#header over atlantic

[kookslastbutton]

Those Eyes Chico ༓ myg (m) | Teaser

✒ Summary: As the new marketing director for Min Yoongi’s upcoming D-Day album & tour, you’re expected to bring your expertise to the table. This shouldn’t be a problem—you’re the best in the business and you’re used to drawing a strict line between your professional and personal life. But what happens when the lines you’ve fought to keep as separate blur for the first time?

pairing: idol!yoongi x plus size!poc!reader

genre/AU: angst, fluff, smut, slow-burn, coworkers2friends2lovers, winter setting, forbidden love?

word count: tbd, 835 for this teaser

warnings: oc is 28, Yoon is 30, oc is not originally from South Korea, oc has light brown eyes, swearing, mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of anxiety, panic attacks, body insecurities, fear of being blacklisted, emotionally restrained Yoon, mentions of smoking, unstable parental relationships, conservative parents, mentions of therapy, mentions of dating scandal, eventual sexual content, and more specific warnings per chapter.

now playing: Sweet Dreams by The Last Shadow Puppets

a/n: Okay this has taken over six months to release but it's finally beginning and I am super excited to share! 🫣 I am low-key terrible at choosing a proper teaser so hoepfull this works haha. ANYWAY, this series is dedicated to my wonderfully crazy friend and beta, Gloom @theuselessdaydreamingidiot, and to all our fellow Yoon lovers bc we miss our sweet man SO MUCH 🥺 Enjoy! 🥰 Also huge thank you to @itaeewon for designing this beautiful series header! Love it!!

Series Masterlist

“Did you get the files I sent to you?”

The woman nods her head in affirmation while sweeping a few pieces of her long, silky hair behind an ear. To strangers, she appears to look about 24 which is only four years younger than yourself but nonetheless she’s the same age as you. Hei-Ran is her name, meaning “graceful orchid” according to Korean translation.

Hei-ran is one of Hybe’s newest hires and based on her experience, a near perfect fit to being South Korean boy group Tomorrow X Together’s new marketing manager. Until about three months ago, this had been your job.

You never imagined giving up the position after three years of working in the role. But with December right around the corner Hybe had other plans for you.

"Graduated summa cum laude with a bachelors degree in BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and a MBA in Marketing from NYU Stern. You worked two years as a brand manager for U.S record label Atlantic Records immediately after graduating, and are now working at BigHit Music as a marketing manager for TXT including liaison with their global marketing team.”

You recall PD Bang’s voice vibrate in the back of your mind from mid-August. You thought you were called into his office to discuss details of TXT’s latest promo, so having your resume read back to you was a sweeping curve ball. Your determination must have far exceeded the heaviness you felt in your chest because before you knew it you, you were shaking hands with your boss in acceptance of your role – the new marketing director for Min Yoongi’s upcoming D-Day album & tour.

The tedious knot that’s formed in the nape of your neck reminds you that as surreal as the situation might be, it’s undeniably real.

Months spent drafting a comprehensive marketing proposal for D-Day; often until the wee hours of the night, inevitably takes its toll on even the mightiest of warriors. An entire new team of fifty people, all of who you’ll be in charge of orchestrating for the next eight months, doesn’t provide much to relief either.

You’re excited nevertheless. Working with one of the most respected artists in the music industry is an opportunity you couldn’t let slip by, especially since the album’s rock-inspired genre aligns closely with your own music taste.

“Thank you so much for helping me get settled __,” Hei-ran’s gentle voice returns you to the present. “I appreciate the time you’ve taken these last few months to train me despite the tight deadlines you have.”

Smiling, you shake your head. “It’s no problem at all and if there’s anything you need in the future, feel free to give me a call or stop by my office.”

“On the 16th floor right?”

“1656A. Take a left off the elevator and walk to the end of the first hallway. The door on the right is mine.”

Referring to any room on the 16th floor as your own is something you don’t take lightly. For one the offices are double the size of any other office spaces in the building. Yours in particular has a giant skyscraper window draped with heavy white curtains. Secondly, the floor above is the 17th floor which is exclusive to Hybe artists only.

"How's the proposal coming along, by the way?" Her curiosity is palpable, genuine in its nature. You’ve always appreciated that in an individual.

“It’s done,” you respond. “Only thing left to do is to prepare for our meeting with C-suite executives next Monday. It’s nearly perfect as is, but the presentation could use a bit of refining in terms of organization.”

Hei-ran is silent for a moment longer than usual before her next inquiry, which is undoubtedly the question on both of your minds. “I can't help but wonder what it'll be like to meet him for the first time,” she muses.

You don’t bother asking for clarification on who the “him” is; you’re already well aware that it’s Min Yoongi. The same subject has managed to intrude your own thoughts more and more as the date of meeting him draws closer. It's peculiar honestly, considering you’ve encountered him before. Granted, it was only a small handful of times the hallway, both heading in opposite directions. Min Yoongi typically greeted you with a hoarse 'Good Morning' those instances, along with a curt nod of his head. You would nod back with a brief 'Morning' yourself. Deep down you feel he'd make a quality friend, though it's only a premonition. It’s not like you actually know much about him beyond those small exchanges.

"I'm not sure what to expect, honestly," you admit. "I imagine it'll be similar to previous professional collaborations—composed, focused, and intense. D-Day is poised to become a global sensation for the next year, so it's going to need our full, undivided attention."

Hei-ran gives a knowing nod. “Good luck __,” she wishes you well as you head towards the elevator doors. Breaks over, back to work.

a/n: Chapter one will be released soon 🙃 Thanks for reading the teaser!

Masterlist | Requests: closed | Taglist | Fic Recs

no reposting, copying, or translating my work– © kookslastbutton

[piratefalls]

i'm back with a header i like a lot more. this one's a little shorter than usual, but still has a little of everything. also, instead of individual links we've graduated to a masterlist!

masterlist.

you've ruined my life (by not being mine) by coffeecatsme

“I have a secret,” Alex whispers in his ear—he’s sprawled over Henry on the couch, calves and thighs and chests pressed together, breath washing over Henry’s skin. “I shouldn’t tell you.” “Oh?” Alex nods vehemently. “Can’t lose you,” he murmurs, fingertips on Henry’s face, and Christ that touch is deadly. “Can’t tell you I love you. You’d leave.” Henry stares. “Oh.”

i speak in grey (to match the shades on the inside of my brain) by sticktothescript

He spends all of that week researching what non-binary means, but he pointedly ignores the squirming feeling of excitement in his chest. He’s just curious, that’s all. That’s all it can be. He’s lived his whole life as a man. He’s the First Son. There’s no room for testing boundaries when the people need him. --- or; a 5+1 of Alex Claremont-Diaz exploring gender identity

And The Show Goes On by orestespdf

For the second time that evening, a hand suddenly smacks his shoulder. Henry looks up, expecting Philip, but instead he is greeted with a smarmy smile. Henry’s stomach drops at the sight of the man who stands behind him. “Christopher,” Philip laughs. His brother stands, and he and the man shake hands vigorously above Henry’s head. Henry wants to melt into his seat and disappear. “I’m so glad you could make it. Henry, you remember my mate, Christopher Lewis?” Henry stares down at the intricately folded napkin in front of him. Christopher Lewis: 2011 St Andrews graduate, former head of the Eton rugby club, excellent skier, wine aficionado. Seven years older than Henry. Green eyes. Nice shoulders. Yes, Henry remembers Christopher Lewis. He wishes he didn’t. After years of not seeing him, Henry runs into Philip's old friend again. Fallout ensues.

heartbeats under coats by HypnosTheory

Alex, a DC lawyer on his way back from a work trip, is stranded in New York after a freak blizzard grounds all flights. He gets the last available hotel room on the island, but a freak error means the room is double booked. Unwilling to leave the other stranded, both men agree to share the room and wait out the blizzard together.

don't just give it up. by smc_27

Alex checks the flight path for the 12th time this minute, and then rolls his eyes and groans. Amy, next to him, opens one eye. He apologizes wordlessly and tries to stop being so fucking antsy. Look. Look. He’s got something - someone - fucking perfect waiting for him across the Atlantic. If anyone knew what exactly he’s flying to, they’d speed the plane the fuck up and get him there.

this moment in time by rizcriz

She moves away from the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. “What did you do, Alex?” He turns back to the table and puts his hands in his hair as he leans over the cup of coffee. “I made Henry a christmas card, and snuck it into his bag before he left for London.” “Okay?” “I may have used it as a vessel to confess my feelings for him.” He says it fast, almost too quickly to be understood, but June’s had a lifetime of translating Alex-speak, and he hears her quick intake of breath and pulls his hands from his hair to look over his shoulder at her. -- Or, it's a New Years to remember.

when the silence screams by teacupivy

Today, Henry comes home to a stillness that’s out of place in the usually bustling December air. It's only a little disconcerting. or Alex is incredibly frustrated with the state of life and Henry offers to get on his knees.

i dream of our odyssey by violetbaudelairequagmire

Alex rests his elbows on the counter of the small cafe attached to Bankston’s Books, enjoying the quiet period in between the morning stay-at-home-mom-crying-toddler storytime crowd and the rush of college students that appear in the afternoon. It’s only a couple hours, but it’s nice to have that time with just a few black coffees in between the rush of “pumpkin spice latte and a cakepop” and “quad shot espressos and keep them coming” that dominate the busy periods at the bookstore. He’s not complaining though- he loves this job. He gets a discount on books, no one cares how much coffee he drinks in a shift, and, in the last couple of weeks, he’s had a great view of the new guy quietly shelving books. it's a bookstore au!

Shatter Me by politics_and_prose

Henry is resigned to the life he's meant to lead until he meets a man so full of happiness and life that he's got no choice but to confront the secret he's been keeping for years.

Singularity by OrchidScript

"Henry didn’t try to resist. He’d lost his capacity for it the moment his scruffy looking nerf herder had stood in the White House press room and called Henry his choice. Under the onslaught of purposeful dragging of fingernails, featherlight touches under tables, the pink-bitten promise of more, Henry abandoned all defense. He willingly succumbed to his fiancé’s heated breath and honeyed words." The boys find inspiration in a hotel room armchair.

In Every Universe by clottedcreamfudge

Alex and Henry will find each other in every universe. A series of either explicitly or implicitly soulmate-themed AUs, which are all heading in one very specific direction.

You Remind Me of Home by athousandrooms & ifyoustay

Henry had taken the news that he was being summoned to England early much worse than Alex had. He'd left him with a million apologies on his lips. Alex had swallowed them all with a parting kiss and the promise of seeing him on the 23rd, knowing full well that no matter how much as much as he wished to, he couldn’t afford to travel with him during finals season of his first year of Law School. It's been a week, and Alex... Alex would give anything to have Henry here. But, all's well that ends well, as they say.

well we're not here to fuck ducks by stutteringpeach

Henry is looking for someone to help him with his duck study. He makes quite a serious typo in his 'All Staff' email.

with my name on your lips, tell me how does it taste by viciouslyqueer

“I don’t think anyone will be offended if two... very close friends decide to try it out, H. I certainly won’t.” Alex laughs when Henry fixes him with a half-hearted glare. “And you felt the need to track me down and show me this on a random Tuesday morning because...” Henry trails off with a perfectly arched brow. It’s infuriatingly attractive. Alex braces himself on the table and leans in, stopping with his mouth an inch away from Henry’s ear. He can almost hear him holding his breath. “Because I want to take my time with you, sweetheart,” Alex whispers sweetly. “And this is the perfect opportunity.”

Don't - Don't You Want Me? by absoluteaudacity

Alex is bad at communicating sometimes.

(you might be) someone i could love by weather_stained

(...or you're just somebody I fucked once.) After Henry has an anonymous one-night stand at a party, he can't stop thinking about the boy with the beautiful brown eyes and messy curls. Months later, Pez scores them an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with June Claremont-Diaz, her girlfriend, and her brother, at her family's lakehouse. It could be the second chance he's been looking for, or he could be stuck hopelessly pining for someone who only ever wanted sex.

