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doverly · 4 years ago

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The (Not So) Haunted Apartment

My apartment is haunted. Every tenant had complained about their food disappearing, their lights turning on during the night, and the sound of footsteps when they were home alone. It was a nice place, one bedroom with a walk-in closet, exposed brick, a skylight in the living room and even a dishwasher in the full kitchen. But no tenet had lasted longer than three months, and the landlord had to void many leases. Because of the ghost the rent was amazingly low so we were never short on tenants and a new one always moved in less than three weeks after the last one. But I couldn’t really complain about the high-turnover rate, I was living there for free after all.

When I was a baby my mom forgot to feed me a lot. She said that I didn’t cry, but the truth was that she just couldn’t hear me. They went on three vacations without me because they simply “forgot” I still have the stuffed animals they gave me as a congelation prize. By the time I was ten they had forgotten me entirely. I tried to wave my arms in the air and yell and knock things over, but they just thought it was a ghost. My parents sold the house and I didn’t try to follow them. I continued going to school, although my teachers couldn’t see me, and even moved myself up a grade. The new couple who moved into my house could afford to replace the food I took and they didn’t use my room. When I was eighteen I moved out and started sitting in on college classes, I was trying to major in sociology.

She was the fifth tenant that year and was going to the same college that I was. That was fine, her being a college student just meant that I would have to steal my own food from the supermarket instead of eating hers. I watched her unpack from the kitchen counter, and when she looked up at the skylight she made that face I knew so well. Wondering how she had gotten such a good apartment at such a good deal. The landlord told people about the ghost, but they always underestimated how creepy having another roommate they didn’t know about was.

I had to resist jumping down from the counter when I saw her putting together a pull out sofa. My sleeping bag was great, but nothing could replace the feeling of sleeping on an actual bed. Well, sort of a bed. It would be nice enough. I was just thinking about how great it would be to have a new roommate ,it felt weird to live alone, when she started unpacking something else.

A sonogram, a thermal camera, audio recorders, and an EMF meter. Top of the line ghost hunting equipment that would definitely be able to detect me. I’m very visible on cameras and I do make noise, but the reason that I was still able to live there rent free is because even though people can see and hear me, they don’t realize that I’m there. Technology can’t lie, but the human eye can be very, very mistaken. It was fun watching her set them up though, and I realized that the look in her eyes hadn’t been because she was happy about the price it was because she was happy that I was there. All of those pieces of equipment were custom painted and looked well worn. My new roommate was a ghost hunter, it seemed, and a good one at that. I had met ghost hunters before, many, many had been called on me even before I moved out of my parents house, but this was the only one that had moved in just for me. I was flattered.

I had to go shopping so I didn’t get to see her finish packing up, but I was thinking about her while I loaded potato bread and vegan salami into my cart. With her setting up that equipment I should have been extra careful, making sure that she didn’t get creeped out enough to move out like all of the others, but I couldn’t help wanting someone to notice me again. To look at me and tell me that my eyes were dark brown, something that my parents had stopped being about to do when I was seven.

When I got back to the apartment she was still awake and finishing setting up things in her bedroom. She heard the door slam shut but when she got there it was closed and she didn’t notice me putting my food away in the fridge. What she did notice was the fridge door shutting , fully stocked fridge, and the empty paper bags in the kitchen. My new roommate smiled like it was christmas morning and immediately got out her phone and dialed someone from her contacts.

“Mom?” she practically screamed into the phone, “Mom, it’s real there’s really a ghost here.”

By this point I was so close to her that if she calmed down a bit she would have feel my breath on her neck. I heard a sigh on the other end of the line and some babble that I couldn’t decipher. Her mom must have been at work or just woken up to be talking so quietly.

My roommate placed her phone on the counter and stuck her head in the refrigerator, I noticed some of her black kinky hairs got stuck on the freezer door, I would need to clean after she went to sleep.

“Potato bread, kale, mangos, frozen pineapple, baby spinach, fresh tomatoes, vegan salami,” she listed off the things I had placed in the stainless steel fridge like she was reading an acceptance letter, “VEGAN salami, mom, vegan salami! I’m not vegan, I don’t eat vegan food. Why would there be vegan food in my fridge?”

Another sigh, “You mentioned your landlord volunteers at an animal shelter. Maybe she stocked your fridge, there’s no such thing as ghosts, Kim.”

“Kimani,” she replied as a reflex.

Kimani continued arguing with her mom, trying to convince her that I existed. But eventually they both remembered that they had things to do and after an entire hour ended the call. My new roommate sat against the fridge on the kitchen floor and rubbed her temples, like just speaking to her mom had given her a headache. When I was ten I had felt a little weird eating my lunch in the classroom because my teacher couldn’t see me anymore but now I’ve gotten over my apprehensiveness. I watched Kimani wipe away tears without feeling the least bit awkward, only sympathy for her. Still sniffling she opened the fridge and took out some of my vegan salami and started munching on a slice. Once she tasted the salty mock-meat, felt it’s rubbery texture, and made sure it was real she got up and went to her bedroom.

The next day we both needed to get to classes. My routine hasn’t really changed since I was twelve years old and really accepted that no one would ever know me again. When my roommate was just out of the shower I give myself a sponge bath so they wouldn’t notice the water running, get my clothes from my hiding spot and try out a new outfit (I pretty much change out my entire wardrobe every four months, the clothes are free why not), and put on the gaudiest makeup I can think of. Before I used to hate drawing attention to myself but since no one can pay attention to me anymore I just wear whatever. And a sparkly purple eyeshadow gradient with steel gray eyeliner isn’t that gaudy, just uncommon.

While Kimani was getting dressed I packed myself a sandwich and loaded it along with my water bottle, textbooks, and laptop into my backpack. Kimani and I ate breakfast together, by which I mean I ate out of the box of frosted flakes she left on the counter. Making sure to only grab a handful when she started reading a book on exorcism that she had open on the counter. It was really funny actually, if there was anyone who had a demon inside them it was me.

I took the same bus as her onto campus and it turned out that we had the same first class. History of Psychology. Kimani was paying more attention to her exorcism book than she was to the lecture but I was religiously taking notes. College is much easier if you're actually choosing to be there. Exams are easier if you know your grades don’t matter, and getting dressed is easier if you know that no one is looking at you. My life is easy, nothing matters , but I wished that I could trade places with Kimani and face consequences for the first time in eight years.

For the first time since I started college I decided to skip my afternoon classes and follow my roommate around. She seemed to be doing well in college, happiness wise that was. Her grades seemed mostly average, except in her history classes those she was perfect in. But she waved to a lot of people on campus and ate with a big group of other students at the dining hall around lunch time. And she stayed behind to ask questions to most of her professors. Making connections, forming lasting friendships, and learning what the real world was like; Kimani was doing college perfectly.

At around the end of the day Kimani went to the library and sat at the table studying for half an hour. That seemed odd to me. Despite reading an actual physical book for most of the day she didn’t seem like someone to study at a quiet library to me. It turned out that I was right and she was just killing time. Around five, when the sun was starting to set and even the most dedicated students were starting to file out and go home when Kimani finally turned around in her seat.

I hadn’t heard it but apparently Kimani noticed the footsteps coming up behind us. Kimani, still turned around in her seat, watched as a guy walked towards us. At first he looked scarier than people thought I was but when he took down the hood on his navy and yellow school sweatshirt he was smiling excitedly. Kimani said that she had been waiting for him and that she was happy that he had come. Turns out that he would be spending the night at her place, if I had known my new roommate had a boyfriend I would have fallen asleep earlier. They left the library together and I followed behind them. I didn’t pay much attention to their conversation, instead I watched how he and Kimani acted together.

He looked to be the same age as Kimani and me, a college freshman, but he had a youthful jubilance that told me that he hadn’t gotten out of the highschool mindset yet. His skin had the natural tan of someone who played an outside sport of some kind. His hair was light brown with natural highlights and slicked back with gel, I didn’t think he was good for Kimani. She did most of the talking while they were walking to the bus stop that would take us back to the apartment, and he wasn’t even looking at her. Instead his eyes wandered to the campus, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem because it was beautiful. Native trees burning red and orange surrounded by native flowers lining every path and the occasional bench, and everything smelling lightly of coffee, rain, and overpriced textbooks.

We got to the bus stop and they both sat down while I stood up and kept watching them. Kimani drifted off while talking about what she had read in the exorcism book and finally asked what I had been curious about the entire walk there.

“What do you think?” finally asking him a question that he could only answer if he was actually listening to her, “Is Graeson or Robert’s theory more correct?”

He stroked the non-existent beard for a second before answering, I thought it was because he needed to come up with some bullshit to spew but then, “Graeson, definitely. If a ghost were to possess you it would be really hard to tell because the ghost’s spirit is influencing everything about you, even your thoughts. If you were possessed you wouldn’t be able to tell but I would because I wouldn’t be influenced by the ghost.”

They continued talking about ghosts and possession with such an authoritative tone that I thought I was in a lecture. But more importantly I realized that maybe staring off into space was his way of concentrating. The bus came and we all got on and they kept on talking about ghosts and possessions. By the time we got to our stop I wasn’t the only one on the bus staring at them. On our walk to the apartment Kimani kept talking and her boyfriend kept looking at the buildings, the sidewalk, the Subway while she talked. I wondered if she was the one who was un-noticeable and not me.

We finally got home but the boyfriend collapsed on the couch before I was able to and asked Kimani if she had gotten any food yet. She went to the kitchen to find some and I thought that even if he listened to her didn’t make him a good boyfriend. Of course since she hadn’t any real food yet, and she didn’t seem like the type to serve a guest frosted flakes, so she got him some of my canned soup. I pouted a bit when I realized that they were eating my food but that gave me license to eat some of Kimani’s food later so I didn’t try to stop them.

I had just gotten home too so I went to the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of soup too and by the time I got back to the living room they were watching an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved on Kimani’s old flatscreen tv. They were taking up the couch but that I was fine, I was used to sitting on floors. We watched and ate in silence, the sound of me slurping my soup covered up by the sound of them slurping their soup. The living room was pretty cozy with us eating in silence, the only problem with the apartment that I know of is that the heater is a little cold but Kimani had bought a little space heater so it was almost like having a fireplace in the room. Her little succulent on the scratched up wooden coffee table brightened the entire space and comforted me when the episode got too creepy. Even though I was accused of being a ghost I couldn’t really handle anything scary.

The soup was done when the show was done and that’s when the real action started. Kimani put their bowls in the skin, without rinsing them or anything, while her boyfriend checked out the equipment she had around the living room. Once I had gotten back from putting my bowl in the sink the boyfriend was setting up an ouija board on the coffee table. The stars had just become visible, although there was so much light pollution in the city it was hard to see them, and it seemed like that was their que to get started.

“Spirit, if you’re there give us a sign,” the boyfriend proclaimed. They were on the floor next to the coffee table, their hands on the little glass and wood slider that the ghost was supposed to move and I was sitting on the couch behind them.

Once a single dad had stayed in the apartment. The rent was cheap enough for him to afford while paying lawyers fees and babysitter costs on a plumbers salary. He decided to play around with an old ouija board one night with his daughter. I liked hanging out with them, and made sure that the little girl stayed out of the trouble when the babysitter took a nap. When they asked if the ghost was there I moved the marker and told them yes. Each of them thought the other one was moving it, and we had a fun time together. The little girl bragged at school about having a ghost in the apartment and the dad was just happy that his daughter was happy. They moved out once he got a raise so his little girl could have her own bedroom.

This time I didn’t move anything, just let them sit in the silence and semi-darkness waiting for nothing to happen. Kimani already set up ghost hunting equipment and I didn’t want to confirm what she already thought. I had dealt with excrosists before, watched them deprive my roommates of food to “starve out of the ghost” watched them kick my roommate out while they did nothing but shake a cross around for days to “call the holy ghost”. Once any of my roommates got the idea that there was a ghost in the apartment they either moved out or were scared to be in their own home. Kimani was already setting up ghost hunting equipment, I didn’t want her to move out. Not when she had just gotten there.

They waited an entire six minutes, the sun kept setting, the room kept getting darker.

The boyfriend started to get up, I guess he wasn’t as patient as Kimani, “There’s obviously nothing here…”

Kimani pulled him back to the floor and he landed on his butt and shook the floor, “Come on, five more minutes. The landlord swore that every other tenant said there was a ghost.”

“Did you tell her that you were in the Paranormal Investigation Club before or after she said this?”

Kimani didn’t answer for a while and I slid onto the floor. Even if he was a bad boyfriend I couldn’t let this guy disrespect my roommate like that. She wasn’t grasping for straws and the landlord hadn’t scammed her, I was there I just wasn’t a ghost.

“Just five more minutes, please?” Kimani looked at her boyfriend like she was a kicked kitten. Her dark brown eyes were big and watery and her kinky hair framed her head like a halo.

He sighed, but put his hands back on the ouija board. They asked the same question again, only this time Kimani sounded like she was begging. I moved the slider to the word yes.

The boyfriend’s eyes narrowed at Kimani, “Stop moving it.”

She didn’t seem to register that he was annoyed with her instead she said, in almost a whisper, “I’m not.”

He didn’t believe her I could tell that he was doubting her. To prove that Kimani wasn’t moving it I decided to ask a question. The ouija board that the boyfriend had brought didn’t have many pre-made answers. Just yes, no, and all the letters of the alphabet. It was going to be hard to ask a longer question, but I had to defend my roommate.

W-H-A-T I-S Y-O-U-R N-A-M-E

I had wondered if they would be able to keep up with what I was saying. But even though Kimani hadn’t been taking notes in class she seemed to be able to keep up really well. Putting together the letters and then excitingly moving to shout out her name. I already knew her name, though. What I really needed to know was what the boyfriend’s name was. Again I put my hands on the glass and wood slider and started moving it around. All the while the boyfriend looked a little bored.

N-O-T Y-O-U H-I-M

His hands had been on the slider as I was moving it around but eyes had been elsewhere. But when Kimani read out my next message he seemed to jump out of his skin. For a ghost hunter wannabe he was scared easily.

“You already know my name, Kimani,” he said, and I wondered why he was avoiding the question.

She rolled her eyes and sighed like she was babysitting toddlers, “I’m not moving it, just tell it your name.”

“Julian,” he mumbled.

Before they had moved out my parents had taught me to be polite. So even though I resented his attitude I had to say it.

T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U

Kimani and Julian waited a bit for my next question, but my hands weren’t even on the slider at that point. Instead I was cracking my knuckles and stretching my hands in preparation for my next question. A quick neck crack later I put my hands back on the slider and started to ask the big question.

H-O-W L-O-N-G H-A-V-E Y-O-U T-W-O B-E-E-N D-A-T-I-N-G

“How long...have...you two...been...d..atin…?” Kimani didn’t even get to the end of my question before both she and Julain jumped up off the floor and started arguing.

Instead of the shock that he had shown at my previous question Julain seemed angry. At Kimani. They started arguing about what I had asked while I was just trying to come up with a way to set them both straight. The gist of what they were saying was that both of them thought the other was moving the slider. But what the question meant coming from the other was different for both of them.

Kimani was close to tears, “You know that me and Ryland broke up last month, why would you say that?”

Julian rolled his eyes, “You were planning on breaking up with him anyway. And by the way I didn’t move it, you did! Do you have a crush on me or something? Just tell me if you do, and don’t get my hopes up by saying there’s a ghost here!”

“I WASN’T MOVING IT!” Kimani was raging with tears in her eyes, “You just don’t want to believe they’re a ghost here because you’re only in the club so get close to Cameron!”

By this point I was panicking, and seriously questioning my judgement. Why had I assumed that they were dating? Just because they were hanging out together at her apartment? I was berating myself trying to figure out how to restore what I had broken, I was such an idiot. My life had no meaning, but if I made a mistake I had to fix it.

S-O-R-R-Y

Both of their hands had been off the board but the slider was moving. Julian instantly looked up to the ceiling. But no clear fishing wires hung down from the vaulting ceiling, even the skylight was closed. Kimani instantly kneeled back down, her eyes glued to the board. Her hands stayed at her sides though. Julian was still looking for hidden wires while I spelled out my next message.

I D-I-D-N-T K-N-O-W

“There are no wires,” once Julian realized that he knelt down to the table to watch me write the rest of my message but he didn’t stay there for long, “You haven’t been punking me.”

I had already exposed myself so I just couldn’t resist being a little snarky.

Y-E-A-H

Even though I was being rude to him Julian smiled like it was Christmas morning. As soon as he got it through his skull that I was really there he jumped up along with Kimani and they hugged very platonically. Kimani was just exuberant but Julian was full on crying and I wondered if I shouldn’t have been so hard on him. Once the hug was over Julian raced over to the coat rack and put on his sweatshirt. Kimani barely had enough time to tell him not to leave her alone with the ghost before he was out the door. Leaving her with only a promise to return with the others...Whoever they were.

I guess living in a haunted house was more fun when there was a friend over. Kimani looked at the board and outside at the last remnants of the setting sun, instead of staying in the living room she went to the kitchen. I had wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t hurt her, but just thinking about that sentence gave me the creeps.

Instead I followed her into the kitchen and watched her use my water filter to pour herself a glass of water. It felt good to interact with her and Julian, but I hadn’t thought my first social interaction in years would be through a ouija board. When I realized that my parents were moving out I had tried everything to tell them that I existed. Writing on the walls, sending them emails, even arranging scraps of magazines on the counter to form words. But they scrubbed out my marks on the wall before reading them, their eyes told them that the emails were blank, and didn’t see any words in the scraps of paper. If I had known about ouija boards back then maybe I would have gotten one to use because even though people never notice me or my actions they always notice the ouija board.

Kimani hung out in the itchen for a while. Turning on all of the lights and staying in the exact corner of the room, so she could see everything in the kitchen. She did turn her head a lot though, just so she could see if anything had emerged from the counter behind her. Once Kimani was sure that she would be able to see any ghosts that came into the room she waited, and I waited too sitting on the counter right next to her.

We had been waiting for a while, Kimani playing a little game on her phone and me looking at her screen over her shoulder, when Kimani got a text. I only go to see the ID, Just the J, I wonder who that could have been, before Kimani opened her phone and turned away from me to read it. It was such a deliberate turn that I wondered if she sensed that I was looking over her shoulder, but that wasn’t the case. As soon as she read the text she turned back towards me with a face that told me all that I needed to know about the text. They weren’t coming. But her eyes still had some hope in them, so there must have been a promise of coming see the ghost on some later date. Promises could be broken though, after all my parents told me that they would never leave me.

Once my roommate knew that there would be no more guests over that night she yawned. Communicating with me was tiring I guess, or maybe it was all of the yelling. Either way without bothering to clean up with ouija board Kimani changed into her pajamas, I didn’t watch that part, and went to bed. Even though I can’t communicate with anyone through technology either I had a smartphone, and I tended to read comics before bed. Kimani woke up once while I was scrolling but her mind told her that the weak light of my phone were just moonbeams and she headed back to sleep without any trouble.

The next day I think Kimani dressed up a little. Her normal attire seemed to be jeans and a t-shirt, and a jacket of course because it was getting cold. But that day she wore tights with a long knitted cardigan and a jean skirt. She was planning to go and talk to her paranormal club so I assumed that she wanted to impress them, but I had to wonder if there was someone at the club that she had a crush on. That didn’t seem right though, she didn’t sound mad or incredulously enough at the prospect of her dating Julian to have a crush on someone else.

I didn’t have time to follow my roommate around campus that day, but I made sure to check out where the paranormal club was located. Just in case I had some time after my classes.

In most of my lectures it didn’t make much of a difference that I wasn’t noticeable. The professor just talked and me and everyone else in the lecture room just listened. But in symposiums where it was a small group and we were supposed to be asking questions or in labs when we were supposed to be interacting or with partner work I knew I wasn’t getting the education that I wasn’t paying for. I still went though, because knowing what I was missing was better than blissful ignorance.

That day our classroom style lesson was going amazing. Lots of discussion that I wasn’t a part of and amazing participation. We were discussing the first DSM and debating the merits of the DSM in general and I wanted to know what the professor thought about it. He had been alive and practicing when it was published and I needed to know how it had affected his practice. There was no way I would be able to do it, no way they would be able to hear me but I tried anyway.

“HOW DID IT’S PUBLICATION AFFECT YOUR PRACTICE?” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The person in front of me turned around, probably because they felt the air of my screams on the back of their neck but no one noticed the actual noise. But again I screamed, and again and again and again. Stopping only to listen in on any great discussion I heard. At a couple of points the professor came close to answering my question, but he stopped short. I knew it was because he was baiting the other students to ask it. But none of them did, they were so focused on their own discussion and opinion that they barely noticed him. I wondered how they would ever become effective psychologists if they couldn’t notice the people right in front of them. The hour and a half finished without me getting an answer to my question.

It was a warmer day than the previous one so I decided to eat outside. I never ate in the cafeteria anyways, being unnoticed in such a packed place was like a curse on my mental health. Normally I ate on the floor in my next class or ate in one of the many, many cafes on campus, but that day after looking at the weather I decided to do something different.

I laid out the blanket that I had brought right in the middle of one of the busiest paths on campus. Took out my sandwich, my water bottle, and the other snacks I had brought and had a picnic. Right in the middle of the path. Those are the experiences that made me think that people had been pranking me for eight years. I was unnoticed, but still somehow everyone stepped around me. Their eyes slid off of me and my blanket but they still walked on the grass next to me instead of just running over me or my neon yellow blanket.

And I watched and waited but no one’s eyes lingered on me and no one ever stepped a centimeter over my blanket. That was how my state worked. I was there and on some level people knew I was there. When I stood in place people went around me, when I wrote on the wall they scrubbed it out, but they couldn’t really understand why. As my picnic went on people kept routing around me and my blanket and I kept watching them. I had a smartphone that worked and I had Youtube videos that I could have been watching, but I had found in my eighteen years that real, live people provided the best entertainment.

For the second day in a row Kimani and I rode the same bus home, though I almost missed her. It seemed that her classes finished for the day earlier than mine did so by the time I finished lunch and my next lecture Kimani was already done meeting with her paranormal club and was waiting at the bus stop with a group of five people that included Julian. I had to run to make sure I was on the same bus with them, but the exertion was worth it. The talk in the bus was very lively and it continued way too loudly for the entire twenty minute ride to our apartment.

Everyone was excited to see the ghost but some were more Kimani excited and others had more Julian levels of scepticism. In between the thoughts of what questions to ask on the ouija board were questions of what equipment Kimani had set up in her apartment and if they had actually checked the readings from the previous night. But even if they were sceptical of the ghost everyone on the bus was excited to go to Kimani’s new place, well everyone except the people just trying to go home and were stuck listening to a bunch of college students talk about ghosts like it was an election.

They all got off at the same stop and we walked together, it was really nice being part of a group for once. Even though I hated being unnoticed in big groups especially, just walking quietly with the paranormal club was nice. There were a few people talking sure, but most of everyone was just like me. Walking quietly in the back just trying to get to our destination. It was like hanging out with friends for the first time in a while.

Even though I didn’t want to give them more proof of my existence I didn’t want a repeat of the previous night. Kimani needed her friends to believe that she lived in a haunted house so I was going to help her. I ran ahead and managed to catch the elevator before they were even in the building. Once I was up to the top floor I used my key to open the door and leave it slightly ajar. I was waiting just inside the door for them to come in, but I thought the open door would give everyone a slightly spooky vibe. Robberies aren’t that common in our city so I was crossing my fingers that they wouldn’t call the cops for a suspected break in.

