friends laughed at him. We watched a few more rounds of the game before moving on to another group. Three girls in cut-off Bobcats t-shirts were holding a funnel and a tube above another girl’s head and pouring beer into the funnel.

“Why are those girls drinking beer out of a funnel?” Sloane asked.

“That’s a beer bong. They do this so they can get drunk faster,” I explained to her. She nodded her head, watching the girls in concentration as they assisted their friend in “funneling” her beer, then cheering when she finished it.

“Fascinating,” Sloane said, observing the girls as they lined up for another hit. We made our way through the parking lot, stopping occasionally at different groups to check out their tailgating activities. After several minutes, we made it to the stadium gates. Nadia fished our tickets out of her purse and handed them to the attendant. He scanned our tickets and let us through. We walked through the concourse, checking out the different food and drinks offered at the concession stands. We found our gate and made our way to our seats.

We took our seats and settled in, squeezing into the front row of the bleachers, right behind the home bench. A guy in a BU Wolves jersey sitting at the end of our row slid across the bench and wrapped his arm around Sloane’s shoulder.

“Hey, cutie! You here to check out a little sports ball? Greg here will tell you all you need to know. So, the guys in burgundy are the home team. They’re who you need to root for. That weird spherical object in the middle of the field is called a football. That’s the name of the sport.”

Nadia leaned over and gave the guy a death glare. “Excuse me! Are you actually trying to mansplain football to my friend?”

He raised his hands in defense. “Calm down, babe. I’m just trying to help her out. She doesn’t look like she’s ever watched a game in her life.”

“Who are you to assume she’s never watched football because of how she looks? Get lost, creep,” I spat out.

Sloane cleared her throat. “I’ve got this, girls.” She straightened her glasses and turned to the guy. “For your information, I’ve watched plenty of organized sports. Did you know that the main physical actions of American football, such as blocking, running, and tackling illustrate several fundamental concepts in physics, biomechanics, and math? It’s quite interesting to calculate how many pounds of water a player loses on the field or how much energy it takes to stop a running back in a full-on sprint.” She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at the guy. He hung his head sheepishly and got up from his seat, scurrying away embarrassed. Nadia and I sat there in awe, then dogpiled her in a group hug.

“Have I told you you’re my hero?” I asked her.

“I’m dating the first-string wide receiver and I didn’t even know that,” Nadia chimed. Sloane laughed and returned our hug before turning her attention back to the field. Both teams were announced and we leaped from our seats and cheered as Steve jogged past us to the bench. He spotted us in the crowd and shot Nadia a wink.

The game kicked off and the Bobcats received the ball first. The quarterback threw a 20-yard pass to Steve on the first play, and he took it to the house an additional 60-yards to put the first points on board. I thought Nadia was going to pass out with how hard she was screaming and jumping up and down.

The opposing team got the ball next and their running back broke through the line on the first snap for a 45-yard play before he was tackled by the Bobcats defense. They drove down the field on the next play and tied it up. Both teams went score for score throughout the game, and it came down to a tied score of 35-35 during the final two minutes of the fourth quarter.

The Bobcats had the ball at their own 45-yard line. It was 3rd and 2. The running back lined up in the backfield while Steve lined up off the line of scrimmage to block and wait for the center to snap the ball. The QB called an audible at the line and when the ball was snapped, he slung it to a wide-open Steve, who danced down the sideline 50-yards as time expired to give the Bobcats a 42-35 win. Nadia tossed her popcorn and her pom in the air as the stadium erupted in cheers. Steve’s teammates engulfed him as they celebrated on the field.

We filed out of the stadium and waited by the team entrance for Steve to arrive. When he emerged a few minutes later, Nadia took off in a dead sprint and leaped into his arms, nearly tackling him to the ground.

“YOU DID IT, BABY! I’M SO PROUD OF YOU,” she shouted as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, peppering his face with kisses. Sloane and I watched in amusement as Nadia and Steve mauled each other in the parking lot.

“Okay, lovebirds. Let’s save some of this for the afterparty,” I said, rolling my eyes. Steve set Nadia down and we made our way to where his truck was parked. We climbed in and set off for the Delta Mu Kappa house.

When we pulled up to the curb, the party was spilling out onto the front lawn of the frat house. We exited the pickup and weaved through the throngs of partygoers to enter the house. The bass thumped through the room and dancers moved erratically to the beat on the makeshift dance floor. 

Steve held Nadia’s hand and guided us through the living room to the keg set up in the kitchen. The guy operating the tap extended his hand to Steve for a high-five, which he returned, then poured beer in cups for him and Nadia. He then offered Sloane and I a drink. I declined, but Sloane accepted. The guy poured her a beer and she took a sip, a dollop of foam coating the tip of her nose. Her face turned up in disgust.

“This tastes awful,” she said, wiping the foam off her nose and upper lip and handing the cup back to him.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Steve laughed, taking a sip of his own. Nadia pulled on Steve’s arm, urging him to the dance floor. He nodded at Sloane and I, then followed her to the living room. Keg Guy pointed to a red cooler and offered us a couple of Smirnoff Ice Wild Grapes. Sloane and I took the drinks, clinking the bottles together in cheers, then each took a swig.

“Oh my gods, this is delicious,” she shouted over the loud music. We leaned against the kitchen counter, scanning the crowd. After a few minutes, she noticed someone from her Spanish Comp class and excused herself to say hi. I continued to crowd watch, sipping on my Smirnoff, when I noticed Damien striding toward the keg. His eyes met mine and a grin spread across his face.

“This doesn’t look like your scene,” I said to him.

“Yours either,” he retorted.

I laughed. “Touché. Nadia’s boyfriend invited us. At least the refreshments are top-notch.” I tipped my drink up to him. He chuckled and moved over to the keg, grabbing a fresh beer from Keg Guy. He nodded thanks and walked back over to where I was standing. 

“Nadia’s here? I’m going to have to say hi to her sometime tonight.”

“Yeah, she and Steve are out dry-humping on the dance floor.”

He threw back his head in laughter. Gods, I missed that laugh. “So, what do you think of your first college party so far?” 

“Who said this was my first college party?”

“Just a guess. If it was, I’m sure we would have run into each other by now,” he said, taking a drink. “Nice shirt by the way. It looks good on you. Did you go to the game?”

I looked down at my shirt, noticing the way it hugged my curves. My cheeks flushed as I avoided his gaze. “Yeah, Nadia’s boyfriend is the star wide receiver so we went to watch him,” I said, brushing a piece of lint from my shirt.

“Mhmm, Tennyson. Yeah, he had a hell of a game. That 50-yard TD at the end was nuts. No one could cover him. The kid’s a machine.”

What a weird thing to say. I took another sip of my Smirnoff and scanned the crowd. “So, where’s your girlfriend tonight?”

He sputtered and started choking on his beer. I leaned over and slapped his back a few times until he regained his composure. He wiped the beads of beer dribbling down his chin with the back of his hand. “She’s around here somewhere. What about you?”

“My girlfriend is at home waiting for me. Parties aren’t really her thing.”

His eyes widened, which caused me to burst out laughing. “I’m kidding, I don't have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend for that matter. I’m just here with my friends. Who have all conveniently disappeared. But that means I can scout the local talent for my next boo.”

He cleared his throat and hid a smile with his cup. “Well, good luck with that. You have your pick of the litter with this new crop of freshmen. What about him over there?” He pointed his cup to the dance floor.

I squinted, trying to follow his line of sight, but with it being so dimly lit, I was having trouble making out most of the faces in the crowd. “Who?”

He leaned in to guide me to where he was looking and I got a whiff of his scent. Masculine. Earthy with hints of leather and sandalwood. I closed my eyes and inhaled, trying not to make it obvious. The smell caused the butterflies in my stomach to flutter wildly. Memories of our last night together flooded my mind and I took a step back and chugged the rest of my drink, trying to tamp down my urges. I spotted the guy he was pointing at — a shorter guy with curly brown hair and glasses — nursing his beer as he made eyes with different girls on the dance floor. “Wait...I-is that Brad?”

He burst out laughing and I leaned over to slap his arm. My palm touched his bicep and the firmness of his muscles against my hand caused my breath to catch. I narrowed my eyes at him and shook my head. “Not funny, dude.”

“It was worth a shot. Hey, I’ll be right back. I gotta hit the head,” he set his empty cup on the counter behind me and winked as he moved through the crowd toward the bathrooms. I watched him until he disappeared from sight and clutched the empty bottle in my hand, willing my nerves to calm. You can do this, Kaia. It’s just Damien.

But could I?

***

Damien

I made my way through the packed fraternity house, trying not to bump into anyone as I headed for the bathroom. When I reached my destination, the door was shut and only one person was waiting. I leaned against the wall and tapped my fingers against my thigh. The door swung open and a drunk guy stumbled out, allowing the girl in front of me to enter.

I looked back toward the kitchen and could still see Kaia leaning against the kitchen counter. The strobe lights danced off her features as she was leaning over talking to the kid manning the keg. Whatever he said made her throw her head back in laughter. A tinge of jealousy coursed through me. Why was I jealous? She wasn’t mine. And besides, I had a girlfriend. Somewhere in this house. Speaking of. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent her a text, asking her where she was. 

The girl in the bathroom came out, and I entered. I shut the door and leaned forward, resting my hands on the sink. Staring at my reflection, I sucked in a deep breath and tried to get my emotions in check. Having Kaia back in my life after four years was fucking with my head. When she laughed, I wanted to do everything possible to keep hearing that sound. When I leaned in to point Brad out to her on the dance floor, her hair brushed against my nose and I inhaled the scent of her shampoo. It smelled like lavender and rosemary. When she smacked my bicep, I wanted to grab her wrist and pull her to me, to feel her body pressed against mine.

My phone chimed with a text from Alana, breaking me from my Kaia spell. She said she was in the backyard and asked where I was. I gave her my location, then set my phone back down on the sink and turned on the cold water faucet. I cupped my hands and splashed water on my face. A few moments later, someone knocked and I heard Alana’s voice on the other side. I swung the door open and she strutted inside, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it.

“Well, looks like we’re all alone in here, huh?” she said, sashaying across the bathroom to where I was standing. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off since we were so rudely interrupted the other day?” She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my head down, capturing my lips in a searing kiss.

“Alana, baby. We can’t. Not in here.”

“Why not? We’ve never done it in the bathroom of a frat house before. It could be fun.” She said, pulling the shell of my ear between her teeth.

“What if someone comes in?”

She backed away from me and locked the door, never breaking eye contact. “Better?” she said, arching her eyebrow. I sighed and moved in, kissing and sucking the curve of her neck. She brought her hands up to my hair, raking her fingers through the thick strands. “See, this isn’t so bad, is it?”

I growled into her neck and dragged my hands down her hips, catching the hem of her shirt and pulling it up. When my fingers skimmed the strip of skin, she inhaled sharply. Our lips crashed together and she scraped her nails across my scalp. My fingers trailed lightly up her ribcage and brushed against the lace trim of her bra, causing her grip on my hair to tighten. A loud pounding on the other side of the door startled us.

“Yo, you about done in there, bro? Some of us gotta take a piss,” A guy’s voice called out.

Alana growled, “Motherfucker!” She huffed and pushed herself off of me. Fuming, she straightened her clothes, checked herself in the mirror and yanked the bathroom door open. The drunk frat bro on the other side jumped when she appeared.

“Whoa! I didn’t know it was this kind of party! Hey, baby! If you’re done with this dude, I believe it’s my turn,” he said, reaching out to stroke her arm.

She rolled her eyes and brought her knee to the frat bro’s groin, dropping him like a hot potato. The people in line behind him all groaned as Alana stomped away. I leaned down and rested my hand on the drunk guy’s shoulder. “You should probably learn how to talk to girls, bro,” I said, patting him a few times before walking off. I scanned the party for Alana, but when I couldn’t find her, I pulled out my phone and texted her to ask her where she went. Several minutes passed with no response, so I made my way back to the kitchen. I saw Kaia still standing in the same spot, talking to a girl with curly brown hair and glasses.

“Took you long enough. Did you fall in?” she said, raking her eyes up and down my body.

“Long line. It happens.” I turned to her friend, “Hi! I’m Damien. And who might you be?”

The girl extended her hand. “Sloane. Sloane Washington. So, you’re Kaia’s mysterious hot older friend. Wow, I can see why she’s so enamored by you,” she said, winking. My eyes darted to Kaia and her cheeks instantly turned pink.

“Sloane! What the hells?”

“Oh, whoops! Was I not supposed to say that out loud?” she giggled, slapping her hand over her mouth. “I probably should stop drinking these.”

I chuckled and turned back to Kaia. “Hot older friend, huh?”

Kaia looked down at the floor, her silky strands falling in her face. I resisted the urge to reach out and brush them away. “Don’t let it go to your head, Dames. You know how good you look.”

I cocked an eyebrow and Sloane giggled. “Well, thank you. I’m glad that my looks haven’t gone to shit yet. I figure I’ve got about five more years before Father Time superkicks me in the face.”  My comment drew laughs from both of them.

“So, how do you two know each other?” Sloane asked.

“We grew up together,” Kaia answered quickly before taking a long pull of her drink.

“What she means is that she lived next door to me and always hung out at my house because all the kids her age were losers, so she wanted a ‘cool friend.’”

Kaia rolled her eyes, trying to hide a smile. I turned back to Sloane. “How was your first week of classes?”

She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Pretty good, but my Calc class is going to be tough. The professor is a nightmare.” 

“Dr. Carson? Yeah, he’s a real ball-bust...err...I mean, he’s strict. When I had him freshman year, he made a girl cry the first week of class. He also grades on a curve.”

Sloane’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me that! I have to take Calc II with him next semester too.”

I laughed and turned to Kaia. “What about you? Any classes or professors you want to run screaming from yet?”

She shook her head. “Thankfully, no. Although there’s this super creepy guy in my Interpersonal Comm class that keeps hitting on me, even after I’ve rejected his advances.”

I hummed. “You should probably punch the guy. I’ve heard that gets your point across pretty effectively.”

She laughed and I felt my chest tighten. Gods, I loved that sound. I asked the girls if they both wanted another drink, and they nodded yes, so I made my way over to the cooler and retrieved three Smirnoff Ices. I handed them to the girls, and when Kaia took hers, our fingers brushed. Her breath hitched and a smile tugged at my lips. She twisted the bottle cap off, not meeting my eyes. I popped the top of mine and took a long swig, my face turning up in disgust. Holy shit, this stuff is awful. How do chicks drink this garbage? I looked over at Kaia and saw her watching me. She noticed my facial expression and burst out laughing.

“You gonna finish that?”

“Fuck, no. This is all you,” I replied, handing her the bottle. I moved over to the kid manning the keg and asked him if they had any rum.

“I think there’s some in the liquor cabinet, bro. Right over there,” he replied, pointing to a China Hutch on the other side of the fridge. I walked over and opened the cabinet, examining the contents inside. A few bottles remained. A thin layer of dust coated the shelves where liquor bottles once sat. I spotted the bottle of spiced rum toward the back. Thanking the liquor gods, I grabbed it and dusted it off. I grabbed a red Solo cup off the counter and poured two fingers of the golden liquid into the glass, taking a sip. Damn, this shit is smooth. I made my way back over to where Kaia and Sloane were still talking and held the bottle up to them.

“You girls wanna play a drinking game?”

Sloane shook her head. “I’ll pass. But thanks for offering. I’m going to go use the bathroom.”

My eyes darted to Kaia. She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Let’s do this.”

I smirked and moved over to Keg Guy, asking if he had a deck of cards. He pointed me to a drawer next to the sink. I opened it and found a deck of adult-themed novelty playing cards. The box had pictures of women in various states of undress. I rolled my eyes. Classy.  Kaia and I moved over to the kitchen table and I poured more rum into my glass. “Okay, so this game is called the Nazario Chug…”

“Wait...you have a card game named after yourself?” Kaia asked suspiciously.

I chuckled and began shuffling the cards. “Long story. We came up with it my freshman year. So here are the rules. You take the top card. Black card means dare, red means truth. If you fail or want to dodge your task, you drink according to the number on your card.”

“Ooh, a new twist on truth or dare. This should be interesting,” she said, taking a sip of one of the bottles of Smirnoff.

I smiled and cut the deck then placed it between us on the table. “Hey, save your drinks for the game. Okay, since this is your first time playing, you go first.”