Locked In by allmylovesatonce

After their night together in Paris, Henry and Alex get quarantined in their hotel, locked in for two full weeks.

hours by demigodbeautiies

Although the White House is fast, the British press is faster. It has to be a leak. An accident. A screw up. There's no way a story like this would be allowed to break if anyone had actual control over the situation. Perhaps the entire headline is wrong, and the agonising lurch in Henry's stomach is for nothing. He reads it again. BREAKING: Son of US President Ellen Claremont abducted, held hostage. Watch for LIVE updates.

Forty-Four Days by bleedingballroomfloor

"God, I haven't seen you in forty-four days," Alex suddenly spits, and Henry feels the pain of his words in his own chest, like ice replacing the blood in his veins. Because that's it, isn't it? Forty-four days of separation. Forty-four days of waking up to an empty bed, of making coffee along with his tea only to realize that Alex isn't there to drink it, of long meetings without any of Alex's witty jokes, of cold hands on chilly autumn walks because Alex isn't there to warm them up. Maybe it's the simple fact of hearing for the first time, or maybe it's the tipping point of the taxing day, but Henry feels something inside of him snap, and — And all he knows is that he needs to see Alex now.

Hope is a Five-Alarm Fire by AnchoredArchangel

“I’m just saying- we know you, Alejandro. I've ran the odds and with your personal history of decision-making and impulse control, there’s a less than four percent chance��you of all people didn’t shoot your shot. Even if he’s in the closet. Even if he’s supposedly straight. Even if he’s a prince. You love a good story.” Doesn’t he ever. Too bad he’s never going to get the chance to tell this one. Or: Alex returns to real life after crossing the actual Prince of England off his totally superfluous valid No Consequences Sex List. It does not go quite like he expected.

Wrap Me Up, Unfold Me by @sparklepocalypse

After the Kensington confrontation, Henry gets on the plane with Alex. (Or, Henry and Alex join the Mile High Club in filthy, spectacular fashion.)

Shameless by everwitch

Henry has a lot of sex. A lot. He's young and in college and there is no shortage of men to fall in bed with. What better time to explore what he likes and what he fucking loves, as well as to catalogue how to make his many, many partners feel as good as possible? It’s all part of the learning experience. And Henry is a very dedicated student. Alex has been inescapably aware of Henry ever since that one time they kissed. You don’t just stop being aware of the guy who basically caused your sexuality. So when Henry propositions Alex at a lame frat party, Alex accepts eagerly. Maybe this is exactly what he needs. Maybe, if he can just have Henry once, he’ll have a better chance of finally getting over his embarrassing fixation with Henry. It's worth a try.

3/4ths Cup of Love by inexplicablymine

“What the fuck are you doing with my pinto beans?” “It says I need them for pie weights.” “Hell no, baby, sweetheart. Over my dead body are you using the beans I use for mole for your quiche recipe. I would like us to eat these.” “Hey!” “If you put my beans in the oven, I will make it so you can’t possibly ever put a bun in the oven.” “Noted.” Or, The ups and downs of Henry learning how to perfect his quiche recipe.

A Practical Arrangement by kiwiana

“I know.” In fairness, he didn’t ask his mom to delay the wedding after the betrothal was made official when he turned eighteen. It wasn’t that she expected another option to materialise—he’s pretty sure she was trying to give him and Henry more time to get to know each other, maybe move past their open animosity a little. They’ve been pushed together every few months for the last three years, their marriage an inevitability. “I just… I still can’t quite get my head around it, you know? Married. To Henry.”

if you ever want me to tag you, let me know!

tagging: @starkfridays @stilesgivesmefeels

[sorchathered]

Sacred New Beginnings- Chapter 7

A/N- we have a new header photo! Since the story has progressed into mainly Jake and Stormy’s relationship it seemed like it was time. This one is a little short and super angsty, don’t kill me!

Y’all send me some feedback after this chapter. I want to know what you’d like to see happen next!

Pairing- Jake Seresin x reader (OC Stormy)

Song inspo- “never let me go”- Florence and the Machine, “ if you need to, keep time on me”- Fleet Foxes

Summary-Stormy is on her first deployment with her new squad, missing their 6 month anniversary and gearing up for a hell of a mission.

Warnings- language, violence, injuries (it’s an angsty one guys)

The lumpy twin bed on the aircraft carrier didn’t do much in the way of comfort, but damnit you’d been having the best dream. You and Jake at some seaside restaurant, slow dancing and toasting to your anniversary. It had felt so real, when you’d startled awake by your alarm you could almost feel his warm embrace, tears welling up in your eyes as you came back to reality. You were in the middle of the Atlantic, nowhere near San Diego, and today you and Jake had been together 6 months.

You’d gotten your deployment papers and shipped out almost a month ago, infrequent emails and the occasional phone call all you had to hold on to, along with a handful of letters and photos Jake had printed for you to decorate your bunk to spruce up the empty space you’d call home for the next 2 months. Long distance had been hard, but being deployed without him was a whole other level of pain. For years you’d worked together as pilot and WSO, enduring the shitty conditions and battling the homesickness as a team, doing this alone with a brand new team was a choice you’d make all over again but the loneliness stung no matter how you sliced it. Startled by a sharp knock to the cabin door you threw the covers back and called out for them to wait. It was Viper, your front seater who had become a damn good friend the past few months of integrating with your new team. He and his husband had welcomed you with open arms, game nights at their home and family dinners on Sundays were infamous in your squad, you truly did love this group of misfits despite missing the Daggers something fierce.

Flinging the door open to his smiling face you felt a little lighter, “Come on kid, let’s get some breakfast in you, we’ve got a hell of a day ahead of us! You can dream about your golden boy later!” He let out a cackle as your cheeks tinged in embarrassment and patted you on the head, ushering you both towards the mess hall in preparation for another long and tedious day of maneuvers.

—————————————————————-

On the opposite coast Jake is feeling much of the same, he had complete faith the two of you could weather any storm but the longing he felt without you took his breath away sometimes. He’d never loved anyone like this before, and he’d certainly never been the one waiting for his loved one to come back from deployment. How did spouses do this every day? Just sending the ones they love off to far away places for months at a time and praying to whatever deity existed that they’d come home safely, it was a selfless burden he’d never take for granted again. He checked his email as he inhaled his breakfast, seeing an email and photo attachment from you and he nearly tripped over himself to open the message. There you were, half unzipped flight suit with your cleavage on display, blowing a kiss into the camera just for him. But it was the message itself that sent him over the edge, you explaining in graphic detail all the ways you wanted him to take you apart when you were re-united, how much you loved him and couldn’t wait to be back in his arms. He was the luckiest bastard on earth, shaking his head with a soft chuckle. He held his phone up, took a selfie of his shirtless form and messy bed head, sending you kisses from across the world and typing out a quick reply. “Just a little longer Stormy, it’s you and me baby we can do anything, you’re my moon and stars baby girl I love you. Kick ass today, and thank you for the best 6 months of my life. Love, Jake.”

——————————————————————

The day which started relatively normal, went to shit almost instantly. The mission had to be moved up, enemies were in the area; pirates hired by a foreign nation to carry out a terrorist attack against the very vessel you were sailing on. Your COC wanted a team in the air within the hour to take them down and it left everyone scrambling to throw together a plan and get to their aircrafts. You’d had a bad feeling gnawing at you from the moment they described the plan of attack; two much could go wrong and there wasn’t enough information about the kind of weaponry the enemy had trained on them. Viper gave you a pointed look to keep it to yourself, he didn’t feel good about it either but time wasn’t on anyone’s side today, better to keep your head down and do whatever was needed to survive.

It was a shitstorm, between the enemy aircraft on everyone’s backs their warship seemed to have a never ending supply of missiles, raining down explosives from every direction. It was a dogfight no one had expected and with what was truly a miracle you all made it out alive, barreling across the sky back to the carrier. As you all made your descent warning lights began to appear on your radar, something was coming in hot and it was headed for the ship. You were calling out coordinates while everyone rallied into a formation to see if they could take it out, but it was too late; it had been a diversion. Heat seeking missles were drawing in from another round of jets, and it was either take out the jets or risk everyone on the carrier. Just as Viper began to howl in victory over his first air to air kill, an explosion landed on your left side, taking out the wing and sending you both plummeting. You could barely hear yourself screaming to eject, heartbeat roaring in your ears, your last thought before being flung from your fa/18 was of Jake.

—————————————————————-

It had been a boring day filled with lectures and Jake couldn’t be more happy to get the hell out of the school house, a beer and sports highlights were calling his name. He’d made it halfway through the lot before he heard someone calling his name, more like screaming it as they hurdled towards him through the parking lot. It was Cyclone’s assistant, gasping for air as she told him he was needed immediately in the admiral’s office, it was an emergency. He felt his heart sink, the only reason your godfather would need him for an emergency was you, and he took off towards the building as fast as his body would carry him. Flinging the office door open was unprofessional but he couldn’t be bothered to give a shit, he knew something was wrong and when he crossed the threshold Beau Simpson’s normally callous demeanor was gone, tears in his eyes as he looked up at Jake.

“What?!” He gasped, “Don’t sugar coat it Sir, just tell me, where is she?” Jake was shaking uncontrollably now, if you were gone it would be the end of him.

“She’s alive, but her injuries are severe. She’s being transported to Walter Reed as we speak, and you and I are heading there as soon as possible. She’s been placed in a medically induced coma.”

Jake’s knees hit the floor, and the tears began.

Jake Seresin Masterlist

Tagging- @attapullman @mamamaystbr @mamachasesmayhem @bobgasm @pinkdaisies9285 @djs8891 @jessicab1991 @the-aspiring-fanfic-writer @nouis-bum @roosterforme @jostan456 @kmc1989 @dempy @its-the-pilot @86laura11 @mrsevans90 @shanimallina87 @floydsglasses @mygyn @dizzybee03

[ladamedusoif]

Visiting - Chapter 12: If I Must Have A Future

(moodboard by @agentjackdaniels)

Pairing: Professor!Ben (College AU) x OFC Lydia/fem!Reader (reader POV/2nd POV)

Summary: Seeking a change of scenery after her life falls apart, Lydia crosses the Atlantic and arrives in a small New England town, to spend a year expanding her intellectual horizons as a visiting professor of art history at a small liberal arts college. Her growing friendship with Ben Morales, professor of Hispanic literature, forces Lydia to confront the fallout from her past - and raises unexpected questions about the future.

Chapter summary: Spring break comes to Barrow, and with it a European trip with major consequences for Ben and Lydia.

Word count: ~18k words (I'm so sorry but HEY LOOK THEY'RE BACK!)

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Warnings (chapter specific): Smut; quite a lot of smut really; oral sex (M and F receiving); unprotected but safe PiV sex; fingering; praise kink; very mild submission kink if you squint; self-esteem and body/weight insecurity; anxiety; angst; family dynamics; strong language; alcohol consumption; references to past instances of emotional abuse; fluff

A/N: Oh, boy. This was a labour of love. An incredibly important part of their story, and one that took me ages to get ‘right’. This is not the end of Visiting - I’m planning about three more chapters, which will not be as long as this one. So there is still more to come from Ben and Lydia.

I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who was so kind and excited about the little Christmas one-shots I wrote for this pair - sometimes I feel like my dorks are the last kind of characters people want in this fandom, and it was lovely to see that they have readers who actually care (and even miss them!). Thank you too to everyone who voted in the poll about the chapter length. You wanted the full-on 18,000 words - you’re getting it.

And a special word for @agentjackdaniels, who screamed with me when we got one of the most Benergetic red carpet looks I’ve ever seen at the Emmys, who made my gorgeous new header image, and who has helped me see more times than I’d care to admit over the last few months that I matter and make a difference, especially around here. I hope I have done the same, too.

See the Series Masterlist for an outline of Lydia’s story and background.