I got to let out the breath I had been holding once they got in. A couple of whispers about how Kimani definitely had locked the door before she left, and a few seconds of silence listening for a burglar. Once they were sure that there was no one in the apartment they went in to find the lights off, but they flicked the switch they saw it. Kimani had packed up Julian’s ouija board the night before but I had just enough time to unpack it, and put it right on top of the box, the wood slider already on YES right in front of the welcome mat. Their smiles were like toddlers on christmas day, although I think they would have liked Halloween better.

Kimani didn’t have to explain herself or convince the other club members that there was really a ghost in her apartment so they got an early start to all of it. And what a start it was. It was like a swarm of bees. Everyone was everywhere doing something. A guy with a henna tattoo on his forearm was checking the food I had brought from Whole Foods with some kind of black light, trying to look for ghostly residue or something. There were fingerprints on the food, but even though his eyes saw it his brain didn’t register it. A girl with amazingly dyed hair was up on a step ladder checking the cameras and sensors that Kimani had mounted everything, making sure they were functional I guess. Kimani was looking at Julain’s ouija board and Julian was checking for wires in the ceiling and conspicuously open windows. A lanky guy with big glasses was going room to room, supervising I guess.

It seemed like the sun had to go down before they started on anything concrete so they had some time to kill. The girl with the purple dyed hair swung her blacklight along every surface in the apartment, and the tattooed guy even had some time to make sure the thermal goggles they had brought were working. And after all that it was still light outside so they put something on Hulu, Kimani excitedly said that she had a student package, and ordered some pizza.

Twenty minutes later two pizzas were delivered and we all dug in. Luckily there was no meat on any of the pizzas so I got to eat as well. They were so focused on their show that they didn’t even notice extra slices going missing. But by the end of it the could tell that something was off. The sun was down at that point so they turned off the lights and Kimani and the guy with the henna tattoos put on the thermal goggles and Julain and the girl with dyed hair were continuously checking the cameras and sensors.

I wasn’t worried. Even with the thermal cameras and sensors their brains still couldn’t register me being there. They could see me but they couldn't really register me being there. It was the most fun ghost hunt I had ever been a part of though. Normally it was some old priest or shady exorcist closing their eyes and “listening to the ether” or something like that. But this was different, they were walking around looking at things in the dark sure, but they were also talking, laughing, joking. It was a bunch of friends hanging out first and a ghost hunt second.

Even though they didn’t notice me there I couldn’t let them find nothing. I had helped Kimani out so far and I couldn’t just stop when I was already in so deep. So every couple of minutes, when the hunt was getting boring and Julian suggested the theory of wires in the ceiling again I did something noticeably ghostly. Throwing up a few pieces of paper, knocking on the underside of the pull out couch, and just generally being a very good pretend ghost.

They looked until the early rays of the morning, but they didn’t find anything other than a few pieces of tissue paper and the occasional knocking on the walls.

“So now do you guys believe me?” Kimani asked at the end of the night when her friends were about to go back to their own beds.

The purple headed girl who I now knew was named Taylor laughed a bit, “Yeah you definitely have some sort of ghost in here. But it seems pretty benign.”

“Benign? It was banging on the couch!” said the guy with the henna tattoos, who I had learned was named Cameron.

Taylor stood her ground, “Yeah but it didn’t really hurt or anything. And those tissues made me think that it was messing with us.”

Kimani laughed nervously, “I really hope that it’s just messing with us. I mean I have to live with it after all.”

They discontinued the ghost talk after that but with promises to look up ghost repellent or something that would keep me away from her while she was sleeping. It was an empty promise though. Since they didn’t have to live in the haunted house, I could tell they weren’t going to put their full attention to it. Kimani seemed optimistic though so I wondered if my intuition was wrong again, maybe her friends were that good of people. I wasn’t the one who really knew them after all

But once the door closed and their sound of the footsteps faded down the hallway Kimani looked up at the early sunlight filtering through the skylight. She seemed small in that big space. I sat down on the couch while Kimani went into the kitchen. When she came back she had a glass of light red colored liquid that was slightly bubbly that I was sure had some alcohol in it.

Kimnai sank into the couch next to me and took a sip. And maybe she was tired or maybe the alcohol just affected her that fast but a few minutes into nursing her drink she put the glass on the table and spoke.

“You want some Casper?” she half said, half yelled out into the room, gesturing to the glass, “It’s CranGrape juice, club soda, and vodka.”

I picked up the glass and took a swig, Kimani’s eyes didn’t leave the spot where she had put the glass down originally but her dark brown eyes glazed over and she seemed to pause. Between the carbonation and the vodka the cocktail went down rough, but it was actually pretty good. Once I had taken my drink I put the glass back down on the coffee table and Kimani resumed blinking. To her it must have seemed like the glass had magically lowered in volume, because she couldn’t notice me drinking it. But she smiled nonetheless and raised the glass in a toast to us.

I hope you guys like it (honestly, I’ve started and abandoned three short stories since the last one) it’s not my best but at least I had fun writing it. Have an amazing beginning of September and hang in there until Halloween.

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fluffrry · 5 years ago

Text

Let Me Make It Better//H.S Imagine//

Requested by @punekar-jenner, thanks for sending this in xx

Could you do a Harry Styles imagine where Harry has been missing a lot of dates and has been ignoring YN and she's really hurt? But then Harry finally realises his fault and makes it up to her by taking her shopping and treating her to fancy dates everyday? Thanks a lot! 😇

If you enjoy this please give it a reblog and send some feedback to my messages or ask box. It brings me joy and helps me more than you know.

----------

It was a nice breezy day, the wind pushing the rain to beat against Harry’s window. These were the days Harry most liked to write songs. He’d spend the morning watching movies, usually romantic comedies, and then use the rest of the day to write songs and plan melodies in his music room. You were usually there to see this process, bringing him snacks and making sure he eats his lunch on time. Telling him what tunes you like and which ones you think don’t fit the lyrics. Always quiet so he could write, but a huge support system for him regardless.

But today you just weren’t there. In fact, Harry had forgotten to invite you at all.

You’d be calling him for the past few weeks to plan dates and even vent out your feelings, but it was always ‘Sorry, you know I’m busy on this next album, love’, or he just wouldn’t show up at all. That hurt the most because it took a lot to get ready for a date with someone you love so much. You hadn’t felt his warm cuddles in a long time, heard his voice quietly singing along to guitar melodies. You’d forgotten what his warmth and love felt like.

Due to your closed off nature, you never really told Harry right away when he upset you. He knew what he was doing right now was hurting you, but he figured you’d be okay with it. He wasn’t in the correct frame of mind. Instead of feeling full of emotion when he was writing, he felt stress and upset that he couldn’t get a word out.

Harry’s phone buzzed on the desk in front of him, covered with sheets of lyrics and pens out of ink. He looked up from the guitar to see it was you. He was hoping after the first two times he’d ignored it you’d understand he was busy today.

“Yes?” He said sharply into the phone.

A moment passed between words, and Harry could hear your shaky breathing, “Hi, H.”

“Hi. What is it you need?”

“I just needed by boyfriend, Harry. Is that not enough? I can’t just call to see how you’re doing?” You were already pissed and emotional when you dialed the phone, so your mouth was just saying everything you’d been feeling.

“Woah, woah, sweetie. What’s wrong? I never said you couldn’t call me.”

Harry could hear a sniff through his speaker, “Yeah but you’ve been ignoring me, haven’t you?”

“No, why-“

“…Do you have any idea how it feels to sit at a bar by yourself, expecting to see your boyfriend come sit any second, and have him not show up? Or how it makes me feel when you ignore my texts and calls like I’m some…I don’t know…annoyance to you?”

“Honey, of course I don’t-“

“…If you didn’t want to be with me I would have preferred to just be told that, because I promise you Harry that I will not be sitting at a picnic table watching the food that I made for you spoil again. I just won’t. I’ve been needing you and you haven’t been here.” Tears had started to fall down your face by now, making marks on your pajama covered legs. Your sniffs became more frequent and your voice unstable.

“Y/N you have to li-“

“You aren’t with someone else…are you? Is that what this is?” You wiped you hand across your wet cheek.

Harry simply hadn’t realized how much he’d been hurting you. He somehow thought that all of it was necessary to write music, and that you’d get it when he didn’t show up or ignored a call. Hearing you speak he knew he was very, very wrong. He wasn’t even aware you liked him that much.

“What?! Of course not, Y/N. Please listen to me, okay? I’ve been under a lot of pressure with this music thing and I’ve just been trying to finish in time. I haven’t left the house in days. I wasn’t thinking about you when I should have been, and I’m sorry. I promise it wasn’t because I don’t love you, and I’ll do everything in my power to make it up to you.

“So now you’re making promises?”

“Yes, I am. Please stop crying, love. It upsets me more than you know that I did this to you. I understand if you’re angry, but please let me make it better.”

“Umm.”

Harry waited a few seconds before adding a, “Please?”

“Okay. You’ve got one chance.”

----------

You’d never been to this mall before. It was gigantic to say the least, and far in distance from your small apartment. There were chandeliers looming over every walkway and decorated pillars beside every store. The smoothie carts reeked of expensive energy smoothies and kale.

Harry had come to your door with flowers and a blanket, apologizing once more and telling you he had somewhere to take you.

“A date?” You had asked, to which you got a cheeky smile in response. You later realized the blanket he was carrying was meant to be paired with a pillow in the car. Both brought to help with the long ride.

Harry held your hand to lead you down the wide hallways. It was nice to feel his large hands swallow yours, the coolness of his rings shocking you for a moment.

“You’ve been here before, Harry?” You inquired, large eyes settling on his face.

“Yes, I have actually. Do you see a store you want to visit?”

“I don’t have money for this, H. This was a nice idea, but you know I have rent in a few days.”

“I’ll be paying, petal. Get whatever you like.”

After that you’d found yourself traveling from store to store, trying on clothing and gazing at beautiful earrings. You must have spent an hour spraying fragrance on testers and smelling them for worthiness. Arguing with Harry over money had proved to be useless. He was very dedicated to making what he’d put you through better.

“Do you like it, babe?” You asked, smoothing out the sides of the dress.

“Yes,” Harry smiled, “You look stunning in red.”

“It’s kind of expensive, though. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“Please don’t worry about that right now. You’re always worth it.”

After your little trip to the mall, Harry had been taking you on dates faster than you could recover. He decided to remake the picnic date you had planned before. This included remaking the food and finding a perfectly shaded tree. He watched you blush as you read the little notes he’d put on the food. They were mostly corny jokes; Why couldn’t the sesame seed leave the gambling casino? Because he was on a roll!

Harry also invited you over for a proper sleepover. Movies, snacks, and a makeshift fort crafted to the best of your boyfriend’s ability. He cuddled you and giggled at your comments throughout the movies (“How does he run so fast when he’s wet? Wouldn’t he be slipping?”).

Another day he decided to take you out to dinner, assuring it was a day you’d worked late and felt like being cooked for. He got a lovely table that was hidden up some stairs and situated on a patio. It had tall, carved candles and napkins so soft you wanted to rub them on your cheek. The restaurant was fancy but had a very café type smell. It was a mixture of coffee and freshly made smores. It made you feel comfortable and at home. Harry suggested things on the menu through some prescription glasses. He looked so cute like this, calm, loving, and all around himself.

To top it off Harry asked you to accompany him to a writing session. You fell asleep about halfway through. The smooth guitar accompanied with his soft voice sent you right into a dream. Once he noticed you were resting, he placed a blanket over you and his writing couch. He touched your shoulder and put a soft kiss on your cheek.

Maybe next time he could take you to a pet store, he knew how much you wanted a cat. He felt so much love in his heart for you right then that couldn’t help but pour all of it into a song. If he was honest, you were the reason he did all of this anyway.

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to leave some feedback.

#harry styles #harry styles imagines #harry styles one shots #harry styles one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurbs #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #one direction #one direction imagines #one direction fanfiction #harry styles fanfiction #one direction one shots #harry styles x y/n

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elisaphoenix13 · 5 years ago

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Godmarked

Scott was out of town for the weekend, so Quill had the bed to himself. It never felt right to feel the other side of the bed as cold as it was when he was home. In the past, he loved having the bed on his ship to himself and always laid right in the middle of it, but after meeting Scott that changed. It changed the moment they started to share a bed. Quill had to keep to one side and that habit stuck with him even while he was out in space. The coldness of the bed on his ship didn't nearly feel as wrong as it did than his home one did because Scott never came to space with him. Scott has been in the ship's bed but it was always when the Milano was in the tower's hangar or Quill flew the ship around Earth.

The celestial never truly slept when he was home and Scott's side of the bed was cold and empty. One of the two people he promised to protect was not in reach and it bothered him. Of course he knew Scott was capable of taking care of himself, but Quill already almost lost him once, and another time he should have escorted him. Scott wouldn't have more scars on his right wrist if he did. Quill definitely blamed himself for that incident with the hunter, but he didn't say anything to Scott because he knew the younger man would say that it wasn't his fault. He was there to protect him from further harm...blah blah blah.

The bedroom door clicks open and the pirate listens as feet quietly shuffle over to the bed and a hand reaches out to shake his shoulder. He grunts in response and finally blinks his eyes open to find Cassie standing by his side of the bed.

"Wha's wrong baby girl?" Quill asks sleepily.

"I...um...I had a nightmare and I couldn't go back to sleep. Can I stay in here with you?" Cassie whispers shyly.

"Yeah...yeah...course...c'mon."

After the incident when Diana turned he and Scott into animals and Scott almost being killed by a poacher, Quill rearranged their bedroom so that their bed was shoved into one corner, away from the door and the windows. Scott was a little miffed with the Celestial's overprotectiveness but didn't bother arguing, and Quill had taken the side closest to said door and windows. If anyone wanted to get to Scott, they would have to get through Quill first, and if Cassie needed help he would be out the door in no time.

Quill buries his face back into his pillow as his daughter climbs over his back to get into the bed, and his protective side calms a little. At least one of the ones under his protection was right here with him...he wouldn't need to race out of the bedroom. Diana and Valerie had their brothers and parents, but Cassie (and Scott) just had him. Sure, they had the Avengers as well to go to for help, but this was his family and he had an obligation and want to protect them.

"Good night Papa." Cassie says after she curls up under the blankets.

"Night Sunshine."

He slept a little better once he used his Gaze one last time to check on Scott (who was sleeping peacefully in his hotel room), only woke once to find that Cassie had curled closer to him at one point in her sleep, and then slept on until morning. When he woke again, Cassie was gone and the quick look in at Scott found the younger man bored out of his mind. Quill didn't know where he was, but didn't bother trying to figure it out since Scott wasn't in any danger. The smell of breakfast was distracting him anyway.

Quill gets out of bed and leaves the bedroom to walk down the stairs and join Cassie in the kitchen, snagging the toast that just popped up from the toaster. He butters the toasted bread and bites into it as he sits at the counter with a grin.

"You spoil me."

Cassie snorts. "I have to or you'd probably blow up the tower, and since Dad isn't here…"

"Sex deprivation can be deadly you know."

"Eww." Cassie scrunches her nose and points toward omelet fixings. "That's what you have to choose from."

Quill frowns. "Slim pickings."

"We can always go grocery shopping today."

"There's no bacon?! We might have to. I'll brave it." The celestial looks up at the ceiling. "We can always ask-"

"Already did. Mom said Harley and Tony ate all of their bacon and he has to go grocery shopping too." Cassie interrupts and Quill looks back down at her with a raised brow.

"Why don't you just go with Stephen then? Don't drag me to that hellhole."

"You need to get used to it."

Quill snorts. "There is no getting used to the grocery store when new things keep popping up...and who's the adult here?"

"Sometimes I wonder." Cassie snarks.

"Very funny. Don't sass me or I'll ground you."

"Not if you want an omelet!" She responds in a sing-songy voice.

Quill chuckles in response and pushes the fixings he wants toward Cassie and watches her make him a couple of omelets. He was so grateful that she liked cooking and was willing to make him breakfast. What she didn't know was that Bucky, Wanda, and Stephen were giving him lessons when they had free time...and Tony had been giving him different lessons. How to speak and understand French without the use of his translator. It was always turned off when he was down in the lab with the billionaire, and Quill was at the point where he could understand the language perfectly and could hold a conversation with only a few slip ups. The French was for Scott though (although it was nice to pick up Terran languages; he was already picking up Italian with how often Tony spoke it) to see if the younger would swoon if he used it like Tony used foreign languages with Stephen.

He was actually planning on testing that when Scott got home.

The cooking? He could do that safely and well now too. Quill just wanted to wait when both Scott and Cassie went out for the day or whatever and make dinner. He was looking forward to the surprised looks that would be on their faces. They would be skeptical at first he was sure, but he would blow their minds in the end.

"Hey hey hey!" Quill reaches out and grabs Cassie's wrist to stop her from sneaking in what he recognized as kale. "Don't put that garbage in my omelet!"

The girl huffs. "You need a green vegetable!"

"I'm the adult! If I don't want-" Quill stops when Cassie gives him a scathing look. "Look...there's some spinach. Put that in instead." He relents.

Cassie just had his health in mind and he couldn't be angry about that. It didn't matter if he was a god...and although he would never admit it out loud, he did feel a lot better after moving in with Scott and Cassie. She always made sure he ate at least one healthy thing in each meal and annoyingly monitored his Skittles intake. She did it to Scott too, so the couple always ate what they could when Cassie wasn't home. It made them feel like little kids.

After breakfast, Quill washed the dishes and then opened the fridge and grinned when he saw a can of whipped cream sitting innocently in the door. He grabs it, closes the door, and shakes it before spraying some of the whipped cream into his mouth. It didn't take long for Cassie to jump onto his back and try to take the can from him.

"Lemme have some!"

"No! You made me eat a vegetable!" Quill jokes as Cassie continues to reach past his head.

"You're still alive!" She argues.

"I can feel it poisoning me!"

"You're a big baby! That makes me the adult so give me the whipped cream!"

"Nope!"

Quill reaches back to try and pry the teenager off of his back, and they both freeze and look toward the elevator when it opens and a couple the celestial doesn't recognize step off. The pirate growls and just before his powers start to come to the surface, Cassie pats his shoulder.

"It's okay. That's my mom and stepdad." She says as she jumps off Quill's back.

Maggie and Paxton. Shit. Scott was planning on introducing Quill to them since they eloped, they've both been so busy lately that neither had the time. Scott didn't even get the chance to tell Cassie's mother that he was dating, let alone married again. Quill was a complete stranger.

"We were in town and thought we would stop by to say hi." Maggie says to Cassie when she approaches her mother. "Where's your dad?"

"Business trip." Cassie says and Quill winces when Paxton frowns.

"He left you here alone?" He asks.

"Of course not! Quill is here and so is the rest of the team."

Quill figured that was probably the best time to introduce himself so he stepped forward and held out his hand.

"Peter Quill."

Maggie stares at him while Paxton takes his hand and shakes it. "Oh my god you're huge." She immediately smacks her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that out loud." She shakes his hand with a blush but then turns his hand when she notices the ring on his finger. "You're married? Who's the lucky lady?"

Quill smirks. "Guy actually. I'll let you guys catch up."

Cassie rolls her eyes when Maggie touches Quill's arm with a silent 'wow', and drags her and her stepfather into the living room before Paxton can get jealous. Quill took to sitting around in the kitchen and playing on his phone while he ate whipped cream, and heard Cassie telling her other parents all about Quill. Except for the part that he was married to Scott. She knew that wasn't really her place to tell them and the pirate appreciated it. She did tell them he was a god though. Considering what the Avengers were made up of, they weren't the least bit skeptical.

A little more than an hour passed when the elevator opened again and Scott stepped off, dropping his bag off to the side and making a beeline for Quill. The celestial was barely out of his seat when the younger jumped into his arms and started a very nice but rather awkward makeout session. Awkward because Quill knew Maggie was in the other room.

"You have no idea how cold hotel beds are when you aren't in them with me."

Quill chuckles. "Probably just as cold as our bed when you aren't here."

He kneads Scott's ass with his hands and the younger moans quietly into his mouth until Quill suddenly releases him back down to his feet. The younger whined quietly but refused to keep his mouth off of his celestial husband...until Maggie cleared her throat. Quill keeps himself from laughing when Scott's eyes widen, and the younger slowly pulls away from his husband to face his ex-wife. She and Paxton were standing in the entryway looking surprised, and Cassie...she just looked amused.

"This was not how I wanted to tell you." Scott finally says after a few silent, tense moments.

"...I think I can let it slide. Cassie has told me all about him in the past hour and I believe she's completely safe with him. You wouldn't leave her with him otherwise." Maggie says. "Also, Mom number two wouldn't let him near her either. God or not."

That was true. Maggie knew Stephen and trusted his judgement. She trusted Scott's too when it came to Cassie because his daughter meant everything to him. It was still nice to know that Maggie trusted Quill to take care of Cassie. He was already doing it and Cassie even told her mother that. Scott did too when he sat down with them in the living room to properly catch them up on what was going on and his relationship with Quill. The celestial sat with them and was content to listen, but when Paxton pointed out Scott's scars, Quill clenched his fist and left the living room. He couldn't bring himself to look at the doubt in Maggie and Paxton's eyes when they found out how Scott go them. It was possible they wouldn't trust Quill with Cassie as much if he couldn't do something as simple as protect Scott.

He didn't even realize that he stayed quiet for the rest of the day. Quill kept to himself and zoned out during their conversations, and at dinner, Scott had to nudge him to get his attention. Apparently Paxton had asked him some sort of question that he missed entirely. It was a question that he could give a simple one word answer, but based on the other man's expression, he had been hoping for more. After dinner, the other four decided to watch a movie, but Quill excused himself for the night and went up to the bedroom. Maggie and her husband would be staying in the guest room before they continued traveling, so Quill wasn't worried about their accommodations or being an even worse host.

He didn't go to bed though. He alternated between prowling the bedroom and standing at the windows looking out across the city lighting up the dark of night. Quill eventually stopped at the windows and stood there for a long time as he got lost in thought. He didn't want to be the reason Cassie was taken from Scott. From him. She was as much his daughter as she was to Scott, Paxton, and Maggie.

The celestial fiddles with one of his space tools as he looks out the window, and almost jumped out of his skin when a hand touches and trails up his back. Quill looks down as Scott walks around to his front and wraps his arms around the god's shoulders and buries his face into his collarbone.

"What's going on Spaceman? You were weirdly quiet today." Scott mumbles.

"...they saw your scars."

To the younger's credit, he seemed to pick up on Quill's train of thought. "They're not going to take Cassie away. I told them neither time was your fault but you were there in the end."

Quill reaches up to grab Scott's right arm and pull it away from his shoulders to look at the scars on that wrist. "This is my fault."

Scott sighs and follows his gaze to his wrist. "No it is not...I won't have this argument with you whenever I get hurt. What's important is that I'm still standing here. Both times I could have been dead. Once by sickness, and the other by a bullet...but you prevented it both times."

"Barely." Quill presses a soft kiss to Scott's damaged wrist. "I can't lose you Sugar...I literally cannot handle losing one more person."

Scott nodded against his collarbone, but Quill refused to elaborate any further. He never told the younger about the first time Scott was taken. He saw red when the Avengers told Quill that Scott was missing for three weeks, and he was incredibly close to losing control when he found the younger thief hurt, sick, and dying. No one told Scott that he temporarily stopped breathing and Quill went berserk when they thought him dead.

Even now, after gaining more control over his powers, there was a very real chance that if Scott were to die, Quill would permanently lose control of himself and his powers. Not even Cassie or the younger girls would be able to calm him down.

He could cause global destruction.

"Maggie is jealous by the way."