She leaned over and grabbed the first card and flipped it towards me. “Five of diamonds. So, red.”

I nodded. “Truth. So, what do you think about Hartfeld so far?”

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Softball questions right off the bat? I thought this game would be more of a challenge.”

I laughed. “I don’t want to be too hard on you your first time. Answer the question or drink.”

She pressed her lips together and hummed. “It’s okay.”

“Just okay? Come on. You can do better than that.”

“Well, the classes are good. The professors seem cool. And I’ve already made a few friends.”

“But…” I probed.

“I don’t know. It’s only been a week. I feel like I can’t give a more detailed answer just yet.”

I nodded. “Fair enough.” I reached over and pulled the next card from the deck. Three of Clubs and black. I shook my head and Kaia’s eyes lit up when I turned the card to face her. She laughed maniacally and rubbed her hands together. “You’re going to make me embarrass myself in front of the whole party, aren’t you?” I groaned.

She tapped her finger against her bottom lip, the motion drawing my eyes to her mouth. Her lips were so plump, I wanted to lean in and taste them. She caught me staring and snapped her fingers in my face. “Hey, space case. Pay attention. Here’s your dare. See that blonde doing a keg stand over there?” she pointed to the keg where a freshman girl — being held up by two frat bros — sucked the beer from the lever while a small crowd cheered her on. After several moments, she gagged and beer shot from her nostrils, causing her to start coughing.

“You want me to do that?” I asked. She giggled and nodded. I shook my head and moved over to the keg. One of the frat bros noticed me.

“Hey, man. You wanna get in on this?”

I sighed. “Yeah, let’s get this over with.” I braced my hands on either side of the keg’s rim and lifted my body weight. The two frat bros grabbed each of my legs and held me up as I grabbed the tap and opened the lever, allowing the foamy liquid to pour in my mouth. I chugged the beer as Kaia and the crowd around us started chanting, “Chug, chug, chug.” Thirty seconds in, the beer must have gone down the wrong tube, because I started choking and spat up beer. The crowd moaned and the two frat bros helped me down. I moved back over to the table, where Kaia was crouched over laughing, holding her stomach.

“Holy shit. That was awesome!”

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, freshman. Draw your damn card.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and retrieved the next card. A frown formed on her face and she turned the card to face me. The King of Clubs, black.

“Payback,” I smirked. She groaned and threw her head back. My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for someone to recruit for Kaia’s dare. I spotted a kid with frosted tips and a denim jacket that screamed late ‘90s, leaning against the wall. He looked completely out of his element. Bingo. I pointed to him. “See that guy over there? I dare you to go over to him and pretend you’re his biggest fan.”

“Wh-what?”

“Then, you have to get a selfie with him.” 

She gnawed on her bottom lip for a few beats, then nodded and took a deep breath. My eyes stayed glued to her as she rose from her seat and straightened her clothing. “I’ve got this,” she said with a cocky tone. She smirked and marched over to where the guy was standing. I watched in amusement as she gripped his arm with both of her hands and shouted, “Oh wow! Are...are you Niall Horan?” The guy gave her a confused expression as several people turned around to look at them.

She released his arm and pretended to fumble with her phone. She then tapped the screen and handed it to a random girl standing nearby. Jealousy coursed through my veins again as the guy snaked his arm around Kaia’s waist and pressed a kiss to her cheek. The girl held the phone up to snap the photos and I watched them, trying to tamp down the feelings. I pushed back from the table and started walking toward them when a pair of arms caught me from behind.  

“There you are! I’m ready to go when you are,” Alana slurred, clutching my midsection as she swayed on her feet. 

I watched Kaia as she chatted with the guy. A smile spread wide across her face as he leaned in to whisper something in her ear. As much as I wanted to go over there and claim her, I knew I couldn’t. I sighed and turned around, wrapping an arm around my intoxicated girlfriend’s shoulder. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.” 

She slipped her hand in my back pocket and guided me through the crowd toward the door. I looked back and caught Kaia’s eye as we retreated from the kitchen. She stared at me, her face void of emotion. I gave her a weak smile and led Alana out of the house to our car.

[atths--twice]

Faith for the Future 

Chapter Three 

Journaling the Heart 

Mulder takes advantage of the peace and quiet of the house to reread his journal to Faith.

7c/15

Mulder waited until he knew Scully was asleep before he slowly got out of bed. He watched her sleeping for a few seconds and then stepped out the door and walked to Faith’s room. He looked in on her sleeping, watching her tiny chest rising and falling. Smiling at her, he shook his head before heading to the stairs.

He looked at the rooms that held the women he loved most in the world and smiled again before walking quietly down the stairs, avoiding the creaky step so that he would not wake Scully.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, he slipped on the slippers Mrs. Scully had given him years ago. They were wearing down a bit, but he would keep them, no matter the holes and how they broke down. He shuffled into the kitchen, turned on the light and made half a pot of coffee. Grabbing his mug and a pack of Pop-Tarts, he walked over to the couch.

He set down the items on the coffee table and then grabbed his laptop, turned on the lights behind the couch, and sat down with a sigh. He opened the laptop and waited for it to turn on. He ripped open the foil package and took out a Pop-Tart, shoving it in his mouth, chewing as the screen asked for his password.

Typing it in, he waited for it to continue waking up, as he took a drink of coffee and set down his mug, shoving another huge bite into his mouth. He looked toward the stairs and thankfully heard nothing. Good.

Since Scully had been attending her baby yoga class, he had begun working on the idea that had come to him as he rocked Faith to sleep a few weeks ago. A history of their past on paper, or more appropriately, into a Google document to tell Faith when she was older.

Twice a week, for the past month, for a few hours during the day, he sat at his laptop and wrote a journal to his daughter so that she would know what her parents had done in their lives- before. Before they became this little trio, with a hope that one day, the missing piece to their family quartet would return.

He was almost at a point where he could show Scully what he had written. He had gotten up for the past couple of nights, needing some extra time to write down his thoughts. Being up when it was quiet, he felt calm as he reread what he wrote, adding to what he had and taking out parts that were too intense.

He scrolled the mouse across the screen and opened the ever-expanding document that he had been working on, skimming it. When he started, he simply wrote whatever came to mind. Not surprisingly, he started with a funny case. One that was truly one of his favorites: Daryl Mootz, the “Rain King” of Kroner, Kansas.

“Beyond the case and the belief that one man was controlling the weather and profiting off it no less, my sweet girl, there was a love story I had not anticipated. It had not been Daryl controlling the weather at all but a quiet, unassuming Holman Hardt.

Years of his unknown and thus unrequited love for Sheila had led to strange weather phenomena throughout the town. When I figured it out, Holman had asked for my advice and the best way to talk to Sheila. You read that right, honey, your old dad had been asked for dating advice. He said he had seen the way I gazed at Mama, so I must have some good advice to give. Well, I made a point to deny that, of course, I did not gaze at her.

By the time you read this, Faith, you will know that was a lie. I could not and I still cannot help but gaze at your Mama. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Besides her beauty though, she is the smartest person I know. Her intelligence amazes me every day. How could I not be expected to gaze at someone like her?”

He sat forward, took a drink of coffee and set down the mug. Looking back at the story, marveling again at the love he found within. Holman and Sheila and him and Scully. He remembered how they had been mistaken for a married couple on separate occasions with Scully sighing and bristling, which he found hilarious. Watching her roll her eyes and sigh, made him laugh and make jokes, loving the look on her face.

“Little girl, during that case, I know I was guilty of looking at her the way Holman had suggested, but he only saw the surface. He saw that I gazed at her, but he did not see that I longed for her. She was there, right beside me every day, but not the way I wanted. I was terrified to tell her how I truly felt, worried she would not feel the same or leave me because it was unprofessional to have those feelings. I very casually and cavalierly told Holman to take a leap, but I did not have the courage to do the same. I was a chicken, no denying it. But, my love, somehow I knew it would have been a disaster and not the right time for us.”

Pausing in his reading, he remembered Holman’s parting words, “You should try it sometime.” Well, he thought with a smile, it took a while, but when he had finally taken that leap, and kissed her the first time, it had been well worth the wait.

Taking another drink of coffee, he moved onto the next story. A supposed vampire attack in Chaney, Texas.

“Sitting in our office, seeing Mama arrive at work, our meeting with Uncle Walter imminent, I had been … we can just call it “on edge.” The family of Ronnie Strickland was considering suing the bureau for $446 million, we had the possibility of jail time hanging over us both, and all because I had, as Mama put it, “overreacted.” Faith, I knew I had to do what I did. I was right. Ronnie was a vampire. I had to put a stake through his heart because that is the only way to kill a vampire.

Still, while we both sat in the office, our meeting growing ever closer, I wanted to be sure that we both had seen what the other had seen. That we were on the same page.

Well, by now, you have a good grasp on who your mother and I are, and you know we can definitely disagree and not see things the same way. We each told what we remembered, and, well, we may have over exaggerated the other’s part in the story. Mama painted me as more exuberant, and I painted her as less. It was … well, it was interesting.

But, while we had varied versions of the same experience, we were on the same page when it was most important. Our stories eventually corroborated the other. There had been vampires in that little town and Ronnie Strickland had been one of them. I saw that before and even more so after we went back to Chaney.

Why did we need to go back, I hear you asking. Oh, because Ronnie came back to life. The coroner was attacked when he removed the stake I had put in his chest.

Amateurs, am I right? They clearly had never seen any of the literally thousands of vampire films or read any books about it either.

When we went back to investigate, we separated to check on different leads. Both of us were drugged and left where we had fallen, giving them time to pull up stakes, and get the heck out of Dodge- er Chaney. We never found them. All of them left, even Sheriff Hartwell, whom your Mama will swear was handsome and did not have buck teeth. We know the truth though, my love. We know.”

He smiled, knowing that when the day came, and Faith mentioned the story of Ronnie and Sheriff Hartwell, she would be on his side. Team Buck Teeth all the way. He was not whispering it to her every night just for fun.

He continued to skim down the page and his eye landed on a different story. His stomach clenched when he looked at it. Padgett, Naciamento, and the milagro. He had almost lost Scully. Reading it again, he debated whether to keep it in the journal but then nodded. She needed to hear the bad with the good.

Instead of focusing on the gory parts, he chose to tell Faith about his own feelings and thoughts. His fear, curiosity, and worries.

“Faith, one day I will expand on this story. One day, if she wants to tell you, Mama will also explain it in more detail and give you her account of how she felt. For now, you will have a few paragraphs from me.

This case was hard on both of us. The man who was eventually found to have caused the hurt of others lived next to me in my old apartment. He was a writer and had purposely moved there to observe Mama and see who she was as a person. He wrote a book about her, or more accurately, who he wanted her to be. He may have thought he knew her, but he was mistaken. He knew what he may have seen, but she is so much more than what was observed.

He wrote beautiful words that described her, I will not deny that, but I never needed fancy words to know of your mother’s beauty. She radiated it everywhere she went. No makeup, soaking wet, covered in dirt or some other substance, she was always beautiful because she was her.

During the course of this case, I grew worried about your Mama. Now, I know she can take care of herself, but I also know her, and I saw how she was affected. She covered it at times, but I saw. I became protective and angry. I wanted to hurt this man who seemed so brazen in his watching of her. He was not aware that his words, while flattering, made her uncomfortable. He was so drawn to what he wanted to happen that he failed to actually see her.

When he did ... when he was no longer close to us, he said as much. He admitted that he had made a mistake. He finally saw that she was not in love with him, as he had hoped, but with someone else. Honey, I cannot lie to you, hearing those words from him was like ice in my veins and made me freeze where I stood. My heart pounded so hard in my chest at the thought it could be me he was talking about, I was sure everyone could hear it. This man wrote fiction, terrible fiction, without a doubt, but … I wanted those words to be true, and I wanted them to be about me.

Faith, on that same day, I almost lost your Mama. Had it not been for a decision made by the writer, your Mama would have been gone and far away.

She was hurt, Faith. Badly hurt. I found her on my apartment floor, not sure if she was breathing, but then she woke up. She was scared and reached for me, pulling me close to her. I could feel her fingers digging into my neck, not letting go of me, and I held her as tightly as I could. I was terrified that I had lost her and there was no chance that I was going to let her go. If I could have held her forever, I would have.”

He sighed as he leaned his head against the couch and closed his eyes. After everything  they had been through, seeing her soaked in her own blood from a wound that he could not find terrified him. Her deep red, pungent blood stuck to his clothes and pooled on his floor. It was a memory that would be burned into his brain forever. He loved her, and he almost lost her again. Yet, even as he held her, he said nothing.

Opening his eyes, he sighed again. Mistakes and fears in the past could not be changed, but they could be learned from. He had been learning, and he would continue to do so. To evolve, as he told Scully they needed to do. He glanced at the computer again and groaned when his eyes landed on another one that made his stomach clench.

Robert Patrick Modell.

“Faith, my girl, this is another one we can talk about in more detail one day. There are parts of this case that remain delicate and should be treated as such. I will tell you that this person came into our lives twice and each time, your Mama was stronger than I ever could be.

Modell was able to put the whammy on people. That is a reference that you will not understand (it is so old) and one that will make your Mama roll her eyes. However, it does adequately describe what he could do to people.

Somehow, he had the ability to make people do what he wanted and make them think a certain way. He got inside of their minds and controlled them. We saw it happen before our eyes. It was equal parts terrifying and intriguing. How was anyone able to do that to a person?

He focused in on me, calling me out and demanding my attention. He was ill and at a hospital, and I decided that it would be best to face him on my own to reduce the risk of others (including your Mama) being in harm's way.

Your Mama and I, we are a team, and always will be. (Even if I sneak you cookies when she is not watching.) We were a team then, but I walked into the hospital where Modell was on my own. I gave him what he wanted, and I left my teammate behind, believing she was safer there than by my side. What an idiot I was sometimes.

Faith, you need to understand something about your Daddy. I was a bit more impulsive than I am now. Daddy in the past did not always pause and take ten seconds to count, a breath to cool down, or a walk to try and recenter my thoughts. No, I was impulsive. If I saw a big button, I had to push it. If a sign said not to enter, well, that was an open invitation to climb the fence and walk in. Your Mama, on the other hand, has always been the cool head trying to steer me in the right direction.

Understanding that, of course, Mama had come in to help me. She walked into the room where I was in trouble, and she never wavered. Never, until I went too far and scared her and made her cry. Faith, seeing your Mama cry has always broken my heart, and that day was no exception. Her tears and the look on her face, reached me more than anything else ever could. Knowing I was the cause of her pain, I had to stop it, but I needed her to help me. As a team, we helped each other and stopped the bad guy. We won that day.”

He shut the computer down, leaving it on his lap, put his feet on the coffee table, crossed his arms, and leaned his head back again. He shook his head as he thought of Scully’s face, her blue eyes full of tears, her words finally reaching him, from so far away. Her safety, in that case, had been what he worried about most, and he would be damned if he was the cause of her suffering or her possible death.

When he heard a soft, light noise, his eyes flew open. Scully was standing at the bottom of the stairs, apparently having bypassed the creaky stair just as he had done several hours ago. She stared at him and he at her.

Her eyes were sleepy, her hair mussed. She was wearing one of his long-sleeved shirts and an old pair of pajama shorts. She walked over to him, moved the laptop to the coffee table and climbed into his lap. Her arms went around his waist, her chest flush against his as his hands went around her back and into her hair. She sighed and burrowed deeper into him.

“Come back to bed, Mulder,” she said sleepily.

He chuckled lightly and ran his fingers through her hair. “Five more minutes,” he whispered with a smile, seeing if she would remember.

“Five minutes,” she said sternly.

He laughed again, and she breathed a laugh against his neck. He knew she was thinking of the same memory.

Arriving home from California after that horrible movie premiere, they came to his apartment. She walked in and sat on the couch with a huge sigh. He looked at her, and she patted the spot next to her. She sat forward, and took off her boots as he sat down. She scooted around and laid down on the couch, putting her feet in his lap. Smiling at her, he reached out and began to rub her feet, causing her to sigh and close her eyes.

“We should get some food, but I can’t fathom getting off this couch and putting my shoes back on,” she said in a tired voice. He laughed softly and kept rubbing her feet.

“We could order in,” he said, tickling her feet and making her giggle. “What sounds good?”

“Chinese,” she said, attempting to pull her feet back as he grabbed them and held them still. She looked at him and he nodded.