Chapter 11 - Chapter 13

Cross-posting to AO3 (and if you’re reading on there, too, and yelling along in the comments, love you!)

Further A/N at the end of the chapter.

The title of this chapter is a line from the Fontaines DC song “I Love You”, which is not terribly romantic, all told, but I heard it over the holidays and this lyric hit me hard: If I must have a future/I want it with you.

Taglist: FYI I’m retiring taglists as they are giving me so much trouble with people not getting notifications - follow me on @ladameecrit and turn on notifications. But just in case: @agentjackdaniels, @tessa-quayle , @vermillionwinter , @iamskyereads , @tieronecrush, @perennialdoll247 , @love-the-abyss, @javierisms, @fuckyeahdindjarin , @littlemisspascal , @khindahra , @pedrostories , @readingiskeepingmegoing , @rhoorl , @red-red-rogue , @princessanglophile , @katareyoudrilling @survivingandenduring , @trulybetty @fictionismyreality @sunnywithachanceofjavi , @joeldjarin , @lahoozaherr, @s-u-t, @its-nebuleuse

“We will shortly be beginning our descent. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.”

You have never been one for sleeping on planes. Ben, on the other hand, has been snoozing away for the last two hours, the thin airline blanket comically small on his broad frame. 

You put a hand on his arm to gently rouse him. “Love? We’re almost there.” 

He blinks awake, eyes sleepy and hair askew, and stretches out his arms. “Mmmmfff. Hi, Lyd. You excited?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m really looking forward to seeing them.” 

You’d mentioned the trip shortly after Valentine’s, during a conversation after dinner about plans for the spring break. 

Your spring visit home had been booked since well before Christmas. A few days at home, visiting your family and catching up, and then to Paris for a week of tying up loose research ends and some vacation time. 

It sounded blissful at the time. Now, your anticipation was tempered with disappointment at the prospect of leaving him here. 

“So, uh, what are you doing for spring break, love? You going west, or…”

He shrugs. “Ordinarily I’d try to get a few days in San Francisco. But everyone’s got plans and is out of town on various trips, so there’s no point.” He looks a little resigned. “So it’s time catching up on work and my reading here, I guess. Maybe do some prep for directing the student play after the vacation. When are you back from your trip?”

There’s a nervous knot in your stomach. Just ask. Just do it. 

“Could you take your reading and directing prep on the road?”

He looks perplexed. You take a deep breath. 

“What if you came with me?” 

Ben’s eyes widen. “Come with you? To see your family?”

Oh, fuck. You’ve pushed your luck. This is too weird. 

“No, don’t worry about it.” You stand up from the table and pick up your plates. “I just knew I’d miss you but it’s probably too much. It’s fine. Forget I said it.”

He follows you into your tiny kitchen and leans against the doorframe. “What if I wanted to come?”

“Wanted? I mean, you seemed totally stunned that I’d even ask.”

He shakes his head and smiles gently. “Not stunned, as such. Surprised, maybe? But not in a bad way.”

“Why surprised, then?” You cross the small linoleum floor and wrap your arms around his waist. He blushes, tucking his chin against his chest bashfully. 

“I dunno. Just that you want to bring me home with you? It… it means a lot to me.”

“It means a lot to me just to ask you, love. But you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

He looks at you with those big dark eyes and you feel your heart swell. “But I think I’d like to. As long as that’s okay with your family, of course? I don’t want to be in the way.”

You laugh and raise your eyebrows. “In the way? I think they’d be more excited about seeing you than me.” You rest your head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “You know they think you’re great, you’ve been on the video calls. My mother asks me more about you than she does about myself.”

He wraps an arm around you and kisses the top of your head. “It’s different in person, sometimes.”

You shake your head. “Mmmm, I don’t think so in this case. You haven’t been dealing with daily queries about the welfare and wellbeing of Ben Morales. And no, she doesn’t yet seem to realise she can just call you by your first name.”

He chuckles and holds you closer. “Guess I’d better go book some flights, huh?”

Ben pushes the luggage cart towards the sliding doors and out into the bright, bustling Arrivals area, where families wait excitedly at the barrier to greet their loved ones. 

“LYDIAAAAAAAA!” 

You immediately spot your parents, standing right in the centre of the barrier, aligned with the sliding doors. It’s still very early in the morning and you wonder how long they’ve been here, waiting at the perfect spot to see the two of you emerge. 

You give Ben’s arm a reassuring squeeze as the two of you walk towards your excited family. “You’re not a stranger, love. They already love you. Remember that.”

Ben has barely exited the arrivals area when he’s enveloped in a warm embrace by your mother, who seems to have forgotten you entirely. Your father puts an arm around you and smiles widely while your mother coos over Ben. “And Ben Morales! Welcome, welcome. We’re so delighted to have you.”

Your mother has had her hair done and is dressed in an outfit that feels somewhere between “weekday lunch at a nice restaurant” and “Sunday best”. She’s also using what you and Kate refer to as her “telephone voice” when she speaks to Ben, more clipped and flatter than her usual tones. 

“Mom, he knows what you sound like normally, you don’t need to put on the fancy accent.” You hug your father tightly and notice that his eyes are shining. He’s similarly neatly dressed, wearing a nice smart-casual pair of pants and a matching shirt and v-neck light sweater. 

“I am talking normally!” your mother fires back, followed by a tinkly laugh as she tilts her head and smiles at Ben. He smiles broadly, though you know he’s shattered, and your mother gives you a look that says “See? Ben likes me.”

Your father shakes Ben’s hand before embracing him. “The two of you must be exhausted,” he says, arm still wrapped around Ben’s shoulders. “Let’s head to the car.”

Ben and your dad lead the way, your mother reaching for your hand and giving it a warm squeeze as you walk companionably a few steps behind. 

“Welcome home, pet. I’m delighted he’s here too. We’re so happy for you.” She looks ahead and appraises Ben’s broad frame as he pushes the luggage cart and chats to your father. 

“Grand big man, isn’t he?”, she says approvingly. “Don’t look at me like that, Lydia!”

“There’s milk there and bread and tea and coffee and a few biscuits and butter and a couple of bags of crisps and -“

“Mom, we’re fine. We’ll take care of ourselves. Okay?”

Your mother throws up her hands in resignation. “Alright! Just wanted to make sure you didn’t starve.” 

Kate, Marc, and their little girls have taken over your parents’ house for the duration of renovation works on their own home, and in the interests of space (and your sanity) you’d booked a small holiday flat in your hometown for the visit. Now, with Ben in tow, the privacy of the flat was even more welcome. 

“Thank you. I mean it. Now, can we please go and get some rest?” You hug her tightly and she kisses your cheek, before looking in Ben’s direction. 

“Of course. We’ll see you later, though? For something to eat? Kate and Marc and the girls are that excited to see you, I think they might burst.”

You stand beside Ben, bringing your hand to the small of his back, and wave your parents off as they return to the car. They’re not even out of earshot when you hear your father saying “He wouldn’t let her lift a single bag! Not one! Helped her all the time. Lovely chap. Very nice. Far cry from the other fucker…”

Subtlety has never been their strong point. You just hope Ben is too jet-lagged to have heard what they said.

A relaxed family meal, she said. Nothing special, she said. Come over in the early afternoon. It’s just like a Sunday lunch, she said. 

Your mother is reading Ben a list of menu options that’s longer than in some restaurants. His eyebrows rise and fall as he takes it in and considers the possibilities.

“Honestly, Mrs -“

“MARIE. I told you.”

“Honestly, Marie, I’ll just have whatever everyone else is having. It all sounds great. Do you need any help in the kitchen?”

“I most certainly do not. You can have whatever you want. You are the guest.” 

“Seriously. Whatever’s easiest.” He looks nervously at you and speaks in a low voice. “What is easiest?” 

You shrug. “Probably the beef.”

He beams at your mother and tells her he’ll have some beef. She tilts her head, smiles delightedly at him, and does that tinkly laugh again before returning to the kitchen. 

The meal is delicious but, inevitably, chaotic. Your three-year-old niece Cora, who had insisted on sitting between you and Ben (Benjamoo, as she persisted in calling him), realises quickly that the family-style service meant she could help herself to her favourite sides as and when she wanted, chubby little hands rapidly making a mark on the mashed potato and carrots. Your mother keeps asking if the food is hot enough. Kate and Marc try to talk to Ben while corralling little Evie and making sure she gets fed. 

Your father, meanwhile, veers between talking delightedly to the little girls and engaging Ben in a rapidly-shifting conversation that covers San Francisco, transatlantic flights, whether Ben liked sports, and a detailed description of the plot of a film he’d watched the week before. You couldn’t work out which film it was, but you knew it had Kevin Costner in it. Mostly because your dad kept referring to him as “Kevin Costner”, rather than by the character’s name. 

You rest a hand on Ben’s knee, under the solid dining table your father had made for the family home when you were barely two. 

“You doing okay? I know we’re a bit much…”

His warm hand covers yours and he smiles softly. 

“I’m great, Lyd. And you haven’t been to a Morales family meal yet - now that’s a bit much. Just you wait and see.”

You grin and lean your head affectionately on his shoulder for a moment, winding your fingers through his, never noticing the conspiratorial, knowing look exchanged between Kate and your mother. 

You and Ben insist on clearing the dishes, making short work of loading the dishwasher before your parents can tell you off for letting the guest do the chores. Through the kitchen window you see Cora running towards her little plastic play house, on temporary loan to your parents’ back garden while Kate and Marc’s building work is being completed. Kate follows swiftly behind, waving a soft fleece jacket at her daughter.

After wrangling Cora into her jacket, she appears at the back door. “Cora wants to know if Ben can come and visit her tea shop. Not you, Lyd. She was very clear about that. Only Benjamoo.”

He smiles happily and puts down his dish towel, before making a sympathetic face at you and kissing your cheek. “Sorry, Lyddie. I guess I better take up my invitation.” 

It’s a hilarious and adorable sight: Ben, sitting cross-legged on the mat beside Cora’s house, hair a bit messy and eyes still a little tired behind his glasses, broad-shouldered in his grey Berkeley sweatshirt and decidedly out of proportion to the pink-and-white plastic cottage. You can hear him giving Cora his order and talking rapturously about the “tea” she serves him in a little pink cup, while she giggles and claps her hands. 

Marc and your father arrive in the kitchen, your brother-in-law carrying little Evie in his arms. “Evie thinks she’s missing out on the fun with Ben and Cora,” he announces, opening the back door. “And we want to make sure Cora doesn’t try to force-feed mud cakes to your boyfriend.”

You’d been so nervous about this - not because you thought your family wouldn’t like Ben, or vice versa, but because by definition the first visit to your partner’s family feels a little like an audition of some kind. It has the potential to go horribly wrong, no matter how well prepared you are, or how many video calls you’ve had over the last couple of months.

But here he is, now, integrated happily into your close-knit family of origin, getting on famously with your parents, sister, and brother-in-law, and making your beloved little niece laugh like a drain as he pretends to drink from her toy teapot. Like he was always here. Or always meant to be here.

There’s a surge of emotions in your chest: deep love and affection, above all, but with it a reminder that your future together is by no means assured. Assuming, of course, that he wants a future together. 

“He’s good with kids, isn’t he?” 

Kate’s voice startles you. “Where did you come out of?”

“I’m stealthy when I want, Lyd. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question.”

You throw a bombastic side eye in your younger sister’s direction. “I know what you’re getting at.”

Kate shrugs, the picture of innocence. “I’m just observing.”

“Ben is a wonderful uncle. Just as I am a wonderful aunt. We like that. And that’s one of the things I love about him.” You lean on the kitchen counter, voice quieter. “So…what do you think?”

Kate arches an eyebrow in your direction. Your mother arrives in the kitchen with impeccable timing, as ever. 

“What do I think of what?”

“You know what. Who. Him. Ben.”