Quill blinks and focuses back down at Scott to find an impish smile on his face. "Jealous? About what?"

"That my husband is…" Scott pulls away just enough to drop his hands from Quill's shoulders and trace the muscles straining against the older man's shirt. "...big and muscly. Her words. Not mine."

"I've heard you say something similar while drunk off your ass."

"I never said she was wrong."

Quill smiles and lifts Scott up by the back of his thighs, walking to the side just a few inches to press the younger's back against the nearest wall. A pleased growl escapes the older man when Scott reaches up to run his hands through Quill's hair, and the celestial gently noses at the scars on the younger thief's neck. It was a way to test the sensitivity without hurting him, and if he didn't flinch, that was the god's all clear.

"She also noticed that I look a little younger." Scott moans out quietly when Quill nibbled gently on unblemished parts of his neck. "I told her why."

"You're due for another dose my little fox." Quill rumbles and Scott shivers at the godly undertone.

"You make me sound like an addict."

"I know I am." Quill glances at the floor to ceiling windows out of the corner of his eye. "Want to test the durability of the windows?"

Scott's eyes widen as his hands and legs cling tighter to the celestial. "Not with your strength!"

Quill chuckles as he moves away from the wall and toward their bed. Maybe next time. Right now, he was going to give his lover a proper welcome home. Complete with love bites, bruises, and maybe even a limp...definitely a limp.

He was just glad his bed wasn't devoid of Scott anymore.

#antlord #scott lang #peter quill #cassie lang #celestial quill #celestialfamily #maggie lang #jim paxton #mama bear au

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prorevenge · 6 years ago

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Nervous about sharing this one.

I used to be a butcher/meat cutter. I was trained at a small mom and pop shop on how to be an actual butcher, rather than just a meat cutter. I loved the career. Of course, if you intend on even getting close to a decent salary you have to take your skills to a grocery store and work your way up the chain, or start your own successful business.I got a job at a chain supermarket and worked there for several years until I was offered the chance to run my own department. The hitch was they wouldn’t bump my salary up for the promotion. So I didn’t complain, I moved on to another supermarket. This one was fancy, and had a real good reputation for being a nice chain.

At this point I want to let you know that I intend to keep this somewhat anonymous, most of the naming and shaming has already been done and this is five years in the past.

This new supermarket only had five stores in my area, I worked at three of them during the three years I was there. I didn’t have any real issues with this place until I was offered a promotion.Something you may need to understand is that each store had a meat department, each meat department had a handful of meat cutters, an assistant manager and a manager. Above the department manager, you had the store management, but you also had a district meat supervisor. This guys job was to go to each store every few weeks and see how things are going, and get with the department manager to work on sales and waste. Stuff like that.

Due to our particular district only having five markets, our supervisor was also the manager of one of these markets. Let’s call it store ‘C.’ When I was hired on, I began working at store ‘A.’ I bought a new house a little outside of town and moved to store ‘B’ so that I would have a closer drive. I liked every one I worked with at both stores. I even liked the district supervisor who i’ll call ‘DS.’ He was extremely friendly and outgoing. DS got a promotion which required him to move to another state and become that areas full time District Supervisor. He took it, and his assistant manager at market C, got a promotion to become the manager of that market. I was offered a promotion to assistant, but I would have to transfer from market B to market C. So I did.

Market C was a store that I had not been in yet and my first week there was pretty strange. The new manager was on vacation, and I found out that this particular market would have two assistant managers: me and another guy who I was ill call ‘AM.’ Besides me and ‘AM’ there were three other meat cutters. My initial impressions of the place were that it was the dirtiest meat market I had been in. You could smell our seafood case when you walked in the front door. The coolers were covered in old blood, and they had out of date products stacked all over the place.

Now, I’m not usually an asshole, so I decided to wait until the manager came back from vacation and see how things go from there, because I may be seeing the results of a messy transition, and it might not be representative of how the market is usually run. When the market manager came back, he asked me what I thought of the place, I told him that I honestly thought it looked dirty and that aside from the cases needing cleaning, some of the cutters were putting spoiled seafood in the cases, and slimy tenderloins in the display cases. He seemed disappointed, but I wasn’t sure if it was my opinion he didn’t like or the state of things while he was away.

He had warned me about the other assistant manager, AM, and told me that AM was a troublemaker, that the former manager, DS had told MM that AM was out to get him. Now MM was looking for reasons to fire AM. (are you still following? lol) I told him that I would keep that in mind. The manager closed with me a few days and wanted to show me his methods of closing down the market for the night. Which I thought was weird because I had years of experience doing this, but I’m not going to turn down a helping hand. MM’s method of cleaning the machinery was to use no soap, no sanitizer, just degreaser and water. Which is disgusting.

I was also shown his method for accounting for waste. This company had a really good management information system, which gave a manager all the tools they need in order to plan for sales and reduce waste. The only requirement was that you fed it the proper information. Proper procedure was to scan out waste at the end of the night. This way you can keep track of what wasn’t selling, or what you may be producing too much of. MM on the other hand didn’t scan out anything. He threw it away, and made up numbers to input manually into the system. It doesn’t make sense, but then he was able to fudge the numbers on the monthly inventory to make them look acceptable.Why? Out of all of this, this is one of the things I understood the least. It is so easy to do it properly. I do know one thing, he was taught this by our former District supervisor, DS. He told me as much.

I felt I was in a real bad position. I didn’t want to be the guy who just got here and stirred up shit left and right. And I had also just bought a house and had a two year old at home, with another one on the way. I felt like, I might actually be able to change the culture of this market a bit and get people to start doing things they way they should be not. Not just my way, but the way the law and the company require us to do the job.

Months go by and I didn’t make much headway. Weeks and weeks of the manager shitting on the other Assistant, or ignoring him completely in order to give me more responsibility. One day AM blows up on me. So we have a talk that night and I ask him what was going on and he said, he felt our manager was cutting him out, in favor of me. I told him that I had noticed it too, and asked him what was up between the two of them, and he tells me his story.

He began working at that market about a year before me, under DS. MM, our current manager was his “Co-assistant.” AM’s first week there was similar to mine, he saw how dirty the place was and also closed the market down with MM and realized that he wasn’t using any soap or chemicals. He told me some other stuff, like seeing him mis-weighing roasts (by stacking rolls of stickers on the scale along with the meat.) So AM went and told the Manager at the time. DS. He told me that after that, they had it out for him.

Of course, I had heard the other side of this story from MM, and now it all made sense. My co-assistant, saw many of the same problems I did and thought that DS would care. Instead DS told MM to watch his back and they tried poisoning most of the store against him.

For my part in this, I still kept to my goal of straightening out some of this mess. I would ask my cutters to do their job and get on a weekly schedule of looking for product going out of date and mark it down a few days in advance, I eventually found out that MM had told them they didn’t have to listen to me because I was just an assistant manager.

I began scanning out waste like we were supposed to, but I would come in from my off days and fin a shopping cart of waste rolled back into the cooler. Which MM would separate into prepackaged items that he would just toss, and meat we cut there, which he would keep in the cooler.

Seafood was a whole other problem. We would get cases of fish in, unwrapped and the case of unwrapped fresh fish would usually have the sell by date on it. They would never keep this information, like other stores, and would throw the dates away, and put those fish in the case until they were disintegrating.On days I had to set up the case, I would do it properly. If it looked bad I would print up a ticket scan it out and throw it away. I told MM that the fish wasn’t selling well and we should back off of certain varieties and fill the case out with kale, like other low volume fish sections I had worked at. Nope.

Well one month we apparently had a bad inventory. Me and the other assistant was called up to the Store Manager’s office, where he asked us what was going on back there. So I gave him my perspective. I said that many of the guidelines were not being followed, we were over ordering product and we weren’t throwing it away when we should.The store manager didn’t seem to care, he told us that he was gonna “blow the market up and didn’t care where we landed” whatever the fuck that means. But I left with the distinct impression that he wanted us to quit trying to fix shit and just keep the numbers where DS and MM had them.

I reached out to former co-workers at the other stores and told them what was going on, and they said they had heard those rumors about this market for years. My cutters at this market were aware of it and most of them got to the point they wanted to fix things too, except for one of them.

So I kept at trying to fix things. I would have quit but this company paid more than I would have gotten at any other market, and I really couldn’t afford to take a pay cut at that moment. However my wife was floating the idea that I should become a stay at home dad once our daughter was born, and just leave the place behind, but I didn’t want to be a stay at home dad.For several weeks our store manager would call us up into his office separately, and yell at us or try to intimidate us. I told him, you know I’ve been here over a year and never got the raise I was promised, you guys, have never completed my training and want me to do things that I consider unethical. Just transfer me back to my old store and I’ll step down. He replied that there were only two ways I could leave, and that a transfer wasn’t it. I took that as my options were to quit or get fired. I even contacted HR and asked to be moved, but they talked to the store manager and they denied me. We even showed the HR manager cases of out of date meat that had been frozen and put in the freezer in order to keep scanning it on our monthly inventories.

Fortunately, I had been recording every yelling session he had me present for. It’s not something I would have normally done, but an old boss told me to document everything and cover my ass. So I did. I recorded video showing piles of out of date meat, video of fish disintegrating in my hands, I recorded audio of every time I brought the conditions up to my boss, his boss, and the store manager’s assistants. It all amounted to a few hours of them being completely aware of what was going on and either threatening my job, or telling me to leave it as it is.

Over Christmas that year I had two days off and talked with my wife again, about the option of being a stay at home dad. I told her I would only do it if I could use the time in order to go back to school. We agreed on that, and I contacted the local news investigative team. And I turned over all the video and recordings pictures etcetera that I had. I also had them talk with AM, who backed up everything and who also had his own examples.They talked to meat cutters at the other stores I had worked at, to hear their rumors about this place, and then they did a background check on me.

They began sending in undercover shoppers who would show up when I wasn’t there and buy spoiled fish and meat. I also covertly marked some meat that had been vacuumed sealed and relabeled by our manager for months on end. Which the news ended up buying.They sent all of this product out to be tested at a local university, and most if not all of it had 1000’s of times the safe level of staph, ecoli, and something else that I can’t remember right now. And I went in for two on camera interviews, as they wanted a face to put with the investigation.

The investigation took around three or four months, and during that time we found out that our company was being bought out by one of the biggest supermarket chains in the area. Oh well, the trigger had already been pulled.

In April, the news aired a three day multi-part expose’. The store had been suspicious for a few weeks cause the news van had been outside shooting b roll, and the reporter had contacted corporate for comments on the story.I walked into work after the first day, and it was the weirdest thing in the world. Some people, wouldn’t speak to me. Others came up to me when no one was around and thanked me. Some people wondered why I would continue to show up and I did it because of three reasons, I have huge balls, I was in the right, and I wanted the severance package they were offering employees once all the stores closed due to the buyout. I had to work till the middle of June as that was the date all the stores would close and start converting over.

The company had told the news that I was making it all up, of course they had no idea the extensive amount of evidence I had gathered. I had a lawyer offer to represent me pro-bono, and besides being a nice guy he was also three quarters Pit bull. He threatened to sue them for defamation, and they had to retract their statement and say that this was a one time occurrence that they were not aware of.

I received two death threats, from people who were associated with MM. The police took care of them. They moved me back to store ‘B.’ Where I was able to work a bit easier, then they had me spend a full day locked in a room with the District Manager and a loss prevention officer, who… I don’t know... he questioned my story but my story has never changed, and the next day they told me I didn’t have to come in anymore and I would keep all of my pay until the official closing date, keep my benefits package and severance package.

My department manager MM, was demoted to assistant, and from I have heard he moved to another state working for the same company. In fact he moved to the same area his old boss DS was running.The Store Manager resigned before the stores shut down. In fact his store closed before all of the other ones because they had a double your money back no questions asked guarantee on meat sales, and people were bring back whole tenderloins they had in their freezers. They lost a lot of money, and decided to close that location down early.

The store manager was rehired as a department manager, when that location opened back up under the new company.

And most of the employees remained unaffected other than the buyout required everyone to reapply for their old jobs and everyone got a massive pay cut across the board. Though that had nothing to do with me.

As for me, I am on my fourth year as a stay-at-home dad. I graduate from university with a degree in IT this May. I have a 4.0 and will be going into a master’s program next year, which will be the last year before my girl starts kindergarten.

I never wanted to get anyone fired. I just wanted to do a good job, not be forced to do things I didn’t consider right. But I stand up to bullies. I don’t let people threaten me, my family, our well being or anyone else I care about.

I have been hesitant to write about this experience, because it’s in the past and I came out on top of everything, in a way that makes me feel as if the other shoe never dropped. Over the past several years I think of this often and it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I hope that putting it down on paper, helps me finally quit thinking about it. I wonder sometimes if I did the right thing that maybe I should have let it go. But it is what it is, and now you know.

(source) story by (/u/Butchertattletale)

#prorevenge #by /u/Butchertattletale #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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parkerparts · 5 years ago

Text

It Only Takes a Taste

Read it on AO3 here.

Peter Parker, the genius behind Spider Bites’ amazing baked goods, also happens to deliver said baked goods to the coffee shop The Iron Mug. Harley Keener, a barista at The Iron Mug, is smitten.

Parkner Week 2019 Day Three: “Dropped My Croissant” / Baking / Non Powered AU

Harley’s eyes widen as he sees the crowd of tourists streaming into the coffee shop. The cases of baked goods are practically empty, and Harley curses the delivery boy. “Abbie, do we have an ETA on the delivery?”

“Negative. You know, for a genius, that boy is scatterbrained. Peter’s probably just running late. Why? Finally gonna get over yourself and ask the boy out?” His sister emerges from the back room. “Oh, shit. That’s a crowd.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Help me out? You have more patience with hungry tourists than I do.”

“Sure thing. Keep an eye out for the buzzer,” Abbie says, heading to the till to take the first order.

Harley works on autopilot as he makes the first iced latte. He and Abbie have been working at The Iron Mug for the whole summer, and it’s almost second nature by now. The little coffee shop is owned by their family friend Tony Stark, who took a vacation with his fiancee Pepper and left the shop in the Keeners’ care.

“What do you mean that’s the last cake pop?” An angry mother of three clingy children is yelling at Abbie, who wears a thin smile on her face.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but our afternoon delivery hasn’t come yet. I’m sure it will be here in the next ten to fifteen minutes if you’d like to wait.” The mother huffs but stomps away to a table to wait, anyway.

The buzzer goes off as Harley slides a kale and ginger smoothie to the last waiting customer. “I’ll get it!” he all but yells at Abbie, pushing through the swinging double door to get to the back room. He throws a middle finger over his shoulder as his sister laughs.

Spider Bites is an independent baking company founded by Ben Parker. May Parker took over after Ben’s death, and she runs the company alongside her nephew Peter Parker, whose excellence in chemistry manifested itself in a love for creating outrageous pastries and cakes. Just before the beginning of summer, Spider Bites and The Iron Mug struck up a deal, and now The Iron Mug sells Spider Bites’ baked goods.

The delivery comes twice a day, once in the morning before the shop opens, and once in the afternoon. With the delivery comes the delivery boy and master baker himself, Peter Parker.

Harley opens the back door and absolutely fails at keeping a disgruntled expression when he sees Peter struggling under the weight of a dozen trays. Peter perks up when he sees Harley. “Is this The Iron Mug?”

“Yes, dipshit. Get in here. You’re late,” Harley says, but it comes off more fond than scolding.

“There was traffic?” Peter replies with a cheeky grin.

Harley swallows down a laugh. “Mhm, sure. Still doesn’t get you out of helping me load the display cases.”

“Anything for you, Princess.” Peter winks, and it makes Harley want to scream.

He has a little crush on Peter, which might be a bit of an understatement if he’s being honest. It only took a taste, and that’s how he knew Peter Parker was something special. One bite, and that was enough for him to realize he needed more.

Harley takes half of the stack of trays and follows Peter into the shop. He’s so distracted by trying to calm his rapid heartbeat that he bumps into Peter.

“Harley! I could’ve dropped my croissants!” Harley smacks the boy lightly for the vine reference.

“There better be more than croissants in these trays. I know you like to make guinea pigs out of my customers, but I have one grumpy mother whose kids have been clamoring for cake pops for the past ten minutes. Abbie’s about to drive her head through the register.”

Peter looks sheepishly at Harley. “Whoops.”

Harley stares in horror. “No. Is this a joke?”

Peter’s expression wavers for a split second, and it gives him away. The boy bursts into laughter as Harley smacks him again. “Kidding!”

“You’re the worst, Parker!”

The door to the back opens, and a weary Abbie steps in. “The two of you better stop flirting and start loading up the display before I lose my goddamn mind.”

“Where d'you pick up that potty mouth?” Peter asks, picking up a tray and tugging on Abbie’s ponytail on the way to the counter. “You’re like ten years old.”

“I’m thirteen!” Abbie shouts after him, grabbing a tray of her own.

Harley follows them to the counter, and between the three of them, the display cases are loaded in no time. Peter hands three cake pops free of charge to the mother who waited, along with a personal apology for being late. The lady smiles at him and forgives him immediately because who can resist Peter’s charm? No one can, except for maybe Abbie, and least of all, Harley.

Business at the shop slows down at this hour, so Abbie dismisses them with a wave of her hand and a wink. Harley pointedly ignores her as he leads Peter to the office, where Peter immediately claims the spinny chair as his own.

“I threw in an extra chocolate muffin for Abbie,” he says. “It should be in the bottom tray.”

Harley pouts. “Nothing for me?”

Peter smirks and reaches into his giant apron pockets. They’re seriously giant. Harley once witnessed the other boy pull out a whole hand mixer from his pocket once, and since then, he’s been mildly terrified. “And of course, macarons for my favorite barista, as long as you don’t tell Abbie I said that.”

Harley quickly snatches the plastic box with a grin. “Deal. You’re the best, Petey Pie. What flavors are these?”

“Dragonfruit, apple, and watermelon. I went on an experimenting binge last night, and we had a lot of fruits lying around. There’s also a classic dark chocolate one in there if you hate the other ones. You Keeners have a killer sweet tooth.”

“You supply us with an endless supply of the best pastries in New York. You’re the cause of our sweet tooth.”

“Ah,” Peter says, with a smirk. “So I’m the devil.”

Harley snorts, but he’s so flustered it sounds more like he’s blowing his nose. God, this is embarrassing. “At worst, you’re an enabler. You’re too good to be the devil, more like an angel.”

Peter leans back in his chair and pouts. “But I want to be the devil! Everyone likes villains more because villains seem more attainable and human than the heroes, who are put on a pedestal. Also, the villains are hot.”

“If it makes you feel better, I think you’d be the hottest superhero around.” Harley freezes as the words come out. Crap. He didn’t mean to actually say that out loud.

Peter laughs, and Harley can feel his face turning red. “Well then, you’ll be my sidekick, won’t you? Or will you be my damsel in distress?”

Harley can’t breathe. Is he dreaming? There’s no way Peter’s actually sort of asking him out. He’s got to be dreaming, but he just wishes his dream self were a bit more clever and clear-headed. “Damsel in distress sounds fine?” His voice breaks at the end, and it’s embarrassing. He’s hopeless, really.

“Great. Saturday night at six o’clock sound good?”

Harley gapes. “What?”

“Princess,” Peter says, leaning forward with a wicked smile. “Will you go out on a date with me on Saturday at six?”

“Yes.” The words are out of his mouth in a heartbeat. It’s all he’s ever wanted, so it’s not like he needs a long time to decide, anyway. “Undeniably yes.”

Peter beams, and it makes Harley’s heart melt how happy Peter looks and how tightly he hugs him as he stands.

“Well then,” Peter says. “I’ll see you tomorrow for delivery?”

“Sure,” Harley replies breathlessly. “Just don’t be late.”

Peter cackles all the way out the back door.

#parkner week #parkner week 2019 #harleypeter #harley keener #peter parker #parkner #parley #fluff

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manicr · 5 years ago

Text

Season’s Greetings

...and a merry fuckmas to you too, asshole

Summary: It’s the season and Bullseye has a job, everybody just keeps getting in the way and into each others pants.

...Taskmaster already regrets hiring Bullseye.

Rating: T for mentioned violence, profanity

Parings: implied Outlaw/Domino, Taskmaster/Outlaw

Prologue

Chapter 1: Queens

The first snow had long since fallen, earlier this year than usual, and as expected, it came with the annual issues of subway cancellations, unplowed roads, and slip ‘n falls in the City. Even the caped crusaders of New York were less likely to be seen on the streets and skies as it continued to pour down to the tune of Let it Snow. It was a time made for people like him to slip under the radar and get shit done.

As he stood with his spiked hot chocolate, Taskmaster wasn’t surprised to see Spider-Man, now in a knitted red and blue scarf and snug cap, swing past not far from his Queens apartment, clocking him as he did on his phone. At least twice a day, usually on a pretty even schedule. It wouldn’t be hard to avoid the Webslinger. Spider-Man didn’t really look into anything unless civilians complained or got hurt.

Taskmaster made a big point of being the nicest neighbour possible for this very reason, he helped old ladies with their bags and put up christmas lights even despite Bullseye’s efforts to tear them down.

He could certainly have chosen another place, but each borough had it’s heroes and it was at times useful to have one under clear surveillance. Queens just had the least violent one and the one who wasn’t tapped into what was happening in the criminal underground. Happily enough, he knew that the Black Cat was again in one of her off seasons with the Spider, so he’d be getting no intel from that front. And other heroes seldom interfered in the Spider’s turf in Queens even if he shared Midtown with a few. All he needed to do was to keep his dirty business indoors and elsewhere.

He had argued extensively with Bullseye about this, there was no way he’d setup shop in the City, especially the Kitchen, and he wouldn't tolerate any killing anywhere near him. Taskmaster wasn’t going to court the attention of Punisher or Daredevil; those two were dangerous to get involved with especially when he was doing the hit with Bullseye. He knew about the middling beef with Spider-Man, but it wasn’t anything as psychotically obsessive as Bullseye’s thing for the aforementioned vigilantes.

Now it was just to keep the assassin on track and focused without picking fights with any superheroes or vigilantes. It had gone fine the first week with the extensive surveillance and planning needed, but now well into December it was starting to get more difficult.

An unexpected, though in hindsight predictable, issue had been the utter loathing Bullseye had for Christmas and the season in general. It wasn’t the more common version of just outright ignoring the festivities, which Taskmaster himself mostly did, but the virulent and expressive hatred of an obsessive nutjob.

It wasn’t just murdering Santas with christmas decorations and vandalising christmas displays, it was Bullseye whining about it constantly. If it wasn’t the holidays, it was the cold and the snow. Bullseye was always too cold and bored by everything when he wasn’t allowed to just murder everyone who annoyed him. Bullseye was making Shocker seem like a stoic and Boomerang mature by comparison. It was frankly making Taskmaster want to kick Bullseye off the job. If only the plan didn’t hinge on him.

Sighing, Taskmaster texted Black Ant on a secure VPN bounced line for a progress report. He couldn’t wait for this job to be over.

SpcUpUrLif: status

BBA69: got full access to Access. Got myself a free prime account on the bosses credit and a waterbed }XD

SpcUpUrLif: exit strategy in place?

BBA69: nearly. Tho why bother? I coudda killed the target like last week. I’m tired of living of Karen’s lunch. iÍt’s KALE and vegan. She thinks its Mark in accounting :PPP

SpcUpUrLif: i’m not arguing about this again. just do it. client wants it like this.

SpcUpUrLif: besides money. can’t hide all that cash in your prime account.

BBA69: truth bro. Gimme a few days then, gotta go slow to hide the trail

BBA69: hows the resident Grinch psycho? Still making darts outta glass for Santa?