He got off the couch and picked up his phone, ordering their usual from Ling Palace, adding an extra side of egg rolls as Scully whispered loudly for them in the background. Hanging up, he sat back down and put her feet in his lap again. He rubbed them, and she sighed.

His hands moved further up her legs, rubbing her calves and listening to her moan and breathe his name as he worked. He ran his nails across her shins causing her to jump and scramble up into his lap. When her arms had gone around his neck and her lips had fallen onto his, his hands pulled her closer while his lips moved to her neck. She threw her head back and dug her nails into his scalp, his name falling from her lips as she fell further into his lap.

“How long did they say before the food would be here?” she asked breathlessly. He chuckled, his tongue trailing up her neck to her ear. He kissed his way across her jaw, landing on her lips, their tongues meeting in a slow kiss. Her hands went his hair, rocking her hips into him, both of them groaning.

“Too soon,” he murmured against her lips, before kissing her again, his hands coming to rest in her hair. They sat there, kissing and whispering to one another, waiting for the knock on the door, and the arrival of their dinner.  

When they heard it, Scully kissed him once more and climbed off of his lap. She glanced down at his crotch, and smirked at him, seeing he was in no condition to answer the door and held out her hand. He raised his eyebrows and she smiled.

“I need your wallet,” she said, snapping her fingers. “I spent the last of my cash buying that set of California magnets you just “had to have.”” He laughed and leaned up to grab it from his back pocket and handed it to her. He watched her walk to the door, staring at her in her socked feet, feeling content.

Being here with her like this on the couch in the quiet, kissing her the way he had wanted to for years, he felt happy and peaceful. The door shut and Scully walked back toward him with the meal they were about to share. Once again, he felt those words he wanted to tell her bubbling up and threatening to spill out. She set the bag down and smiled at him.

“Plates? Or just out of the containers?” she asked him.

“Containers are fine,” he said, opening the bag and taking out the food. She went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of water and two forks. She set them down as she sat next to him and reached for a container. He picked one up, and for a few minutes, they were both quiet, swapping containers between them as they reached for egg rolls.

With dinner finished, they settled back into the couch. She moved a bit and leaned her head on his shoulder so that his arm could come to rest around her. She took a deep breath as he leaned his head against hers. Wrapping her arm around his waist, she moved to accommodate him as he leaned over, allowing for them to lay side-by-side on the couch with their arms wrapped tightly around the other.

She kissed his neck and then nuzzled into his embrace, her breath warm against his skin. He closed his eyes, feeling her arms around his waist. Her nails scratched lightly at his back, though not in a sexual manner. He smiled, and they both lay quietly. Her breathing began to even out as he ran his fingers in her hair.

“I need to get home,” she said in a low sleepy voice. “Back to work tomorrow. I have things to do there.” She sighed and snuggled closer to him.

“Stay, Scully,” he whispered to her. “Stay here with me.”

“Okay,” she agreed quickly and softly. “But, we should move to the bedroom, so that we can get a good night’s sleep, change out of these pants, and get more comfortable.”

“Mmm-hmmm. Five more minutes, Scully,” he said sleepily, kissing her forehead. She echoed his words, but those five minutes turned into an hour, and an hour into a couple more.

She woke first and kissed him awake. Getting off the couch, they stretched and stumbled into his room together. They both undressed, climbing into bed in their underwear, immediately reaching for one another again. Whispering good night, they fell asleep, embracing for one more night before the real world came knocking.

“Five minutes, Scully,” he whispered and she hummed out her skeptical response, as he smiled.

“Time’s ticking,” she whispered and he laughed.

Five more minutes. Ten. A lifetime. Whatever he got, he would be happy, as long as she was with him.

[michael-langdon-baby]

Salvation

Pairing: Michael Langdon x Original Character

Word Count: 3k~

Warnings: Some smut~

Chapter 7: Acceptance 

Masterlist!

Julie knew this place; she’d been here before.

It was the long hallway- she knew this hallway; knew that to look behind was endless darkness. That it looked as if there was no end to the tunnel. But there was an end, there was -

“Wake up Julie. You need to wake up!” The incessant shaking at her frail shoulders had Julie March waking up, eyes blearily taking in the blurry form of Emily. It took a moment for the world to turn clear, but a pounding in her head had her whining in pain. Her memory was foggy.

“What happened? Wha-“ Emily shushed her and helped her sit up, throwing her legs over the side of the bed with quick ease. She was still in their clothes from the previous meal, which turned out to be very uncomfortable sleeping wear.

“We need to go downstairs; there’s a meeting with the person who breached the perimeter earlier. He won’t start unless everyone is present.” Emily left out the part where they had all been sitting before the man who had yet to identify himself; only for him to let out- what Emily would definitely identify as- a snarl.

His blue piercing eyes had searched the room, looking at each of them like they were vermin before turning on Venable, “You said this was everyone, correct?”

And Venable pursed her lips as if sucking on a sour lemon, “Well, not everyone-“

“Is everyone not what I specifically stated? Or were you unaware of what exactly everyone meant?” Venable gave the tightest smile and nodded.

“We have one more inhabitant here but she fell ill after dinner.” Emily had watched a look of anger cross his face. “I could have one of them retrieve her if you would like.” She watched him take a deep breath, a soothing smile crossing his face.

“Bring her here. Now.”

And so here Emily was, having run from the room with one look from Venable. “Come on, we need to get to the parlor.” Julie nodded, barely understanding what was going on. Had it not been just one of the cannibals breaching the surrounding area? A weak smile crossed her face- was it the Cooperative? Were they here to save them from this hell?

She weakly asked, “Are they here to save us?” Emily didn’t answer, instead helping her across the wide fire in the entry way with precision and speed. They arrived at the entryway to the parlor room when Emily stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. It hurt Emily to see Julie like this; no, the girls hadn’t really grown to close in their 18 months together, but to see anyone become a starved version of themselves was painful.

“Try and smile, and not look like you’re in pain.” Julie nodded with a smile and they walked into the parlor. Gallant smiled at them, while Coco gave a sneer with a lip curl. Andre and Evie could care less; their eyes were trained on the man whose presence seemed to take up the entire room.

“And our final guest arrives.” And his voice was smooth like silk, a sleekness that could wrap around your throat and would feel like a soothing touch. Everyone wanted that voice to sooth them.

Emily wouldn’t deny that his eyes had watched Julie until she took her seat, quickly darting away to watch the rest of the room. Julie took one look at him and tried to find his gaze, but he seemed resistant against it, so she turned away with half lidded sleepy eyes and waited for him to start. He seemed familiar, but her brain was too foggy to pull up a memory.

“My name is Langdon and I represent the Cooperative. Now, I won’t sugarcoat the situation. Humanity is on the brink of collapse and my arrival here is crucial to the survival of civilized life on Earth. “

“The three other compounds in Syracuse, New York, Beckley, West Virginia, and San Angelo, Texas have all been overrun or destroyed. We’ve had no contact from the six other international outposts, but we are assuming that they too have been eliminated.”

Timothy was brave enough to ask after processing the information that said that they were basically it in terms of humankind, “What happened to the people inside?”

It was a simple for Langdon, “Massacred. The same fate that will befall almost all of you.” Emily saw the way his eyes darted to the droopy-eyed Julie, own brows furrowing in confusion for his looks at her.

“Almost all?” Mallory’s voice was akin to a mouse, and quickly looked shy once more. “With the knowledge that this very moment might occur, we built a failsafe. The Sanctuary.”

Coco asked in a voice that was akin to a petulant child, “The Sanctuary?”

To which Langdon nodded, “The Sanctuary is unique. It has certain security measures to prevent overrun.” Mead piped up from behind Venable, “What measures? Why weren’t we given them?”

Langdon simply raised his right heavily ringed hand in a way that commanded silence, “That’s classified. All that matters is that the Sanctuary will survive, so the people populating it will survive, so humanity will survive.” Emily was counting on her fingers how many times he glanced at Julie; this was four.

“Who are the people populating it?” Andre had a point, but Langdon gave the same response as before, “Also classified.”

Langdon continued, “’However, all hope is not lost. I’ve been sent here to determine if any of you are fit to join us. It’s a rigorous questioning technique called ‘Cooperating’. I will then use the information I gather to determine whether or not you are worthy of salvation.” Emily counted five.

“What is this, The Hunger Games? I paid my way in here and that is the only cooperating I plan on doing.” Everyone but Coco knew they would never take her, she was dumber than a bag of rocks and any child of hers would be twice as loud and ugly. And Langdon didn’t seem concerned, “You don’t have to sit in for questioning.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Another good question from Andre, to which the response was a hard “You stay here and die.”

Gallant eagerly raised his hand, “I’ll go first.”

Langdon smirked, “And so you shall.” Emily counted six.

“But don’t worry. If by chance, any of you don’t sit for questioning, or are simply not chosen-“ He pulled out a small pill container from his vest pocket “On the possibility that feral cannibals come knocking, down one of these. One minute later, you will fall into a sleep and never wake up.”

The inhabitants of Outpost 3 were silent, “I look forward to meeting each and every one of you.” Emily counted seven as he sauntered out of the room, meeting her eyes for a moment before quickly looking away. Those blue eyes made her skin crawl. Once he was out of hearing range Venable took his spot.

She looked ready to murder, anyone from Coco to Langdon would do. None of them were very happy; there was a chance that only a few of them would be saved and the rest left to die. What would she do if she was saved and not Timothy, or if he was and not her?

“Emily, take Miss March back to her room. It would be unfortunate if she were to keel over in the parlor.” Emily was quick to get Julie up, helping her out of the room and back across the entryway, Timothy quickly following after them but staying a bit away.

“I’m okay Emily, really. I just need some rest.” Emily didn’t believe her in any way but nodded, watching her step into her large room, marveling at how big it was. It was the size of Emily and Timothy’s room combined, with presumably the bathroom hidden behind the closed off doorway.

“I’ll feel better tomorrow, promise. Now go off and find Timothy, you guys have things to do I assume.” A knowing look from Julie had Emily blushing and fleeing, closing the door behind her, allowing Julie to collapse on her bed with a huff.

It took a few minutes for her light breath to echo through the dark room, and for the dark strawberry blonde haired figure to sleuth from the corner of the room. Those blue eyes took in the sleeping form; they saw every sharp bone and could feel every pain and ache. It made rage fill his veins. He took the few steps to reach her and let one hand run along her much smaller than before cheeks- he’s always loved how chubby they’d been. Those slim digits trailed down her neck with soft precision, grazing the globes of her bountiful breasts and sliding down her arm.

How he’d missed these hands; he could remember every time they held him close or chased away his fears. He’d dreamt of these hands, craved these hands, and missed everything about her. Langdon interlocked their fingers, marveling at the cold they now held. He laid himself, curled into her side, head resting on her bosom.

He’d missed this, so much. With a close of his eyes and a shuffle closer he was asleep, and Julie’s skinny frail body healed and grew, bone reverting back under her flesh and growing full of life. He’d never slept so well.

~

“How is she?” Timothy inquired this with a heavy brow, watching Emily let out a long sigh as she closed the door to Julie’s room. He knew the answer wasn’t going to be good; she’d looked horrible over dinner, and during Langdon’s informative meeting she’d looked barely alive, and after having a nosebleed and passing out- he knew it wasn’t good.

“She’s asleep.” Emily paused. “I don’t think she’ll last much longer like this. She looks like she’s starving but gets the same as the rest of us. It just doesn’t add up. And now with Langdon here, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

They both didn’t trust Langdon; the whole ‘Sanctuary’ idea seemed too good to be true and his whole concept of Cooperating seemed like bullshit. Why couldn’t they all be saved?

“I think he’s hiding something.” She grabbed Michael’s hand and led him up the stairs, looking around to make sure they were alone. “I say we check his room, he might have something there that can tell us what’s really going on.”

Timothy wasn’t on board, “What? You want to sneak into Langdon’s room? What if Venable finds out?” But Emily grabbed his hand and squeezed, “She won’t.” It was a quick peck on the lips that had Timothy giving in to her scheme, both of them sneakily walking down the hallway, trying to find Langdon’s room.

His door was open, and they watched with bated breath to see if anyone left since they couldn’t see anyone inside. It was a solid five minutes before Emily relented and tugged him inside, eyes widening at the glowing laptop on his desk.

“A laptop? Didn’t think there were any left…” She scurried over to it and lifted the top, displaying the screen. “How is there even Wifi? There are no cellular towers.” Timothy walked over to her and looked as well, “There’s messages from a week ago. How?”

Langdon’s emails page covered the entire screen, and they were all to and from the Cooperative. There wasn’t much that was important, mostly stuff he’d told them about during the meeting a few hours prior. Except-

“’Venable has deviated from protocol and has instituted her own rules forbidding sexual contact. Punishable by death.’ Venable’s a fucking liar.” God, the things Emily would give to see the look on Venable’s face when Langdon tore her a new one. But first, “Let’s check his desktop.”

Emily dragged the cursor to click the little red x at the top left hand corner, revealing a plain blue background with two folders. One was titled ‘Kineros’ and the other had no title at all. “You ever heard of Kineros?”

Emily shook her head and instead clicks on the blank one, nearly flinching when a password was required. “Shit, it could be anything.” She turned to Timothy, “Any ideas?” They were both stumped; it could be anything.

March

Emily stepped away from the laptop and looked around the room, “Did you hear that.” Timothy was still at the computer brainstorming when she asked. “Hear what?”

“That voice. Someone just spoke to me.” Timothy gave her a look and she glared, “I know what I heard.” He inquired, “And what did the voice say?” She’d heard it clear as day, and it all made some weird sort of sense. Langdon, who hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Julie and had a locked password protected file, and a voice had whispered Julie’s last name. Emily was trying to piece it all together.

“Its March, the password is March.” Timothy looked confused and tried to question her but she pushed his aside, typing in the five-letter word, smiling when it unlocked. Her eyes watched as hundreds and hundreds of files appeared, each one titled with a number, ranging from 0 to the thousands.

“Emily, this is bad he could be back any second. We need to go.” Timothy made his way to the open door and peeked outside. She wasn’t listening, finger dragging the cursor to a random file, waiting barely a second for it to pop open.

“Oh my god. Timothy-“ Emily turned to tell him what she’d opened but he was gone. She turned around and stumbled back in fright.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

May you rise from the void, Father May your darkness guide me.

Julie stretched out on her bed, fingers clenching and unclenching in that akin to a baby.

God, she felt so good. Oof, her bones felt fresh and clean. Unfortunately, she seemed to have fallen asleep in her purple dress, which was pretty uncomfortable, but that had been a better sleep than any other. The room didn’t even feel cold, but then again it seemed that someone had gone and lit the fireplace.

Her eyes were finally open, looking around the slightly lit room, arms outstretching in front of her and-

“Ho-Holy Holy Shit!” Julie hopped out of bed like the energizer bunny and did a little dance; something had happened to her, something marvelous. The arms that had once been that of a stick with veins was now full and meaty, the stretch marks back were they belonged. The fingers that were once twigs were thick once more, a strong grip that had feeling like herself again.

Her stomach- oh how she’d missed her stomach- the once concave flat skeleton like form she’d had was gone, and in place was the flabby cushiness she’d loved and missed so much. Oh love handles, they were back! Her thighs were thick as could be and legs stronger than ever.

She felt like a Goddess, ready to fight the world with all her might. She had to show everyone, it was a miracle! The old and improved Julie skipped- yes, she skipped like a jolly kid- to the door, sliding it open and –oh.

The latex covered man was there, here, standing in front of her, her nose practically in his chest. And now that she could feel it, it was more like rubber- a rubber man. It was difficult to see his eyes, but she felt when his hands gripped her thick shoulders and pushed her back, stepping into the room and sliding her door shut.

Julie wasn’t scared; it wasn’t like he’d ever hurt her- he didn’t all those months ago. In fact, that had been 18 months ago, where had he been. She was tempted to ask, but she instead asked, “What do you want from me?”

He took a few steps forward, till they were touching once more and skimmed those hands down her sides, grasping her sides and tugging her close.

Power in Satan to overcome my weaknesses.

He curiously tilted his head down at her, fingers clenching in her dress. Her own hands gripped the suit. What was wrong wit her? She wanted this; she wanted him to fuck her. But why?

Power in your name, to be strong within

She yelped when he threw her onto the bed, appearing before her to tug off her dress, revealing her once more full voluptuous breasts and panties. She breathed the command “touch me.”