Your mother laughs as she fills the kettle with water and puts it on to boil for some teas and coffees. She turns round to face her two daughters. “Well, Kate, I don’t know about you, but - he wouldn’t be for me.”

Your jaw drops. “Excuse me?”

Kate opens a cupboard and starts to take out some mugs. “I know what you mean, mom. Not really for me, either.”

“You know yourself, Kate,” your mother adds, finding a carton of milk in the fridge and filling a small milk jug, “Just not my thing at all.”

Anger spreads hot and warm across your face. “Good, because he’s not your fucking ‘thing’, he’s my thing and I can’t believe how two-faced you’re being. All sweetness and light and then saying he’s not really for you and -”

Your mother holds out a hand, expression deadpan. “Lydia, not everyone wants a man who’s kind and funny and genuine and clearly worships the ground his girlfriend walks on.”

“Exactly,” Kate chimes in. “Just because you love someone who’s really smart and nice and good with kids and is actually kind of cute in a dorky way doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

For a moment, your confusion and anger doesn’t quite let you hear what they’re saying. “I’m not asking you to be in love with him, I’m just - oh. Oh.”

Marie and Kate burst out laughing. 

“Well, fuck the two of you. Forty-two years and you’re still winding me up.”

Your mother wraps you in a warm cuddle. “Ah, poor Lyd. We’re sorry. We just couldn’t resist.”

“He’s so lovely, Lyd,” Kate adds, embracing you from behind. “I mean it. Marc thinks so, too. I know I said at Christmas that he looked like he’d been engineered in a lab for you and it looks like I was right. And Ben’s even cuter in the flesh, not that I notice such things.” She coughs for dramatic effect. “What with being a married mother of two.”

“And he loves the bones of you, darling girl,” your mother whispers. “And sure, why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know about you, love, but I’m shattered.” 

Ben glances over at you and wraps his arm around your shoulders, bringing you in to nuzzle against his chest. He holds up his copy of the script for Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, multicoloured tabs fluttering like tiny flags. 

“I’m just going to work through one more scene, is that okay?”

You hum contentedly. “Of course, love. How’s it going, anyway?”

He flicks through a few pages, scanning his notes and annotations. The comparative literature students put on a play every year, towards the end of the second semester, and Ben had to step in at short notice as director after a colleague in French fell ill. “It’s a relief we’re doing it in the English translation, put it that way. I just don’t know why Jen thought I could take this on, after Michèle went on sick leave.” 

You idly rub his tummy and kiss his side through his old shirt. “Because she knows you’re great and talented and the students love you, Mr Director.”

He huffs a laugh, marks up another section, adds a tab, and closes the book before taking off his glasses and shuffling down the bed and wrapping his free arm around you. He kisses the top of your head and holds you tight. 

“Thank you for bringing me home with you.”

You open your eyes and glance up at him. “Sure they haven’t put you off?”

“It would take a lot to put me off, Lyd. Anyway, they’re great. It - it meant a lot, to be welcomed like that, by the people you love.”

He looks down at you, and you place a light kiss on his jaw, smiling at the bristle of his beard against your lips. His gaze is solemn and intense as he reaches for your hand.

“I’m serious about this, Lyd. About us. You know?”

“I know. I’m serious about us, too. Deadly serious, in fact.”

He smiles, eyes shining, and kisses you, soft and slow, pulling you closer and working a path of kisses down the side of your neck as your body writhes against his. Tiredness is forgotten, for the moment, as you slip your hand inside the waistband of his loose boxers and tug them down, fingers wrapping around his cock. Ben sighs against your chest as you stroke him, his mouth finding your nipples as his long fingers trace the wetness building between your legs. With one leg hitched across his, you angle your hips just so and guide him inside you as he whispers your name against your ear. 

After you’ve made love, Ben falls asleep mid-cuddle, and you tuck yourself against him and close your eyes. But sleep doesn’t come easy. You should be delighted, after the beautiful day you’d had. But there’s an anxiety building in the back of your mind that you can’t quite shake. 

Serious this relationship may be, but spring will soon turn to summer, and with it the prospect of being separated indefinitely by an entire ocean and several time zones. Kate was wont to remind you that you “could just do distance for a while”, and she meant well. It was intended to reassure you. 

The problem was, the more you thought about what that option would actually mean, the less comfort it provided.

Over the next couple of days, you introduce Ben to the world of your hometown, to the places and people that shaped you. It is strange, at first, to see him, whole and present, in the spaces that defined your childhood. But it is a beautifully intimate thing, sharing memories with someone you love. You lay yourself even more bare before them, revealing the you that was before they knew you. 

The two of you have, of course, shared so much about yourselves and your pasts with each other in the time since you met. But this was different. Walking with him, pointing out your old schools, old haunts, swapping memories and stories, introducing him to random relations you meet in the streets: you are quietly knotting the strands of your past - with all its love, loss, joy and sorrow - with the man who, you hope, represents your future. 

Kate and Marc insist on bringing you to dinner one night. “It’d be wrong not to,” Marc had explained as you sat in your parents’ living room, Ben playing peek-a-boo with Evie while your mother looked on approvingly. “Sure we have built-in babysitting while we’re staying with Joe and Marie.” 

Your mother’s expression shifted instantaneously, shooting daggers at your brother-in-law. “Cheeky.”

Your hometown is not known for haute cuisine, but Kate booked a table at the nicest restaurant in town and it has been a perfect evening: good food, decent wine, and the pleasure of seeing how well Ben, Kate, and Marc are getting along. You and Kate go to the bathroom at one point, and she eyeballs you as you top up your lipstick, side by side, in the mirror. 

“Think he’s passed the audition, Lyd.” She pouts and blows a kiss at her reflection. “Oh, and guess what? We’ve got a special immersive cultural experience planned for the rest of the night.”

You swivel and glare at her. “And what does that involve, exactly?”

Kate picks up her handbag and does a little shimmy on the spot. “The Roxy, Lyd. The ultimate method of integrating your lovely Benjamin into your native place.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” 

The Roxy was once the town’s cinema, built in the 1940s and made redundant by the coming of the multiplex in the 1990s. Its owners had moved swiftly, though, and transformed the Roxy into a nightclub. It was a site of memorable nights out dancing with your friends, of crying in the bathrooms when you realised your crush was interested in someone else, of bad kissing, of telling random men to fuck off when they told you to smile, of screaming with glee when “Hey Ya” came on.

 If the Roxy was a taste, it would be peach schnapps and orange squash. Its smell, meanwhile, had lodged permanently in your memory: old cigarettes, sticky carpets, cheap aftershave, vanilla musk body spray. 

She was not kidding. You and Kate sit on some banquette seating in a corner of the Roxy’s lounge - which was just a separate floor with slightly better, more old-school music - and take in the completely incongruous sight of Ben, followed by Marc, weaving his way through the habitual crowd of locals with your drinks in hand. 

“Vodka tonic for Lyddie, gin and tonic for Kate.” Ben places the glasses on the table and nestles in beside you, giving your thigh a little squeeze. He reaches for his bottle of beer and raises it slightly. “Uh, cheers, I guess?”

Kate enthusiastically clinks her swimming pool-sized glass of gin and tonic off Ben’s drink. “Cheers! Now, you have to promise me you’ll dance. Otherwise it’s not full assimilation.”

You groan audibly and stir your drink with the straw as Ben chuckles. “C’mon, Lyd, you’ve got moves.” He raises an eyebrow at you mischievously. 

You manage to stave off the inevitable for a while, finishing your first vodka tonic and about to suggest you go to the bar when a familiar opening melody sends Kate leaping out of her seat, excitedly grabbing her husband and beckoning to you. 

“AS IT WAS?!? COME OOOONNNN LYYYYD!” Kate bellows back to you and Ben from the tiny dancefloor, where Marc is already showing off a move you can only describe as “rhythmic shuffling” while mouthing Harry Styles’ lyrics.

You look at Ben. He stands, removes his jacket, and offers you his hand, smiling expectantly. His hand rests gently on the small of your back as you join your sister and brother-in-law on the dancefloor, and he pulls you in to whisper in your ear. 

“We can do better than them, can’t we?”

You laugh, leaning in as he wraps an arm around your waist, takes your hand, and helps you exorcise all those demons of heartbreak long past on the dancefloor. 

As she clambers into a taxi in the early hours of the morning, Kate turns and yells “I’m telling mom you’re bringing a boy home with you from the Roxy!”, before collapsing in hysterics as Marc takes her hand and pulls her into the car. They grin and wave at you and Ben as it disappears up the street and back towards your parents’ house.

You lean against Ben as you walk back towards the little flat you’d rented for your stay at home, sighing contentedly as he drapes an arm around your shoulders. 

“She’s right, though,” you giggle, “I’m actually bringing the hot boy home with me from the Roxy. I’ve come a long way from endless rejection and the odd bit of bad kissing.”

Ben huffs a laugh as you open the main door of the building and climb the stairs to the apartment. “Well, fuckin’ good.” He adds a sassy little head movement for emphasis. 

“Excuse me?”

“Fuckin’ good. Because what would have happened to me if you’d been swept off your feet by one of those bad kissing boys back then?” He follows you into the little entrance hall and, for all his joking tone, there’s a vulnerability lurking in his beautiful eyes.

You cradle his face in your hands. “I’d have found you one way or another, Benjamin.” A coy smile crosses your lips as you take him in - danced out, hair mussed, and so stupidly sexy you still can’t quite believe he’s real. 

Your fingers hook inside his waistband as you pull him tight to you, leading him into the living room and pushing him against the wall as you bring a hand to his crotch. “And I’d like to make the most of bringing the hottest man home from the club for once in my life, if you don’t mind. Especially seeing as he was worth the wait.”

Ben’s eyes widen and he half gasps, half chuckles as you undo his jeans and slip a hand inside his boxers, stroking his cock as you pepper his throat with tiny kisses. He leans down slightly to bring a hand under the skirt of your dress, hitching up the fabric and slipping two fingers into your panties to play with your clit as he kisses you: hungry, urgent, wanting. 

But you’ve had something else on your mind all night. You break the kiss and begin to sink to your knees, hands around Ben’s waist for balance. 

Your eyes flit up to meet his. “Let me make you feel good, darling.”

His breath hitches as he takes you in: hair a little messy, eyes wide and wild, lips slightly parted, the soft flesh of your tits rising and falling with your breathing. 

“Fuck, Lyd, you’re amazing.”

“That a yes?”

He swallows hard and nods rapidly. “Fuck. Yes. Yes. Please.”

You lick your lips and smile as you carefully tug down the waistband of his boxer briefs. Your mouth presses into the softest, most sensitive parts of him: a kiss, a lick, a little nip to his belly; a course plotted down from his abdomen to the hardening cock you hold in your hand. You take him into your mouth, tongue swirling gently over the tip as you stroke him, revelling in the sensation and the moans of pleasure you’re pulling from the gorgeous man above you. Ben rests his hand on the back of your head and leans back against the wall, panting harder as you find your rhythm. 

The ache between your thighs builds with his every grunt and groan. Your fingertips find your clit, rubbing little circles over it in a fruitless bid to find some relief. You ease his cock out of your mouth with a pop and Ben helps you to your feet before you take his hand and guide him to the couch.

You slip off your panties and encourage him to lie back on the sofa as you gather the skirt of your dress around your waist and straddle him. “Need to fuck you, my love.” 

He grips the flesh of your hips and thighs, fingers pressing into your body as you take him inside you and begin to ride him, relishing the slow drag of his cock as you come undone. He looks beautiful underneath you, eyes wide and shining as he watches every move of your body.

“Fuck, Lyd,” he pants, smiling up at you. “You look incredible.” He reaches up and pulls down your neckline, groping your breasts and gazing at you like you’re the sexiest thing he’s ever seen: head thrown back, eyes closed, and vocal. 

He begins to thrust up into you, finding a rhythm that complements yours, intensifying the sensation so much that you can’t help but cry out with pleasure. 

“Yes, baby…fuck, that’s so fucking good, Ben, that’s fucking it, fuck!”