SpcUpUrLif: out doing his part, talking to everyone how he’s gonna do the hit of the century. best scapegoat ever.

BBA69: Small blessings. GTG Nancy Tightpants is clocking in and she’s having an affair with Mark and it’s a real porno up in here

SpcUpUrLif: you’re disgusting

BBA69: gotta get my kicks somehow ;)

Logout

Taskmaster pocketed his phone and sipped more of his chocolate, mind churning on getting everything right since shit would go really bad if it didn’t, pissing off both the client and Bullseye. He didn’t know who scared him more, but he was determined to make this job run without a hitch. He’d just have to manage until then.

Maybe he’d call Outlaw, have a boozy night and good fucking. She was out with Domino, and she deserved that, but hey, maybe they were into a threesome. He snorted to himself, thinking it unlikely, but Christmas miracles. Later perhaps, give them some nice presents, with all the money he’d make, and have a quiet evening, which would be an improvement on his current situation.

Speaking of the devil, Bullseye stomped in through the door, bundled up into anonymity in more garments than an adult man should ever need. A gloved hand tugged down the scarf and revealed a grinning mouth, and a bright red snotty nose.

“Guess what? I hit Spidey with a snowball!”

Of course he did. “I swear, if you blow our cover--”

“Pfft. No chance, even if he saw me he’s too much of a weeb to hurt anyone over a snowball,” Bullseye said as he shed all his outer clothes on the floor in a wet pile, making Taskmaster bite his tongue to avoid yelling at him to pick his damn stuff up.

“Why are you here?” he asked instead. “We didn’t schedule anything for today, and I told you I’d contact you when your part started.”

“I’m bored and I talked to a few people at the Bar --- guess what they told me?” Bullseye grinned, and Taskmaster honestly couldn’t tell if Bullseye meant talking as in actual conversations or torture induced confessions. He somehow doubted that Bullseye made much distinction between those two. It also begged the question of who would willingly talk to Bullseye? Never mind, he was already the idiot doing that.

“That you have beautiful eyes and can absolutely take their seat?” he remarked dryly, knowing to thread the fine line of joking with Bullseye and taking him seriously.

“That too.” Another grin and a chuckle. “There’s gonna be a big charity gala and all the bigwigs will be there. We don’t need to wait around anymore, just kill him there, job done. And we can even make it look like he wasn’t the target since there will be so many rich assholes there! Shooting fish in a barrel and tons of guards for me to play with.”

Oh God, Bullseye thought he was being clever. Taskmaster could already feel a headache coming up, he set his cup on the table and tried not to raise his voice.

“No. We have a job. We do the job according to specifications. If you want to do another job while you wait, be my guest, as long as you don’t get caught.”

“Spoilsport,” Bullseye huffed, took and drank his chocolate before Taskmaster could snatch his cup back. “Can’t do anything fun with you and I hate just sitting around.”

Deep breath and resist the urge to punch the daylights out of Bullseye.

He needed to give Bullseye something to do before everything blew in their face. “On the other hand, it might be good for you to go. Check out the target and his guards, do a little gentle poking to see their reactions, but nothing that’d make them beef their security up further. It’d need a delicate touch as well. I think I know exactly who to send with you to make that work and to finance it all.”

He was certain that he had Black Cat’s number and she owed him. She couldn’t afford to end up on his naughty list. Maybe get Domino on it too, she had a better hand on Bullseye’s brand of crazy. God knows the man needed a babysitter.

Taskmaster told Bullseye the outline of a simple smash and grab with an added assassination of a few ‘bigwigs’ he knew had active bounties on them. The assassin ate it up like his marshmallows and hot chocolate. It would at least give him some time away from Bullseye; it wasn’t worth the headache to get a close eye on the marksman’s uncanny skills.

As Bullseye finally left, Taskmaster could see and hear a pile of snow land on him, out of nowhere, and an insincere ‘sorry’ call out from above as Bullseye burst into a litany of curses.

He wrote down the time on his phone, smiling.

TBC

#manicr writes #bullseye #taskmaster #black ant #spider-man #fanfiction

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etherealxch · 6 years ago

Text

something like this

word count: 4078

[a/n] : im baaaaaaack. ok. started this on a whim and it kind of ended up being so long. sorryyyyy. anyways, this is my first scenario of 2019, the first of *hopefully* many to come. as always, i’ll be glad to hear your comments, just hit up my inbox! ps. if you guys reblog this don’t be shy to add something cute in the tags❤️❤️! alsoooo don’t forget to support ASTRO on their comeback guys!

The frozen yoghurt shop is unusually quiet today. It’s 1:32 pm and there’s only been 6 people in here. I check the containers, making sure the cubes of fruits are properly cooled. I wipe a few stray drops of yoghurt from the machine with a cloth and thoroughly rinse that too.

My co-worker, Kailo, looks up from her phone to ask me a question, “Hey, did you know that there’s a new flavour for toothpaste?”

I look at her, wildly amused. “No, I do not.”

Excitedly, she nudges up to my side and shoves her phone in my face.

“But please, enlighten me.” I deadpan, taking the phone from her. I can barely hide my disgust as I read the article. “Oh, that’s just very wrong.”

“Eh, I guess.” She shrugs one shoulder, back to scrolling through her daily newsfeed. That figures; Kailo is the kind of person that would come into work wearing the weirdest things and is still able to pull it off. She is very adventurous and likes trying new things. She told me she once tried kale ice cream and actually liked it.

The front doorbell tinkles, signalling a customer. Kailo takes her order, tapping at the computer screen. I grab a small cup and fill it with fresh frozen yoghurt, then with languid strokes, drizzle cookie sauce over the top and hand it to the customer with a napkin.

“Enjoy.” I offer a smile, handing her the yoghurt. The doorbell tinkles again and Moon Bin enters this time. He waves hi to both me and Kailo.

“Hey. Class finished?” I ask as he walks over to my side of the counter.

“Yeah,” He nods. He sighs. “I kind of need to talk to you about something.”

“Is everything okay?” I look at his expression. He briefly glances at Kailo.

“Not really.” He looks at the clock behind me. “Your shift ends at 2, right?” I nod.

“Then, I’ll just wait here for you.” He orders a medium sized yoghurt and takes his usual spot by the window at the very end of the room, like he always does when he comes here to wait for me. When I had just gotten this part time job, my manager, Sammy and Ji Ah, two other part time workers, and Kailo would always ask me if he was my boyfriend because sometimes if I worked the late night shift, he would swing by and wait for me until my shift ended. He would walk me back to campus then, making sure I safely gotten into my dorm.

They soon got used to me denying me and Moon Bin dating and stopped asking questions. Although Kailo occasionally comments on how she thinks he’s pretty hot. I teased her once about it, offering to help set her up with him and her exact answer was, “Honey, please, he’s not my type.”

I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just he’s really not her type. She usually dates really quickly and the longest I’ve ever her date was with a guy who had his own pet hedgehog. To think of it, I’m not even sure what her type is.

The two hours tick by, with a large group of sleep deprived students walking in and demanding we serve them coffee in between, until I pointed out that the cafe is next door. They eventually ordered frozen yoghurts, apparently too tired to even walk to next door. Sammy enters just in time, to take over my shift.

She clocks in on Moon Bin immediately and then gives me a knowing look.

“Honestly.” I shake my head. Sammy is the only who won’t stop pushing me and Moon Bin together. Sammy has classes with the both of us so she knows Moon Bin as well.

I clock out and grab my staff from the back. Moon Bin is already standing by the counter, waiting for me as I come out from the back. We go outside, the heat of the afternoon blasting from the ground.

“So, what’s wrong?” I ask, as we come to a bench under a shady tree. I’m still in my white cotton collar shirt which is the uniform and am sweating down my back. Moon Bin notices my discomfort.

“D'you want to go home and change first?” He asks.

“No, it’s fine, don’t worry.” I shake my head. “What’s up?”

“You know the show I have to do next Friday?” He says. I nod in response. “Yeah, that’s also the same day my parents are coming to see me.” He waits for the ball to drop.

“Oh. Oh.” I raise my eyebrows in realisation. Moon Bin’s dad doesn’t know that he is enrolled in the Performing Arts Major. His dad wasn’t really supportive of his choice but his mom covered for him and then told him to choose whatever he wanted. If they come this Friday…

“Yup.” He nods gloomily.

“Well, your performance is at night. Maybe they’ll have left by then?” I suggest.

“I…I want to tell him.” He exhales.

“What?”

“I don’t want to lie to him anymore.” He says, turning to me. “I keep having to think of answers to questions about aerospace.” He looks so positively terrified. In spite of myself, I give a small laugh.

“That’s what you told him you were studying?”

“I panicked.” He says defensively.

“Bin, I think that it’s great that you want to tell him the truth but are you sure?” I ask him.

He looks down at his fists. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Well, okay then,” I bump my fist at his arm. “I have your back. If there’s anything you need me to do, just tell me.” I smile at him.

We move on from this subject and talk about how rehearsals are going. He digs out the tickets from his pocket and hands them to me, one for me, the other for Sammy, my roommate and Jin Woo’s girlfriend.

“Don’t lose them. You know what, just ask Sammy to take them.” Moon Bin has zero trust in me.

I roll my eyes. “Just because that one time I lost the train tickets–”

“And we had to run all the way back because you’d lost yours and everyone had to re-buy their tickets for the later train.” He reminds me darkly.

Ignoring his words, I tell him that I’ll keep them safe no matter what. It’s his first performance with his parents there, I’m definitely not missing this for anything in the world.

*** “That will be all today. Thank you class.” Our lecturer switches off her slide and packs her laptop up all in one swift movement. Everyone else is either leaving the class or talking to their friends. I check my phone, slightly frowning. Why isn’t he replying?

I flop my bag on the desk, putting my notebook and textbook inside. I check my phone one last time before shoving it in my jacket pocket. As I walk along the hall, passing some students taping a poster on the wall, I spot Rocky and Jin Woo among the crowd.

“Hey, guys,” I catch up to them. They turn, surprised.

“Hey,” They both say, smiling.

They should know where Moon Bin is. “Do you know where Bin is?” I ask. “He didn’t come to class today. And I can’t get hold of him either.”

Rocky glances at Jin Woo before answering. “Oh, he’s probably practising again.”

“Um, see the thing is,” Jin Woo sighs. “He hasn’t stopped since 3 in the morning.”

“What?” My tone is sharp and the two guys in front of me visibly straightens up. “He hasn’t slept?”

Rocky winces. “We rehearsed last night and finished at 10. We went back to the dorm at 10:30–”

“He went out at 3 in the morning to practise by himself again.” Jin Woo explains.

“So, technically, he did sleep for about 4 hours–” Rocky stops when Jin Woo nudges him. I sigh.

“It’s his dad, isn’t it?” I look at them. They both nod slowly.

“He was really stressed out before and now he’s even more stressed than ever.” Rocky says.

“Maybe you should go talk to him. At least get him to stop for a few hours to get some rest.”

They tell me which of the building to go to and what practice room he is in. Two girls and a guy look at me suspiciously as I walk down the corridor blindly before finally giving up and asking them for directions. Standing outside the door, I can hear the thump of the music and someone’s feet moving rapidly. They don’t stop even when I knock on the door.

Moon Bin finally looks up as I enter the room. “Ae Ra.” He stops dancing. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to check up on you.” I say. I watch as he turns off the speaker and plops down on the floor, exhausted. I grab his towel from a chair nearby and toss it at him, landing on his head.

“Bin–” I start, sitting down in front of him. He wipes at his face, refusing to look at me.

“I know, you want me to get some rest. But the show is two days away. I can’t afford to waste any time.” He finally says, lowering his head while fidgeting with the corner of the towel.

“You’re exhausted, Bin.” I say. “Did you even eat breakfast?”

When he looks back at me, his eyes wet around the rim. “I’m just so scared.” He says. “I mean, it’s my dad. He’s never approved of my interest in performing on stage, says it’s a waste of money.

How am I going to impress him, Aera?” His voice cracks slightly. I scoot closer to him to hug him. He leans his head on my shoulder, taking a deep breath.

“You don’t have to impress him, you know?” I say softly. “Just show him what you can do. You may disagree on somethings but in the end you’re his son, he’ll love you no matter what.” I pat his hair, slick with sweat, wince a little and try to discreetly wipe it on my pants. He gives a soft chuckle.

“I can see you through the mirror.”

“You’re disgusting. Please go take a shower.” I deadpan. He laughs as we pull apart.

“Thank you. You seem to always find the right things to say.”

“What? Like asking you to take a shower?” I joke.

He chuckles and absentmindedly pecks the top of my forehead. I stare at him, startled by this out of the blue yet affectionate action. His eyes shift; contemplating something. He slowly leans in and to my surprise, I do too.

“HEY BIN–” Our lips barely touch when Rocky bursts through the door. We pull away with the urgency of a dog chasing after a cat. Rocky stares at us, speechless.

I stand up abruptly. “I have-have a, um, shift.” I say to no one in particular. “So I, yeah, um, okay, byeeee.” Shit, I sound like Jake Peralta. But there’s no time to dwell on that as I leave the room at top speed. I’m so concentrated on leaving that I almost knock down Sammy by the stairs.

“Woah, hey,” She says. “Have you seen Jin Woo?”

“Uh, um,” I clear my head, trying to think of an answer. “No.”

“Oh-kay,” She frowns. “Are you alright?”

“Me? Yeah, yeah, totally fine.” I swallow. “Listen, I gotta go. I have….a class.”

I scurry down the stairs and out of the building. I walk and walk with no actual sense of direction. Walking keeps me occupied. If I stop, I keep thinking of…that. Eventually, my legs tire out and I plop down on a bench. How did that happen? My face heats up even at just the thought of it and despite myself, I feel a bit giggly on the inside. He’s my friend! I shouldn’t be having thoughts like this.

We barely talk on the phone, our usual routine, for the next few days until the show. I’d like to say it’s mainly because he’s busy practising and I’m busy with my shifts and assignments. We do text back and forth, but avoid talking about what happened. Texting is easier, because we don’t sound awkward at all. We still sound the same, playful banter, some nagging.

“Lighten up.” Kailo hisses at me. I’m slumped behind the counter, playing with a plastic spoon. The doorbell rings and a couple of people walk in chattering. I get up from my seat and grab a cone to fill. I drizzle cranberry sauce on it and wrap a napkin around half the cone before handing it to the customer.

After giving the customer her change, Kailo turns to survey me. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. Assignments,” I reply automatically, back in my slump seat.

“Something happened with Moon Bin?”

I sit up, alert and suspicious. “How did you know?”

She puts up both of her hands, her eyes wide. “I didn’t. I guessed.” She says.

“Oh.” I mumble.

She looks at me. “Whatever it is, it’ll eventually work its way out.”

I wince. “I’m not so sure about this.” She moves her attention away from me when the doorbell tinkles. She urgently nudges my arm and I’m about to give her an annoyed look when I see the people standing in front of me: Moon Bin and his parents.

I scramble up, face red and unable to look at anything except for the countertop. I can feel Moon Bin’s eyes on me but I resolutely stare at the cup and cone model that shows our customers what the different cup sizes look like. I start making their orders, three cones. As I hand it over to them, I smile politely at his parents; over the five years I’ve known him, I’ve seen his mother more than his father. I surreptitiously glance at his dad’s expression, which is hard and realise he must have told him already.

As they leave to take a seat, I grab my phone. There are 5 unread messages all from him.

‘I’m having lunch with them now.’

‘Probably going to tell him now.’

‘Going to find somewhere to talk.’

'Headed to the yoghurt shop.’

'You busy?’

These were all sent before they came here.

I look at them talking by the window. It seems like Moon Bin has got everything under control, although his father doesn’t look too happy. I look worriedly in the direction of the washroom; Kailo’s been in there for a long time. As they get up to leave, I shoot a questioning glance at Moon Bin, who nods slightly at me.

I don’t really understand but it must mean that his dad is willing to give him a chance. Kailo emerges from the washroom looking pale with one hand clutching her stomach.

“Kailo! Are you okay?”

“Ohhh, I think something went wrong with my lunch.” She sits down heavily. Her expression is pained as she drinks from her water bottle.

“What did you have?” I ask.

“Sushi.” She pauses as her stomach makes a weird sound. I offer to go the pharmacy to buy some medicine but she shakes her head, saying it’s all out of her system. That doesn’t seem to be the case even after two hours, I’ve been manning the cash register and making the orders for the customers while she sits weakly behind the counter, out of sight from customers.

“Kailo, I think you need to go to a clinic.” I frown, getting her a cup of warm water. Her hair plastered to her forehead from all the cold sweat.

“But, you have to leave soon and if I do too, no one is going to be here.”

I check the time. The show starts at 7. If Ji Ah makes it here by 8, I can still make it. “I can stay until Ji Ah comes. Just go to the clinic Kailo.”

She doesn’t even bothering protesting anymore. Before leaving, she gives me an apologetic hug. I tell her to tell me when she’s at the doctors to be safe. I look at the clock. I won’t have time to go home and change now. Business is slow between dinner hours so there’s really nothing much I can do, except pray that Ji Ah arrives here as soon as possible.

8:11 p.m. I am about to scratch the walls with frustration. Where is Ji Ah? I text Sammy to check if Moon Bin, Jin Woo and Rocky has performed yet.

'Almost. Where R U???’

I sigh and shoot off a quick reply. Ji Ah rushes through the door, out of breath. “Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.”

“Okay, I’ve got to go, bye!” I’ve been ready ever since 7:45 so I just grab my bag and hurry out the door. Sammy comes out to meet me when I arrive at the auditorium. She grabs my hand, pulling me inside. We pass rows and rows of seats in the darkness. I glance briefly at the stage just as the three of them emerge on stage. The music starts as I take my seat, trying to catch my breath. Moon Bin’s eyes flicker towards the crowd and then spots me. He gives the smallest smile and then resumes his performance.

The three of them work in perfect harmony, moving to each beat. I look around and see his parents a few rows over. His mother looks positively proud while his dad leans back against his seat, an unreadable expression on his face. The audience gives a loud cheer when Rocky does a spin mid-air, earning a bashful smile from him.

The performance ends with the crowd hyped up. After two vocal performances and a small skit, the show ends. There’s the sound of people talking and feet shuffling as they get ready to leave. Sammy and I make our way out and manage to find our way to backstage. We find the guys, with three of their other friends, Sanha, Eun Woo and MJ already with them.

“You guys were awesome!” I say, while Sammy gives them the thumbs up.

“I honestly thought I was going to trip and fall at one point.” Rocky says.

“That’s because you almost stepped on my foot.” Jin Woo shakes his head. As they bicker on, Moon Bin’s focus shifts to behind us; his parents. He excuses himself to walk over to them. We move farther away so as to give me some privacy in all the hubbub at backstage. MJ starts showing them the video he took of them on stage.

“That’s so unflattering.” Sanha comments. He whips out his phone. “You should look at the one I took.” They argue who recorded the best video with Jin Jin exasperatedly chiming in to say at one point, “None of you are Steven Spielberg. None.” and Rocky saying, “You should’ve taken it from my left.”

I look away from their tirade as Moon Bin hugs both of his parents, who leaves and walks toward us, a look of relief on his face. “Everything okay?” I ask, as he nears. Everyone turns their attention to him.

“Yeah,” He exhales a little shakily. He gives a smile. “He doesn’t get the dancing.” We pause, unsure how to response.

“And you’re smiling because…?” Eun Woo asks.

“Because he said I could continue my major, even though he didn’t understand it.” He gives a small laugh. “He’s letting me stay on!” We cheer, hugging him all at once, ignorant to the other looks in the room.

My phone vibrates a message from Kailo who tells me she’s at home now. I see another one from her when she was at the doctors. I tell them I’m going out to make a call where it’s quieter so I can actually hear what someone is saying.

“Hey, are you feeling better?” I ask. “What did the doctor say?”

“I’m feeling sooo much better now.” Kailo’s voice, although not yet back to her normal tone was sounding much more alert than a few hours ago. “It turns I have a very weak intestine and I’m technically not allowed to eat anymore raw fish.”

“I told you, 'Fish are friends not food’.” I quote 'Finding Nemo’ to her.

“That’s just because you don’t eat raw fish.” She says. “Say that again when you’re eating battered cod with chips. Maybe then I’ll believe you.”

She yawns and I tell her to go to bed. She says she will but not before watching an episode of Kim’s Convenience. I hang up, turning to go back inside when I see Moon Bin waiting for me.

“Where are the others?” I walk up to him.

“They went to celebrate. I told them to go ahead first.” Moon Bin says.

“Oh.” Awkward silence. Not wanting to feel weird around him, I hold up my phone.

“I just got off the phone with Kailo. She was feeling unwell just now. Ate some sushi. She had to go to the doctors and there was not anyone to stay at the shop. That was why I was late to the show.”

He lets out a breath that I didn’t know he was holding. “Oh. That’s why.” He scratches his neck. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”

“Why would you think–” I pause as realisation hits me. “Oh.”

“Is she feeling better?” I look up at him, confused, then realise he means Kailo.

“Yeah. She’s okay now.” I nod. There’s another pause where neither of us says anything, then as if he can’t stand it, he says, “Should we talk about what happened the other day?”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, I think we should.”

We walk around, finding some place to sit, heading towards the campus park. Not for the first time ever, I marvel at the size of this entire university. It’s like a small village could literally just live here. We walk along the path, lined with small grey pebbles and small lights installed on the ground, so that it looks like one of those airplane runways.

“So, I guess I should apologise first.” Moon Bin says, as we take a seat on one of the park benches.

I open my mouth to protest but he stops me. “Just–let me finish.

What happened the other day. I shouldn’t have done it. I was feeling helpless and you were there as a friend and I shouldn’t have kissed you,” He continues. “That wasn’t how I…” He trails off.

“You what?” I ask, catching his hesitation.

“It wasn’t how I…,” He scratches his neck again, an action he does when he’s embarrassed. “…imagined I would kiss you. Not in that situation.”

I stare at him dumbly, too stunned to speak. There’s so many parts to his explanation that needs more explaining.

“I-I….” I swallow. “Um, okay.”

He lets me take my time, albeit the concerned look on his face is kind of endearing. “Moon Bin, what do you mean it was how you imagined?”

“Oh. That.” He says, as if he hadn’t thought of explaining that part to me. “Um, see, I kind of, really like you.” He fixes his eyes on mine. I think I can fully comprehend what the phrase 'heart beating against ribcage like a freaking earthquake’.

“Well,” I find my voice again. “In what situation would you have wanted to…kiss me?”

He gives the cutest/ most bashful smile ever and leans in to peck me on my lips. “Something like this?”

In spite of myself, I smile, feeling giddy. “Could you do that again?”

He smiles, leaning in again but this time I do too. This kiss lasts longer than the former and when it ends, he gently kisses my forehead. “Thank you.” He chuckles softly that my heart does a small skip.

“For what?” I laugh, even if it isn’t that funny.

“Just.” He shrugs. “Thank you.”

“You know, if you’re trying to be all mysterious and romantic like in dramas and stuff, it really isn’t going to work on me, because I won’t understand a thing you’re doing.” I joke, smiling.

You just never know when you’re going to open your eyes and fall for someone who’s been by your side this entire time.

BONUS :

“DID YOU GUYS MAKE A BET ON US GETTING TOGETHER?!”

#ASTRO #Astro #astro scenarios #moonbin scenarios #all night #all light #Astro all night #Astro all light #moon bin #kpop scenarios #ethereal-17

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fly-pow-bye · 6 years ago

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Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Lights Out!”