And so he did, sliding those black hands up her thighs and creeping up her stomach, tearing the bra in two. She didn’t ask him to take the mask off but was disappointed he couldn’t suck her nipples dry. Instead, he rubbed against them to create some lovely friction that had her panties wet.

And as if he could smell it, he moved down, tearing the panties in shreds. Once again, he couldn’t eat her sweet juices but instead stuck two thick fingers inside her wet hole, fingering her with a fury.

I found her, she’s here

Her toes were curling in pleasure, but the rubber man knew what he wanted. Her tugged up those thighs and released his cock from his suit, slamming into her and thrusting like a dog in heat. Her moans echoed through the room like a record on repeat, and he relished in them

Please, Father!

“Please, please, yes, please!” He never faltered, holding up her lower half with desperate thrusts that had her seeing stars. She hadn’t felt pleasure like this in a long time, not since-

Open my eyes!

Julie came with a scream, tears welling in her eyes and sliding down her plump cheeks. He didn’t stop, not until his own release filled her to the brim. Her thighs fell as he let his cock slip free, but continued palming over her warm flesh with curiousness akin to a child exploring a playground, but yet, he touched her as if he had once before.

Julie murmured, “who are you?” through blurry eyes as she felt him leave the bed, but of course he didn’t respond. She heard his steps, heard the door close and felt sleep overcome her body once more.

Ave Satanas

Hope you enjoyed it!

If you wanna be tagged, just ask!

[sweetsmalldog]

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Warnings: Slight Swearing

Description: The boys take a slight detour

Author’s Note: I should do more one shots like this

The dark grey clouds rollover the sky like a churning vengeful sea. There’s no civilization for miles. Just dusty roads and empty plains. A car is pulled over at a seemingly random spot on one such dusty road. Two men stand in a field nearby. A hole looked as though it was being dug by itself. One man is kneeling beside the hole and preparing something. The other looks to be on his phone.

“I think Bates is done.” Owen smiles as the digging stops.

“Yay, defying the laws of nature.” Curt jokes not looking up from his phone.

“You didn’t half to come.” Owen points out as he finishes his preparations.

“Yes I did because you’re gonna to get mauled by an angry racist skeleton.” Curt replies.

“Have a little faith love.” Owen smiles.

“Not after Washington.” Curt snorts.

“I’m not new to this anymore” Owen scoffs “And if we’re going by that logic you can’t check me over.”

“I wouldn’t need to heal you constantly if you’d stop playing with things beyond mortal understanding.” Curt sasses “Without me you would’ve gotten murdered back in Mass.”

“And without me you would’ve kicked the bucket on the trip to Quebec.” Owen replies as he finishes lighting some candles.

“I wouldn’t have gone to Quebec if I hadn’t met you.” Curt double checks something in his bag “If I hadn’t met you I probably would’ve opened a clinic back home.”

“You can thank me for enriching your life later.” Owen laughs.

“We’re supposed to be going to see my mom.” Curt reminds “I had to tell her our gps broke and we got lost in Kansas so she didn’t question why we’re taking a day long detour in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” Owen promises as he stands.

Curt grumbles “You better.”

The ground is littered with small candles and crystals that glow in a pulsing light. Owen stands in the center of them, right in front of the pit. Curt puts his phone away and backs up. Then Owen starts chanting.

The sky darkens. The wind picks up. The temperature drops. Curt looks queasy but keeps watching. Owen’s eyes glow purple. He seems to glow slightly as the crystals dim.

Then a skeletal hands reaches out of the hole. Owen’s eyes stop glowing. The wind stops suddenly. Lightening strikes in the distance. The skeleton lift themself out of the grave.

“Remind me why we’re doing this?” Curt asks looking disinterestedly at the reanimated remains.

“Why not?” Owen smirks “Also you didn’t do anything.”

“Because resurrecting a ten-year-old who just died from drowning is different then resurrecting someone who died like 100 years ago.” Curt scoffs “And I got Bates out of the car excuse you, he’s heavier then he looks.”

Having heard his names a large black dog jumps out of the hole and runs up to Curt. He’s almost impossibly large. With eerie red eyes and long shaggy fur.

“Practice makes perfect. Don’t want to mess up the spell on the ten-year-old.” Owen points out.

“I guess.” Curt relents as he scratches Bates behind the ear “So are you gonna get rid of that thing or will I need to explain to my mom that you break the laws of nature as a job?”

“You didn’t say that about the hellhound.” Owen smirks.

“Hellhound doesn’t mean necromancy Owen.” Curt argues.

Owen shrugs “I guess.” Then with a wave of his hand the skeleton collapsed back into a pile of bones.

Curt looks at the open pit “So... we just gonna leave that?”

“I doubt anyone will care.” Owen says as he starts picking up his candles and crystals “Besides maybe a tired crossroads demon mad about it ruining their vibe.”

“Let’s not talk about those.” Curt shudders “Not after last time.”

“Agreed” Owen remarks trying himself to not remember that night in Texas.

Bates lets out a soft whimper and Curt immediately starts looking him up and down. Then he sees scarlet on one of Bates’s front paws.

“Your ‘practice’ hurt my dog Cavour.” Curt huffs as he picks Bates up.

“You can literally heal him in a minute with just your hands.” Owen points out as they make their way back to the car “Also he’s our dog.”

“He’s our dog when you start being a good pet parent.” Curt stumbles slightly when he tries to open the car door while holding a hundred pound hellhound “And it’s the principal of it.”

Owen rolls his eyes as he opens the car door for Curt before moving around back to put his equipment away. The trunk is full of the kind of essentials one would assume a traveling Necromancer Healer duo who can’t not get into trouble would need. Bandages, silver bullets, holy water, dog food (Hellhounds half to eat), preserved ingredients that Owen has no clue what they actually do, gasoline, matches, carefully packaged potions, and plenty of other necessary items like multiple tomes of ancient incantations and a fleece blanket.

Owen closes the trunk only to find Curt sitting in the backseat having just finished chugging a bottle of water “Are you sitting back their until we get to the motel?”

“I’ve gotta heal Bates you ass.” Curt rolls his eyes before taking the dog’s large paw in his hand and closing his eyes.

The car light glows brighter as soft wisps of gold come off of Curt’s hands. The car gets warmer until the windows fog. The air starts to smell like fresh baked cookies. Owne suddenly feels as if nothing could hurt him, which for all he knows any residue magic would protect the him. Life magic was similar to life in that it was usually quiet messy.

Then the light dims (thankfully instead of breaking because Curt had done that more times then he would ever admit). Bates gives Curt a slippery kiss on the cheek.

“Love you too.” Curt smiles giving Bates one more scratch behind his ears before moving to the front passenger seat.

“You didn’t need to use that much love.” Owen says softly as he starts to drive.

“His heart was acting up again.” Curt replies as he grabs another bottle of water.

Owen sighs “You should warn me before you go using that much magic.”

“I didn’t use that much.” Curt argues “I’m just thirsty.”

“Just.” Owen raises his eyebrow as Curt finishes the second bottle of water.

“I’m fine.” Curt repeats sounding a little less sure.

“Curt...” Owen glances at him.

“I could go for a burger.” Curt admits.

“You wanna go bother the ghosts at Denny’s?” Owen smirks.

Curt smiles “Sure.” They laugh together as the speed off, back to civilization.

Taglist: @robertstanion @gone-to-oregone @haniawritesthings @cracks-open-cold-one @agent-megagirl @purplegori @showstoppingnumbrr

[travelingtheusa]

ALABAMA

1 Jun 2020 (Mon) – We ran a bunch of errands today.  Shopped at CVS, WalMart, Publix, the liquor store, and the post office.  We also did laundry and stopped at McDonalds for breakfast while waiting for the clothes to finish.   We had lunch at an Irish pub, too.  They have a patio and we were able to eat outside.  I guess that’s the new criteria for picking a place to eat.  Our mail was forwarded from Texas and we received it with no problem.  We went into the lodge and settled up our bar tab back from the day we were in there for the tornado.  I called Memorial Sloan Kettering to have my medication shipped to me but the pharmacist said I had no refills.  She would have to call the doctor to get authorization.  She never called back so I’ll have to have it sent to me when we get to Indiana.

     I finished my 2018 Travels slideshow but now I can’t seem to burn it to a CD.  This is so frustrating!  I will have to see if Best Buy can help.

     We leave tomorrow.  We will try to avoid big cities so we don’t run into the rioters that are out there protesting the murder of George Floyd.  The country seems to be coming apart at the seams.

 31 May 2020 (Sun) – We stayed around the campsite today.  A gray dog is now in the yard next door along with one German shepherd.   I sat down and wrote letters to the Human Society, the police department, the County Animal Control Division, and the local animal shelter.  I hope they can save this dog.

 30 May 2020 (Sat) – Paul discovered one of the tires on the RV was low.  He filled it yesterday and it lost 10 pounds overnight.  He took it off and brought it to a tire repair store.  The mechanic said it was a bad valve and replaced it. Hope that does it.

     We got to Zoom with Caiden and Miranda today.  It was the first time using Zoom and turned out to be pretty easy to use.  Travis has been facetiming or calling almost every day to check on us.  I enjoy the contacts.

 29 May 2020 (Fri) – I asked to have our mail forwarded.  It should be Monday or Tuesday.  We will leave as soon as we get the mail.  We have to be up in Goshen, Indiana by June 8th.  Paul wants to stop by Vanleigh Vilano in Tishamingo, Mississippi first so they can take a quick look at the slide out and confirm our problem is a warranty issue.  Then it will be a fairly straight up to Indiana.

     I picked up garbage along the back and side of the property line. We have spent over two months looking at the stuff and I couldn’t take it any more.  I got two garbage bags full.  I probably could have gotten three bags of garbage if I wanted to dig into the leaves.

     Paul washed the truck and camper today.  We are getting ready to move on.

28 May 2020 (Thu) – We took a ride to Sokol Park, the same one we went to with Bonnie a few days ago.  But instead of going into the dog area, we hiked a trail through the woods. It was a short one but nice in the trees.  It was after 11 a.m. and the sun was hot.  Bonnie was soon panting heavily.  We didn’t do much more than a mile.

     After the park, we stopped at King’s Kitchen for lunch.  It was a café with tables on a patio.  We sat outside with Bonnie and ordered our meals. Bonnie enjoyed her burger very much. It was a very pleasant change of pace and the food was very southern.  Unfortunately, we noticed that they were not wiping down the tables after use. A couple sitting at a table nearby got up and left but the table sat with no cleanup.  When we finished, we wiped down our table and hands.  Then used sanitizer when we got in the truck.

 27 May 2020 (Wed) – We stayed around the camper today. Thunderstorms pummeled us most of the day, sending Sheba deep into the closet.

26 May 2020 (Tue) – Didn’t do much today.  It rained most of the day.  Paul worked on maps for the New York caravan.  I worked on the slideshow for our 2018 travels.  This is a very enjoyable project.

25 May 2020 (Mon – Memorial Day) – We had to go shopping today for pet food. Since we were out, we also went to the supermarket and picked up a few things.  We also stopped at McDonalds for breakfast.  I’ll bet the drive in places did especially well during this pandemic. People who don’t normally eat McDonalds or Wendys or Chick-Fil-A have gone there because delis and cafes have been closed.

     Noah called to facetime with us.  He’s so funny.  I love talking to him.  Travis had his in-laws over for a barbecue.  His brother-in-law was supposed to come over but didn’t.  We just hung around the camper for the rest of the day.  The sun is so damn hot!  It blazes bright, too.  Anything light colored seems to reflect and magnify the sunlight. Walking outside during the day absolutely requires sunglasses.  Walking the dog will be reduced to early morning and evening.  I imagine the roadway/parking lot gets very hot for her paws.  At the height of the day, it feels like standing in front of an oven.  The sun is certainly more intense down here in the south.  I rarely remember the sun feeling like this back up in New York.

 24 May 2020 (Sun) – The day started out overcast and oppressive but cleared up later.  I worked on creating a slideshow of our 2018 travels.  Paul is still trying to get the 2017 slideshow he did to burn on a disc and make a copy of our 2016 adventures.  The technology is very challenging.  

23 May 2020 (Sat) – We stayed around the campground today. In the afternoon, thunderstorms rolled in and my phone was dinging with weather advisories.  At 8:30 pm, I got another notice.  Thinking it was another weather advisory, I half glanced at the notice then sat bolt upright.  It was a Public Safety Alert that said “Escaped inmate seen in your area.”  It then went on to describe the man.  I went to the door and locked it.  Paul as quite amused by my reaction.

 22 May 2020 (Fri) - We slipped out early this morning and did laundry.  There was one woman with a small child and a repairman in the laundromat.  After the clothes went into the washer, we drove to Chick-Fil-A for breakfast and brought it back to eat in the truck.  There was a lot of traffic on the road.  Seems like the whole state has opened up.

 21 May 2020 (Thu) – We went to Home Depot today to pick up material for Paul to use in revising Sheba’s perch in the truck.  The shelf he has for her now is just a little too small. The new one will accommodate her better. With her spinal issues, she can’t curl into a ball like most cats so we have to make the form fit her straighter posture when she lies down.

     The parking lot was pretty full.  When we entered, a worker with a cell phone said she had us.  She was counting people as they entered the store and entering it into a program.  When we exited, another worker counted us.  One adds the number of people going in and the other subtracts the people going out.  I guess they are keeping the number of people in the store at any one time to a maximum number.  Most of the customers were not wearing masks.  We wore ours and all the employees had masks on.

     Governor Ivey held a press conference today.  She announced the openings of businesses and the restrictions that will stay in place.  She also said that people have to take personal responsibility for their own safety. I liked that.  There are many people who are not at risk for the coronavirus and shouldn’t have to remain at home.  Others, like us, are vulnerable and should take precautions to protect ourselves.  That is just a fact of life.

     There are two German shepherds in the yard of the house below us. Are these the original dogs that were there when we first arrived or two different dogs?  Where have they been if they’re the same dogs?  Does the guy have a business where he keeps his dogs for guard duty?  Hmmm.

20 May 2020 (Wed) – We took a ride around the corner this morning and got the address of the house below us where the man was abusing the dog yesterday.  If I see him doing anything like that again, I will call the police.

     We took Bonnie and drove to Capitol Park.  It contained the ruins of the capitol building that burned down in the late 1800s.  I don’t know how you can make ruins attractive but the town somehow managed to do it.  There were plaques all around telling the story of the buildings that used to be there. The park was small but neatly kept.

      Then we drove to a dog park.  It was almost 8 miles away (the UA Arboretum is still closed).  It was a very nice park – large, grassy area with a concrete walkway around the perimeter of the park.  It lets the owners walk while the dogs play.  Unfortunately, there was dog crap all over the place.  Apparently, people walk and talk on their cell phones and don’t pay attention to what their dog is doing.  No one picks up after their dogs.

     There was no sign of either of the dogs in the house below today. They were not out in the yard at all. I am distressed and at a loss at what to do.  I think he killed the two dogs.  When we first got here back in mid-March, there were 3 dogs in the yard (2 German Shepherds and a poodle) but I haven’t seen them in a while.  The 2 that were in the yard yesterday looked like border collies (black and white).  I don’t know if I am looking into the yard of a serial killer.  I want to call someone but I don’t know who.  To make it worse, Paul does not agree that there’s anything wrong and nixed my call.  He thinks I have watched too many TV shows about killers.

 19 May 2020 (Tue) – A new critter showed up next to our camper today! I was looking out the window when I caught sight of a small creature walking by.  I thought it was one of the cats that walk through the area from time to time.  There’s Blondie (a yellow tom), Tabby (a gray, striped tabby), and a black and white cat that we haven’t given a particular name to.  Anyway, when I looked closer at the gray ball of fur I discovered it was a groundhog.  It calmly walked along the edge of the grass, stopping to munch on the greens from time to time.  After a while, it went into the bushes and disappeared.

      I was very disturbed by an event that took place next door this afternoon. I was outside watching Sheba when I heard a dog screaming.  Looking down into the yard of the house below us, I saw a dog running back and forth in terror.  Thinking its friend (there were two dogs) was caught in something or facing off with a rattle snake, I strained to see what was going on.  The trees and bushes have grown in pretty thick.  What I witnessed horrified me!  A man was wrestling with a dog who was screaming.  Then the dog stopped screaming.  The man was kneeling on the dog and smacking it.  But the sound it made was not like anything I have ever heard before.  It was a kind of popping sound.  I yelled out, “Hey! That’s no way to treat an animal!”  He stopped hitting the dog but remained kneeling on it.  So I suggested that I was going to call the cops.  He got up and went into the house but I never saw the dog get up.  Later, the man walked back and forth to his shed a couple of times.  Neither dog was seen again.