“Take it, Lyddie.” His dark eyes stare into yours, hands still gripping you firmly. “Ride me, take what you need…fuck, good fucking girl. I’ll give you whatever you need, whatever you want.”

And he knows what you need, in that moment. His thick fingers slip between your thighs and find your clit, circling it over and over as you keep on fucking him. 

You come hard, the last flutters of your orgasm still working through you when Ben follows suit. He’s still inside as you bend forward to kiss him, trailing your hands over his beautiful face and through his damp hair. You rest on his chest and let the sound of his breathing start to steady you as he holds you close for a couple of moments.

“I love you so much, Lyddie,” he pants quietly, chuckling to himself. “You’re a hell of a woman.”

For your last day, Ben suggests that he might make dinner at the flat, as a gesture of thanks for your family’s hospitality. You suggest lasagne with some sides as a general crowdpleaser, borrow some dishes from your mother, and Ben gets to work while you lay the place settings. 

The lasagne is cooking away happily when your mother arrives with Kate, Marc, and the girls. You look puzzled. 

“Where’s Dad?”

Your mother rolls her eyes as Cora goes tearing off around the flat, Kate following swiftly behind. “He insisted he had to go to the football match tonight. Of course. Anyway, he said he’ll be here shortly.”

Ben emerges from the kitchen, clad in a navy and white striped apron you’d used back when you (briefly) did home economics at school. He kisses your mother and Kate on the cheek and hugs Marc, before bending down to give a delighted Cora a high five. 

“I made you a present,” she says quietly, suddenly shy. 

Ben brings himself down to her level. “A present? For me? That’s amazing.”

Kate rummages in her bag and produces a rolled-up piece of paper, handing it to Ben. “She did it all herself. Mostly.”

You stand beside him as he unfurls it and Cora looks down at her toes. The drawing features a large figure with a mop of dark wavy hair and a wide smile - “Benjamoo”, Cora points out helpfully - standing close beside a slightly smaller figure immediately recognisable as you. “Auntie Lyd,” she adds seriously, in case you weren’t aware. 

The figures’ stick arms are touching. “Holding hands,” Cora says. 

Ben looks at Cora, then up at you, and back to the little girl. “This is the best art anyone’s ever given me. I’m going to put it on my wall when I get home.” He stands, and reaches for your hand, noticing the tears threatening in your eyes. “Auntie Lyd will help. Won’t you?”

You nod and squeeze his hand. Cora starts to giggle and points at you and Ben. 

“See? Holding hands.”

Ben and Marc pop out to the nearest supermarket shortly afterwards, when you realise you had neglected to buy garlic bread. You sit in the open-plan kitchen and dining area with your mother while Kate plays with her daughters in the living room. 

“You alright, love?” Marie notices how you fiddle with the place settings and rub your fingers together, sure signs that something’s on your mind. 

“Mmm? Sorry, I was miles away. Yeah, I’m… I think so.” You exhale. “I don’t know.”

Your mother gives you a little breathing room, waiting to see if you’ll open up more. 

“It’s just… fuck. I don’t know. I - what the fuck are we going to do?”

She sighs softly and pats the back of your hand. “You and Ben?” 

“Me and Ben. It’s spring break. And there’s no clear pathway about what we’ll do when my year in Barrow ends and I have to come back to my job over this side of the ocean.”

“Well, I mean… I know you hate the thoughts of it, Lyd, but have you talked about it? Kate’s right, you could always do long-distance for a while, until you knew what you both really wanted.”

You put your head in your hands. “We’ve said that we’re very serious about the relationship.” 

“So then! There’s your answer. No?”

You look up at her mournfully. “Yes and no. Yes, we’re serious about each other. No, that doesn’t mean we have any idea how to manage the distance.”

Marie adjusts the salt and pepper cruets in the middle of the table. “People do it, Lyd. It’s a commitment but they make it work.”

You nod slowly. “I just don’t know if that’s what I want, at this stage in my life. We see each other every day. We’re practically living together.”

Your mother fans herself in mock horror. “And not a hint of a ring on the finger, goodness!”

You roll your eyes good-naturedly. “Forty-two, mother dear. But yeah. I don’t know if I could go from that to not seeing Ben for weeks or a month or more at a time. Not now.”

“So what does that mean?”

You swallow hard. “I don’t know. One of us moves. He moves for me. I move for him. But that means trying to find a permanent academic job and in both places that’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“And if there’s no job? Distance as a temporary measure?”

You bite your lip. “But what if that’s still too hard?”

“So move.”

“But that means him giving up his life for me, or me uprooting for him, and being so far from all of you and from here and…” You look up at your mother, feeling like a scared little girl again.

“I love him so much, Mom. I never thought I’d love anyone like that. Never thought I’d even meet someone like that. And for him to love me in return…fuck.”

Marie shifts closer and wraps her arm around your shoulders. “I know, love. I know. You love the bones of each other. And it’s real love. Everyone can see it.”

“What do we do?”

“Lydia, I can’t tell you what to do one way or the other. Only you know what’s right for the two of you.”

You lean your head on your mother’s shoulder and she gives your hand a squeeze. “I know. It’s just - fuck, why does it have to be hard? Don’t I deserve things to work out, for once?”

“You do, pet. Of course you do. No one deserves it more.”

“Sometimes it feels crazy, y’know? This time last year I didn’t know Ben existed, and now -”

“Now it’s like you’ve known each other forever? Like you can’t imagine life without him?”

You turn to face her, and smile. “Exactly.”

“That’s love for you.” Marie purses her lips, thinking. “I’m only going to say one more thing. Your happiness.”

“Huh?”

“Lyd, for years you prioritised someone else’s happiness over your own. I know, I know, that fucker moved for you when you got the job away, I know that. But apart from that…it was all you. All you, trying to keep someone else happy and cracking under the strain.” She inhales and exhales, trying to curb the fury that still burns in her when she remembers how you were treated. 

“All I’m going to say is this: don’t worry about anyone else, Lyd. Not me, not Dad, not Kate, Marc, the girls, your job - nobody. Well, worry about Ben. But above all, prioritise your happiness. We have ours over here. It’s time for you to find yours.”

You hug her tightly. “One final question.”

She nods and waits. 

“What does Dad think of Ben? I know it wouldn’t change my feelings but given everything from the shitshow, I’d like to know he doesn’t absolutely loathe him.”

She looks at her phone and pushes away from the table, walking into the living room and opening the door of the flat. “Ask him yourself, Lyd. Here he is now.”

Your father comes into the kitchen, talking about something that happened at the local football match he’d attended that afternoon and eyes already locked on the kettle, his mind focused on making a cup of tea. 

“Joe? Lyd wants to ask you something.”

You roll your eyes at your mother. “It’s not a big deal.”

He turns around, tea caddy in hand. He’s been to this flat twice, you think, and he knows exactly where all the tea-making equipment is kept. 

 “Alright. Ask away, Lyd. Are you alright? Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine. I just - Dad, what do you think?”

“What do I think of what?”

“Ben. Me and Ben, specifically. But also just Ben.”

Joe switches on the kettle and leans against the kitchen counter. “Sure, my opinion isn’t what matters. What matters is how you feel. Isn’t that right?” He looks to your mother for backup. 

“I said that to her, but she said she wanted to hear from you.”

He takes a mug out of the cupboard and drops a square teabag into it. “Lydia, is everything okay? Are you having any doubts about him, is that it?”

You laugh and shake your head. “Not a one.”

“And you don’t think he’s having any doubts about you? Because if he is I’ll fucking -“

“No, Dad. He… he’s very clear about how he feels.”

Your father nods in satisfaction. “Well, that’s reassuring. Would be strange if he wasn’t, given how he is with you. At least, what we’ve seen here.” He pours the freshly boiled water over the teabag and opens the fridge in search of milk. “But the point stands. You love each other, don’t you?”

You aren’t sure if your father has ever been so open or explicit with you in asking about a romantic relationship. Perhaps, you wonder, he regretted not being more honest about his concerns over the years of your longest one. 

“We do.” Your eyes fill with tears, unexpectedly. You swallow hard. “We love each other very, very much.”

“Okay then.” He stirs his tea vigorously, the metal of the teaspoon clinking off the stoneware mug. 

“But I still want to know what you think. It matters to me. Especially - especially after the last time.”

Joe pulls out a chair and settles at the table, your mother reaching automatically for a coaster and sliding it under the mug. “Lyd, you know what I’ve always said. There’s not one person walking this earth who deserves our lovely Lydia. Not one.”

Your heart sinks a little, and you nod. You’ve heard this a lot since your ex cheated and fucked off. You never really believe it. 

“But.” Your father pauses and sips his tea. 

“But?”

He looks at you and reaches out to touch your hand. “But - that lovely man you brought home definitely comes very close indeed.”

Right on cue, the front door opens and you can hear Ben and Marc chatting companionably and laughing together. Marc does a silly little dance into the kitchen, waving the garlic bread around like glow sticks.

“Now, please don’t destroy the garlic bread before it’s even gone into the oven, Marc!”

As your mother grabs the bread and sneaks a peek at the lasagne, now browned to perfection, Ben pulls you in for a quiet word.

“Lyddie, are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

You lean against his chest as he wraps his arms around you. “I’m okay, darling. I just needed this. Needed you.” The oven timer pings and you look at him. “Time for Professor Morales to serve us his delicious lasagne. C’mon, we can plate up before my mother takes over.”

You thought goodbyes would get easier the longer you worked away from home, but the opposite turned out to be true. Your parents are doing their usual brave face routine at the airport: Joe clearly trying not to cry, Marie overdoing the levity to distract you and stave off her own sadness at seeing you go. 

“Paris in the springtime, Lyd! It’ll be gorgeous. She’s a great tour guide, Ben, she knows it all.” 

“She’s brilliant, Marie. But you knew that before the rest of us found out.” He reaches for your hand, holding it tightly as you start to feel the tears prickling. 

He only lets go as you both embrace your parents in turn, Ben thanking them repeatedly for their kindness. Then, his fingers curl around yours again, holding you strong and steady at the entrance to departures. 

“I love you both so much, you know? We’re so grateful.”

Your mother can’t hold back her tears any more, and her wet cheek presses against yours as she pulls you in for a final hug. “We love you so much. Both of you.” 

She pulls away and holds your gaze. “Both of you. Remember what I said to you, Lydia. Remember that.”

You nod and give Ben’s hand a little squeeze. “We should probably head on through. Safe home - message me when you get back, okay? We’ll see you soon.”

You keep waving back with every sharp turn you take in the queue for security, until eventually your parents’ faces are obscured by the crowd behind you, and you face forward into the security area, still holding Ben’s hand.

“Paris par train ou Paris par bus?”

Ben shrugs as he pushes the luggage trolley. “You’re the expert, Lyddie. What’s easiest?”

You summon up the mental map of Parisian transport options that is always ticking over at the back of your mind. “Train is quicker but involves a change at Châtelet Les Halles - ugh - and then again at Bastille. Bus gets us to Opéra which means we can get right on to line 8.”

“Bus?”

“Bus.”

Ben stacks your bags carefully in one of the Roissybus’s luggage areas and exhales as he takes a seat beside you. “You know it’s been almost thirty years since I was in Paris?”

“Excusez-moi?”

He chuckles. “Came up on a very poorly-thought-out visit with some friends while I was on exchange in Málaga. Overnight trains, hostels, no money, cheap wine. I barely saw the Eiffel Tower, let alone anything else.”

The bus pulls out of Charles de Gaulle Airport and onto the motorway. You squeeze Ben’s thigh affectionately. “Isn’t it a good thing that you’ve come to Paris with a ready-made guide, then?”

He smirks and arches an eyebrow suggestively. “Oh, I’m really looking forward to doing some, er, exploring with her.” 

“Is that so?” You move your hand ever so slightly up his thigh, smiling with satisfaction as Ben gasps a little and shifts in the seat. “I always like to try out new pleasures here, you know?”