Written by: Haley Mancini, Jake Goldman

Written & Storyboarded by: John West, Angela Zhang

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

It’s an uphill battle, in more ways than one might expect.

We're at the beginning of the episode, and we already get our peek at this episode's special guest. That's right, it's that guy that looks like Guy Fieri wearing a toupee, checking out that jetpack to Flavortown. No, just kidding, it's actually the giant wacky inflatable tube man, making his return appearance from Man Up! That was the very first episode I ever reviewed, and it gives me good memories. I remember when I actually thought this show was going to be okay, and then I watched it!

So what are all these people gathered around for? It's the Townsville Town-Topia Fair, "the town of the future", where people of all countries get to show off their inventions!

One of the exhibits is a Japanese cat robot which gets the mechanical heart of Schedulebot. He appears exactly one other time, and they completely forgot about him and his love. I am sure we are all crestfallen at how we avoided seeing yet another character in this reboot get a love interest for a sake of a love interest.

Not forgotten is a running gag where Sitcom Dad decided to go on the roller coaster that consists only of an infinitely tall lift hill. It kind of explains by itself why it is useless, both as an invention and as a joke. It just builds up and builds up, and it has no real payoff. I might as well call all of the terrible running gags uphill roller coasters.

But enough joking around, this episode main attraction is everyone's favorite DeviantART OC, Blisstina Insert-Fifty-Other-Names Utonium, or Bliss for short! She's here to show off an invention from the Universal Protection Bureau: the Buggly! Just put it on your ear, or the place where an ear is supposed to be, ask it for anything, and it will magically generate it for you.

At first, I was thinking it was called the Buttly, as it's basically a butler one wears on their ear, but I appreciate that calling it Buggly prevents any unnecessary butt jokes. Isn't that right, Buttercup?

Buttercup Wheelz: No, WHEELZ! Wheelz with a z! I'm reinventing myself for the international stage!

Speaking of unnecessary jokes involving something that has the word "butt" in it, Buttercup wants to be called Wheelz. Why? I dunno. I wish I could say it disappears after one time like Schedulebot, but sorry, it lasts for most of the episode. Needless to say, this is uphill roller coaster #2.

Blossom especially loves this device, because the thought of generating pizza from thin air can give her more time to over-analyze everything she says! That's what she says, just roll with it.

In comes Jared Shapiro, whose "hi" causes her to over-analyze about how she should have went further than just saying "hi" back! This comes up a few times after this, so this is uphill roller coaster #3. Thankfully, I'm not talking about Jared, as he disappears after this scene.

His only role in the episode, and vast majority of his appearances, is to show off how much Blossom loves him. I'm sad they didn't decide to change his character to the dork he was in Phantasm Chasm. It would have been a slight improvement.

As the Buggly is able to generate more Bugglys for everyone to share, the Puffs have more fun with it. Bubbles is busy tinkering with it, because, surprise, this is a coder Bubbles episode, too! As for Blossom, she makes a kale smoothie from Penguin Pete's just by asking the Buggly to make one for her.

Bubbles: Why didn't we just go to Penguin Pete's? It's right here!

For starters, Penguin Pete's costs money, and this thing can make kale smoothies for free! I was expecting a twist where the Buggly was actually stealing stuff from the nearest vicinity. However, that crime would be far more fitting for Discount Jojo than the villain of this episode.

In fact, Discount is too busy getting pied in the face for daring to think Wheelz is a terrible name. Also, the Buggly can also be used to give Buttercup Wheelz another accessory for a toy line that will definitely never exist at this point.

The real villain will be revealed right now, as a sudden shockwave knocks down the Reboot Puffs. Even Bliss gets knocked out by this. Clearly, something must be going on. I mean, Bliss getting knocked out?

Also, the power went out, and worst of all, the Bugglys stop giving everyone free stuff. That's the real problem here! The Powerpuff Girls turn to Bliss to ask her what happened, and she reveals that it's all her fault.

She teleports away and appears on every TV in the TV repair shop, laughing maniacally. It was her, Blossom, it was her all along!

And Silico decides to abort the ruse immediately and show himself. I guess even he thought the "evil doppelganger" plot was too cliche. And yes, Silico just happened to know everything about Bliss, including the name of her intergalactic protection agency. At least I could say being able to take the form of anyone isn't unheard of for Silico; the cliffhanger of the last episode featuring him had him turn into Sitcom Dad. Having him become Bliss is an upgrade, I would say.

He also reveals that the Bugglys were not from space, but they were invented by him. Along with being able to create anything out of nothing, he programmed in another feature on the Bugglys.

Specifically, the ability to reprogram everyone's brains to hate the Powerpuff Girls! But wait, one might ask if they really cared that much, weren't the Powerpuff Girls wearing these Bugglys too? Is this another situation where the Powerpuff Girls are immune to mind control because the plot wouldn't work otherwise? No, because Silico says that he disabled their Bugglys, but all the other ones are under his control. He probably could have reprogrammed them to play dead, but plot.

They even get attacked by their various weapons, like a giant crayon bazooka from Ms. Keane, and a croissant grenade from a random French guy, all coming from their Bugglys. Now I realize another reason why they decided not to call it the Buttly. Bubbles tells her sisters that she wishes the Professor were here.

Yeah, that uphill roller coaster sure wasn't shoved in here, I completely lie. What could the Professor do even if he wasn't on this roller coaster? After flying away from the people of Townsville, they run into a familiar face.

The real Bliss shows up. There is one line that explains that she came to Earth for Town-Topia, and presumably saw all the carnage, so it's not entirely unexplained. The Puffs immediately assume it's just Silico doing another trap, but Bliss proves that it's her by stopping them with her telekinesis. Yes, her defining trait, being able to stop the other Powerpuff Girls. A trait that seems to shared by Silico, but that doesn't seem to cross their mind.

Bliss figures that Silico wouldn't be anywhere without power. Yes, Bliss happens to know that Silico exists. Maybe they talked about him during another webcam chat where Bliss talked about how she moved a planet just by not thinking too hard about it. Sadly, that's not much of an exaggeration.

But, oh no, these reprogrammed townspeople are in the way, ready to sock them with...well, anything. I'm sure you can probably throw a sponge at them, and they would drop dead.

They could fight all of the people they loved, something they did in the original, but there's also the possibility that Bliss can just use her ability to teleport right into this building. Which they actually do. Only a second later, they get hit by a laser beam.

Turns out, this was indeed where Silico was hanging out, but, being the excellent planner who is always two steps ahead, he planned for Bliss to teleport inside! This leads to the one fight scene worth talking about.

See, this fight is actually very interesting, as it pits the girls' powers against Silico's ability to generate anything he could think of. He uses a cannon, and Blossom makes a net aura to catch the cannonballs. Bliss then lifts the cannonballs up and throws them using telekinesis. He then makes a giant, and says "you're out". Silico is rather jokey here; reminds me of one of the better parts of The Trouble With Bubbles.

Wheelz, actually, they kind of forgot about that uphill roller coaster by then, tries to fly right to him and bust his lights out, but he generates a giant brick wall. Silly Silico, he should have learned from the theme song why that shouldn't work. It goes like this:

Breaking all their bones

When they hit a wall

They gon' quit

(Who's got the power? They certainly don't!)

That might be a misquote, but that might as well be how it goes. However, this does distract Silico, as Blossom and Bliss do a team up plan to strike Silico when he's not thinking about defending himself. With the combined minds of the Game Breaker and the smartest Powerpuff Girl unless she has to do math or coding...

...they just punch him in the face. Honestly, I don't mind this at all. At least I can say they're using the abilities they had before this reboot, too.

I got to say, it's also good to see that this is a fight scene where Bliss just fights alongside the existing Puffs. No special Powerpuff Sisterhood, no Bliss just taking care of everything by herself, just good old fashioned teamwork. This is one of the better fight scenes in the reboot overall. This is not saying much, but it's something.

Bubbles sneaks up on Silico and puts her reprogrammed Buggly on him, and you can watch the episode to find out what happens next. Honestly, I already spoiled enough when I mentioned Silico is in this. I will say it's an ending similar to that one episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, and it doesn't fit the "gives you anything you want" device. However, neither does reprogramming people's brains.

Maybe they might have been aware that this could be his final appearance, as, unlike all but one of his episodes, this episode doesn't end with a cliffhanger. It's a fitting end for someone who was angry at little girls for breaking his toys. What does it end with?

Rest in peace, Sitcom Dad. You were such a Sitcom Dad. No, it's just uphill roller coaster #1, which happened to be the uphill roller coaster.

Does the title fit?

The lights going out seem to be more of a side thing than anything else.

How does it stack up?

There are some pretty bad running gags that take up far too much time. If they took out those, this could easily be a top ten episode for me. As it stands, it's merely only good by reboot standards. The fight scene is interesting, Silico actually manages to get some good lines in here and is not a total dingus, and it manages to have Bliss be useful without making her overpowered. A decent episode all around.

Next, finally, Barry gets his own episode! It could be just what I always wanted, as the monkey's paw bends one of its fingers.

← Brain Freeze ☆ Bucketboy! →

#fpb ppg 2016 #ppg 2016 #powerpuff girls #fpb reviews #cartoon network

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buckyscrystalqueen · 7 years ago

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Half Blood, Whole Heart: Part 21

Pairings: Jax x Reader, sister Winchester!reader- SOA/SPN Crossover

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, angst.

Word Count: 2,892

A/N: So I decided to repost my novel- the story that someone stole from my old blog and put up on Wattpad. PLEASE don’t be an asshole and steal my stories. It CRUSHED me when it happened and almost ran me off Tumblr.

Half Blood, Whole Heart Masterlist Aesthetic by @ravenangel33

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jax didn’t say a word the entire 22 hour drive to Kansas. The two of you sat in near silence; the only noises made were the radio in the truck and Thomas talking away as he flipped through his books and played with his toys in his lap from the passenger seat. Although no words were said, the truck was thick with emotion and Jax refused to let go of your hand. As the bunker finally came into view in the full moon light, Jax followed Dean’s flashlight gestures past the Impala to park the trucks down in the garage. Sam met you inside with a giant smile.

“I was wondering when you would come and visit. Didn’t think it would be under such shitty circumstances.” You gave him a tired smile and a hug as Jax got your sleeping son out of the truck.

“Sam, this is Lyla and you remember Ope. This would be my half brother, Sam. Dean is the oldest…”

“Hey! You didn’t tell me you were bringing one of the Saffron Sisters!” Dean said as he came out into the garage. You decked him hard in the shoulder and shook your head.

“And obviously he is the most tactless as well. Help with the bags, dick.”

“Asshole.” He grumbled as he rubbed his shoulder.

“Jerk.” Sam said as he whacked his older brother on the back of the head.

“Bitch.” It took a minute to get everything collected from the trucks before the boys led you inside. The library you stepped into was huge but the first thing you noticed was the large display of knives.

“We are gunna have to do some Thomas proofing.” You said as you followed your brothers toward the bedroom. Jax took a look around and whistled.

“Yea, that’s an understatement.” Sam pointed out his room to everyone and moved a few doors down to another room.

“This would be (Y/N) and Jax. Right across will be Thomas once we clear it out.” He said as he opened the door and put the bags on the floor.

“And Opie, you’re down here.” Dean said as he stood at the end of the hallway pointing to a door to his right. “We tried to give everyone space away from each other but despite how big this place is, it’s kinda hard.”

“It’s not super long term.” You told them as you flipped on the light in your room. “Just long enough to wait out the heat then up to Bobby’s for a bit.”

“Can’t stay too long in one place until we see the full fall out of the RICO case.” Jax said as he came back into the hallway.

“What’s a RICO?” Dean asked.

“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.” Jax, Sam and Opie said in unison. You couldn’t help but giggle. Dean looked at Sam, still confused.

“Way for the government to punish organized criminals. Original use was in the 70’s to go after the Mafia…”

“Alright, I get it. No need for the history lesson.” Dean said as he brushed off his brother. "Well. It’s the middle of the night and we have a case tomorrow few hours away. Two bathrooms; one is first door on the left here.” He said as he pointed to his left. “I’m three doors down on the right same way. 2nd is back that way.” He gestured down the hall behind you. “One door before Sam but across the hall. Kitchen is that way as well. Just keep walking you’ll see it. I’m going to bed.” He turned on his heel and strolled down the hall without another word.

“He still does that?” You asked Sam who simply rolled his eyes.

"Just like dad. ‘That’s mine. Ice machine down the hall’.”

“I heard that!” Dean called out, his muffled voice slightly echoing off the stone walls.

“Idiot. If I’m not up, wake me before you leave.” You asked Sam. He nodded as he gave you a quick hug.

“I’m glad you’re safe. All of you.” He said as he clapped Jax on the shoulder. You all said good night before heading off to bed.

“I feel so guilty.” Jax said as he set up the pack and play you were grateful you thought to grab. You sighed as you dug though one of his bags to find a shirt to wear to bed.

“So do I baby. If we had another choice, you know I would take it.” He nodded solemnly as he took his sleeping son out of his car seat and laid him down for the night. He quietly looked down at his son and ran his hand over his head; letting it rest on the base of his head.

“If we get caught…” You walked over and wrapped your arms around his waist.

“We won’t. Crowley made sure our murders were all as legit as possible, this bunker doesn’t exist on any kind of records anywhere, Sam is gunna give us official public identities and change the registrations on both of the trucks and the bikes. We ride out the heat and go from there. I know it’s not how you wanted it, Jax but we got out in one piece.” He wrapped his arms around you and sighed as he held you close.

“Just… tell me we did the right thing.” You nodded and took a step back. With a small smile you pointed into the playpen.

“Our sons will grow up with both parents in their lives and we got our best friends out alive, too. We did the right thing for us and that’s what you have to focus on or this will eat you up inside. I know how you are, baby. Just keep reminding yourself you did what was best for your boys and your wife.” He nodded as he pulled you back into his chest.

“Couldn’t have done it without you.” A smile crossed your face and you sighed.

“And I’ll keep doing it… Always.”

——

You laid in bed all night, listing to the unfamiliar sounds of the bunker as you replayed the last 48 hours in your head on repeat with Jax tossing and turning next to you. It took him hours before he finally pulled your back against his chest and fell asleep; but that same sleep seemed to avoid you no matter what you did.

Around 6 am, you heard the faint beep of an alarm clock. You smiled to yourself, knowing it was just Sam getting up for the day. You gave it a couple minutes to let him start his morning routine before you gently removed yourself from Jax’s warm embrace. As your feet hit the floor, you heard another distant alarm go off.

‘Ain’t no rest for the wicked.’ You thought as you crept across the room and headed into the dimly lit hallway. You followed the smell of fresh coffee toward the kitchen and you were a bit surprised to see Dean up and not Sam.

“Since when are you the early bird?” You asked him as you leaned against the door frame. Dean glanced back at you and chuckled.

“Since I lived with you. Had to get up early to get to the shop and it just kinda stuck. You look like shit.”

“Thanks, dick. Between worrying about Jax and the guys back home and listening to him toss and turn all night long, I didn’t sleep for shit.” You heard feet shuffling down the hallway and you looked over to see a zombie version of your brother.

“Well look at you, sleeping beauty.” He groaned as he ran his hand through his messy bed head.

“Coffee?” He grumbled. Dean pointed to the pot and handed him a cup.

“Button, you want one?” Dean asked as he grabbed you a cup. You smiled and shook your head.

“Can’t. Apparently caffeine is not good for you when your pregnant.” Dean looked up at you with his eye brow arched as Sam grumbled ‘congratulations’ as he walked past you and headed to the table.

“Again? What, one wasn’t enough?” You rolled your eyes and pushed off the door frame to look for something to drink in the fridge.

“Why are you such an asshole?” You asked rhetorically as your looked at a seemingly endless supply of beer. “And why is there nothing to drink in here?”

“Apple juice; middle shelf behind the kale.” Sam said as he leaned against the wall by the table. He had already downed at least half his coffee and seemed a little more awake. You scrunched up your nose at the idea of kale and moved it out of the way to grab the apple juice.

“Just so you know, I’m going to the store at some point to stock shit for us.” You told them as you sat down across from Sam and leaned back against the wall. “Thanks for taking in us strays.”

“You’re our sister; what did you think we were gunna do, let you die?” You yawned and nodded as you unscrewed the cap of the apple juice.

“I actually didn’t think you were going to answer Crowley’s call. I never know if y’all are on the outs or not.” You took a drink as Dean poured himself another cup of coffee and brought the pot over to fill Sam’s.

“I still think it’s weird you two are all buddy buddy. So what happened, anyways?” Dean asked as he put the pot back and sat down next to Sam.

“Long fucking story. Short version? My mother-in-law tried to make a demon deal to kill Lyla and I so she could have Jax and Tommy all to her self, my father-in-law tried to hire Crowley, the cartel assassin to kill Jax, and the news bomb of the RICO case against SAMCRO.”

“Wait… were you working for the cartel?” Sam asked, now apparently fully awake as he turned to look your way. You shook your head.

“I wasn’t. I’m just an old lady that supports her husband’s endeavors, kept the house clean and raised the kids.” You said repeating bullshit words Gemma had said to you years ago jokingly.

“Oh, for the love of…” Dean started to say loudly and you hissed at him.

“You wake my kid and I will kill you and if you wake Jax, he’ll kill you. Sun ain’t even up yet; to early for yelling. No, not working for the cartel. It was a temporary means to an end that went south. Jax and I had been talking about how to go about him getting out and us leaving Charming and the deal they had was gunna make us good money.”

“You could have just run a plastic scam.” Sam said as he got up to refill his coffee again.

“Jax wanted out of the outlaw life and didn’t wanna start a new one outside of Charming as an outlaw with scams.” You took a sip of apple juice and sighed. “Not like we are gunna have a choice on that one here for a bit though, unfortunately.”

“So what are you gunna do from here?” With a heavy sigh you ran your hand through your hair and turned toward the table to rest your elbows on it.

“Honestly, not a fucking clue. We had less than an hour to pack and skip town. I figured coming here would be the safest place to ride out the storm then maybe up to Bobby’s to work for him. We gotta start over completely and stay off the government radar since all five of us are technically dead. Canada or Mexico was an idea that crossed my mind to get over seas but I don’t wanna be that far away from you two and I also don’t want to raise my sons in a foreign country.”

“Sons? How do you know…?” Dean asked.

“Crowley told me. It’s fitting though; I grew up with boys and now I’m raising boys. Full circle.” You heard a soft, sobbed ‘mommy’ that seemed to be coming closer and you smiled. “And I already love the fact that Tommy is a total mama’s boy.” It took a moment before your exhausted husband poked his head around the corner into the kitchen.

“Sorry. He wants you.” You got up and pouted at your son as he stretched toward you and sniffled.

“Watsamatta baby boy?” You asked him as you held him to his chest. “Fresh coffee. Dean made it.” He nodded and tried to stifle a yawn as you sat back down.

“Thanks… and thanks for doing this for us, guys. Sorry for dumping this shit on your door step.”

“Forget it.” Sam said and waved him off. “After all the shit we’ve dropped on you two the past few years; this is nothing.”

“We’re used to running from the law.” Dean said as Jax sat down next to you and raised his cup in thanks.

“Well I know I can speak for all of us when I say we are grateful and owe you one.” The boys nodded and stayed quiet for a moment, letting their coffee wake them up a little more.

“So what are you hunting?” You asked as you situated your son on your lap a little more so he could fall back asleep.

“Wraith down in Oklahoma. Son of a bitch is tearing through a community college.”

“That’s the wrist thing, right?” Jax asked as he glanced over at you.

“Yep. Tricky little fuckers. Ugly as hell too.” Sam said.

“Are you two idiots gunna need backup like the last time?” You asked from behind the apple juice container with a smug smile on your face.

“Listen here. We did not need backup; I had that shit totally under control.” Dean quipped. You and Sam both cocked your eyebrow and looked at him.

“Dude… I was handcuffed to a hospital bed about to get lobotomized and you were nearly drooling on yourself you were so poisoned. You most definitely did not have that shit under control.” You and Jax laughed and Dean glared at you.

“Shut up.” Sam glanced over at the clock and sighed as Dean finished off his coffee.

“Well, while I would love to continue this little chat, we gotta get going. I’ve got a card going for groceries so I’ll leave it here for you.” Jax opened his mouth to interject and Sam shook his head. “Nope. First trip is on us. Welcome to the bunker gift. I know the top cabinet to the right of the doorway has our stuff in it but feel free to use any of the other ones and feel free to move stuff around in the fridge if you need it. Thing is huge and probably full of nasty left overs. We’ll be back day after tomorrow.”

“Help yourself to the beer… well, not you, Button. And have fun Thomas proofing the bunker. Keep him away from the buttons in the room with the map table. We don’t know what more than half of them do yet.” Dean chuckled as the two of them got up from the table.

“Oh, and if you go to the end of the hall past Dean’s room there is a screen room with a projector TV. I’ll email you directions on how to work it.”

“Can you write down the Wifi password if there is one? We gotta pick up new phones in town today so texting is out.” You asked as you leaned back against the wall with your son peacefully sleeping on your chest.

“Yea, you got it. Text me when you get one you plan on hanging on to so I have the number.” You nodded at Sam and he gave you a small wave as your brothers left the kitchen. With a sigh, you picked your legs up and laid them across Jax’s lap.

“You look tired, babe.” He said as he rested his hand on your shin and lightly rubbed it back and forth. You nodded as you leaned your head back against the wall.

“Couldn’t sleep. Worried about you and the guys.” Jax sighed and nodded.

“Yea, same. It’s for the best though; there is nothing we could do to stop it, right?” He asked unconvincingly. With a small nod, you leaned forward and pushed his hair behind his ear.

“We did what we could. We saved our sons; at the end of the day, that’s what matters the most. And trust me, it’s not easy for me to say that either. Those guys were a family to me, too.” You cupped his chin in your hand and smiled. “Let yourself have a second chance, Jax. You deserve it. Take your time to grieve your loss but grow from it; use what the MC taught you and be a better man because of it. You have such an amazing heart, baby and right now, the world is at your feet.” He nodded subtly as he reached up and moved your hand to his cheek.

“Just don’t leave me… I need you.” You shook your head slowly as your head tilted to the side.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jackson Teller. You’ve been stuck with me since the day you picked me up in Nevada.”

Part 22

#Jax x Reader #Half Blood Whole Heart #SOA/SPN crossover

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lil-nct-scenarios-11 · 6 years ago

Text

Dongwoon- Shortie

Group: Highlight- Dongwoon

Theme: Request- Dongwoon accidentally embarrasses Y/N in front of the other members and Y/N gets upset as he keeps doing it which leads to them getting to a fight in front of everyone

Type: scenario- angst + fluff (for the most part)

Plot: You and Dongwoon invite the rest of highlight over to your new house for a good time but with the way Dongwoon talks about you results in anything but a good time.

____

It’s a burning hot day that’s caught in the middle of a heat wave yet you’re out on the street going around giving cold water to homeless people and advice them to take shelter under shade. When you run out of water bottles and feel content with your work for the day, you decide to visit Dongwoon and the others at their studio or office, wherever they might be today. Before you go off to visit them, you decide to stop by an ice cream shop that a friend owns to get some ice cream for the guys as well as just paying a visit to your dear friend.

As the door chimes, you exclaim, “Heyy!”

Your friend turns around and her face lights up upon recognizing you, “Hey Y/N! How can I help ya today?”

“I’ll take mine and Dongwoon’s usual as well as a cup of matcha, one mango, and two rocky roads please.”

“Okie comin’ right up. To-go right?”

“Mhmh,” you nod.