18 May 2020 (Mon) – We went food shopping at Publix this morning. I really liked the assortment of choices.  Maybe we’ll make this our regular store.  We were both surprised with the amount of food we bought.  We didn’t think we needed that much.  The cost was over $300!  At least they had steaks.

     After shopping, we stopped at Another Broken Egg for breakfast. Sitting by the river, eating a scrumptious meal, was so delightful!

     This afternoon, we saw a few cars parked over at the lodge.  A guy in a pickup drove over and started talking with me while I was outside watching Sheba.  He said they opened up today but he wasn’t going in.  They never let us know what was going on.  They put up signs on the door the last time they were here describing the circumstances of their reopening.  One of them says “If you’re sick, don’t come in here!”  I thought that was pretty funny.  The other signs are just print outs from online that describe recommendations from the CDC and requirements from the Alabama Department of Health.  It basically called for a reservation or call ahead system.  Sounds restrictive to me.

15 May 2020 (Fri) – We drove to Moundville today and walked around the Archaeological Park.  It is an historical area with 29 mounds built between 1200 and 1600 AD.  The tallest mound was about 60’ high and had a great view of all the other mounds in the area.  It was quite a climb up!  Then we walked around the area.  It was almost 1.5 miles.  Good exercise.

     Afterward, we drove around Moundville looking at the area.  It is kind of depressed with a lot of run down, poor parts to the town.  We bought lunch at McDonald’s then stopped in the ABC store and picked up a couple of bottles of liquor.  It was good to get out again.

      When we got back, there were several cars parked at the lodge. We thought it had opened but it was probably the officers who were meeting to discuss the best way to open the lodge, given the restrictions the state is putting on businesses.  They were gone by 5 p.m.

 14 May 2020 (Thu) – We bought breakfast at Chick-fil-A, then went to the laundromat, put the clothes in the washers, and sat in the truck to eat our meal.  Clothes transferred from washer to dryer, we remained seated in the truck until it was done. One of the machines did not fully dry all the clothes and we put them back in for another 12 minutes.  They still came out damp but we just took them home and spread them out to air dry.

     When we pulled into the lodge parking lot, the neighbor’s dog was running loose (again).  It had managed to slip out of its harness and was exploring our campsite. I chased it back to their RV.  The lady didn’t even know the dog had escaped.

13 May 2020 (Wed) – We drove back to the Riverwalk this morning and had breakfast at Another Broken Egg Café.  We were the only people on the deck when we arrived but were joined by other couples as they arrived and chose to eat outside, too.  The meal was excellent and Bonnie especially enjoyed her scrambled egg.  When we were done, we walked the Riverwalk to the end and back.  There was a visitor’s center on the route and Paul stopped in to get some brochures on the area.  Unfortunately, they didn’t have much and the clerk wound up telling Paul to go online.

    We ran out of propane two nights ago.  He went out today and got a refill.

 12 May 2020 (Tue) – We put Bonnie in the truck and drove to the Riverwalk.  It was a very nice walk and the park was very nicely maintained and there were many people walking/running/biking on the trail.  We came across Another Broken Egg (a breakfast place) along the trail.  We will have to go there for breakfast. Parking is limited to just one hour so we’ll have to take a shorter walk if we stop to eat.  They are pet friendly so we could bring Bonnie and let her have breakfast out, too.  She’ll love that!

     When we arrived back at the lodge, a red SUV turned into the parking lot in front of us, drove to the back where our RV is parked, then left.  It looked like the same inspector who was here yesterday.  He had another man in the car.  Was this his boss on a field trip?  We’ll find out.

 11 May 2020 (Mon) – Another very warm day.  Summer is around the corner!  Someone was working around the lodge in the morning.  We went food shopping this morning.  We also stopped in two CVS stores to pick up hand sanitizer. We still can’t find Wet Ones (hand wipes).  At least, everyone seems to have worked out the toilet paper issue as everyone has it in stock.

     A man came onto our site today claiming to be an inspector with the County.  Someone complained about us being here.  He says there is no camping authorized here.  We pointed out that the hookups are not new; that they’ve been here for many years.  He dismissed our argument.  We had a very pleasant conversation.  He is originally from Elmira, New York and was sympathetic to our situation.  When I asked if he was going to evict us, he said no. He also recommended that we take a walk along the Riverwalk on the Alabama University Campus down the road. We’ll try it tomorrow.

 10 May 2020 (Sun-Mother’s Day) – The weather is getting hot. It starts out cool in the morning in the high 40s/low 50s but then the sun comes up and it burns hot.  It must be because we are closer to the equator that the sun feels so intense.  

    Folks have been working in the Elks Lodge all day.  Maybe it means the place is getting ready to open.  At 5 p.m. Paul went out to Olive Garden and picked up a meal for us to share. It was delicious!

9 May 2020 (Sat) – We ran out of milk today.  We walked next door to the Dollar General and picked up a quart of milk.  All the stores in the strip mall were open.  When we drove into town the other day, Paul noted that the mall was open. JC Penny’s was not open but the rest of the mall was.  Guess the state is starting to open up.  People are demonstrating in other states and a woman was arrested for opening her hair salon in spite of state directed orders to remain closed.  It’s starting to get hairy out there!

     We have been going back and forth with Jon Katin of the SMART Travel Committee.  They want us to put a cost to the NY caravan.  Most of the campgrounds don’t open until Memorial Day and many websites just say they are closed due to the pandemic.  They offer no information on prices.  We will have to wait until we can physically get up to New York to get the costs.  In the meantime, we have developed a caravan for 8 days in Reading, PA for the WWII Reenactment.  I sent that to Jon.  He is afraid that there are not enough travelers to fill all the caravans that being offered (5 of them).  How funny is that?  They were concerned about getting enough caravans and wagon masters to offer caravans. Now, they’re afraid they can’t fill them all.

 8 May 2020 (Fri) – It rained most of the day.  Paul picked up dinner from the Olive Garden tonight.  It was a pleasant change.  The food was good.  I finished the slideshow.  Once Paul has had a look at it, I’ll start one for 2017.

 7 May 2020 (Thu) – I think I am living Groundhog Day.  The past three mornings I have gotten up, the clock has read the exact same time: 6:54 a.m.  Weird, huh?  I have just about finished the slideshow for our 2016 travels.  

 6 May 2020 (Wed) – We went out early this morning to do laundry. There were already a couple of people in the laundromat.  After putting the wash in the machines, we sat in the car and ate our Chick-Fil-A breakfasts.  Then we went in to put the clothes in the dryer, then sat in the car playing with our iPad and iPhone.  When the laundry was done, we stopped at CVS on the way home to pick up hand sanitizers. We both went in and got one bottle each.

     Two dogs from the neighbor came into our campsite this afternoon and left deposits.  I had had enough!

I walked over and asked the lady to please keep their dogs on a leash.  I was pleasant; said “Please” and “Thank You” but was firm.  She said they run out when she opens the door.  I asked that she not let them do that.  Let’s see if my request holds.

5 May 2020 (Tue) – Since I have to sign for my medicine and UPS would be delivering it to the lodge, I sat outside all morning waiting for the truck to arrive.  At noon, two jets screamed overhead twice.  They were part of the Thunderbirds/Blue Angel Thank You tour they are doing around the country to show support for all the medical people who have worked so hard during this coronavirus pandemic.  I don’t know why we only got two planes when they usually fly in a group of five.

     Finally, at 1:00 pm, Paul drove to the local Mexican restaurant and picked up lunch for us.  Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we celebrated with margaritas and burritos.  While Paul was out, the UPS truck arrived.  I got my medicine, Paul returned with the food, and everything was fine.

     Our neighbor, whom we thought was leaving, is still here with his wife.  I guess they just went through spring cleaning around his rig.  They remain aloof and unfriendly.

 4 May 2020 (Mon) – We went food shopping at Winn Dixie this morning. Besides the cashier, there were very few people wearing masks.  Boy.  I don’t know how people can work in those things all day long.  It gets so hot and mine keeps sliding up into my eyes.  I think my mask is too big for my face.

     I called Memorial Sloan Kettering this afternoon and ordered a refill for my medication.  They said they would overnight the refill to me.

3 May 2020 (Sun) – We tried walking a new route this afternoon. We crossed the road onto a small country road that parallels the main road as well as the train tracks.  It has less traffic.  We came to an intersection and turned right, intending to go to a park just up the road.  Unfortunately, it is still closed.  The entire walk was about half an hour.  As long as our usual walk but not as intense.  The hill had a more gentle slope that the hills into either the apartment complex or the Elks lodge.

 2 May 2020 (Sat) – Our neighbor is still here.  We thought sure that he would leave today but he hasn’t. His wife is still here with their 3 dogs.  One dog keeps getting loose and running over to our area.  It wants to play with Bonnie so badly.  I feel sorry for it.  I also feel angry at the couple that can’t seem to get their dog under control. This lodge is on a very busy road and if their dog chooses to run to the road instead of over to us, it will not survive the experience.

 1 May 2020 (Fri) – We see that our camper’s wife is here. Maybe she came to help him pack up. He had a motorcycle which he took away in his work truck and did not bring back.  We never saw him ride it so maybe it was borrowed from someone at work or he was just holding it for someone.  

30 Apr 2020 (Thu) – We drove into town today to get pet food. While out, we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s then picked up bourbon and “43” at the liquor store.

     The other camper parked here in the parking lot of the Elks Lodge is packing up.  We’re guessing his work assignment is up and he is leaving tomorrow.

      I paid bills this afternoon.  I also have been working on gathering input for the Nomads chapter newsletter as well as still collecting pictures for a slideshow of our 2016 travels.

29 Apr 2020 (Wed) – Took two walks along our usual route.  Got in 2 miles plus whatever else we put in while watching the cat play outside.

28 Apr 2020 (Tue) – The Exalted Ruler of the Lodge stopped by today.  I was outside watching Sheba when a van pulled up to the dumpster and the guy got out to put garbage in the dumpster.  I waved so that the man would know I was watching him.  He got back in the van and drove over.  It turned out he was the ER.  He introduced himself and said he appreciated our offer to paint the lines in the parking lot but they already were working on having somebody do that.  He did give Paul permission to take down some piping they had put up a couple of years ago for a fair.  It took Paul all of a half hour to do that project.

     I started my next video project by putting all our pictures from 2016 into a slide show.  We have been to many places!

 27 Apr 2020 (Mon) – Our big adventure to Piggly Wiggly was a disappointment.  The store appears to be big but there selections were small and they carried a lot of unknown brands.  We had to finish off our shopping list at Winn Dixie.  

     After dropping off the foodstuff at the RV, we went to the laundromat and got our clothes washed.  And such was our big day in town.

 26 Apr 2020 (Sun) – The lodge secretary was helping a member today. She saw me sitting outside in the camp chair and drove over to introduce herself.  Her 90-year old mother was visiting from upstate New York when the virus hit so she is still here in a very extended visit.

     Sheba certainly is enjoying all the time she gets outside.  With us home all the time now, Bonnie and Sheba get lots of outdoor time.

 25 Apr 2020 (Sat) – Still hunkered down.  Noah called this morning to say thanks for his books.  I bought him 3 books because Travis said he would like them.  Apparently he had one of that type and just tore through it.  He does love to read!  The books are called “Everything You Want to Know About . . .” then there was “Math,” “English,” and “History.”  I also bought books for Hudson and Lincoln.  I also bought their parents ink and paper in order to be able to continue entertaining/home schooling the kids.

     I am surprised by how cool the weather remains.  I thought that Alabama was one of those hot southern states. It’s been in the high 40s, low 50s every morning.  Doesn’t get up past the 70s.  Although the sun burns hot on your skin.  I guess it has to do with being closer to the equator.

 24 Apr 2020 (Fri) – Nothing much going on.  Noah, our grandson, has learned how to call us on FaceTime.  He calls between 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. to talk about whatever he’s doing.  He’s such a happy, upbeat personality.  I love talking to him.  He makes me laugh so much.

23 Apr 2020 (Thu) – Thunderstorms came in last night.  There is so much rain here.  There are flash flood warnings everywhere.  Luckily, we are on high ground with no water bodies nearby so we don’t have to worry about that.  I am surprised that with all the rain, there aren’t more puddles.  They have an incredible drainage system in the area.

22 Apr 2020 (Wed) – We had rain a good part of the day. Hunkering down for rain tonight. Thunderstorms are on the way again. These storms seem to roll through about every 3 or 4 days.  

 21 Apr 2020 (Tue) – Nothing happening here. Took our daily walk. Talked with our son and his family. Noah has learned how to dial us up on FaceTime and calls when the urge grabs him.  He is so funny.  I thoroughly enjoy his calls.

 20 Apr 2020 (Mon) – Another storm system came through yesterday. It rained for 20 hours.  I usually enjoy thunderstorms.  I like to watch the lightning flash in the sky and feel the rumbling of thunder in my bones.  But these storms come with warnings of tornados and that scares me.  Of all the weather systems that can happen, tornados scare me the most.  I tried calling Malissa from the lodge but her phone kept saying the person “is not accepting calls at this time.”  That was very unsettling.  She is proving to be a very unreliable person.  She said she would come down on Tuesday to cook a dinner but never showed. That was the second time she did that. And then not being available when a potential emergency was looming?  Hmmmm.  Fortunately, no tornados came our way.

     We went into town today to get pet food at Pet Smart.  Then we drove around looking for a Piggly Wiggly but wound up shopping at a Publix.  They have traffic signs on the floor directing one way movement in the aisles. There was also a thick Plexiglas sheet between the cashier and customers.  This is a new world.  Next time we’ll shop at a Piggly Wiggly.  The excitement of new adventures!  We stopped at a Taco Casa for lunch.  The food wasn’t bad but I think I like Taco Bell better.

     The man from Wyoming left.  I guess that when I told him someone from the lodge would be down to open up the building in the event of a tornado watch, he was scared off – either because he realized his free stay was over or he just didn’t want to endure a tornado.

     There is a residential area behind us on the other side of bushes and fences.  One of the neighbors had a party Saturday night.  They barbecued food, played games, listened to music, and just plain had a great time with family and friends.  People are really starting to defy stay-in-place orders.  There were lots of cars on the road when we drove around today.  Paul thought it was because it was later in the day (we usually go out first thing in the morning).  Maybe.

 19 Apr 2020 (Sun) – We watched the church service back home in Islip this morning.  A very talented young man, Christian, played the trumpet.  It was mesmerizing!  I am glad they have been able to set up these digital services.

     We were able to FaceTime with our son, Travis, and his family. Noah is just the happiest and most lively child.  He always makes me giggle.  Hudson wants to talk but gets embarrassed and doesn’t know what to say. He has to be drawn out and given prompting.  What a difference between the two boy’s personalities.  I am looking forward to  discovering Lincoln.

     Miranda sent a picture of Caiden with a missing tooth.  He lost his first tooth.  Unfortunately, he swallowed it while eating a PBJ sandwich.  I remember swallowing a tooth while eating watermelon.

18 Apr 2020 (Sat) – I got a message from CVS in Valrico, Florida, yesterday saying that Paul’s prescription was ready for pickup.  I called and arranged to transfer it to the CVS right by us here in Alabama.  We got a text message an hour later saying his prescription was all set.  We drove to the store and got his medications, then had lunch at Bojangles.  Picked up our order at the drive thru and brought it home.

     We haven’t seen anything of our new neighbor.  He has a motorcycle rather than a car in tow and it’s been gone every day, all day.  With everything closed, I wonder where he goes.  His RV is in really bad condition.  It is clear that he does not have a lot of money.  We think he pulled in here and stayed longer than he said he was going to because it’s free (he was just looking for a place to pull over for the night).  There is no one here to collect any money.  

     Paul’s sister, Joan, called today.  We did Facetime with them.  Joan & Peter are in the RV boondocking with her son’s family; Adam, Diane, and Devin (and the dogs).  Adam gave us a 360 degree shot of the surrounding area.  There are a few RVs parked out there in the desert.  It is the epitome of social isolation.