A wiggle of your eyebrows has you both giggling, leaning against each other as the bus makes good progress towards the périphérique, the motorway that rings the city, and into Paris proper. You start to point out landmarks, locations, shifting into a stream of consciousness that spans history, personal memories, places to visit, and random observations. 

Ben smiles to himself as he watches and listens, delighting in your joy and excitement as you prepare to see your old friend - to walk her streets, listen to her voice, and write another chapter in your long love story.

The advantage of Parisian connections: your friend Sophie offered you her apartment in the 11th arrondissement for the duration of your stay, as she was away in the south of France. You meet her upstairs neighbour outside the narrow, early nineteenth-century building on a quiet street just off the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine and collect Sophie’s key, taking note of the door codes. 

“Holy shit. Look at this place!”

Ben has carried the bags up the stairs - thankfully, Sophie’s flat is on the first floor - and followed you into the little apartment. You turn and grin when you notice how entranced he looks, staring up at the wooden beams in the tiny hallway, peeking out into the communal courtyard, tilting his head this way and that to check out the books on Sophie’s shelves. 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” You pick up your suitcase and lead the way into the bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed as you take off your shoes and wriggle your toes happily.

“It’s incredible. Exactly what you might imagine a Parisian apartment to be.” He drops his own bags in the corner and joins you on the bed, flopping back onto the mattress and yawning.

You lie back and turn to face him, resting a hand on his stomach. “Let’s do some exploring. I know we’re tired, but I want to show you around, get some dinner, buy some wine…”

The featherlight touch of his fingers, working their way under your denim blouse and stroking the soft skin of your waist, sends delicious shivers through you.

“We could do some exploring here, right now…?” he asks, eyes twinkling and a smile on his lips. 

“You know how tempting that offer is, Benjamin, but let’s restore our energy first, hmmm?”

Dinner is Vietnamese food from a tiny restaurant just around the corner, a staple favourite from your time living in the city, followed by a walk around the neighbourhood and a stop at a nearby supermarket, to stock up on some essentials and a bottle of wine. As you climb the stairs to the apartment, the fatigue from a day of travel and the underlying, gnawing anxiety about your future starts to hit you. 

You should just say it to him. Ask him outright what he wants to happen.

You push the thought down, down, as deep as it will go as you settle on Sophie’s tiny sofa and watch Ben uncork the wine in the coin cuisine, the little kitchenette tucked into a corner of the living room. You spot a portable speaker tucked on one of the bookshelves and connect it to your phone, scrolling through your playlists until you find what you want. 

“Never let it be said that you don’t cultivate an atmosphere, Lyd,” he says, handing you a glass of the purple-red wine and joining you on the couch. “Let me guess: this is a Paris-specific playlist?”

You hide your face behind one hand and peek at him through your fingers as he laughs, leaning in to kiss your cheek as Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘La chanson de Prévert’ starts to play.

He rests his head on your shoulder as you listen to the song together. It’s a favourite of yours regardless, but tonight, with the man you love so deeply but still fear losing nestled in beside you, Gainbourg’s plaintive melody and lyrics about lost love are like a punch to the gut.

“Lyddie?”

Ben is sitting up, looking at you with concern. “You look so sad, all of a sudden - you okay?”

“It’s just the song, it’s so –” You halt yourself. No. Time to say it.

“I guess I’m just really feeling how close I am to the end of my time in Barrow, that’s all.”

His chocolate-brown eyes soften and he wraps you in a warm embrace. “Still got plenty of time, Lyddie.”

“And then?”

“And then…?”

“What happens? To us, I mean.”

He looks surprised at the question. “We’ll be okay, one way or the other. Right?”

But what does that mean?

You’re too tired to ask the question, you tell yourself. In truth, you’re too scared to - not because you fear his reaction, not at all. Rather, it’s because you fear that your concerns might upset him.

Ben’s head has barely hit the pillow before he’s sound asleep, one arm draped loosely around your waist. For you, though, sleep is elusive, arriving only as the dawn starts to break over the city of light. 

You wake, exhausted, to the aroma of fresh coffee brewing and the sound of Ben pottering around the apartment, humming the melody of “La chanson de Prévert” to himself. With a groan, you remember you’d planned to do some research today and force yourself out of bed.

“Bonjour, la belle Lyddie! Du café?” Ben waves a little espresso mug at you and you nod weakly. 

He is bright and cheerful as he moves around the kitchenette, pouring the coffee and joining you at the tiny dining table that acts as a kind of divider between the kitchen and the rest of the living area. 

“Did you sleep okay?”

You look up, and his face falls when he spies the telltale redness in your eyes. “I’m taking that as a no. What’s going on, Lyd?”

A fortifying sip of the strong coffee. You sit upright and look at him, studying his beautiful face. “Darling, I meant what I said last night. About how anxious I am, how scared of what comes next, the…uncertainty of it all.”

“But we know we’re serious about each other? We talked about it,” he replies, sipping his own coffee. “You know that. Don’t you?”

“I do. I really do. And we are, but -” you pause to gather your thoughts. “But that doesn’t mean there’s an answer for what happens when I have to go home, and that’s eating away at me.”

He looks at you kindly, but you can see the confusion written all over his face. “What do you mean, exactly, Lyd? Surely we can see if circumstances change over the summer, and if not then we do distance until stuff gets figured out. Right? Things are going to be just fine.”

It’s so tempting to smile and agree, but you can’t. You owe him honesty, as much as you want clarity. 

“Is that really what you want?”

“Distance? It’s not ideal, but if it comes to it I think we can make it work and - Lyd?”

You have closed your eyes, fearful of tears falling. 

Say it. Say it. Be honest with him.

“I - I don’t think I want a long-distance relationship.”

Ben makes no effort to hide his shock. “You don’t want a long-distance thing?” He shakes his head in amazement. “Even if that’s the only option for the moment?”

“I just want certainty, not constantly saying everything would be okay or we’d see what happens when we don’t know that things will be okay, or what’s going to happen. I want you, love. I want a life with you, you know that. Don’t you?”

“But you don’t want long-distance with me.” His brow furrows and his jaw ticks as he stares at the floor. 

“I don’t know, I mean I just want what we have now, I don’t know if I could cope with the implications of that kind of distance and -”

He exhales sharply, exasperated, and reaches for his light cotton jacket. “So it’s all or nothing. You would rather have no relationship than even try distance, is that it?”

Fury and sadness mingle and build in your chest. “Ben, that’s not what I fucking said.” Your hands fall to your sides, defeated. “I’m just - fuck, I’m not finding the words right now.” 

“Well, if you find them later let me know.” He opens the door of the apartment and pauses for a moment. “See you, Lyddie.”

You sit staring into space for a good half hour at your appointed desk in the print room at the Bibliothèque nationale, before you open the grey archive box of lithographs you’d called up for the day. 

The ritual of research is familiar and soothing, a useful distraction from the memory of the argument that morning. You set out your camera and prepare your customary scraps of paper inscribed with the call number of the collection, to make it easier for you to match up images with notes when you return to the materials at home. Wherever the hell “home” is supposed to be, now. 

Assess each print. Study it. Immerse yourself in the details before photographing it and writing up your observations on your laptop. Repeat over and over, add to your research materials and stave off the metaphorical wolves circling in your brain. 

Your stomach starts to rumble just before one o’clock. The garden courtyard outside the building that houses the print room is busy, with researchers and visitors taking an al fresco lunch and chatting over coffee. Salad consumed, you take your phone out of the transparent plastic briefcase you are required to use inside the library. 

No message from him. Nothing. 

You decide to make a call. She should be on her lunch now, too. 

“Lyd! How are you? How’s Pareeeeee?” Kate’s voice is cheery and comforting, and exactly what you needed to hear. 

“Hiya… um, can you talk for a few minutes?”

She immediately knows there’s something wrong and her tone shifts. “Of course, always… Lyd, what’s happened? Are you okay?”

Deep breaths. “Kate, I think I need to make a decision and I’m fucking terrified.”

Kate pauses, aware that she doesn’t need to ask you what this is about. “Okay. Talk to me. Let’s work through it.”

BEN: When do you think you’ll be finished for the day? We should talk. I’m so sorry about this morning x

LYDIA: Probably by 4.30 or so. Do you want me to come meet you?

BEN: I’ll come to you. You want food? It’s a nice day for a picnic dinner. 

LYDIA: It is. Dinner is your choice. Meet me at the rue Vivienne exit at 4.30 or so? x

BEN: You say that as if I know where that is… I’ll find it. See you soon, Lyddie. Love you. 

Ben Morales leans against the railings of the Bibliothèque nationale and looks at his watch. He’s early, so he meanders across the street and wanders into the Galerie Vivienne, admiring the fine detail of the mosaic floors and brass light fittings that adorn the nineteenth-century covered arcade. He pauses at an antiquarian bookstore and print shop, perusing the selection of vintage postcards displayed in wooden crates outside. 

He’s standing at the entrance to the arcade when he looks up and sees you coming through the gates of the library, somehow managing to carry a backpack, tote bag, and small cross-body handbag all at once. 

You don’t notice him at first, instead turning your head in both directions as you look for him. Ben’s heart soars when he sees you, in spite of the nagging ache he’s felt in the pit of his stomach ever since the argument you’d had that morning. 

He calls out to you from across the street, raising his hand in an enthusiastic wave, and a warm, delighted smile spreads across your face when you realise he’s there, waiting for you. He’s as impossibly handsome as ever in his navy blue shirt jacket, white tshirt, and jeans, tote bag slung over one shoulder. 

You keep Kate’s words from your lunchtime conversation in the forefront of your mind. “You know what you want, Lyd. You know what you need to do.”

“Sorry, I got delayed on the way out of the print room and then it always takes longer to pack up than I’d anticipated and then I thought I should pop to the bathroom before I left and then -”

Ben interrupts your explanation with a kiss and a hug. “I’m so sorry, Lyddie. I’m sorry about this morning.” He pulls away and holds out a small, flat brown paper bag. “A peace offering.”

The bag contains a selection of vintage postcards of Paris, postmarked in the early years of the twentieth century: Notre-Dame, photographed from the Left Bank; the place de la Bastille; the facade of the Bibliotheque nationale you’d just left. 

“Some of your favourite places, right?”

You reach for his hand and lean in for a kiss. “You know me so well. Thank you, my love, they’re beautiful.” You spot a larger brown paper carrier bag in his other hand. “Dinner?”

Ben smiles, holding out the bag for your approval. “I ended up getting a selection of stuff from one of the Asian takeout places near here. And I picked up a bottle of chilled white wine, and some paper cups. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect. Let’s go, Benjamin - dinner at the Palais-Royal awaits.”

“I have to admit, I did wonder when you said we were going to a royal palace. Didn’t seem very…Lyddie.”

Ben quirks an eyebrow in your direction. You giggle as you reach into the bag of takeout and retrieve boxes of rice, steamed buns, gyoza, and nems. 

“I mean, technically it was a royal residence. But the gardens - where we are now - were public, as were the arcades and shops.” You set the boxes of food on a green metal park chair, serving as a makeshift table in front of your bench. “And it was an important location in the revolutionary period, so…”

He grins and opens the bottle of wine. “Ah! There it is. That’s my Lyd.”

His Lyd. Affection surges in your chest, and you place a hand on Ben’s knee, giving it a light squeeze as he pours some of the white wine into a paper cup and hands it to you.

He raises his own cup in your direction. “To my clever, revolutionary girl.”

You swap stories about your respective days as you dig into the food: Ben describing his informal solo tour of literary locations on the Left Bank, you talking through your finds in the print room. He shows you photos he took of Richard Wright’s apartment building, of the original site of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company, and a selfie of himself looking completely perplexed at the plaque on the rue du Cardinal-Lemoine that refers to James Joyce as a “British writer of Irish origin.”

You burst out laughing at that one. “I’m so glad you found that. It annoys me every time I see it.”