“Looks like you’re visiting the boys today huh?“ she asks as she swiftly scoops the ice cream into the containers.

“Actually Dongwoon and I invited them over to our house, I figured I’d just grab some ice cream for them before heading home plus I was missing you as well so it's good to see you.“

“It’s good to see ya too. So tell me how you’ve been?“

“I’m doing great, just got back from giving water to people. How about you? It looks a little empty in here, I figured there’d be more people since it’s hitting triple digits, is business okay?”

“Yup, business is doing amazing, especially in the heat! But it’s a little slow at this moment since kids are still in school and it’s not lunch time anymore. And you just missed it, there was major hustle here like you would not believe. Who knew hot people could be so darn angry and demanding? And I’m not talking the good-looking kinda hot people, I mean sweat-drenched hot. Anyways how are things with you and Dongwoon?”

“Things are good, we’re at a great place with each other and keep each other happy and all that. So how much do I owe ya?”

“Don’t worry about it right now, just treat me to a lunch so we can catch up properly then. Here you are, hope you have a good time Y/N,” your friend says with a friendly wink as she hands you the bag of ice cream.

“Awe thank you and I’ll text you later this evening regarding that lunch love, take care.“ You say as you take the bag and head out the door.

-----

You open your front door and as the door opens you hear the guys having an animated conversation and you wave the bag over your head at the same time they call out happily, “Y/N is here!”

“Look here comes the shortie,” Dongwoon chuckles as he comes up to greet you. As he walks over you give him a little glare yet blush in embarrassment but despite that Dongwoon pulls you into his embrace and plants a quick kiss on your head.

‘Strike one,’ you think to yourself.

“I got you guys some ice cream as a treat from this warm weather. Yoseob oppa, I got you matcha ice cream. Gikwang oppa I have mango for you. And for you two I got your favorite,” you list as you take out each container and hand it to the corresponding person.

“Rocky road?“ Doojoon asks excitedly.

“Yup, rocky road. Here’s one for you and one for you Junhyung oppa. And for you,” you stop to look at Dongwoon adoringly. “For you I got your usual babe.”

“Thank you Y/N,” the guys say in semi-unison.

“Haha no problem. Thank you guys all for coming over today, I know there’s always a lot of work so I appreciate you guys taking the time to be here,” you smile sincerely.

“Of course Y/N, since you invited us so sweetly we wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Gikwang says genuinely.

“Mhmh, you guys have a very beautiful home,” Junhyung comments.

“Oh, I almost forgot! Y/N, Dongwoon, this is for your new home,” Yoseob says as he hands you a gift.

“Oh! You guys didn’t have to do that, thank you very much,” you thank.

“Yea thank you hyungs. Please enjoy the rest of your ice creams as Y/N and I will grab some snacks for the movie,” Dongwoon states as he puts his arm around you.

---

“Hey babe I never said thanks for that ice cream earlier,” Dongwoon says in a low voice to you as he corners you and leans in for a kiss.

“Mhmh don’t get any ideas, you know we have company, and it’s your hyungs too no less,” you say quickly as you break free from his grasp but he manages to give you a kiss on you cheek.

“Mhh whatever you say lil one,” he whispers as he lets you go.

You narrow your eyes at him and cock an eyebrow, “You take the popcorn and stuff, I’ll go bring the beer.”

‘Strike two’ you count.

---

After the hilarious movie, you decide it’s time to cook dinner. Yoseob and Gikwang join you in the kitchen as Dongwoon takes the elders to play pool in the room next door.

“So Y/N, what’s for dinner tonight?” Yoseob asks as he sits on a stool.

“I was thinking of a grilled salmon with some kale salad and I’ll also be making some bean soup as well,” you say eagerly as you go around your kitchen gathering various ingredients.

“Ooh very good Y/N,” Gikwang complimented. “I heard from Dongwoon that you two were trying a diet so I’m happy to see that you two are still sticking with it.”

“Thanks. And you didn’t hear this from me but our diet magically reappeared today,” you say with a shrug as Yoseob and Gikwang laugh.

---

“Y/N?” Doojoon calls as you set the final dish on the table.

“Yes,” you say as you stand still, wiping your palms on your apron.

“Where’s all the meat? Is this it?” Doojoon asks in a serious tone but breaks into a laugh seconds later. “I’m just joking with you, the meal looks delicious. Thanks for making us this feast.”

“All that meat went into the other half of her height. Get it? ‘Cuz it’s not there,” Dongwoon cracks himself and the others chuckle nervously.

You scoff and stand in disbelief.

‘Final strike’, you think before quickly walking away with your head down letting a whisper that faintly sounded, “excuse me.”

Your hand reaches out to grab the door handle of the bathroom but Dongwoon grabs roughly your hand instead and swings you towards him.

“Why’d you leave like that?” Dongwoon asks harshly with a dark glaze over his eyes.

“Wh- why’d I leave? How about why you’ve been making fun of my height all day?” you ask defensively as you poke his chest sharply.

“Height? Is that what this is about?”

“Yes, of course it is if it’s all you keep mentioning!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” Dongwoon commands dauntingly.

“Excuse me, I’m not the one who’s been making people uncomfortable. I don’t think you realize how inconsiderate you’ve been all day.”

“Yeah whatever just come back to the table, this doesn’t look good,” Dongwoon says monotonely as he lets go of your hand and turns to walk back.

“Um no you’re not gunna pull that card with me. We’re not done here. You wanna tell me why you’re being like this? I thought you knew how much I don’t like being made fun of for my height. Baby why’d you make that joke, it wasn’t even funny.“

“It's not a big deal, I don‘t know why you‘re making a big fuss over this.”

“Cuz I know for a fact I told you that I’m very insecure about my height in general and even more so when it’s front of others. I know you’re not one to do something like this that’s why I’m ‘making a big fuss over this.’“

Dongwoon just stands there and shrugs his shoulders.

“Woonie look, we can't keep fighting like little kids. Look around, we bought that. Woonie, we bought a whole house together. Together, me and you. And that’s a huge thing and a very adult thing to do too. So please stop acting like this, you know better. You’re right, it doesn't look good for us to leave the table like that. But you gotta watch what you say cuz in our house we gotta care about each other not hurt each other, right? So let’s stop wasting time and go back,” you say softly as you rub his back softly.

Dongwoon sniffles, “You’re right Y/N, I’m sorry for making you feel so uncomfortable today. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking, I think I had too much to drink tonight. Yeah, let's go back, the hyungs are probably waiting for us. I’m sorry love.”

You smile up at him and he leans down to kiss you. He puts his arm around you and you two start to walk back together. “You know one of my favorite things about you is your height, you fit perfectly with me. We’ve waited so long to share a home together and be able to invite friends over. And look, we finally did that together. I love you Y/N,” Dongwoon says gently to you before pressing a kiss to your forehead and returning to his seat on the table amongst the others.

“Sorry about that, how’s the meal so far?” Dongwoon asks everyone politely.

*omllll look how mf handsome he isss omffff AND he’s got blk hair

*anon, you know who you are, I’m terribly sorry love, I hope I did it justice

#highlight #highlight Dongwoon #Dongwoon #highlight scenario #highlight Dongwoon scenario #Dongwoon scenario #highlight one shot #highlight Dongwoon one shot #Dongwoon one shot #request 21 #hi5hli5ht #hi5hli5ht request

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thisislizheather · 4 years ago

Text

March Magic 2021

Above Photo: Cherry Blossoms are in bloom at the University of Washington right now - Photo By Kai Wang

Am I alone in thinking that was the longest March of all time? It truly felt like it would never end. Usually I love my birthday month, but with everything still the way it’s been for the past year, there really didn’t feel like much of a reason to celebrate. Also, Nathan got COVID. It was awful and scary and I was worried about how he’d be, but all is well and he just got his vaccine this past weekend, which is incredible. So a real roller coaster type of month, but thank god it’s over.

Here’s everything that went down last month.

I recapped how my winter list of things to do went.

Forever an optimist, I made a list of spring things that I’d like to do. One of my favourite things to do is get a pedicure on the first day of a season. I don’t get them very often at all, so it’s a nice way to usher in some new weather.

I finished watching Superstore, which is such a great show. I would’ve never watched it on my own, so this is why you have to listen to your best friend’s recommendations sometimes. They know more than you. Also, it was weird as hell to hear the Smashing Pumpkins song Today in one episode. Just seemed like a strange pairing, them and this show. Or any show, really. But I mean they did lend a song to that Apple ad, so I guess the old days of Billy Corgan complaining about everything are over.

I read and reviewed Joan Rivers’ book Enter Talking.

I made my way back to Lilia with Irene to devour their seasonal leek focaccia & green salted butter, which is always heaven on a plate. (Me and focaccia have had a pretty strong love affair going on for some time now. I plan on making it at home soon, but I can’t decide on the flavouring I’ll want to add to it. There are too many possibilities.) We also shared two pastas: the corzetti with pine nuts, marjoram & parmigiano reggiano as well as the sheep’s milk cheese agnolotti with saffron, dried tomato & honey. Always a good meal here. Might benefit from some new pastas, though.

Above Photo: My sweet baby girl, leek focaccia & her green salted butter

Above Photo: Stunning Irene & pasta

Above Photo: I’m very excited for bread

I got my first Moderna shot! I usually have tons of anxiety around needles, but somehow it wasn’t a problem this time (maybe because I had the kindest nurse on the planet). It sounds so simple, but she told me to look away, to take a deep breath and while I was taking that breath she put the needle in and THAT WAS IT. So grateful for that advice. Must remember that for life now. I have my next shot on April 8th! (I did get COVID arm, but it went away in 24 hours so it really wasn’t a big deal.) Also, I’ll definitely ask a medical professional, but if it’s allowed then I’m definitely getting my card laminated for free.

There’s this great, cute new store called Gift Box on Broadway in Astoria. It’s very similar to Lockwood, only better. Lots of cards, gifts, beauty products, candles, that kind of thing.

It’s green garlic season and we must all celebrate! I’ve also decided that I might devote my life to compound butters. Making them, eating them, giving them away as gifts potentially. Maybe this is what’s been missing.

Google image search the vagar faroe islands and let’s go.

I can’t stop putting this Esti vegan feta on everything, it tastes exactly like regular feta only slightly less salty.

Everything from the brand Umbra is gorgeous.

These are officially (and my niece Layla can attest to it) the greatest socks on the planet. Not too tight, not too short or high, and soft as a cloud.

Best kale caesar dressing I’ve had in months. And I love the idea of using breadcrumbs instead of croutons to liven things up a bit.

I made this roasted winter citrus and wow was it hot fruit. It should be a crime to make something look this good, but taste average as hell.

I started using the app Google Keep to organize all of my lists and tasks and I love it. It’s so much better than using Notes.

HOW have I never even HEARD of Shake Shack’s Innovation Kitchen?! AND HOW HAVE I NEVER BEEN. It’s moved to the top of my current Must Visit list.

I may or may not have fallen down a rabbit hole of incredible Melissa Clark recipes. Love this woman.

If you live in Englewood, New Jersey, how do you not just LIVE at this bakery? My god. Every item. In my mouth. Now.

And listen, I’m no scientist, but this seems like huge news…?

If you find yourself anxious or unsettled, this video of lasagna being made from scratch is the most soothing thing I’ve come across in months.

Target sells candles?! I’m the last person on earth who learned this. $4 for an actually great mini candle is wild.

Tried a slice of the red velvet cake from Milk Bar and it was unexpectedly good. I don’t usually care about red velvet (because it’s a scam?), but honestly their cakes always find a way to taste amazing.

I made this cajun linguine and it was so lackluster, I hate when a pasta recipe doesn’t work out. It’s so upsetting. Also, cajun seasoning can blow me.

They’re opening a Sonic in Manhattan, which I’ve never been to before, is it worth going?

I know Eataly is for tourists, but once in awhile I like to stop in to peruse. I tried one of their prepackaged foods (the eggplant parmesan) and it was a hard pass. Just no flavouring at all. The only thing that saved the day were their individual little Italian chocolates. Always amazing. I do want to eventually try their dried pasta Afeltra since I’ve heard such good things about it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely not ready to watch documentaries about the pandemic yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to. I mean… we’re still IN IT, for christ’s sake. HBO needs to just sit down.

Tell me that you know the song Sea of Love.

You had me at “cheese-oozing focaccia.”

Great piece on diet culture by Julia Turshen.

When I was in Seattle in April a few years ago, I wandered onto the University of Washington’s campus and was blown away by their gorgeous cherry blossoms. They have a livestream of them right now, if you’d like to take a look.

With plastic bags officially banned now, I desperately need a basket bag to take when I go to the farmer’s market. So f-ing lovely. Everyone will think I’m Belle or some shit.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a fresh Jamaican patty in my life, so I’m definitely going here the next time I’m in Mississauga.

I love this chickpea salad, especially after adding basil.

Some of these are actually really great tips.

How on earth have I never heard of the restaurants Dell’anima or Anfora?! They’re both under the Joe Campanale umbrella (of L’Artusi fame)! I’m so excited to go. Just look at those menus.

Speaking of, I can’t go for too long without eating the wagyu steak tartare at L’Artusi. It’s a problem. (It also makes me want to buy a really great finishing olive oil, so I’m looking into that. I’m thinking either Monini or Frantoia.)

Above Photo: Wagyu steak tartare at L’Artusi

One thing I’ve started to do that you should too: buy good butter. I stopped buying margarine many years ago and thought I was a better person for buying regular grocery store butter. But sweetie, you can do more. The butter (specifically European butter) in specialty shops or some bakeries or markets is EONS better than the run-of-the-mill basic grocery butter. And it enhances literally everything that you use it in. Right now, the butter in my fridge is beurre de baratte butter and it’s ridiculously good. Obviously I’m not going to use this butter when I’m baking because I’m not a millionaire, but when I’m making something savory for dinner? Or a compound butter? Or on top of asparagus? On some bread as a snack? It’s unreal.

Speaking of food advice: don’t buy your parmesan at the grocery store either. I’ve never had amazing parmesan from there. It’s always the same, even the expensive stuff. Get your ass to a cheese shop. Enough already, you’re an adult.

I tried a CBD chocolate and just as I thought: it’s a scam. Just like red velvet. It did nothing for nobody.

I bought this tea tree toner on a whim from The Body Shop and I might keep buying it for the rest of time. I use it on my face right when I get out of a hot shower and it’s kept my face feeling incredible lately.

A new coffee shop opened up in my neighbourhood called Coffee Avenue and I can’t recommend it enough. The macadamia milk hot chocolate blew my face off.

I finally ate at Bar Primi in the city and it was spectacular. We had the ricotta crostino with hazelnuts & truffle honey (which is almost like a dessert, it’s so good), the linguine with 4 cloves of garlic & breadcrumbs as well as the penne ragu alla bolognese with ricotta which was the very best. Can’t wait to go again. Loved the atmosphere of the place, too.

The seasonal candle is out at Trader Joe’s and it’s grapefruit, which smells perfect. I’ve finally stopped hoarding their candles and have started burning them. Only took me a year of lockdown to realize I should try to enjoy my life.

Lemon Kit-Kats exist and all is right with the world. Delicious.

I don’t go very often, but I’ll always love The Dutch. Perfect cornbread. Perfect tartare. You can’t go wrong.

Above Photo: Housemade scallion-chipotle cornbread with whipped butter

Above Photo: Wagyu steak tartare, capers, bearnaise aioli

*Note: if it seems like I eat a lot of steak tartare - I do. Good observation. It’s incredible.

Controversial opinion but the Dove chocolate peanut butter eggs are one millions times better than Reese’s peanut butter cups. I couldn’t believe it either.

This leads me to another declaration: Easter candy might be better than Halloween candy. Hear me out. Halloween candy is almost chaotic when you think of the candy options, it’s overwhelming and more often than not, disappointing. Easter candy, however, is usually always new and fresh each season. They’ve got to work harder to get you to notice Easter candy, so infact you’re getting a more well thought out product, which usually tastes better. Anyway, can you tell I’m depressed…?

I went to the new Ulta location in NYC in Herald Square and it’s great, it seems bigger than the UWS one and it’s way more convenient to visit. Must remember. Oh! But speaking of Ulta, remember how last year they had such great birthday gifts? They really dropped the ball this year. They’re trying to give a $5 Mario Badescu facial spray as the March gift?! Are you fucking serious?! That’s the worst. Literally the worst gift of all the months. Fighting every urge in my body to write them a strongly-worded letter about this. Just insanity. I didn’t even go claim it. Keep your damn gift, no spray can calm me down from this.

New love: macadamia milk in my iced coffee in the morning. Just heavenly.

I rewatched Wall-E and what a great movie. For all ages. Too perfect.

Love the song Team by Lorde.

I watched the Woody Allen & Mia Farrow documentary on HBO and it’s obviously a must watch. So many things I didn’t know about that story were shown, this man needs to be stopped.

If you ever get a new phone and you want to transfer over all of your WhatsApp messages to your new phone (and you’ve never backed them up), you can pay $40 and use this site to do it.

The new Super Mario World in Japan looks incredible.

Do not judge me, but I ordered (and returned) a SKIMS bralette. I was swayed by a few photos of women wearing it and wanted to see for myself what it felt like. Verdict: crap. Sure, the material is soft but only because it’s so poorly made and unsupportive. An immediate return. The beautiful colours of the bras are what sells the product, in my opinion. It’s so hard to find well made, beautiful browns and neutrals in undergarments.

Speaking of what’s her name, I also ordered this KKW mini lip liner set that I’m unfortunately in love with. I use it as a lip liner and filler, and each fucking one is gorgeous. I’m going to do a post to show you. You’ll see what I mean.

I came across this wonderful stationary store in Chelsea, City Papery. I could spend hours roaming the aisles in there. Made a mental note to go back to get some really beautiful envelopes (why on earth am I still buying the basic-ass white envelopes at CVS??), such a great store.

I’m proofreading a book right now about the idea of living with intention and I’ll post a link to it as soon as it’s released later this year. It’s honestly one of the best self help things I’ve read in a long time.

I’ve had a Pinterest account forever and I recently organized a lot of the recipes into seasonal categories, which has inspired me to make so many new meals this season. Check it. Also, I haven’t tried these yet, but these spring recipes (below) sound delicious.

Blueberry Ricotta Cake with Lavender Glaze

Banana Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

Lemon Almond Pudding Cake

Asparagus Quiche with Hash Brown Crust

Apricot Shortbread Bars

Buttermilk Lavender Scones

Carrot Cake Bread with Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting

Lemon Olive Oil Cake with Lavender Mascarpone

I’ve mentioned my filmmaker friend Dusty before (his film Violation was at Sundance this year), well his movie is a Critic’s Pick in the The New York Times this month, which is amazing and so well deserved. Truly could not happen to a better person.

I have eaten approximately five pounds of asparagus since spring began and I can’t see myself stopping anytime soon. It’s so fucking good. One grievance: that huge, fat asparagus. Why’s it so big like that?? Unnatural as hell. Give me that thin, beautiful asparagus that’s increasingly so hard to find any day. And to anyone who’s like, “Don’t you hate how it makes your pee smell?” - why you gotta go smell your pee? Be normal, weirdo.

I did Nathan’s podcast and we talked about how it’s been so beneficial to get some intentional offline time each Sunday.

Here were the best tweets of the month.

Some things that I’m looking forward to this month: I’m trying so hard to find a way to stream the last three episodes of Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy which has been impossible to find, will definitely go check out Little Island, excited to maybe go to the Kusama exhibit, I’d really like to make the Carbone garlic bread, I want to locate and try milk bread, my brother Robbie told me to mix balsamic vinegar & mayo and put it on a burger so I’ll try that soon, I bought some dried Rao’s pasta so I can’t wait to make it, I’m so excited that movie theatres are opening on the 2nd here (I’ll be fully vaccinated very soon so this is great), and I’m adding a resolution: I’d like to do one new thing on the first of every month (examples: buy stock in something, eat ramen, etc.).

If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in February over here.

#best of NYC #NYC #NYC 2021 #this is liz heather #Liz Heather #march 2021 #things to do in NYC 2021 #Kusama exhibit #Stanley Tucci #Positive Anger #monthly post March 2021 #monthly post #best tweets #how to spend spring

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raybansandcoffee · 7 years ago

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A New Life in New York: Adventure of a Lifetime (Coldplay)

If you missed the very first installment of this series you can find all three parts HERE. I hope you enjoy this!! It’s a BIT longer than I expect this to turn out. Oops.

This is still set during the first week that Janie and Harry know each other. Their origin stories are fun for me.

January 10th, 2020

“Finn, it’s time to go!” I yelled. I was cutting it close. I needed to get out the door and get Finn to preschool. We were still stuck in winter break mode. “FINN!”

“I’m coming Mom,” he replied as he came bounding down the stairs. Not to far behind him came his two sisters. Elizabeth had been staying with us the last two nights. She had Grey bundled up in her jacket and stocking cap.

“Are you two girls coming with us to take Finny to school?”

“We thought it might be fun. We could stop and grab some breakfast on the way back,” Elizabeth suggested.

“Sounds perfect,” I said. I took Grey from her arms and started to get her put in her stroller. Elizabeth’s suggestion that we get breakfast made me happy that I’d decided to get up and put makeup on this morning. After Elizabeth and Finn had their coats on we were in the elevator and headed to take Finn to school. He was good and held his big sister’s hand the entire walk there. After checking him in, getting his coat hung up and giving goodbye kisses we were headed to breakfast. “Thank you for helping get her ready this morning.”

“It’s been fun. I like helping out with the kids.” I opened the door to the coffee shop and we were headed in. I got the girls settled in at a table before going up to the counter to order breakfast and coffee. Noelle told me not to wait at the counter today that she’d bring the food over to me.

“So I assume that you have a motive to asking me to breakfast that isn’t just free food,” I said.

“I do,” she answered.

“Spill it.” I got the milk ready for Grey to drink as I watched her older sister take a deep breath. I could tell she was nervous about what she was going to tell me. “I mean as long as you aren’t pregnant don’t be nervous. And really I wouldn’t yell at you for being pregnant I’d just tell you I’m too young to be a grandma so we need a cooler name for me.” She started to laugh and I watched her nerves start to melt away.

“I’ve been thinking about your offer. I had a long talk with Mom yesterday afternoon when the kids were napping and you were working.” I had noticed that she’s snuck out of the apartment for a little while, she came back with a coffee for me so I assumed she’d just decided that I made shit coffee and went to get some. “She knows I hate my apartment because my roommates and I don’t get along. I struggled last semester to get all of my work done in my apartment and was basically living in study rooms and the library. She is supportive of me moving in with you and the kids.”

“If it’s what you want to do we will start to convert that room into really being yours. If I have to buy you out of your lease or cover your rent until we can find someone to sublease I will. Last semester was hard on you and I want to do whatever I can to help. Your brother, sister, and I would love to have you live with us if it is what you want. I don’t want you to feel like you’re doing this for me.”

“I’m not. This is for me. You have done so much for me, Becks and Jamie since Dad died. The fact that you’re opening up your doors and letting me move in is just another example of how amazing you are.”

“Your Dad would want me to, but beyond that, I want to. You may not be my kid, but you’re my kid. You could’ve decided you hated me when your Dad brought me to dinner the first time. Instead you decided to welcome me into your family.”

“Dad loved you so much, seeing him as happy as he was with you made it easy to welcome you. And I know you say that I’m not allowed to be a live in babysitter, but I hope you know that I don’t feel like a babysitter, I just feel like a big sister who gets the chance to hang out with her little brother and sister.”

“I still won’t allow you to babysit them constantly. I can afford a nanny to help and I know I need to do that if I intend on teaching more classes when Finny starts kindergarten in fall.”