     Another weather system is headed this way tomorrow.  It will start in the morning but the worst part won’t hit until the late afternoon/early evening.  I hope Malissa is around to let us in the lodge.  She has proven to be a less than reliable person.

17 Apr 2020 (Fri) – We went out early this morning to do laundry. Nobody in the laundromat was wearing a mask except us.  I can’t figure this out.  The folks in the post office were mad at me for not wearing a mask.  The people in the grocery story were a mixed group – some wearing masks and some not.  Nobody in the laundromat was wearing a mask.  It is very confusing.

 16 Apr 2020 (Thu) – We ran out of propane during the night so we went out to buy some.  While we were out, we stopped at Wendy’s for lunch.  Then we drove around the nearby town of Cottondale looking at homes around Canyon Lake.  It really was in a small canyon with a very small lake.  The homes were all very nice; built of light colored brick.

     Another camper pulled in tonight.  His license plates are from Wyoming but he says he is a full-timer who does work kamping around the country.  He pulled a motorcycle out of his RV, which he uses to get around.  I didn’t spot anybody else with him but he put two camp chairs out.  Maybe it’s an invitation for someone to join him?

 15 Apr 2020 (Wed) – CVS gets their shipments on Wednesday so we went out to get some hand sanitizer today.  The first CVS had none so we drove down the road to a 24-hour store and they had some.  I wanted to buy two bottles but everyone is limited to one bottle per person.  So I bought one and then had Paul go in to buy one. So I got my two bottles.

     We also went food shopping at Winn Dixie.  About half the people in the store wore masks.  We wore our masks for the first time.  It is very uncomfortable and keeps pushing up into my eyes.  Accordingly, I kept pulling my mask down.  Isn’t the drawback to wearing masks that you touch it?

 13 & 14 Apr 2020 (Mon & Tue) – Just hanging out around the campground.

 12 Apr 2020 (Sun – EASTER) – There was no rain when we woke this morning. We left the bedroom slide pulled in but opened up the living room and kitchen.  The animals – Sheba in particular – are distressed with the rooms are pulled in.  I guess they don’t like change.  We took a walk in the morning then hunkered down waiting for the storms hit in the afternoon.

     At about 5:30 pm, the possibility of tornados was being reported on the weather channel.  We called Malissa from the Elks Lodge and she came down to open up the building.  She and her boyfriend, David, Paul and I along with Bonnie and Sheba all sat inside watching the weather channel for an hour. Finally, the weatherman indicated that tornadic activity was calming down as far as what was headed in our direction.  We returned to the camper and Malissa and David went home.  An hour later, Malissa called to say they were on the way back to the lodge because a tornado was on the ground.  The news said nothing about it.  We grabbed the animals and our go bag and ran to the lodge amid fire sirens going off and my phone beeping in with warnings to find shelter immediately. The sky opened up and it rained so hard, you couldn’t see the camper from the deck of the lodge.  A tornado touched down about 13 miles north of us in a mobile home park (they always go for the trailers!).  After two hours, the news (again) said there were no more tornados headed in our direction.  With that, we said good night and returned to the trailer.  It was an exciting night.

 11 Apr 2020 (Sat) – We took our walk around the usual route twice today.  For dinner, Paul ran out and picked up KFC.  We are preparing for severe thunderstorms and a possible tornado tomorrow. Paul will pull in the slides tonight and park the truck under some trees to minimize hail damage.

 10 Apr 2020 (Fri) – We drove to the post office first thing this morning.  We arrived at 8:15 a.m. only to discover that they didn’t open until 9:00 a.m.  We then took a quick trip to a nearby bank to get some money at the ATM.  It is amazing how little we think of all the things we touch in a day.  Now that we are  so much more aware of infection, every little thing seems like a threat – doorknobs, countertops, desks, keypads, shopping bags, money, etc.  It’s become a very scary world!

9 Apr 2020 (Thu) - It was another trip to the outside world today. We needed to send off an Easter package to the grandkids so it was a stop at the post office.  That was an adventure in itself.  There was a long line of people waiting to get in.  It looked longer than it actually was because people were leaving 6 to 8 feet between them and the person in front of them. There were 9 people in front of us. The line moved very slowly and it was a half hour before we got to the desk.  There was only one clerk working.  She explained that one of the employees caught the virus so they shut the place down.  All the meters and registers were off.  She was working with something like a smart phone.  Nothing could be metered.  She could only accept flat rate items and she could not accept cash; payment by card only. I got to send off the two packages but was not able to mail off our taxes.  

     We stopped at CVS and Walgreens to see if they had any hand sanitizer.  Neither did. There were some food trucks out so we stopped for lunch at a Mexican Taco truck.  The food was terrible and they used the wrong kind of cheese.  We won’t do that again!  While out, we also stopped at an ABC Store – a state run liquor store.  Actually, two stores.  The first store only had one bottle of Red Stag and no 43.  The owner called over to another store and found they had what we wanted so we drove there and bought another bottle of Red Stag and a bottle of 43.

     At 6 p.m., we fired up the iPad and tuned into the Islip Methodist Church Maundy Thursday service.  There was only the pastor, the organist, and our cousins – Lee and Donna – performing the service.  It was communion so we poured some wine and broke off some bread and followed along with the service.  It seemed weird to be reading the response while sitting in our living room.

 8 Apr 2020 (Wed)

– We stayed in today.  I counted the cars on one of the freight trains that go by every day. There were a hundred cars on it. It’s amazing that so many of those very heavy cars can be moved at one time.

7 Apr 2020 (Tue) – We ventured out today.  First stop was at the laundromat to put the laundry in the wash. Next stop was at Winn Dixie where we picked up groceries.  We went back to the trailer to put away the food.  Then it was back to the laundromat to move the wash to the dryers.  We then went to Chick-Fil-A for a late breakfast. Then it was back to the laundromat to collect our clothes.  Paul brought in a wipe and wiped down the table we folded the clothes on.  We put on gloves everywhere we went but we did not wear face coverings.  Last night, President Trump asked the nation to voluntarily wear face masks to continue fighting the coronavirus.  The number of infections are falling, thanks to the people who are complying with the CDC guidance to self-isolate (most states have imposed lockdowns and curfews), practice social distancing, and wash your hands.  Over a million people have been infected worldwide with thousands of deaths.  It is amazing how infectious this virus is.  It is in 184 countries now.  The world truly is a mobile place.

 6 Apr 2020 (Mon) – UPS delivered my medicine from New York today. I put a sign on the mailbox telling the UPS driver to bring the package to us in the RV.  Paul happened to be up on the roof when the driver pulled in and waved the guy over.  He spent several minutes arguing with me about why he shouldn’t give me the package. It was addressed to the Elks, but my name was also on the envelope.  He told me he was supposed to give it to the lodge, not us in back.  If we need to have mail sent to us here, we should ask the lodge to assign us a lot number.  After going back and forth, he finally gave me the package.   When I said I was supposed to sign for it, he said they are not allowing anyone to touch the pad.  He signed for me.

     As I was sitting outside waiting for the UPS driver to arrive, someone from the lodge drove over to check on us.  She said they were going to have wings and beer tomorrow.  I told her we would have some, too.  Weird.  Aren’t they supposed to remain closed with the 24-hour curfew in place?  

 5 Apr 2020 (Sun) – We tuned in on Facebook and watched the church service back home in Islip.  The picture was dark like they didn’t turn the lights on.  Maybe they’re trying to save money.

 3 Apr 2020 (Fri) – We opened the package my sister sent.  It included mostly supplements I had ordered and sent to her because UPS won’t deliver to us here.  She repacked my orders and sent them in one big box.  

     Paul took the fifth-wheel hitch off and worked on sanding it. He’ll repaint it and make it look all nice again.  I worked on getting our taxes done.

 2 Apr 2020 (Thu) – We drove to the UPS store to pick up a package my sister mailed to us.  We placed it in the bed of the pick up to sit overnight.  We will open it tomorrow.

     Since we were out already, we stopped at Freddy’s for lunch.  It was ok.  After we got our food at the drive-up window, we parked and walked over to their outside tables to eat our meal.  There was a sign on the table saying that their outside dining area was closed.  We walked back and sat in the truck to eat.

     After lunch, we drove to three different liquor stores looking for our favorite liquor.  They were all small and had none of our choices in their selection.  The bigger stores are the ABC Liquor Stores but they are all closed.  We think they are state run.  We will have to make do with the wine we can pick up in the supermarket until things open up again.

     At 6 p.m. I called a nearby Mexican restaurant to order a meal for pick up. The website said that due to the volume of calls they get, they added a second number.  They failed to say that second number was at another location. When Paul drove to the restaurant, they did not have our order.  After he left, apparently that restaurant called their other site and found our call had gone there.  We worked out the misunderstanding, replaced our order, and was able to pick it up. Besides the food, we got a half gallon of margaritas.  A bottle of Jose Cuervo and a container of margarita mix were included in the order. It looks like we could probably get 8 glasses out of it!

 1 Apr 2020 (Wed) – Just hung out today.  Took two walks along our now familiar circle of across the parking lot of the lodge, across the parking lot of the strip mall next door, up the hill around the apartment complex, and back to the camper.

 31 Mar 2020 (Tue) – We ventured out today wearing plastic gloves. Didn’t see many people with face masks. Went food shopping at Winn Dixie. They have designated 7 to 8 a.m. for seniors and 8 to 9 a.m. for first responders.  There was no one at the door checking IDs so I guess anyone could go in if they want to.  Then we drove to Pet Smart for pet food.  Next door was The Fresh Market.  We went in to get some fresh produce.  On the way back, we stopped at a CVS.  Everywhere we go, I look for hand sanitizer but we can’t find any – all sold out.  I wound up buying a nasal saline wash.  Each time we go out, we will use the nasal wash and gargle with salt water.

 30 Mar 2020 (Mon) – It rained most of the day.  We finally finished scanning all the photo albums into the computer.  The trains riding by blow their whistles and fill me with longing to move on.  We have been here now for 14 days.  The governor of Alabama instituted a 24 hour curfew. Apparently, the 10 p.m. curfew didn’t work.  Teenagers were hanging out at gas stations since the bars are closed.  Someone got shot so now everyone is in lockdown. Crazy!

29 Mar 2020 (Sun) – Adventure abounds!  I have just returned from two days in the hospital.  What happened, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  

     We were hiking in the woods at Harris Lake in Tuscaloosa.  We were about a mile in on the trail, stopped at a dam and sitting by the stream.  I suddenly got very shaky, my vision dimmed, and I complained of a severe headache. Paul tells that I then lost my memory. I had no idea where we were, where we have been, or even that there is a virus ravaging the country.  

     We hiked back out of the woods (I don’t remember any of it), got in the truck, and drove to the nearest hospital.  I “came to” during the ride in the truck where Paul was telling me I had an episode.  He thought I had a stroke.  First stop was at a VA hospital but they didn’t have an emergency room so we were directed to a civilian hospital down the road.  

      There was a person sitting at a desk outside the entrance to the emergency room dressed in a gown, cap, gloves, and mask.  She put me in a wheelchair and brought me inside.  Paul was not allowed to enter the hospital. After being checked in at the desk, I was wheeled into the emergency room.  Almost all of the staff was gowned and wearing face masks.   They drew blood and sent me for a chest x-ray and found nothing.  The doctor wanted an MRI but they couldn’t get me scheduled until the next day so I agreed to be admitted for the night.  Paul was still not allowed in the hospital so the staff advised him of what was happening.

     The experience in the hospital was unsettling.  First, I was placed in a room all by myself.  The doors to all rooms on the floor were kept closed at all times.  Only one staff person at a time was allowed in patient rooms and contact was kept to a minimum.  I spent hours behind closed doors feeling like I had been forgotten about.  I got an MRI of the brain and they took more blood. A doctor came by to say everything was normal and left to see when the neurologist was going to come by.  Next thing I knew, a nurse came in and said I was being sent for an ultrasound of the carotid arteries.  The nurse said I was also scheduled for an echo cardiogram but she didn’t know when it would happen.  It turned out later that it would be the next day so I had to stay another night in the hospital.

     At 6:00 a.m. this morning, they took me down for the cardiogram.  A neurologist and his P.A. showed up later to say all the tests returned normal.  There was nothing on the brain MRI, the EKG, the cardiogram, the x-ray, or the bloodwork to explain what happened.  The good news was that there is nothing big that is wrong with me.  It’s possible I suffered a TIA, which, as he explained it, is a kind of catch all diagnosis when they don’t really know what happened.  He recommended that I follow up with a neurologist and a cardiologist after I get out of the hospital.

     I was finally given the all clear and discharged at 2 p.m.  Paul had to pull up to the entrance (all entrances were closed except one), check in with the security guard, call up to the room to tell me he was there, then wait for me to be brought out.  I then had to call the nurse’s desk and ask for a transporter to take me downstairs.  It took more than half an hour for someone to show up.  Paul was entertained while he waited for me.  A guy came out of the hospital to get some food from a truck parked outside.  When he tried to go back into the hospital, the security guard refused to let him in. Yelling and shouting ensued.  People showed up and the crowd grew as the guy tried to get back into the hospital.  Apparently, he was a patient and kept yelling he was not going to stay. Finally, a supervisor came out and allowed the man in.  A few minutes later, he exited the hospital with his belongings.  They don’t fool around down here!

     When I was wheeled out, I told Paul not to touch me.  I had instructed him to spray the seat with Lysol before I sat down.  When we got back to the trailer, I stripped naked standing outside in front of the stairs then went directly into the shower.  While I scrubbed down, Paul washed my clothes and sprayed down my purse and shoes.  I hope we got all the spores I might have brought back with me.  Only time will tell.  It is good to be home.

 26 Mar 2020 (Thu) – There are some railroad tracks across the road from the lodge.  Several freight trains roll by every day.  I saw an Amtrak passenger train barrel through one day.  I don’t know if they go by on a regular basis.  I guess they do.  I just don’t see them.  I hear the train whistles and rumbles often.

     There is a small strip mall with six shops next door.  The only shop open is Subway.  Next to that is a small child care center.  It was closed when we first arrived but there were children in there today.  I don’t know if they have reopened or if they are only watching children of health care workers.  They were all little tykes, somewhere between 2 and 5.

     Next to the child care center and up a small hill is an apartment complex.  At least once a day, we walk past the shops and child care center, up the hill, and around the parking lot of the complex.  I don’t think it amounts to more than a total of one mile but at least it’s a little bit of exercise.  

     The name of the child care center is Little Roll Tide Academy. There are a lot of businesses around here with the word “Tide” in them.  Apparently, the U of Alabama has a team called Crimson Tide and the team chant is Roll Tide.  I don’t get it but then again, I don’t live here or go to the games.  I guess the locals find it reassuring.

 25 Mar 2020 (Wed) – Paul read that Winn Dixie is restricting the first hour to shopping by senior citizens.  He thought the time was 7 to 8 a.m. but when we got there, it turned out to be 8 to 9 a.m.  So we drove down to a laundromat and threw the laundry in the machines.  What a rip off!  The machines were $4.50 each, but another $0.50 for hot water for the whites. Then the dryers were $0.25 for six minutes.  I think it was the smallest load we’ve ever washed for the most money.  One washer wound up sucking our money and we had to spend another $5.00.  The attendant couldn’t do anything about it.  She is not authorized to give refunds.  

     Between washing and drying, we went to Winn Dixie for groceries. There were a few seniors there when we went in - most of them wearing face masks.  The shelves were, for the most part, well stocked.  The cleaning aisle was half empty and the cashier was limiting purchases to either Lysol spray or Clorox wipes but not both.  They had no hand sanitizer.

      We also stopped in to Walgreens so I could get batteries for my hearing aid.  They had no hand sanitizer either.

 24 Mar 2020 (Tue) – It turns out the lilac tree is wisteria and it is growing all over the place.  Looks so nice.  It is tough to just sit here day in and day out.  There is no sidewalk on the highway so we can’t take long walks.  Even Bonnie is getting bored with walking circles around the parking lot.  Paul looked up a nearby park but when we drove there, we found it closed.  I went to Trip Advisor and found a county park then I called to be sure they were open and dogs were allowed.  The answer was YES to both.  We drove a half hour to Lake Lurleen State Park.  It has 1,625 acres of hiking trails, camping, and water activities (but no boat rentals for now).  We walked a trail.  Bonnie lasted about 25 minutes then got too tired to go on (we were on a 4-mile loop trail).   It was nice to get out in the woods and smell the pine and hear the birds.