“I sent it to Evan. He was not impressed.” He slips his phone back into his pocket and reaches for another spring roll. “And then I went and sat in the Luxembourg Gardens for a bit, worked over a little more of the play, thought about Beckett in Paris, watched the world go by. I remembered you said it was one of your favourite places to just sit and think.” 

He smiles softly, almost shyly, at you, and with a pang you remember that some serious conversation lies ahead, no matter how tempting it is to sit here forever in the Palais-Royal, eating your picnic dinner and drinking your wine surrounded by the ghosts of writers and lovers and revolutionaries long past. 

Lemon-scented wipes remove the residual traces of nems and dipping sauces from your fingers, and Ben stacks the empty food containers in the brown paper bag before topping up your paper cup of wine. You rest your head on his shoulder, and he wraps an arm around you to hold you close. 

He sips his wine and takes a deep breath. “I wanted to talk about earlier.” 

You raise your head, turn to him, and nod. He rests a hand on your thigh, tracing circles with his index finger on your leg. 

“I’m sorry if it ever felt like I was dismissing your worries, Lydia. I - well, I guess I was avoiding the issue. Like if I kept saying things would work out, they’d just… work out.”

You smile gently and reach for his hand. “Without having to make the hard call.”

He squeezes your hand and nods. “Exactly. But I did a lot of thinking about that today. About the future, about what I want - what you want.” He gives you a nervous glance.

“You were right, Lyd, long-distance couldn’t give us…I don’t want long-distance with you, either. I couldn’t, Lyd. I want what you said you want - a life, us, together. Like now.” He caresses your cheek with his thumb. “I can’t imagine anything else.”

You bring your hand to rest on his and close your eyes, feeling tears prickling against your eyelids. 

He takes a deep breath. “Lyd, look at me.” Your eyes meet his, dark and warm and serious all at once. “Lyd, I - I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That’s all I want, and - fuck, I think I’ve known I wanted that for a while now.”

You open your mouth to respond and he shakes his head gently. “Lyddie - Lydia - I want to be with you, no matter what it takes.” Another deep breath. “And that’s why - if you want, of course, only if you want - I’ll move back with you at the end of the year. I’ve got some job alerts set up, I’ll find something, you know? I - I just want to be with you.”

“You can’t give up your whole life, darling.” Your voice is quiet as you take in the significance of what he’s telling you, what he’s offering. To his astonishment, you burst out laughing.

“What’s funny, Lyd?”

“I did a lot of thinking today, too. You know you’re all I want, don’t you?” You look at him expectantly, and he nods. “And I was going to tell you that - if you wanted - I would try to stay in the US, so that I could be with you. So that we could make a life together, plan our future.” You turn to him and grin. “But now it seems we’re still going to be on opposite sides of the pond, just with swapped continents.”

Laughter rises from Ben’s chest, emerging as a bright, wide smile and eyes crinkling with delight. He cups your face with his hands and kisses you, over and over, before pulling away abruptly. 

“Wait. You said I couldn’t give up my life, but you want to give up yours? And you know Barrow doesn’t do partner or spousal hires…”

“I mean, it wouldn’t be giving up my life. It would be living the life I want to live, with the man I adore. That’s better, no?” You reach over to brush an errant curl off his forehead. “Anyway, I can look for a position within commuting distance, right? I’d rather that than feel I had got a job I didn’t really deserve.”

He blushes slightly and looks at you from under his lashes. “Even so. I meant it, I would follow you anywhere. I’ll go wherever you want me to be, wherever you want to be.”

“Okay. How about this?” You sit up a little straighter, hands resting on his. “We’re clearly both prepared to move. So…we both start looking for jobs, you near my place and me around Barrow, and whoever gets an appointment first - that’s where we go.”

Ben looks into the middle distance and nods, turning over the proposal in his head. “That sounds like a plan, baby.” 

“Then it’s a deal?”

He grins and kisses you softly. “It’s a deal.”

The evening is bright and warm as you meander hand in hand through the narrow streets of the Marais, heading east, homeward bound. 

You spot a buzzy corner café and nudge Ben. “How about a drink, darling? Something bubbly, maybe?”

He smiles, and you know his eyes are sparkling behind his sunglasses as he squeezes your hand and follows your lead towards one of the small round tables arranged outside the café. The server is typically Parisian: efficient, polite but not overly familiar, and they take your order and return promptly with two glasses of champagne and little dishes of olives and mixed nuts. 

“À nous deux, Paris!” Ben clinks his glass to yours and you giggle as the first sip sends bubbles bursting on your tongue. 

“Quoting Balzac in the original French?! Where were you all my life, Benjamin?”

He shrugs and smiles to himself. “Could ask you the same question.”

Long, thick fingers begin to rub circles on the flesh of your thigh, feeling the heat of your skin through the light fabric of the button down sky blue shirt dress you’re wearing. You echo the gesture, tracing patterns on the back of his hand, and your expression becomes more serious, more intense, your voice quieter.

“I love you, Ben.” 

He squeezes your thigh gently. “I love you, Lyd.” 

Sipping champagne and nibbling on the snacks, you watch the world go by, content and cosy in the little bubble that is just you and him. You’re checking your appearance in the bathroom mirror when a realisation sweeps through you. Your eyes widen, mouth forming into a little “o” before stretching into a happy smile as you ascend the stairs from the basement to the main café and rejoin Ben at the table.

“So something occurred to me.”

He chases the last olive around the dish with a cocktail stick. “Mmmmm?”

“We’re doing this, aren’t we? We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. That’s what we’ve said we want. Right? I didn’t imagine that?”

Ben lifts his head, puts down the cocktail stick, and looks into your eyes with a bemused smile on his face. “No, you didn’t. And yes, we are.” His eyes crinkle as he smiles broadly. “And isn’t it fucking wonderful?”

You nod excitedly and a surge of laughter erupts from both of you, quietened only by a warm, passionate kiss. You break away and run your fingers through the messy strands of hair around his forehead.

“I know people might think it’s soon, love. But… it’s not. I know.”

“I know too, Lyddie. When you know, you know.” He reaches for your hand and brings it to his lips. “And to be honest, I don’t think anyone who knows us will think it’s too soon.”

The server returns to take the empty glasses and dishes. “Autre chose?” [Something else?]

Ben winks at you mischievously and orders two more glasses of champagne. 

The walk back to the apartment should have taken about twenty minutes. Or at least, it would have had you not both been tipsy, incredibly happy, and unable to keep your hands off each other. 

It takes just under an hour for you to get from the Marais back into the heart of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, stopping here and there along the way to indulge in some making out in quiet side streets and passageways. 

“I’m so glad there’s only one flight of stairs,” you hiss theatrically, Ben trailing a hand over your ass as you reach the landing and the door to the flat. 

Once inside, you pull him tight to you and move swiftly in the direction of the small bedroom, fingers already hooked inside the waistband of his jeans as he holds your face in his hands and kisses you deeply, tongues sweeping over each other and lips pressed together so hard you swear they’ll be bruised by morning.

“Sit on the end of the bed, baby.” He nods and follows your instructions, undoing his jeans as he watches you standing before him. 

You start to unbutton your dress, keeping your eyes on him as you ease it off and let it fall to the floor. Ben’s eyes roam slowly over you, mouth falling open slightly as he takes in the floral print of your panties, the light blue lace of your bra, the softness and curves of your body. 

You move closer to him, standing between his legs as he wraps his arms around your lower back and buries his face against your breasts while you languidly trail your fingers through his hair. 

You pull back and look at him, immediately giggling. He still has his glasses on, and those coffee-brown eyes are half-hidden behind a fog on the lenses. 

“Let’s take these off, shall we, Professor Morales?”

The combination of champagne and a decision about your future together has made you joyful, more confident - and more direct. 

“You’re so fucking hot, you know that, baby?” 

Ben raises his eyebrows and his ears flush pink. “I don’t really think…uh…”

You kiss him, his hands moving to grab the flesh of your ass and pull you tight to his body. 

“I think you’re hot as fuck, Ben Morales, and I’m going to tell you. And show you.” You wrap your arms around his neck and encourage him to move backwards a little, so that you can straddle him. “Lemme show you how gorgeous you are to me, my love. Hmmm?”

He grins, nods, and moans as his mouth passes over the velvet skin of your heavy tits. You help him out of his white T-shirt, and pause to take in the sight of him: your thighs framing his hips and waist, his hands resting on them; his tummy, somehow both broad and solid and yet soft, pressed deliciously against your own belly; his beautiful face, eyes filled with desire, and mouth begging to devour and be devoured. 

The temptation is too strong, your hands moving to caress his face as your lips meet his again. You keep your forehead pressed to his as you break the kiss and whisper to him, murmuring about how his dark gaze can make you ache for him, what it feels like to have his lips pressed to your body. 

Your hands move slowly across his shoulders and down his back, feeling the warmth of his golden skin, the strength underneath the surface. “This beautiful body, baby,” you murmur, placing tiny kisses to his collarbone. “When you’re above me, fucking me, or about to, and I look up and see you so fucking broad and solid…”

His breathing hitches as your mouth works its way down his chest and towards his tummy, lips and tongue picking out those little patches of freckles that you love so much, teeth sometimes scraping lightly over his warm, solid middle as you carefully move your body off his and onto the floor between his legs.

“You know how fucking sexy this tummy is, baby. Told you the first night we were together.” He looks sceptical and your hands roam over the warm softness of his skin, your cunt positively aching with need at the sensation. 

“I’m serious, Ben. It’s so fucking hot, the way your body looks, the feeling of your tummy against mine…” You whine as you roll your hips and clench your thighs, and he sits up slightly to drag down his jeans and underwear, a hand wrapping around his cock as he seeks some relief of his own. 

You reach for his other hand, holding it gently as you suck each finger in turn. “I love these hands, baby.” You kiss his palm and he gasps. “I love the sight of them, the feeling of them on me, in me, the things they do to me.”

His eyes are wide and dark with lust and adoration. “Fucking hell, Lyd, you’re incredible.”

And then your fingers join his, working the base of his cock and making Ben gasp with sheer pleasure. He moves his hands up to grope and caress your breasts, long fingers slipping under the lace of your bra to play with your nipples. 

“Touch yourself,” he hisses, hands full as he massages the soft weight of your tits. You obey the instruction, keeping your eyes locked on him as you bring one hand to part your soaking folds while the other continues to jerk him off. 

Ben watches for a moment as you rub small, firm circles over the aching bundle of nerves while pleasuring him simultaneously. “Fuck, baby, this is so fucking hot. You’re so good to me.”

You’re on your knees, now, and your mouth is actually watering at the sight before you. “Can I suck your cock, baby?”

He grunts his consent. “This…” You flick your tongue over the tip. “This is fucking gorgeous.” 

“Please, Lyd.” You look up at him and he whines a little, completely turned on by the sight of you between his legs, one hand now caressing the firm muscles of his calf and the other holding his cock in place. You oblige, expertly trailing your tongue along his full length before beginning to take him, bit by bit, inside your wet mouth. 

Ben cries out your name as you continue your ministrations, looking down at you with his eyes blown wide. “I‘ll come if you keep going, baby,” he hisses. “Wanna fuck you, please. Please. Need you.”

You swirl your tongue around the tip one last time before releasing him, bringing your hands to rest again on his legs, fingers massaging the muscles of his thighs as you hum in satisfaction. 

“C’mon, Lyddie.” He gestures with his head and you stand. He pulls you to him with one hand, palm and fingers splayed across the small of your back as he tugs down your panties with the other. Two thick fingers slide into you with ease, and his eyebrows quirk with surprise.

“You’re fucking soaking?” 

The tone of his voice makes you laugh, and he chuckles against the warm softness of your belly before kissing it, over and over, as your fingers wind through his curls. 

“I told you, love, you’re so fucking hot. Don’t even have to touch me and I’m ready for you.”