“You will need to. But for now, if you want to go out with friends or Aunt Nellie or maybe on a date that I can watch them.”

“Ha. Funny. Nel is clearly wearing off on you with the ‘dating’ thing. I’m fine.”

“I know you are. But you don’t have to be alone forever. Dad would want you to be happy.”

“I am happy. I have my two babies and the three best bonus kids the world could provide. I don’t need a boyfriend.”

“I know you don’t.” It wasn’t long before Noelle brought our breakfast over and I tried to manage eating mine and helping Grey.

“Hey you.” There it was again. The British accent. There standing behind Elizabeth was Harry with Harper in his arms.

“Hi there. Hi, Harper.” She tucked her head into her Dad’s chest shyly.

“Can you say hi to Janie, Harper?”

“Hi Janie,” she said quietly. The table next to us was empty, it was a small coffee shop with only a couple feet between each table. Harry rested the bag he had for Harper in the chair that was beside Elizabeth and came to sit next to me in the long booth with Harper in between us.

“Harry, this is Elizabeth, my oldest stepdaughter. Elizabeth, this is my stalker, Harry Styles and his daughter Harper.”

“I am not stalking her and it’s nice to meet you,” he said sticking his hand out to shake hers.

“Four times since Monday? Sounds like you’re stalking her,” Elizabeth answered. God I loved her sass. “It’s nice to meet you both.”

“And this gorgeous girl must be Grey.” Harry smiled at Grey who perked up the second her name was said. She smiled a giant syrupy smile thanks to the pancakes she was eating.

“Hi,” Grey said. Noelle came over with Harry’s coffee, milk for Harper, a green smoothie and yogurt and granola.

“Thank you, Noelle.” He must be a regular around here. He started to try and feed Harper the yogurt and granola but she was eyeing Grey’s pancakes and wanted nothing to do with the yogurt. After her refusing to eat the yogurt he tried the smoothie. “Come on Harper. You need to try it.”

“She absolutely does not,” I interjected laughing. “She’s not even 2. I’m 29 and wouldn’t want you to feed me the smoothie. Harper, do you want to share Grey’s pancakes?” She nodded excitedly. Harry glared at me as his daughter climbed up into my lap and started to share the pancakes with my daughter.

“Do you do this with every random child you meet on the streets of New York?” he asked.

“Nope, only the kids of the people who stalk me.”

“That’s gotta be full of sugar. She’s never going to take her nap and my Mom just left to catch a flight to London to see my sister for a week. You hate me, don’t you?”

“Don’t hate you. Not full of sugar. It’s sugar-free syrup or something and it’s their protein pancakes or some healthy thing that I can trick Grey with.” Harry started to laugh.

“You’re lying to your child?”

“At least I’m not feeding her a what, kale and spinach smoothie?”

“There’s banana, pineapple and peanut butter in it.” I made a gagging face and heard Elizabeth start to laugh.

“She’s lying again. She normally drinks that but she’s already on her third coffee today and I told her she needed real food.”

“And to think I thought I could trust you,” Harry exclaimed in an overly dramatic way. I rolled my eyes.

“Harper, your Dad is silly isn’t he?”

“He’s really silly.”

“So what are you three girls up to this morning?” he asked, clearly trying to change the conversation from his daughter and I mocking him.

“We took Finn to school and I’m treating my girls to breakfast.”

“I was laying the news on her that I’m moving home,” Elizabeth said. “And if she’ll let me I’m going to pack up my apartment and get out of there this weekend.”

“I’m not helping you move. Use your credit card and pay for movers.”

“Movers are expensive. She’s a college student. If you need help I’d be happy to pitch in,” Harry said as he rolled his eyes at me.

“She pays my credit card bill.” I smiled evilly at him.

“See. Not mean, just not interested in moving her shit. Though you don’t have furniture do you?” I asked Elizabeth.

“Nope, it’s a furnished apartment. It’s furnished with junk but it’s furnished. It’s just clothes and books.”

“Pay a mover.” Harry started to laugh. “She’s a nerd who loves to shop.” I glanced back at Elizabeth. “Convince your brother to come help you Saturday and tell him I’ll bribe him. I know he wants some new gadget or something. You can use the car. If he wants to stay I’ll let Finny sleep in my room and he can have that room.”

“You know Finn will convince him to stay in there with him. He’s still mad at you that you didn’t put bunk beds in his room so Jamie could have slumber parties with him.” I had to laugh. Finn worshipped his big brother, Jamie was good to him and often times it was this 18 year old kid and his 4 year old brother asleep in a Finn’s full-sized bed, which I’d only gotten that big because of the occasional times that Jamie stayed with us.

“Come on, Mom. You didn’t get the boys bunk beds? You’re no fun.”

“Just wait until you get to know my kid.” I laughed as I looked at Harry. “He thinks he can fly by jumping off his bed. I can picture it now. ‘Mommy I can fly really high now’, jumps from top bunk, breaks neck and is paralyzed. No bunk beds.” Harry started to laugh harder.

“She’s a bit dramatic sometimes,” Elizabeth said. “You’ll figure that out soon enough, I’m sure.” I glared at her. She winked at me as she smiled and I knew she as going to be hell to deal with after we parted ways with Harry. The rest of breakfast was actually fun. The girls were enjoying having another tiny human their size around and Harper took to me pretty quickly as she stayed sitting in my lap until we went to leave and wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go back to her Dad when we stood up.

“Are you headed home?” I asked Harry as we walked out onto the street and got the girls settled into their strollers.

“Yeah, I need to figure out how to get a workout in today without Mom home. I probably should’ve thought this stuff out before hand.”

“I can watch the girls,” Elizabeth chimed in. “They are clearly having fun and this one has been whining about how she hasn’t been able to get away from the apartment to work out in a week. Take her to the gym.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asked.

“Positive. I was going to try and kick her out to go work out so she’d stop annoying me. I’ll entertain the girls. You two can go have some gym time and hang out.”

“You in?” He looked at me and I started nodding without even realizing what I was doing. It was like I’d gotten hypnotized by his damn eyes. He was excitedly talking about having some time in the gym for the majority of the walk and filling in Elizabeth on things for Harper. “I’ll go get changed, get a couple things for Harp and then we’ll be up.”

“Okay,” I said softly as we walked into the building. Once the door to the elevator that went to our unit closed I turned to look at Elizabeth. “You are lucky I love you or I’d kill you right now.”

“You’ve got a gym date. You’ll have to tell me if he looks hotter all sweaty.”

“If there weren’t two year old ears in this elevator you’d get to hear the string of expletives going through my mind right now.” The doors opened and we were in the apartment. Elizabeth immediately started getting Grey out of her stroller and I sprinted upstairs to change clothes. I changed between different pants, shorts, and tops what felt like 10,000 times before I heard Harry and Elizabeth talking downstairs. I finally threw on my shoes and practically sprinted down the stairs.

“You ready?” he asked as I opened the refrigerator to grab a water.

“Yup. Lilibet, text if you need anything.” I gave Grey a kiss on the top of her head before Harry and I were out the door. It was just us in the elevator. We’d not been alone until this moment. It was Friday and we’d seen each other four times this week, all completely on accident, but each time we had other people with us. Sure, he’d texted me a bit Wednesday night and then again yesterday to tell me he’d had fun the night before, but this was different. This was just us alone in an elevator for what felt like way too much time because I was focusing on the way his cologne mixed with the scent of the soap he must’ve used in the shower.

“So what sort of workouts do you do?” he asked.

“Run, bike, swim, I’ll do weight training occasionally but I hate it. My sister has had to write about nearly every sort of work out trend and she usually drags me along with her so I can take a picture of her doing whatever it is for her articles. Oh, and I’ve tried yoga but I don’t think I’m meant to be good at it.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m not very well disciplined and I constantly get kicked out of classes for talking. And my talking is usually mocking other people in the room.” He laughed a little. “I’m a bitch, I know.”

“I don’t think you’re a bitch. But I think you could learn to enjoy yoga. I’ve practiced for a number of years. Maybe I can teach you. That way if you need to be a bit snarky you can be. I won’t be offended by you talking if it’s just us.”

“I mean okay, but can I just run and like beat the shit out of a heavy bag today?”

“Sure. You box too?” I nodded as the elevator door opened.

“It was the first sort of workout I did post-pregnancy. The bitter widow found a boxing club in Brooklyn and beat the shit out of some stuff for a while. It’s good stress relief.”

“Yes, it is. I spent a lot of time with my boxing gloves right before Harper was born.” It made me want to ask about the situation with Harper and her Mom but it wasn’t my place. He’d been decent enough to not ask about the whole widow thing so I didn’t want to force him to answer questions.

“Yeah, I would’ve done it when I was pregnant but that was frowned upon.” He laughed a bit as he threw put his towel and water bottle on a treadmill before he started to stretch. I did the same figuring that I’d just start with a run and then maybe not act like I was following him around the gym. “So, your Mom is going back to London for a week?” I asked as we both started out on the treadmill slowly, he nodded. “Why didn’t you go with?”

“Harper isn’t really the best flyer so considering she’s still on her antibiotics from last weekend I didn’t want to make her fly. It’s probably good for my Mom and sister to have some girl time too. I don’t always need to go home when she does and it gives her a bit of time away from Harper and I, which I’m sure she appreciates.”

“I get what you mean about that. When I was still living in Brooklyn I lived about two blocks from my parents and with my sister. They all wanted rid of me and I equally wanted rid of them. I actually wonder sometimes why Nellie still lives with me.”

“Well she’s your sister, she loves you and the kids. She probably enjoys it more than you realize.”

“She might, she might also just like living rent free in a huge penthouse in Tribeca. I mean I wouldn’t blame her for that. It hasn’t always been easy living with me, and she has to put up with two kids too.“

“Your kids both seem pretty great.”

“Thanks. I think Harper and I became best friends during breakfast.”

“You fed her pancakes, so of course she loves you.”

"A kid should be able to eat pancakes sometimes.”

“I know. I think I worry too much about stuff like that because I truly have no idea what I’m doing most days.”

“She’s lived this long, you’re doing great. And honestly, I raised Finn for two years with his father and when I had Grey I still had no idea what I was doing. So as long as you don’t break her, you’re good.”

“It’s fucking tough.”

“It is but occasionally you just have to go with your gut and hope it works out.” Having someone to work out with was actually nice for a change. Most of the time I snuck down here in the middle of the night when the kids were asleep and Nellie was home. I did end up sort of mindlessly following him around the gym and doing whatever he did for workouts, trading off who was spotting for each other.

“You’re doing great,” he said as he was spotting me while I was on the weight bench. As I went to finish and put the bar back his hands brushed mine. The bar slipped out of my hands and fell, loudly, onto it’s rest. “You okay?”

“Uh, yeah fine. My hands were sweaty.” They weren’t. But I couldn’t tell him that simply being touched by a man was shocking, but him touching me was almost too much. I couldn’t tell him that because I had NO IDEA why it effected me enough that I nearly dropped a barbell on my head. When we were done we basically fell into the elevator and headed to my apartment. The door opened to the sound of the TV in the great room. I saw Elizabeth laying down on the couch and the kids nowhere in site. “Where are the girls?” I asked.

“They are both passed out in Grey’s room. They played really hard for a while and then got tired. I’ve honestly never seen Grey pass out like that.”

“We will go check on them,” I said. I gestured for Harry to follow me up the stairs, which he did. When we got to Grey’s room I slowly opened the door and there they were surrounded by 10 billion stuffed animals asleep in her bed.

“She looks so tiny on that giant bed,” he said quietly. “She still sleeps in a crib. My little girl looks grown up in that bed.”

“Grey has only been out of hers for a few weeks. It was her Christmas present. Tucking my baby into that bed the first night was so heart breaking. She’s my last little baby.”

“I hate waking her up when she’s passed out like that.”

“Don’t. Go home, shower and then come back up here. They will be fine sleeping for a while. You said your Mom was out of town right?”

“Yeah, she left early this morning for London.”

“Well, we were planning on ordering in pizza for dinner. I know it’s not a kale smoothie or anything but kids love pizza.”

“I hate you.”

“Nah, you’d stop stalking me if you hated me. Go shower, let her sleep for a while and then we can all do dinner up here. The kids can hang out for the rest of the afternoon if you want.”

“When do you have to get Finn?”

“I’m gonna jump in the shower and then go get him.”

“Well, if Elizabeth is okay watching the girls I’ll walk with you to get him.”

“That would be nice. Meet back here in 30 minutes?”

“Sounds great.” He placed a soft kiss on Harper’s forehead and we walked out of the room. He got back into the elevator and headed down to his apartment while I jumped in the shower. I really wasn’t completely interested in getting dressed in cute clothes for school pick up, it was cold out, I just got done with a killer workout thanks to my stalker and knew that I’d have a rambunctious four year old on my hands. I pulled on a pair of black leggings, an oversized white sweater and an olive green jacket after drying my hair and putting on a little bit of makeup. I threw on a pair of black tennis shoes and a scarf as I heard the elevator ding.

I walked towards the doorway of the master and leaned against the doorframe as I watched the door open to Harry standing there, glancing down at his phone with his hair hanging in his face. He looked up from the phone as the door stopped moving and smiled at me. He has such a great smile. I can see why Nellie and Elizabeth spent time obsessing over the fact that I knew him, he is extremely attractive.

“Hi, there,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied. “The girls are still asleep.”

“That’s great. Harper hasn’t napped all that well this week.”

“Well they played hard this morning.”

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed my purse off of the table that was inside the master bedroom where it usually sat and stepped into the elevator with Harry. “Thanks for kicking my ass today.”

“You did great. It’s not like you needed me to kick your ass in the gym. I think you know your way around it pretty well. We should do it again though. Sometimes it’s nice to have a buddy in the gym. I got pretty used to it back in the day when I was on the road. There was always someone around to go to the gym with.”

“I bet. Thanks for going with me to get Finn.”

“The walk will be nice and it also means I won’t sit in your apartment waiting for Harper to wake up. It’s also nice to know that Harper is making a friend.”

“Yeah, Grey is used to her brother and cousins. Most of my friends don’t have kids yet. Which I know seems surprising considering my age.”

“You’re not old,” he said laughing.

“I know. But a lot of the people I was casual friends with in college have kids. My close friends are all still engulfed in journalism and life on the road isn’t conducive to children.”

“Is that why you changed up what you were writing?”

“Yeah, sort of. I got the opportunity shortly after I met my husband to take a new position in my writing. One that allowed me to have a position.” I started to laugh. “So often in journalism, unless you’re a columnist, you have to be Switzerland and be neutral. Just report the facts, no opinion on the facts. I wasn’t really interested in doing the investigative journalism that my older sister does. I mean she’s taking on stories that require her to go undercover to get information. The threats she receives and the threats I received are different.”

“You get threats about what you write?” he asked as we reached the lobby.

“I don’t know many journalists who don’t. I’m critical of a lot of people in power. Their base hates me. I get threats all of the time but most of them aren’t spelled correctly so I don’t worry. My sister has actually had to go into hiding or have a security guard for a while. It’s crazy. My threats are mainly that they are going to block me or tell everyone not to read me because I’m fake news.” Harry started to laugh. He had a good laugh.

“I mean I get that. I get threats because there are people who think I’m preventing my old band from getting back together. There’s a lot of conspiracy theories about me out there so I just avoid social media for the most part.”

“I’m sure. You basically use it now just to stalk me.”

“I hate you,” he replied.

“No, you don’t.” I shoved him a bit with my shoulder because we were walking close enough.

“You’re right. I don’t hate you.” He put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a side hug as we were stopped at a crosswalk. The light changed and allowed for us to walk causing his arm to drop from my shoulders. We went back to talking about the gym as we walked, it was an easy conversation topic for us. I knew that I could be a little socially awkward when it came to men, especially attractive ones. I wasn’t sure if he was sort of awkward too. It was weird to try and think about the opposite sex and how to handle them when you were constantly trying to think about if you had enough diapers at home and if the spot on your shirt was from the coffee you spilled or something produced from a baby. My go to subjects with people that weren’t kid related were food, music, fitness, and politics. During our walk he decided he was taking me to the gym he goes to that isn’t in the building to box and that we need to catch a spin class at Soul Cycle this week.

We finally made it to Finn’s school and I directed us through the building to Finn’s classroom. When I opened the door and walked in he jumped up out of his chair and ran towards me. He gave me a hug before glancing next to me at Harry.

“Did you have a good day, Finny?”

“I did.”

“Do you remember Harry from the doctor’s office on Monday?” I asked as I grabbed Finn’s coat from the hook and started to put it on him.

“Yup,” Finn replied. “Hi Harry.”

“Hi Finn,” Harry said. “How was school today, buddy?”

“Good. We got to paint today.” The teacher came over to us with what I assumed was Finn’s painting.

“Hi Janie,” Ms. Rockwell said. “Here is Finn’s painting from today. He did great! I love his imagination.” I glanced down at the painting to see it was of a dog. He wanted a dog really badly and was constantly asking if we could get one. My parents and my older sister had dogs. In addition to that a few weeks ago, while she was babysitting Elizabeth had taken him with to stop at her Mom’s house and they have several dogs.

“Finny, are you imaging puppy dogs again.”

“Puppy dogs aren’t imaginary, Mom.” All three of the adults in this conversation started to laugh.

“Puppy dogs aren’t imaginary at all,” Harry said. “They are pretty awesome actually.”

“I know. We are going to get one,” Finn added.

“Finn, don’t start with me.”

“I’m not starting with you. I want a dog.” I couldn’t help but laugh. He was determined to get a puppy.

“Maybe someday.”

“Remember Monday is a full day for him,” Ms. Rockwell said. “We are going to take them to the fire station for a tour. You signed him up for that.”

“I did. I signed up to chaperone too didn’t I?”

“You did. Remember that it’s okay to bring Grey with you that day.”

“The fire station? That sounds awesome. I’m jealous you get to go, Finn,” Harry chimed in. He was clearly trying to win my son over as payback for feeding his daughter pancakes, I could feel it.

“You can come too.” Finn was cute, inviting strangers on his school field trip. I needed to talk to him about how inviting strangers places was not a good idea.

“I’m sure that Harry has something else going on and that Ms. Rockwell doesn’t need any other chaperones.”

“Actually,” she said. “Rowan’s Dad was supposed to go but got called away to China for work last minute. I was going to send an email this afternoon out to parents to see if they could fill in. If you don’t mind you’re welcome to join us.” I could tell the look on her face. She was hypnotized by his eyes too.

“I could do that. Do you mind if I bring my daughter?” he asked. “She and Grey are friends.”

“Absolutely,” Ms. Rockwell replied, almost too quickly. “The more the merrier.”

“We will all see you Monday morning then,” Harry said. I grabbed Finn’s bag and was out the door.

“You really don’t have to come with on Monday.” I had Finn’s hand in mine and he was walking in between Harry and I. “I can ask Elizabeth to help chaperone, she’s not back in classes yet.

“No, it’s okay. Taking Harper to a fire station might be fun. Plus I said I’d help. I’m a man of my word. We will have fun together. It’ll be a chance to get to know each other better with the kids.”

“Stalker.”

“You are the worst.”

“I know.” Once back at the apartment Finn started in with his toys that were okay to play with and let his sister play with. Watching Finn play with Grey and Harper was cute. He loved being a big brother so having two little girls follow him around was like a dream.

“You should give me a tour,” Harry said. “I’ve not been in any of the penthouses in this place.”

“What you and Justin Timberlake don’t hang out together? There’s not a Boy Band Survivors Club in this building?” He laughed and flipped me off after checking that the kids weren’t watching. “Fine, I’ll give you a tour.” We stood up off of the couch as I watched Elizabeth giggle a bit. I led him through the house showing him my office that was in the library on the first floor, the area of the house that was occupied by my sister, the kids’ rooms and playroom, Elizabeth’s room, the master and then the rooftop terrace and entertainment center. We stood in the indoor living area upstairs looking out at the city.

“Your place is gorgeous.”

“Thanks.”

“The terrace has to be nice with the kids.”

“It’s a lifesaver. They love the pool and it’s nice to let them run around up here and burn energy. We’ll have to do some playdates this summer.”

“That would be nice.”

“Our kids all appear to be getting along well.”

“Yeah, it’s nice. Harper doesn’t spend a lot of time with other kids, I’ve got friends with kids but not a ton of them in New York. So thank you for inviting us to hang out tonight, I appreciate it a lot. It’s nice to give her some kids to hang out with and it’s nice to have grown up conversations with someone that isn’t just my Mum or completely centered around music.”

“Fridays are always pizza night around here. You’re welcome anytime.”

“I might take you up on that.”

“Most people have date night on Fridays. I have family date night.”

“Date night? What’s that?” He had to be lying. He was too cute to not know what dates were anymore. “It’s been a while since I went on a decent date.”

“Same.”

“Dating as a single parent is tough. Yours has to be harder,” he said.

“Yeah and I’m maybe not equipped to always be nice. Like I feel a little bad about what I said to Ed at the bar when he asked about Elizabeth but it’s also something I get asked a lot and judged about.”

“You get judged about your husband dying?”

“Yeah, you’d be shocked. I’ve had a lot of men look at me from the other side of the table during appetizers and drinks with sad puppy eyes. I usually then say that I got a text from a nanny and I have to go home.”

“A lot of women think the single dad thing is hot.”

“It is,” I said before even realizing what I’d said. “I mean, men with babies is an attractive thing. Umm…I…fuck. I don’t know.”

“Single Moms are…” “Crazy?”

“That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say are often times intense but also refreshing.”

“How so?”

“It’s been nice to spend time with you today. I meet a lot of women who only pretend to be interested in what goes on with Harper because they want to get into bed with me. You appear to be interested in Harper and not my bed.”

“I mean…” We both awkwardly laughed. We’d been standing up here mindlessly looking out the window for a while.

“What?” he asked.

“You have a cute kid.”

“Thanks.”

“She has your eyes.”

“Finn has yours,” I said as I turned to look up at him as he spoke. “They are beautiful. A beautiful, soft green.” I watched as he licked his lips and pulled the lower one through his thumb and index finger after he spoke. “They are the prettiest green I’ve ever seen.” His hand came to my cheek, brushing a bit of hair out of my face before cupping my cheek and his thumb rubbing back and forth gently.

My mind started going a million miles a minute. He was literally touching my face. I didn’t know why. And the worst part. I couldn’t really focus on anything except the incredible way his eyes looked as he stared into mine and the feeling of his hands. They were soft despite being slightly callused from playing guitar. He slowly bent down towards me and placed his lips against mine as his hand slipped to the back of my neck to cup the base of my head. His lips were soft and full, like two pillows against mine. I felt my stomach do a backflip, the hair on my arms stand up and my heart rate increase all at once. I sensed that he wanted to deepen the kiss and was hesitating.

“MOM!” came the scream of my son as I heard his feet come bounding up the stairs. Harry and I backed away from each other so quickly we banged our foreheads against each other. I started to laugh a little nervously.

“Yes Finny?” I yelled back.

“Come downstairs and play with us. Lilibet is getting out markers and crayons. I want you to color with us.”

“Okay Finny. We will be down in a second,” I replied.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Harry said quietly.

“You’re okay.”

“No, it was wrong of me to do that without asking.”

“No, it wasn’t. You’re fine. We are fine. Fine, yeah…fine.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah, let’s go downstairs and color.” We went downstairs and the kids forced us onto the bench on onside of the dining room table. We were sitting close enough that every time he moved I felt his skin brush against mine. I was like a robot sitting there and coloring. I had no idea what had just happened.