      On the way back, we stopped for lunch at Bojangles (a chicken place).  We both had fried chicken and fries.  The times, they are a-getting’ desperate!

23 Mar 2020 (Mon) – There is a beautiful lilac tree in the back of the parking lot next door.  The trees are starting to bud.  Spring is not affected by the virus.  Luckily, neither are we.  The statistics say that Alabama is the third lowest state to have the virus, so it is a good place to be.  I pray for our friends and family every day.  It is maddening not to be there to watch over them.  

 22 Mar 2020 (Sun) – Well, we finished up the Longmire series. Now we will start watching the videos we have been carrying around with us.  Some are good; some not so good.

 21 Mar 2020 (Sat) – We are binge watching the Longmire series. We bought the entire six seasons a few weeks ago and will now finish it off.  Other than that, it’s watching the daily news briefings about the coronavirus on TV, walking the dog, and hanging out.  Cabin fever is already starting to set in.

20 Mar 2020 (Fri) – We ventured out to shop today.  First, we went to Vowells Fresh Market.  The produce seemed old.  Many of the shelves were empty, especially the cleaning supplies aisle.  We both wore plastic gloves.  The cashier did not have any gloves on.  I thanked her for working during this crisis.  She admitted she is very scared.

     We then drove to the nearby grocery, The Fresh Market.  It was more like the health food stores back home. It had a fresher, better stocked look to it.  The produce was fresh and most of the shelves were full.  There was a delightful deli section with salads.  That cashier wasn’t wearing any gloves either.  I guess they’re not as concerned here.

     After shopping, we drove around the area to see what stores are around. There are quite a few.  This is a built up area and it doesn’t look like we will have any problems shopping for what we need.  I stopped in a GNC shop looking for zinc sulfate and nasal saline but they had neither.  We also stopped at a CVS but they didn’t have any either.  One of the clerks was wearing a mask and gloves.  Made me feel a little more justified for our caution. Silly, isn’t it?

      We have been watching the daily news briefings by the Coronavirus Task Force.  Each day, more action is being taken to try to counter the spread of the virus.  It is amazing how far and wide this thing has spread around the world.  It will have to run its course.  I initially thought it would go away when the warm weather arrived but it’s starting to look like that won’t happen.  They’re predicting it will take 18 months to clear up.  They also revealed that men have twice the mortality rate as women for those who have died.  How depressing!  

 19 Mar 2020 (Thu) – It was a quiet day.  I would have preferred to stay in the Army Corps of Engineers campground in Montgomery among the moss covered trees and the lazy river.  It would have been more in commune with nature. Instead, we are camped in a parking lot at a closed lodge on a busy highway.  At least there are several stores close by.  On one side is a small strip mall with a Subway, an insurance company, a nail salon, and a child care center.  On the other side is a larger mall with a grocery store called Vowells Fresh Market.   Next to that is another supermarket called The Fresh Market.  On the corner at the traffic light is a Walgreens and across the street is a Winn Dixie and a CVS.  There are some eateries and other small businesses.  Many of the small businesses have signs on the door that say they are closed until March 31.  The news said Governor Cuomo in New York has directed ALL nonessential businesses to close for two weeks.  That means Travis & Sam and Miranda & Kenny are out of work.  Well, maybe not Kenny.  He works at a beer distributor that also sells food.  Maybe they will stay open.  What a mess!

18 Mar 2020 (Wed) – We called the campground to see if we could extend our stay for two weeks only to be told the campground is closed. Everyone is being allowed to stay when they paid through to, but then must leave.  No extensions.  Since today was our check out date, we were literally kicked out.

     We packed up and left Montgomery at 9:45 a.m.  The drive was pleasant and uneventful.  We arrived at the Elks Lodge in Tuscaloosa at 12:15 p.m.  There are 9 campsites along the site of the lodge on the grass with full hookups.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you look at it), there was a sign on the door that says the lodge is closed until further notice.  This is in line with all the other notices that have been flooding my phone for days.  Schools are closed, restaurants are only serving take out, colleges have switched to online classes, all federal and most state campgrounds are closed, and some states have called out the National Guard to help with the crisis.  Today, the president invoked the Defense Production Act, an act of wartime activity.  It authorizes him to have manufacturing ramp up to make required products to combat an enemy.  In this case, the corona virus.  It’s crazy!

 17 Mar 2020 (Tue) – Took a quick foray out to get fuel in the truck.  On the way back, we stopped at a fruit and vegetable stand to pick up a few things. The man staffing the small booth was very old with just a few teeth.  He had a heavy southern accent and was hard to understand.  I bought 2 oranges, 2 sweet potatoes, and a watermelon.

      At the entrance to the road leading to the campground stands a Dollar General store. We stopped in there and found toilet paper on the shelf.  We picked up a pack as well as a few other items then returned to the campground. Later, we cooked burgers and corn on the cob for dinner and sat by a delightful fire as the sun set.  What a great campground this is!  The lazy river drifts by, the trees are covered in Spanish moss, and there are lots of trees and few campers.  We could spend the next month here.

 16 Mar 2020 (Mon) – Johnny & Linda packed up and left this morning.  It seems empty now.  We are just sitting around listening to the birds and watching the lazy river drift by. I know we are safe from the craziness of the coronavirus panic going on elsewhere in the world, but it kind of feels surreal.  Kind of like we are the survivors of an apocalyptic event.  We are the only survivors and we have run away to a safe place to hide from the zombies.  That’s what we get for watching all those science fiction movies for years.

 15 Mar 2020 (Sun) – Linda made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Then we went into Prattville for lunch at Hooters.  Johnny has a hood of a race car (it’s really a plastic replica) where he has gone around to different Hooters and gotten the girls to sign it.  So he brought the hood in and had the girls all sign it.  They started out hesitant to do it but by the end of lunch, they were all enthusiastic and amused by his project. I didn’t care much for their food but the margarita was good.

     Back at the campground, Linda again cooked the meal of the day. She prepared wild rice with chicken and corn on the cob.  Our visit with them has been a lot of fun and we look forward to seeing them in New York this summer.  

14 Mar 2020 (Sat) – Linda made tacos for lunch.  I made steak, baked potatoes, and grilled asparagus for dinner.  We are enjoying each other’s company so much. We just hung out around the campground today and delighted in God’s country.

 13 Mar 2020 (Fri) – Linda made Cady Lake Hash for breakfast.  It’s like our frittatas.  You take whatever left-overs you have in the fridge and cook them up with eggs.  It is very good.

    After much discussion, we all decided to go to Alabama to camp out.  It is one of the few states that has not reported a coronavirus infection.  Johnny & Linda fell in behind us and we headed out to Gunter Hill Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers park.  I don’t know if it is related to the virus hysteria or they were doing repairs, but the three rest areas we wanted to stop at were all closed.  We finally pulled into a travel plaza to stretch out legs and walk the dogs.

    We arrived at the campground around 1:30 p.m.  We are both parked in the same site but it has two hookups.  We have water and electric, with a dump station somewhere on the grounds.  We are right on a river front.  With the moss covered trees, the meandering waterway, and lots of room between campers, it feels like we are in another world.  It is peaceful and remote.

    At 3 p.m., Paul and I drove to the Maxwell-Gunter AFB nearby to get some groceries at the commissary.  It was a surreal experience.  All the shelves were half empty.  There was no toilet paper, no tissues, no Vitamin C, and no hand sanitizer (I still don’t get the run on toilet paper).  The line went across the front of the store, up the side aisle, and down the back side.  We were on line for 45 minutes.  And this was the commissary on a base with only military folks!  I hate to imagine what WalMart or Publix looks like.

    We enjoyed wine at our campsite last night, all talking and solving the problems of the world.  Johnny & Linda will be here with us for three nights before heading back home.  We wanted to stay a week but they only had five days available.  It is a very nice campground.

[obscurehistoricalinterests]

P.J. Ransone on finding himself through Generation Kill

Twenty-seven is a strange age in the most Joseph Campbell sense of the number, especially for the male persuasion. It is the time when you realize you’re not 20 anymore, that whatever clever antics you may have done at a younger age now make you cringe. You’re also coming up hard on 30 and I think you start to evaluate the path that you’re on. Twenty-seven is the age when rock stars die and become legends, but to me it marked the death of my youth, when my past caught up with me and punched me in the head.

 I weighed 115 pounds, was about 30 grand in debt and had developed a pretty healthy heroin habit. I had a few accomplishments under my belt as far as my career was concerned: I had been in some successful movies and television shows, and a few almost-successful rock bands. I was “cool” (in my mind at least) to a handful of downtown Manhattan degenerates. Things got so out of control in my head, that at one point I remember being offended when my agency would send me scripts for roles as “the junkie.” Looking back, I was far from the person I wanted to be. I was quickly on my way to being a 30-year-old adolescent. Twenty-seven changed that.

I was involved in a five-year relationship with a wonderful woman who I loved very much. It had run its course. Or to put it more succinctly: she got fed up with my bullshit and finally decided to leave. Let’s face it — junkies don’t tend to make the best boyfriends.

This set off a chain of events that led me to sober up and step up to the table as far as being a man was concerned. There were a lot of things going on inside me that I hadn’t faced, or at the very least, refused to acknowledge for a long time. There were a lot of hard corners in me that needed to be softened. I had no idea what the results were going to be as far as taking some responsibility for my past, but the outcome has been pretty remarkable.

It’s funny what happens to you when you decide — or are forced to decide — to make positive changes for yourself, because in my experience it starts a nuclear chain reaction. Change is painful no matter what form it takes. I’ve learned that the only constant in this weird life is, in fact, change.  If I’m not going through it, something is wrong.

I feel like I evolved into the human being I had hoped to become while living in Africa working on a miniseries for HBO called Generation Kill, based on the book by the same name written by Evan Wright about his time embedded with a battalion of reconnaissance Marines during the initial six weeks of the invasion of Iraq. The book is basically an apolitical, true-life account of what it’s like to be on the ground as an enlisted serviceman in modern warfare. Ostensibly, it’s a road-trip story. Writers David Simon and Ed Burns adapted the screenplays with Wright, and I had worked with the pair previously on HBO’s The Wire. When I arrived in Namibia — where I was to live for seven months while filming the show — I had no idea what to expect. I had landed the part of Cpl. Ray Person, the sped-up Marine who drove the point Humvee in Iraq in March of 2003. The role itself was much bigger than I had anticipated. The amount of work cut out for me had yet to sink in.

The day I turned 28, I was participating in a simulated night mission that marked the end of a boot camp that all the actors were required to participate in before we began filming. It was kind of unreal how much had changed in a year.     Part of the catalyst for growth was the job itself, but much of the credit can go to the people with whom I got to share the experience. During this time, I became acquainted with two guys who changed my life.

Eric Kocher and Jeff Carizales are two Marines who fought together in OIF1 (Operation Iraqi Freedom). They had been brought to Africa to be military accuracy advisers during production, and their input was instrumental to the credibility of the show. Not only are they Marines, but they are two of the actual guys about whom Evan Wright wrote in his book. So here are these two dudes, reliving the drama of their lives, watching actors interpret their stories so that they are portrayed as accurately as possible. I think the word “trippy” comes to mind. I had no idea that I was going to end up loving these guys as much as I do.

Eric Kocher is imposing in the most terrifying sense. Imagine a shorter version of the Incredible Hulk with Tom Selleck’s face and a brain filled with an encyclopedic knowledge of military history and modern warfare tactics. By age 28, he had served in the Marine Corps for close to 10 years and done more than five combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While on a combat mission in Iraq, his Humvee was hit by a rocket- propelled grenade that nearly blew his arm off. Another member of his team, who was in the back of the truck, lost both of his hands in this same attack. Later, he would tell me that he himself pulled out the pins that had been surgically implanted in his hands so that he could get back to combat sooner. When people ask about the insane scar on his right arm he usually tells them it’s from an old “skateboardin’ accident.” He is one of the funniest people I know. For as intense as his appearance is, he’s one of the most loyal and kind-hearted human beings I have ever met.

The other Marine I befriended was Jeff Carizales. He drove the same Humvee that Eric was in during the invasion in of Iraq. He is 100 percent Texan, through and through. He is the type of person who will insult you within seconds of making your acquaintance, only to test your resolve. It’s hard to sum up Jeff in anything short of an epic poem. When I first met him in a bar in Africa, I wanted to punch him in the face within about three minutes. He insulted my clothes, the city I lived in and my general way of life. We only started to bond after we opened up about the demise of both our long-term relationships and our mutual disdain for most actors. Certain anecdotes can paint a better picture. For example, while traveling in Europe recently, he would meet other international backpackers and tell these elaborate stories about what he does for a living. He liked to regale these people by telling them that he was a small-arms dealer training guerilla forces in northern Africa so they could overthrow their governments. The truth is, he is an engineering student at Texas A&M. When he flew home from Europe, he thought it would be funny to dress up in Chechnyan mujahedeen garb, thereby convincing airport security that he was a terrorist. Yes, this is the man I spent seven months with.

These guys introduced me to a side of life with which I had been unfamiliar. In some way, they reconnected me to myself. As a shit-bag junkie who lived in New York, I rarely came across servicemen unless they were sailors visiting the city during Fleet Week, in which case they were usually just in the way on my way to the bar. My father is a Vietnam vet, and my natural inclination towards people who would volunteer for that life could politely be described as “resistant.” I just never understood why someone would knowingly sign up for something that seemed so conformist, in my opinion. I was way off base in this assumption.

Let’s start first by saying that I don’t support this war or the reasons why we are over there. I am of the school of thought that we should clean up our own yard before we start to clean up someone else’s. Having said that, the people I have met who are in the armed forces are doing a uniquely un- American thing. It’s unique in the sense that we grew up in a country of excess, to the extent that in this post-industrial, post-sexual-revolution age in America, my generation gets to live off the fat of the land without developing a work ethic that generations before ours seemed to have had. In the age of short attention spans and reality television, Marines are a group of people that actually strive to go against that excess. As Wright points out in his book, “they have chosen asceticism and assimilation over the idea of being an individual” who can dream big and be the next American Idol winner. Out of this, it seems, comes maturity.

There is a school of thought that seems to imply that as Westerners, we have lost a certain amount of our identity because the rites of passage into adulthood are viewed as archaic. There is no tradition for sending boys out into the wild, not to return home until they came back men. To a large extent, the Marines seem to have experienced these rites, and for a short amount of time, I did as well. While living in Africa, Eric and Jeff forced me to grow up,to look at things differently.

We forged this bond by taking long road trips while filming the series. The production itself was grueling. We had six-day work weeks, but anytime that we would have more than 24 hours off, we would plan these insane adventures and take off on a whim with little more than half a tank of gas and a change of underwear. Most weekends we would drive 10 hours to Cape Town to blow off steam. On longer breaks we would look on a giant map of the continent, pick a spot and point our car towards it. We would have made Hemingway proud.

I can’t tell you how many times Eric and Jeff got me nearly killed, whether it was while we were breaking into Botswana, nearly drowning in the Zambezi river, or avoiding getting trampled by elephants. Our road trips got to be so infamous that the producers would send out memos specifically targeted at our little tribe, letting us know that we were an insurance risk. It’s generally considered a bad thing if one of your actors dies during production — from a business perspective, anyway. In fact, Eric and Jeff always wanted to know the location of the closest U.S. Embassy in case I did die so they could fly back to the states and not get sued by HBO.

During these trips, I really felt alive. My brother (who was with us on some of these adventures) pointed out that it was because these guys have truly lived. They have been around more death and destruction than I could possibly imagine or cope with, yet their vitality is undeniable. I don’t remember a time that my stomach didn’t hurt from laughing. I dealt with more insults and put-downs from them than anyone could imagine, but after a while I came to realize that they were forcing me to examine my shortcomings and actually do something about them. They have a fraternal bond that I envy. For a little while, I got to experience it. They treated me as a brother and tenderized me like a piece of steak, because, at the end of the day, they wanted me at my strongest.

Living in Africa with Eric and Jeff was the best experience of my life so far. The art that imitated life was imitated by life again on our road trips. The irony was that after a breakup forced me to re-examine myself, some of the most romantic moments I have had in my life were with these psycho jarheads — but not in a “gay” way.

It’s been a year since we started production on Generation Kill. I recently turned 29, and by the time this article comes out, the show will be airing. I talk to Jeff and Eric regularly. I miss them and that time in my life. Regardless of whether the show is popular or not, I am a stronger human being because of the experiences I had with them and what they taught me. I will have that for the rest of my life. This August, I plan on taking a motorcycle trip in Mexico with them. There is part of me that hopes not to return, knowing that it wouldn’t be any fun if those two weren’t trying to get me killed somehow every day we’re on the road. I think I can honestly say that while I do not support this war, I do support our troops.

- Source

[blackistory]

BIG MAMA THORNTON THE ORIGINATOR OFTHE HOUND DOG SONG

Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama,[5] but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz she claimed Montgomery, Alabama, as her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton.[6] She was introduced to music in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at early ages.[7] Her mother died young, and Willie Mae left school and got a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. In 1940 she left home and, with the help of Diamond Teeth Mary, joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue and was soon billed as the "New Bessie Smith".[6] Her musical education started in the church but continued through her observation of the rhythm-and-blues singers Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she deeply admired.

Early career

Thornton's career began to take off when she moved to Houston in 1948. "A new kind of popular blues was coming out of the clubs in Texas and Los Angeles, full of brass horns, jumpy rhythms, and wisecracking lyrics."[9] In 1951 she signed a recording contract with Peacock Records and performed at the Apollo Theater in 1952. Also in 1952, while working with another Peacock artist Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", the first record produced by its writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The pair were present at the recording,[10] with Leiber demonstrating the song in the vocal style they had envisioned;[11][12] "We wanted her to growl it," Stoller said, which she did. Otis played drums, after the original drummer was unable to play an adequate part. The record sold more than half a million copies, and went to number one on the R&B chart,[13] helping to bring in the dawn of rock 'n' roll.[14] Although the record made Thornton a star, she saw little of the profits.

On Christmas Day 1954 in a theatre in Houston, Texas, she witnessed fellow performer Johnny Ace, also signed to Duke and Peacock record labels, accidentally shoot and kill himself while playing with a .22 pistol.[16] Thornton continued to record for Peacock until 1957 and performed in R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips.

Thornton's success with "Hound Dog" was followed three years later by Elvis Presleyrecording his hit version of the song.[10] His recording at first annoyed Leiber who wrote, "I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo."[14] But Elvis' version sold ten million copies, so today few fans know that "Hound Dog" began as "an anthem of black female power."[14] Similarly, Thornton originally recorded her song "Ball 'n' Chain" for Bay-Tone Records in the early 1960s, "and though the label chose not to release the song... they did hold on to the copyright"—which meant that Thornton missed out on the publishing royalties when Janis Joplin recorded the song later in the decade.

Success

As her career began to fade in the late 1950s and early 1960s,[2] she left Houston and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, "playing clubs in San Francisco and L.A. and recording for a succession of labels",[8]notably the Berkeley-based Arhoolie Records. In 1965, she toured with the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe,[17] where her success was notable "because very few female blues singers at that time had ever enjoyed success across the Atlantic."[18] While in England that year, she recorded her first album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton – In Europe. It featured backing by blues veterans Buddy Guy (guitar), Fred Below (drums), Eddie Boyd (keyboards), Jimmy Lee Robinson (bass), and Walter "Shakey" Horton (harmonica), except for three songs on which Fred McDowell provided acoustic slide guitar.

In 1966, Thornton recorded her second album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton with the Muddy Waters Blues Band – 1966, with Muddy Waters (guitar), Sammy Lawhorn (guitar), James Cotton (harmonica), Otis Spann(piano), Luther Johnson (bass guitar), and Francis Clay (drums). She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and 1968. Her last album for Arhoolie, Ball n' Chain, was released in 1968. It was made up of tracks from her two previous albums, plus her composition "Ball and Chain" and the standard "Wade in the Water". A small combo, including her frequent guitarist Edward "Bee" Houston, provided backup for the two songs. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's performance of "Ball 'n' Chain" at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and the release of the song on their number one album Cheap Thrills renewed interest in Thornton's career.

By 1969, Thornton had signed with Mercury Records, which released her most successful album, Stronger Than Dirt, which reached number 198 in the Billboard Top 200 record chart. Thornton had now signed a contract with Pentagram Records and could finally fulfill one of her biggest dreams. A blues woman and the daughter of a preacher, Thornton loved the blues and what she called the "good singing" of gospel artists like the Dixie Hummingbirds and Mahalia Jackson. She had always wanted to record a gospel record, and with the album Saved (PE 10005), she achieved that longtime goal. The album includes the gospel classics "Oh, Happy Day," "Down By The Riverside," "Glory, Glory Hallelujah," "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," "Lord Save Me," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "One More River" and "Go Down Moses".

By then the American blues revival had come to an end. While the original blues acts like Thornton mostly played smaller venues, younger people played their versions of blues in massive arenas for big money. Since the blues had seeped into other genres of music, the blues musician no longer needed impoverishment or geography for substantiation; the style was enough. While at home the offers became fewer and smaller, things changed for good in 1972, when Thornton was asked to rejoin the American Folk Blues Festival tour. She thought of Europe as a good place for herself, and, with the lack of engagements in the United States, she agreed happily. The tour, beginning on March 2, took Thornton to Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, where it ended on March 27 in Stockholm. With her on the bill were Eddie Boyd, Big Joe Williams, Robert Pete Williams, T- Bone Walker, Paul Lenart, Hartley Severns, Edward Taylor and Vinton Johnson. As in 1965, they garnered recognition and respect from other musicians who wanted to see them.

Late career and death

In the 1970s, years of heavy drinking began to damage Thornton's health. She was in a serious auto accident but recovered to perform at the 1973 Newport Jazz Festivalwith Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (a recording of this performance, The Blues—A Real Summit Meeting, was released by Buddha Records). Thornton's last albums were Jail and Sassy Mama for Vanguard Records in 1975. Other songs from the recording session were released in 2000 on Big Mama Swings. Jailcaptured her performances during mid-1970s concerts at two prisons in the northwestern United States.[6] She was backed by a blues ensemble that featured sustained jams by George "Harmonica" Smith and included the guitarists Doug Macleod, Bee Houston and Steve Wachsman; the drummer Todd Nelson; the saxophonist Bill Potter; the bassist Bruce Sieverson; and the pianist J. D. Nicholson. She toured extensively through the United States and Canada, played at the Juneteenth Blues Fest in Houston and shared the bill with John Lee Hooker.[6] She performed at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1979 and the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980. In the early 1970s, Thornton's sexual proclivities became a question among blues fans.[9] Big Mama also performed in the "Blues Is a Woman" concert that year, alongside classic blues legend Sippie Wallace, sporting a man's three-piece suit, straw hat, and gold watch. She sat at center stage and played pieces she wanted to play, which were not on the program.[20]Thornton took part in the Tribal Stomp at Monterey Fairgrounds, the Third Annual Sacramento Blues Festival, and the Los Angeles Bicentennial Blues with BB King and Muddy Waters. She was a guest on an ABC-TV special hosted by actor Hal Holbrook and was joined by Aretha Franklin and toured through the club scene. She was also part of the award-winning PBS television special Three Generations of the blues with Sippie Wallace and Jeannie Cheatham.[6]

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a Los Angeles boarding house[21] on July 25, 1984. She died of heart and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse. She had lost 355 pounds (161 kg) in a short time as a result of illness, her weight dropping from 450 to 95 pounds (204–43 kg).

[fangirlfanwritings]

Eric Northman  Request

can you write an eric northman imagine where he is in love with a girl who is an angel, and when he loses her memory and falls for sookie she gets real sad and then when he gets it back he remembers that he loves her? Thanks!

“Eric, please don’t do anything stupid while I’m away,” you pleaded. He had begun hearing whispers that a witch was practicing near his parish. You knew what he’d usually be doing to solve those whispers but, since you were embarking on a mission with some of your angelic brothers and sisters, you begged him to wait to do anything until you got back and could help him.

“You know you hold all my self control in your hands,” he flashed his shiny teeth at you.

“Eric, please don’t do anything that could get you hurt while I’m away.”

“You’re the one running off to battle with your flaming sword. I should be worrying about you.”

“I have years of practice on you, young vampire.” You kissed him deeply and held his chin firmly. “Don’t do anything stupid. I expect you in one piece when I return.” You gave him a final warning before taking to the skies.

You arrived back to Fangtasia 15 days later with scratches healing on your flesh and a readiness to see the love of your immortal life. The sun was just about to set when you let yourself into the bar. A couple steps in you were greeted by Pam as she came out of the office. “Y/N,” she sounded tense. “You’re back.”

“Don’t sound so excited to see me. Is Eric still in his coffin? I thought I could wait on his throne and surprise him.”

“Y/N,” she stopped you in your tracks. “Something happened when you were away.”

“He messed with the witch, didn’t he?” The look was enough to confirm your suspicion. “Good Father, Eric. I told him, I begged him, not to do that. What happened?”

“The witch got him with a spell when we went after her.”

“What spell?”

“One that’s affected his memory; only certain aspects.”

“What are you saying? He doesn’t remember who he is?”

“No, Y/N. He doesn’t remember who you are.”

“Well we can fix it. I’ll go to one of the witches I know. Or maybe once he sees me it’ll come back.”

“He’s fallen for a human, Y/N.”

“A human?”

“She came into the bar with a vampire a few days after we went for the witch. As if an angle wasn’t bad enough, he had to fall for a human. I went to the couple witches we known and they say there’s nothing they can do.”

“Is he happy? Does she make him happy?”

“He’s very enamored with her, follows her around like a lost puppy.”

“Then I want him to be happy.” You flew off quickly, before Eric was awake and before the tears could betray your touch exterior.

You kept busy after that, doing the work that needed to be done with your siblings and keeping a far eye on Eric, making sure he wasn’t getting into too much trouble.

Over a year had passed and you fought everyday to keep the pain of missing your other half out of your mind. You were living in the southern most point of California when you heard the whisper that Godric had gone missing and was rumored to have been captured by The Fellowship of the Sun.

You had heard all about Godric from Eric and had briefly crossed paths with him after the second World War, before you met Eric. He was a good man and an honorable vampire, and you couldn’t let the men and women using your Father’s name for their extreme actions do the unthinkable to him. You took off to Texas and arrived outside the compound of The Fellowship. You heard screaming coming from inside and rushed closer to the church. The pastor, Newland, was preaching to his warriors about the evil of the man you loved, his kind creator, and how evil he proclaimed every vampire to be.

Tired of hearing his ideas preached through your Father’s name you flew into the church, busting the window and letting the stain glass rain down as you stood atop the large cross. “Another creature of the night!”

You ignored the intense look coming from Eric and hovered down to the ground. “Actually,” you picked up the silver chain that laid on the ground and played with it in your hands. “I’m quite the opposite.”

“What are you heathen,” a woman screeched?

“A child of God, actually.” You made your wings visible and extended them for the humans to see.

The humans looked at you in awe. “Did you come to help us smit these devils?”

“Actually, Mr. Newman, I came to free them.” You removed the silver from Eric and Godric. “Do what you want under your own name, not my Father’s. He preaches nothing in his book about tormenting these beings.”

“They are evil,” someone shouted.

“As are humans. There are many in here with hate in their hearts; more than vampires have in theirs. We are leaving and, if you’re smart, you will disbanded your army before I come back with my kin and we set fire to the hate you do in our Father’s name.”

You stormed out of the building with Eric, Godric, and the humans they claimed to protect. One of which you knew was the woman that caught Eric’s heart.

******

You sat on the roof of Godric’s house and looked up at the stars. “I owe you my life.”

“You owe me nothing, Godric. You’re a good man.”

“Tell me this, Y/N. Why is it that my child acts as though he has no idea who you are?” You explained the situation to him and he listened intently. He stood up after a moment of pondering.

“Where are you going?”

“To find a friend.”

******

He disappeared for nearly two hours before you saw him creep back into the house. You stayed on the roof and continued to look at the cosmos.

Godric walked up to his son and handed him the small vile. “Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“Trust me, Eric. I know you’ve been feeling incomplete and this will clear things up for you. Drink it.” Eric took the cork out of the vile and gave the liquid a sniff before gulping it down. In a matter of seconds it felt like he was punched in the gut. Memories of you rushed through his head and had his temple pounding. In an instant all your years together came back to him and he felt sick knowing he had gone so long without you. Godric watched him as the memories came back. “Where is she?”

“On the roof.”

“Thank you.” He was gone in an instant and flew up to stand behind you. “You didn’t try and make me remember.”

“You didn’t wait for me to go after the witch.” You stood up to try and become even with his gaze.

“Why didn’t you come for me?”

“I did. Pam said she tried and the witches she knew couldn’t do anything. She said you were in love with the human, Sookie. I wanted you to be happy.”

“I liked the human, but I stayed in love with you. This whole time I felt like I was missing my cold heart, and now I know why.”

“Eric Northman,” you stepped closer to him. “Are you getting sappy on me?”

He grabbed you and held you tight into his chest. “It must be a side effect from potion.” You two stood there for a moment under the night sky. “Don’t ever leave me.”

[thelittlebluedruid]

I'm bored so I'm going to tell you all the story of how I got my doggo Sakimaru Miyu. (Sad)

In 2017 me, my two nephews, my sister, my mom, the two cats, our bird and my emotional support dog all moved from Denver, CO to Texas. We rented a three bedroom town house by a cemetery and life was awesome. That was until March rolled around. My emotional support dog, Remington, (who we had had for seven years, since he was almost a year old) started getting extremely sick. He couldn't keep anything down hardly and for three weeks (as he went downhill) we tried everything we knew. (I have to note here that my mother went to vet school and my sister was a very skilled vet tech at the time) The last day Remi was home I watched him run around the back while I called my (now ex) best friend and told her that I didn't think he would get better. That same night I did a rune casting, begging the gods to reveal if my beloved Remi would make it through this or not. I got two merkstave and one upright rune, which I took as a sign that he would not make it but something good would come out of the whole ordeal. I believe it was the next day that we finally took him in so the vets could find what was wrong with him. They did their tests and found out that he had pancreatitis, liver failure, and Rocky Mountain tick fever. Normally we would not put a dog or any animal through the strain and stress of surgeries to keep them alive because we know that they would suffer but we were all so attached to Remi that we had them do surgeries. A few days later I was at the park with my friends and we saw tons Monarch and yellow tiger butterflies and I saw that as a sign, I didn't know what it meant but I knew it was a sign. The next day we had to put Remington down. I have had many many animals in the past and lost all of them in some way or another and never had I ever been in so much pain. I remember sitting there with him before we had to officially put him down and a Truck went by, because we were outside, and with what little life he had left he wanted to protect us and barked at the truck. And they used barely half of the "pink liquid" before he was gone. I remember my mom had to practically drag me away from where he was laying and in a type of cliche movie moment I couldn't help myself but almost scream through my tears for Remington because I didn't want to leave him. I fell farther into my already terrible depression after I lost Remington. Never in my life had I ever not had a dog, and it was so so hard for me. It was like a piece of me was missing.

Now, from that time all the way into April we searched for a new dog who could be my ESA but nothing was working out. Finally my mom said "Hey, there's this Pyrenees not far from here and I think we should go see her." I humored my mother (not wanting such a big dog) and we went to see her. We pulled up and the guy brought her out and I was instantly in love. This dirty, fluffy, 70 pound polar bear had stolen my heart in the blink of an eye. I walked her around for a bit before we had to part ways. Mom had already payed the 40 dollars for her and we had to get our house set up for her. On the way home after meeting her my mom asked if I had any names in mind. Panicking, while watching a Yandere Sim video, I said the name of the character that was on the screen: Saki Miyu. Three days went by and it was finally time to get my new best friend. She rode in the car next to me, head on my lap the entire way to the vet where my sister was going to make sure she was all set. Inside where she was being checked there was an xray machine and they had to use it on another dog, so I had to step out for a moment. Man oh man this dog barked and she had been silent until then. She did not like me leaving her! So fast forward to when we get home. We discovered she hates smooth surfaces. Another fast forward and we got her upstairs to my room, which was carpeted, and instantly we curled up on my bed and fell asleep watching Death Note.

So yeah, that's the story of how I got my best friend Sakimaru (the Maru I tacked on bc of Akamaru from Naruto) Miyu! She's now my half-cup of ramen and my best friend. I truly believe that Remington sent us to her and I know that he's watching over us. Saki's had some big paw prints to fill and man oh man has she done well! I think Remi would be proud.