It had been two years since a man kissed me and I felt anything. Sure, there’d been some awkward and terrible kisses from maybe two or three of the men my sisters forced me to go on dates with, but none of them made me feel anything. That kiss made me feel like an electric current was running through my body, even still despite the kiss having ended 10 pages of a coloring book ago.

“I colored this for you,” Harper said as she handed me the picture she’d been coloring. It was full of scribbles that my Mom senses told me were hearts and flowers.

“Thank you, Harper. It’s absolutely beautiful. I am gonna go put this on the fridge with Grey and Finny’s pictures. Is that okay?”

“Yeah!” she excitedly answered. I stood from the bench and went into the kitchen. I sensed that Harry was following me.

“You promise you’re okay?” he whispered.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was a kiss. It was nothing.” Except it wasn’t. But I didn’t know what it was.

“Okay.” It wasn’t much longer when we finally ordered pizza. Harry and I both had a few beers with dinner. It was a nice way to relax from the whole confusing kiss thing.

We put on movies and I grabbed the sleeping bags that the kids used when we declared it movie night. Harry sat next to me on the sofa. It was close enough we could quietly talk during the cartoon the kids had picked but far enough away that Elizabeth wasn’t going to suddenly figure out that we knew what the other person’s lips felt like. His hand was close to mine on the cushion, I felt his pinky rub against mine and I glanced over at him to see him smirking at me. I just shook my head and turned back to the movie.

When the movie ended and we turned the lights up I realized that all three kids had fallen asleep in the sleeping bags. It was becoming difficult for me to carry Finn up to bed. I sighed deeply knowing I’d need to do that tonight.

“Let me get him,” Harry said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yeah. Elizabeth can you stay with Harper while we take the kids up to bed?”

“Of course.” Harry bent down to lift Finn as I lifted up Grey. He followed up the stairs parting in the play room to put Finn into his room while I went and tucked Grey into bed. I shut her door just as he did.

“Thank you. I would’ve died doing that after the workout you put me through.”

“I could put you through another workout, this one might be more…fun?” Well fuck.

“I bet you could.” Hey beer I drank earlier, shut up!

“Maybe sometime.” He raised an eyebrow at me and it took everything not to roll my eyes at him. Instead I laughed as we headed back downstairs. He picked Harper up off of the ground and in her sleep she snuggled into her Dad, her head rested in the bend of his neck. I walked with them to the elevator as Elizabeth picked up the sleeping bags. “Thanks again for tonight,” he said as we waited for the elevator.

“I had fun. We will have to do it again.”

“We will. Elizabeth said she’d watch the kids in the morning. We are going to the gym again.”

“I hate you.”

“Nah, you’d want me to stop stalking you if you hated me.” The door opened and he stepped in with Harper and I stood in front of the door to keep it open. “I’ll pick you up at 8:00.”

“Fine.”

“Goodnight,” he said as I stepped away from the door and it closed.

“Thank you for watching all of the kids today.”

“It was fun. Harper is a sweet kid.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“Her Dad is pretty great too.”

“Yeah, he is.” “He asked me to watch the kids tomorrow so he could drag you back to the gym.”

“I hear that.”

“I thought he might ask if he could take you out to dinner.”

“Nah, we are just friends.”

“Uh huh, sure.”

“What?” I asked. “Friends don’t sit as close on the couch as you two were tonight. Your couch could fit 15 people. He was close enough I’m pretty sure you could tell me what cologne he was wearing.”

“Actually I’ve been struggling to figure out what cologne he wears. Whatever it is it’s fucking amazing. Fuck. Why did I say that outloud?” My phone vibrated on the island of the kitchen. I saw Elizabeth glance down at it and a smile spread across her face as she grabbed it. “Give me my phone.”

“Nope,” she said.

“Give me my phone or you have to stay at your apartment.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“What does it say?”

“Thanks for tonight. The dinner, movie and kiss were all pretty great.”

“Dammit.”

“You kissed?”

“You know what? This is really an awkward conversation to have with your stepdaughter.” Just at that moment I heard the elevator open in the foyer.

“GET IN HERE, NELLIE!” Elizabeth yelled.

“What?” Nellie asked. I could tell she’d been out having drinks with her co-workers and she seemed a bit tipsy.

“Janie and Harry kissed today.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she replied.

“I am so not talking about this. This is not something appropriate to talk to my stepdaughter about.”

“Then talk to me about it.”

“Not happening.”

“You realize that I don’t care if you talk about this,” Elizabeth said. “I told you today. I want you to be happy. Dad would want you to be happy. Dating is ok.”

“This wasn’t dating.”

“No it was better than dating. It was a kiss.” My sister was such a smartass. “I mean if it was a good kiss.” I could feel the blush creeping into my cheeks. “Okay NOW you’re telling us what happened.”

“I gave him a tour of the apartment. We were upstairs looking at the view of the city from the rooftop terrace. We started talking about how great the kids were. Then there was conversation about how Harper has his eyes and Finn has mine. Our eyes locked he kissed me. Then Finn yelled for us to come down and color.”

“Was it a good kiss?” Nellie pushed.

“I mean it wasn’t much of a kiss. It was just soft and sweet.”

“Soft and sweet can be good,” Elizabeth added. I sighed deeply.

“It was like in the same instant my heart jumped into my chest, my skin covered in goosebumps and my heart started racing.”

“YES!” both of the girls yelled.

“Shut up there’s two sleeping kids in this house.”

“They have a gym date in the morning,” Elizabeth said.

“Why not a real date?” Nellie inquired.

“He only asked me to watch the kids so they could go to the gym, not on a date.”

“Because we are only friends.” The phone buzzed again.

“Not just friends.” Elizabeth’s face lit up. “This one reads: That workout could’ve been a fun end to tonight. Still could be.”

“What kind of workout?” Nellie was not going to let me not answer this.

“He carried Finny up to bed. I thanked him for that because after the workout he had me do in the gym today I wouldn’t have been able to carry him up the stairs. He told me he could put me through another workout and it might be more fun.”

“He’s trying to sext you!” Nellie was yelling again and this time both Elizabeth and I shushed her. “If you want to go get that workout we will watch the kids.”

“Give me my phone I’m going to bed.” Elizabeth finally handed the phone over and I went upstairs to go to bed. I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling when the phone went off for a third time.

That was out of line, right? Well, considering Elizabeth had my phone in her hands when you sent it… Fuck. Yup. I’m sorry. Is she upset? Umm…in a way. How so? She’s upset (and so is Nellie) that I crawled into my own bed instead of replying to you. HAHA! That’s great. She’s a great girl. Yes she is. Well was, until tonight. I want to kill them both. They almost woke the kids up. How so? They were excitedly screaming about you evidently sexting me. It was a failed attempt at sexting because I’m alone in bed. You are the worst. Nah, I’m the best. You just don’t know it yet. DAMN. Someone has an ego. Yup. So are you ready to get your butt kicked again in the morning? Yes. Nice segue in the conversation by the way. I’m good. And I wasn’t completely changing the subject. Think you can get a sitter for all three of the kids tomorrow night? Maybe why? Ed wants to go out. His missus just landed today which was why we weren’t recording today. Since his lady is coming and I don’t want to be the third wheel I thought you could join me. Could be fun. Oh, I can make sure its…fun. Bold statement, Styles. Bold statement. I think that I can find a sitter for all three kids. Elizabeth and one of her girlfriends had been talking about having a girls night. I’ll convince them to do it at home instead of out. I’m good at bribing them to do things. I’m intrigued now. Well get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight. Dream of me. Oh shut up.

Well, well, well. A first kiss interrupted by a tiny human. Nothing seems more appropriate for these two. The flirting that went from subtle to blatant. And Harry with the “failed” attempt at sexting.

I mean Harry is being bold with Janie and frankly I love it. Writing them is fun. Their banter. Her sarcastic, smartassed nature. The world has sort of left Janie without a fully functioning filter. I mean she fed his kid pancakes! I love the idea of Janie sitting with both of their girls feeding them pancakes. And the mental image of Harry and Janie coloring with their three kids sort of melts my heart. They are both incredible parents who have done nothing but put their kids first.

They have the building blocks of a great friendship in place. Shared interest. Kids that get along. Proximity, haha. I am excited for them to get to know each other and wonder just how long each of them can go without talking about the two GIANT elephants in the room: Harper’s Mom and Greyson’s death. Eventually they will have to have those conversations and they both appear to be avoiding them because they don’t want it to feel like they are prying. As their friendship grows that will be something they have no choice but to talk about. Any speculations on either situation?

I love writing the three women in this story. Janie, Nellie and Elizabeth are great characters and I can’t wait to provide more information about Nellie and Elizabeth. Janie has quite the tribe of people ready, willing and able to help her raise these two kids alone. Elizabeth being a daily fixture in Janie and the kids’ lives is going to be fun. And I am pretty sure she will always keep Janie on her toes.

I can’t wait to hear what you think!! This was really only supposed to be like 3,500 words and ended up at 7,644. What do you want to hear next? I am excited to tell different parts of their growing relationship and jump around a bit. So please, please, PLEASE tell me what you’d like to hear. I’d love to have a spark of an idea come from someone else.

Also thank you to my fellow Coldplay addict, @death–by–dimples for the title. I’ve been staring at my iTunes for a half hour and she in an instant had a title without even reading the chapter!

xx AM.

PS I apologize about the grammar and spelling. It’s almost 1:30. I’m tired and don’t want to spell check. #lazywriter

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curious-minx · 4 years ago

Text

Tiffany’s Wastrel

The following short story is based loosely on the above tweet. Enjoy.

Tiffany is acquiring a taste for wastrels.

Especially for the ones with trellises and coiffed, pressed curls.

She pushes past her usual coterie of bleach blonde maniacs and born again divas that once crowded up her equally spacious and collapsing studio upper crust loft.

She envisions herself intentionally choking upon a rice cracker alone and saving herself at the last moment. Delicious!

Would you like a duel? Asks the phlegmy ancient frenchie that is poking through her front door.

“Excuse me?” Tiffany makes sure she stares the fellow down and then quickly looks away depleted from having to sustain so much direct eye contact.

Pip the ancient frenchie takes a swig out of a small ginger tonic he keeps strapped to his chest with a bandolier of tonics, “I repeat: would you like some gruel?! Tiffany you’ve got to catch up or else the entire team is going to march on off without you! How would you like to be cast out into a Tin Pan Alley without even a cockatoo to your name? Sure, you’re somewhat of a real classic Tenner, but let’s not kid yourself your face has too many obvious tells to be truly beautiful. Don’t fret though because everyone is really and truly ugly inside and out.”

Another grotesque elderly lothario, Pip Levant, that frequently sloshes onto the elm shores of bookstore aisles on bad days waiting to go full blown Nabokov on anyone carrying the sweatiest perfumed glimpse of college. Pip had accrued a beggar’s banquet worth of bad habits when it came to Tisch students. Tiffany has started recording these encounters and using the audio of these captured harassments as a soundtrack to her fabulous revelry. Let Tiffany have her revelry you dirty old septic tank of a man. You look less like a man and more like a fox that Bryan Ferry has sought to personally catch and skin intoxicated by velvet clad hand. Tiffany has been preparing a launching off for a TV pilot point for her Elder Abuse-O-Rama daily streaming feed that has gotten over 150,000,000 views mostly by smoking children too tough for to be coaxed onto the factory scene. They have jail broken Fortnite and are capable of thrusting stock markets into disarray, but they are eyeballs and eyeballs click.

Violence is not the answer, but it is the Design. How long has Tiffany started each day emerging from her clamshell bed muttering that stormy relegation? Stretch and and get a feel of today’s wastrel, they are a slender tomboy dressed in leisure wear the color of Haden mangoes and she is amusing herself with a possibly tasteless bit of Tulvan throat singing , worse of all possibly in an attempt to win over Tiffany by her biggest weakness: amusement. Sometimes all you can do with a wastrel like this is give a courtesy curtsey and bid the wastrel adieu. Locked out of her own apartment Tiffany begins to roam the streets of Roman Solitude Retreat Center which has become the size of its own municipality or at least triple the usual sitcom set. Tiffany remembers the last line she had on a Mainstream Cranial Transmission, “Molly Trapped in The Polygon Mall.” Paid in sleek blue cash and she kept it all inside of her fanatical sister’s private banking system where all of her family funds are stashed away in inside the family compound’s intricate false rec room. Tiffany can’t remember this wastrel’s name so she hopes if she ignores them for long enough that they’ll do her a solid and dematerialize. Sometimes she breaks out a full on stoic fetal position wrapped around her blanket sarcophagus that was going to buried underneath her family’s shopping mall, a real brick and cement complex which wasn’t at all like the false duplicate mall her family had on loan in Dubai. How much does a personality cost?

Tiffany is a breath away from answering her own fecund rhetorical when she espies that nearly an entire day has been spent hibernating, oh what a satisfying state, and one that Tiffany prides herself on mastering by constantly tapping into her surrounding ether and stern mental gymnastics. She’s had her fair share of unbelievers. Her train of thought is waylaid by the wrapped in Satanic strawberry gift wrapping prominently displayed on her kitchen vanity. She tears into the gift with a Skipper butterfly knife. Wow, more soap Tiffany wants to say aloud but she is saving her voice for a jump scare, hoping that this will be the present that finally kills me. Tiffany unwraps and palms the cantaloupe-n-Licorice scented goat oat milk soap bar, and of course, there is also another bathing cap. When did all of Tiffany’s dates start insisting that she start wearing a bathing cap for every tryst? Stretching out her hunched wallflower posture into a oblique fortune five hundred pantheress with a vision, always ready to abort any given mission. Looks like all of the freelance work wriggled itself out of the hall of self congratulating mirrors and shriveled up into the sheen of dust it has always been. There’s a problem with having a surplus of disposable income and it’s one of the many in her personal Anti-pride parade stampeding issues that Tiffany is dealing with, better than most. Ho hum.

Another day in the life.

Wait a sec, Tiffany realizes that she fell for one of the many FALSE STARTS that have been rampaging her apartment building. FALSE STARTS of days spent as an ode to lovemaking; days dedicated to laundry folding; waking up pregnant with someone else’s paranoia; burning down your house and the rest of the complex being a rare but sought after FALSE START, but other FALSE STARTS are convinced that the other one is openly putting a Welsh mobster hit out on the other. Is it possible to take a hit out on a photo wonders Tiffany? Specifically, the one she keeps in her walk way inside an empty bombed out hospital in Malta. Other such snapshots of daily life were also tormenting the rest of Tiffany’s entire building, surely you can sage that sort of thing away? Tiffany’s FALSE START looks like a pinwheel sprouting out of the rusty smoldering eternally damp spot on her apartment’s bedroom ceiling. Tiffany braces herself, lunge stretches, swaddles a Ninja tailored hijab across her head that suctions itself to her skull. Air circulates into the lungs, but the exhalations are filtered out and even cleaner than before. She has gotten a job as a weather presenter for a fetish enthusiast video game streamer who always has extraneous content for the fans. The unironic straight faced weather reporter portrayed by a youthful female that looks slightly unreal. Tiffany massages her smile dimples and manages to tilt her eyes in every conceivable expression; the main pre-show exercise she has been doing for a good decade now.

////

Back on the set of one of her first jobs as a substitute “Older Sister” or throwaway Kooky Aunt for FACSIMILE FAMILIES INC. Her fictional father, Kale a method actor Pacific Island Man with incredibly bright fiery orange hair and glow in the dark freckles that made him constantly functioning at low-grade irritability. Whenever the real families were asleep Kale would creep into Tiffany’s attic room wearing a flowing night gown and a cigarette stained fuzzy robe. He would mutter all sorts of things never actually going inside of her room but just suspended in air on the ladder leading into the attic. One such muttering exchange sticks out in Tiffany’s imaginings:

A decade spent in this town and even the most alpha Fool gets thrown out for a newer model. Thankfully that won’t happen to you.

“Why not? “ Tiffany asks fully knowing the answer.

Tiffany you’re too much risky business. Something is always fussing around you. You’re gonna be fine, especially when you’re not.

Back on set living the life of a fictional family member Tiffany cradled a special hated in her heart for whenever Kale was being cute, and she was readying to go and take notes of the other crew members smoking and getting union benefits. Then Kale made his average frame appear more layered and enlarged by holding his breath only in certain parts of his body. Complete control is but a mere fragment of the whole this Entertainment Business requires. Spanking the imaginary neighbor too hard on a playdate is the only scenario Kale ever really got to act in and Tiffany never bothered to stay in touch, but the Fake Dad was right, there is something fussing around me. Tiffany flashes a tight knit smile and she grabs a magic eight ball and swinging winged bat, a cold transfused powder steel baby blue and jostles open one of the house’s many front facing windows. Without even looking Tiffany reaches into the umbrella stand pale containing a rough and splintered baseball bat. With one crack of that bat she cleanly smashes a drone out of the sky, the machine putters and sputters lamely crashing down into a private nude beach. .Another one of her secret garden variety admirers keeping an ever watchful eye? There are only so many drones you can cause crashing down out of the sky before you’ve got to pay back an obnoxious fees and fines. Community service is even enforced with classes to drone building classes sprouting up all over the country. The real family grew tired of Tiffany attracting so much attention of making their family feel too mythopoetic. Tiffany could handle getting fired from all sorts of jobs and she was maybe most thankful for being terminated for this one. She was starting to grow too fond of portraying Laurel Tallow daughter of Kale and Whisper Tallow. You have to always be able to find yourself.

////

A sickly fresh out of college bird man, a Gentleman Finch, is greasing up his feathers with Tokyo milk and sebum outside of Tiffany’s apartment building, checking his reflection in the empty koi pond. The Gentleman Finch Using the abandoned walker as a prop to imagine getting old with Tiffany, but then smashing it up and fluttering away with merciful glee. He must have been circling the block for at least half an hour but he hid his agitation well when he greets Tiffany.

Oh, great, not another wastrel. Tiffany lifts the bird boy up by his scruffy lapel and shoves him towards the community bathing center that has been closed since Tiffany moved in for constant reupholstering and fumigation. There is even an over eager exhibitionist elderly nudist. He is reciting the history of the Roman Empire by memory and coaxes the bird man child into the pool who falls in first flustered, and then he wheezes his bony little chest into a doggy paddle. He doesn’t even seem to care that his tweed suit is irreparably damaged.

Tiffany is acquiring a taste for privacy. She no longer traps her thoughts and misabelq them in jars. She is taking this time for herself. She is going to finally learn how to play the saxophone and be her own musical support on her own talk show. Sure, there are too many talk shows right now and it is a dying form of disposable industry, but you have your dreams and leave Tiffany with hers. Tiffany draws up a frothy absurdist escapist bath that is overflowing the entire apartment building. All of the FALSE STARTS are splashing about and pretending to be water nymphs in a manner eerily similar to when Tiffany tripped on acid at the Washington Yearning Yeti festival. Tiffany calls out to one her many readjustable neighbors: Hazel the Terrible, Lorne and Sade the lovers that always setting off alarms of their own agony and ecstasy, Father Pennyweather the convicted child molesting Catholic Priest with an expansive TinTin collection and was weaving a TinTin a Day tapestry in the building’s lobby, and even entire dozen of rude Yuzu family children were nowhere to be seen and no one bothers answering any of her calling out.

Pip is on an island of other people’s belongings and debris, stroking Hazel the Terrible’s dirty snow colored Pomeranian who is upsettingly sedate in Pip’s hairy arms. The Gentleman Finch offers a wing to Tiffany, he is out of breath despite flapping because his life depending on it. Tiffany shrugs him away and hops onto the back the Last Great American Whale, she is smoking a pipe, and she is exactly the kind of life model a woman could hope to find in these canceled times. The Last Great American Whale sings

I’ve watched my best brothers and sisters become bulimic because of arrogant Jonahs

Festoon your sharpest harpoons with my blubber because I’m going splashing

There’s a washed up Actor finding her way in the world and I am not her taxi

Nor am I her Mustang Sally, but nonetheless she shall Ride these waves with me

How about the Palisades?

Tiffany attempts to warble, “Suits me just fine,” but the Last American Whale sighs and gives Tiffany the silent treatment for the rest of the ride. Tiffany is deposited off on a cliff where she is free to dangle her feet over brackish crashing water. Down below idling in the Hudson is the same tomboy wastrel from earlier operating a steel sail boat. The ship’s sail is designed with a print of Tiffany’s shadowed eyes and Tiffany has no choice but to be kind of impress. The tomboy aims a cannon and fires out a parachute at Tiffany with fairly clunky but legible instructions and descends onto her craft.

I was hoping that you’d be wearing your new bathing cap.

“I bet you would. Listen, you’re perfectly cute in a droopy eyed Shelley Duvall kind of way but I’m not really that interested in having a relationship right now.”

Fine by me. Just so you know this ship is not meant to travel far and I can only get you back onto the New York side. Is that where you want to go?

“I do think of you as a mighty great acquaintance…” Tiffany holds waiting for the tomboy’s name to occur to her, but the tomboy simply stares at her, smiles and nods. “New York is the last place in the world I want to go, but it is where I must. The planet has been divided and conquered by the anointed media conglomerates and they want me back there….I want to say…Rikki.”

Glad you finally remembered.

“Whew so your name is Rikki? It’s certainly...spunky.”

No, but I’ll take it. I’ll wait and see how long it takes for you to guess my name right. The longer you take the bigger your prize. I’m going to port in Vermont, maybe Montreal if this old tin bitch can handle it.

“Canada. You know, I’ve always loved Canada. Joni Mitchell, Destroyer, Mark McKinney, what a country.”

They’ll probably deport you, but you can stay with me as long as you like or I can at least help get you sit up with a new place.

And with that the two women with no chemistry and a flaky friendship pointed and directed wind machines into the masts of Rikki(?)’s sail boat, which despite being weighed down by ostentatious steel was beginning a glide up the Hudson. Tiffany kicks herself when she realizes that she has agreed to this nautical voyage without having packed anything other than what she is wearing, but then The Gentleman Finch comes back up over the horizon lugging up one of Tiffany’s antiquate trunk suitcases big enough to fit at least one coastal traveling magician’s circuit worth of belongings, the trunk lands with a gentle thud onto the ship nearly causing the entire vessel to sink. Tiffany has to quickly go through her belongings and sacrifice a flank of wardrobe and two forty pound sacks of floral loose tea leaves that make one’s complexion clear and the glow of living in the present, she still had three more but it still did not diminish the weight of the sacrifice the Hudson is in a state of shock with the weight of so much style and sophistication.

A sea mammal somewhere between a manatee and a bipedal seal with flippers with thumb like protrusions catches flipperfulls of garments, and on a slippery jutting rock begins trying on some of Tiffany’s more scandalous Hudson offerings and is stuffing the rest of the clothes inside of a repurposed fisherman’s net. A gal can always afford to be thrifty. Rikki(?)’s sail boat regains momentum with the assistance of the loud and careening wind machines that Rikki silently with the same expression somewhere between a hesitant grimace and surgeon’s gleeful bad diagnosis. Tiffany reminds herself that this is all temporary. Even newer Jerseys and future minted Yorks will colonize and fetishize even taller metropolises, or better yet retrograde back into a state of complete wilderness. Suits Tiffany mighty fine because she’ll just be using the timber of said wilderness to fashion herself her own Desk. The tinier, aerodynamic and all-encompassing the better. The swaying undercarriage of the steely ship rocks Tiffany into a glimpse of a doze, trying to keep one eye open, trying to not get taken advantage, trying to not appear to be trying.

The Canadian Border approaches. Nevermind, that’s just the Catskills.

#short story #based off a tweet #birds #humor #short fiction

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