Ben grins wickedly as you push him back onto the bed and straddle him again, reaching down and stroking his cock a couple of times before you ease him into you and sink down, moaning loudly as he stretches you, fills you, takes you. You’ve had each other so many times now, and yet the sensation of him inside you remains new and thrilling. 

You start to move, shifting and rolling your hips in a careful, deliberate rhythm that has the two of you sighing and gasping with deep, delicious pleasure. You lean forward to come closer to him, desperate for his touch, for the warmth of his chest against yours. He eases down the straps of your bra a little and caresses your tits as he starts to fuck up into you, meeting your movements. 

He lifts his head up, greedily seeking your lips. His hands trace the curve of your back down to your hips and ass as he watches your bodies moving together, and he smiles wistfully as he brings a finger to your clit. “God, I love fucking you, Lyd.”

You giggle and cry out at his touch, riding him harder still as you edge closer to coming. His finger draws firm, tight circles over the swollen bud, tracing the familiar path he has carved out in you so many times. “Fuck me, baby - gonna come, don’t fucking stop - you gonna come?”

He closes his eyes tightly as the fingers of his other hand press hard into your thigh, breath hitching and voice raw. “Mmmmhmm. I’m so fucking close. Hold on, can you?”

You nod and try to temporarily quell the orgasm that’s been building in you since you got him home, Ben slowing his finger’s steady movements over your soaking clit.

And then the pace increases again, and you’re there, and he’s there. Together. 

Morning announces itself with a rustle of paper and a delicious, buttery aroma. Eyes blinking open, you become conscious of Ben’s soft lips on the nape of your neck - and aware that the enticing smell is right under your nose. 

“Bonjour, Lyd.” Ben is holding an open paper bag just under your nose. “Croissant?”

You turn to face him properly and sit up in bed beside him. “Hi, darling. How long are you up?”

He reaches into the bag and takes out a croissant, before placing it on a plate and handing it to you. “Not that long. You looked so beautiful and content, I didn’t want to wake you.”

The flaky, buttery pastry melts in your mouth as you sigh with pleasure. “Jesus fucking Christ. Nothing compares.”

Ben stops just as he’s about to bite into his own croissant, throwing you a cheeky glance. “Nothing? Nothing compares? You’re sure about that?”

You rest your head on his shoulder, the cotton of his long sleeved T-shirt soft and comforting against your face. 

“Nothing compares… in the world of baked goods.”

 He nods, satisfied, and takes a mouthful of the golden viennoiserie. 

“Oh, fuck. Maybe you’re right, Lyd.”

You giggle. “Thanks for these, love. You’re so kind.”

Ben shakes his head. “As if you wouldn’t have done the same.” He chews thoughtfully on the pastry. “Anyway, I feel like I still need to make it up to you. Yesterday morning, I mean.”

“You apologised, love, and we sorted things out. It’s fine.”

He shrugs. “I just feel bad. I shouldn’t have made you feel bad. Should have known by now that you struggle with this kind of uncertainty.” Ben reaches for your left hand, bringing it to his lips. “I’m sorry, Lyd.”

“Thank you, Ben. But we’re fine. I mean it. That’s what makes a relationship work, isn’t it? Learning about each other and knowing when we need to learn or listen more.”

He nods. “Exactly. And that’s why I’m so excited to spend the rest of my life with you. No matter where that is.”

The rest of the week is spent partly in research libraries, at least in your case, but mostly in the streets and cafés and galleries and museums of the city you love so much with the man you adore. 

You watch with quiet joy as he sees Manet’s Olympia in real life for the first time, shaking his head in admiration and awe as he takes in the painting. He steps back and folds his arms. 

“She’s really something.”

“She sure is. I’d be that confident too, if I was as gorgeous as her.”

He arches an eyebrow and looks at you. “You are. Much more so.” 

You huff a laugh as you link his arm and wander off to see Courbet’s Burial at Ornans. “You want me to pose like one of Manet’s French girls, Ben?”

“Wouldn’t say no, Lyd.”

At Harry’s New York Bar, the legendary cocktail bar near the Opéra, you cuddle up in a cosy corner of the piano lounge in the basement, and drink French 75 cocktails while the resident pianist plays Gershwin late into the night. You follow your own tailor-made walking tours, spotting literary landmarks and movie locations. A night in a Saint-Germain bar ends with a visit to the late-night bookstore L’Écume des Pages (and an inevitable bag full of newly-purchased books). Ben oohs and aahs over the bouquinistes’ boxes that line the walls overlooking the Seine, unable to resist a quick perusal of their selection of rare books and vintage magazines. You share a Paris-Brest pastry from Angelina, moaning appreciatively as you devour the delicious dessert. Together, you drink coffee and sip wine and talk and laugh and people-watch to your heart’s content. 

You could never tire of Paris. Even so, Ben’s wide-eyed excitement and enthusiasm makes everything new: the landmarks, the streetscapes, the food, the drink, the sounds and smells.

And you. He has made you new, too.

You feel it in the way he looks at you when you wave your hands and wax lyrical about god knows what painting or book or historical event. It’s in the reassuring weight of his arm around your shoulders as you wander through the narrow back streets, feeling like you’re ten feet tall. It’s there in the hundreds of little opportunities he finds during each day to touch you: the small of your back as you enter a building, the back of your hand as you sit together on the Métro, the side of your mouth as he brushes away an errant croissant flake. 

It is in the moments when you stop on the street and pull him to you for a kiss, unconcerned by the Parisians tut-tutting as they have to walk around the two of you. It’s in the moans he pulls from you, and you from him, when you are tangled in bedsheets at night, or in the morning, or even - after a lunchtime trip to the movies that escalated into some heated back-row kisses - in the middle of the afternoon, languidly stretched out naked for him on the bed. 

Just like one of Manet’s French girls, he joked.

Most of all, it’s there in the light that always seems to be shining in your eyes whenever you look at him, knowing that he is yours and you his. 

“You’re a tolerant man, Ben Morales,” you say with a chuckle as you walk through the imposing gates of Père Lachaise cemetery one bright morning. “Willing to hang out in Parisian cemeteries with me as I fangirl over the tombs of people no one has cared about for a hundred years or more.”

Ben looks at the list of names on the cemetery map and smiles at you, squinting slightly behind his sunglasses. “I rather like your Gothic side, Lyddie. And I appreciate this too, you know - I want to find Balzac and Proust’s tombs, while we’re here.” He drapes an arm across your shoulders as you climb steadily up one of the winding paths leading through the oldest part of the cemetery, stopping here and there to look at some of the more unusual tombs and memorials. 

There’s a certain part of Père Lachaise, its highest point, where you can look out and see the city unfolding below. You lead him there and sit on a bench, keen for him to take in the view. Other visitors and tourists meander past with their maps, chatting in various languages about Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison or any number of the luminaries whose remains lie alongside those of many more ordinary Parisians in this leafy enclave. 

And then it’s just the two of you, side by side, contemplative. Little birds chirp and chatter in the trees, their song a moment of peaceful stillness in the bustling city. 

Paris has a tendency to look particularly magical when you’re entering into the final hours of a visit. This evening, the fading spring sunlight cuts a path along the street below, gleaming off the windows and shop signs that line the ancient thoroughfare.

“My heart always breaks a little when I have to leave.”

Ben finishes combing back his hair, still damp from the shower and curls starting to form at the nape of his neck. He turns from the mirror just inside the door of the apartment, adjusting the collar of his white shirt. 

“This isn’t the last time, Lyddie. Not for you, not for us.”

You nod sadly, picking up your purse and slipping into a pair of dark red patent ballet flats. “I know. I’ve been telling myself that for twenty-odd years, but it never gets easier. Stupid, huh.”

He shakes his head as he reaches for your hand. “Not stupid. You love this place, and twenty-odd years is a long time to be in love.” He looks you up and down admiringly. “You’re all fancy.”

You cock your hip and strike a pose as Ben laughs. “I like to dress up for my long-term lover, the city of Paris, Monsieur Morales. Anyway, you’re all fancy too.”

“Not like you, I’m not. You look…” He exhales as he takes you in. “You look like you walked out of a perfect French movie.”

Even you have to admit he’s got a point. Sure, the outfit had been a bit of a splurge, a treat to yourself from the BHV department store. But a classic, knee-length little black dress would never go out of style. At least, that’s how you justified it. That, and the fact that it hugged your body just so, working wonders with your curves, somehow narrowing your middle and accentuating your tits and hips in a manner that was impossibly elegant and incredibly sexy. It was a marvel. 

For once, you got a flash of what Ben always told you he saw when he looked at you. It made for a pleasant change.

This evening you have accessorised with a vintage brooch and chunky brass earrings, the gold necklace Ben gave you for Valentine’s Day a permanent fixture around your neck. The spring evening is warm enough for you to get away with a dark red pashmina shawl in lieu of a jacket, though you worried bare legs might be a step too far and decided not to forego your black hold-up fishnet stockings.

Ben slips into his olive green suit jacket and you squeeze his hand. “Thank you, my love. You look beautiful, too.” 

He does. But then, he always does: his beauty is easy, natural, effortless; as obvious to you when he’s bleary-eyed and bed-headed in his old t-shirts and pyjama bottoms as it is now, with him suited and booted and looking every inch the debonair Parisian intellectual in his clear-framed glasses.

For an instant you wish you could travel back to your broken-hearted self all those years before, to tell her that a better day would come, that real love would find you when and where you least expected it, and that it would arrive in the form of a man as beautiful on the inside as he is on the outside.

Most people would say the two of you are a little overdressed for your dinner destination. But then, you aren’t most people.

You catch a glimpse of the two of you reflected in a shop window as you walk along boulevard Henri IV. You, black dress and red accessories; Ben, green suit with his top shirt buttons undone, hair combed back and starting to form soft waves a little as it dries. The fact that you are both wearing sunglasses only enhances the sense of slightly retro European chic. 

“Look at us. Not bad, hmmm?” 

Ben stops, puts down the wicker basket he’s carrying, and winds his arms around your waist, kissing the side of your neck. “Perfect.”

You stroll past a little park near the river, pointing out a reconstructed bit of the Bastille to him, and wander in the direction of the Pont Marie and onto the Île Saint-Louis. It’s a little out of the way for where you’re going, but you have a good reason. He asked you a couple of days ago what your favourite view of the city was, and you intend to show him. 

The evening sky is streaked with a palette of pale blues, pinks, oranges and reds as you reach the Pont de la Tournelle and stop to lean on the parapet of the bridge. 

“This is it.”

He stands beside you and rests his hands on the parapet, following your gaze westwards along the river, taking in the silhouette of Notre-Dame - still obscured by scaffolding - painted against the vibrant canvas of the sunset, and the curve of the quaysides as the Seine splits around the Île de la Cité. 

“This is my spot. When I stand here I feel as though I could wrap my arms around the city and as though it wraps its arms around me.” You look at Ben, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. That’s a bit weird, I know. I am aware that it is a city and I cannot hug it, please don’t run away.”

He looks at you with affectionate bemusement. “You know how beautiful that is, to have those feelings and be able to articulate them like that?” He reaches for your hand. “It isn’t weird. It’s you, and it’s wonderful.”

You rest your head on his shoulder and squeeze his hand. “The first time I came to Paris after…everything, I came here the first night. I stood here and I looked at the cathedral and the city.” You pause as the memory resurfaces. ���And then I had a massive cry. See? Weird.”

Ben shakes his head and chuckles, pulling you close to him. “Not weird. Catharsis.”

“I guess it was. I was still here. Notre-Dame was still here. Paris was still here. It gave me a sense of hope, I think, for the first time. Like, I knew things would get better.”

“I’m so fucking proud of you, you know?” He kisses your forehead and leans in to murmur, cheekily, in your ear: “So did things get better?”

You wrap your arm around his waist, slipping it under his jacket so you can feel the strong muscles of his back under his shirt. “Eh, I guess you could say that.”

Dinner is simple: a baguette, a selection of cheeses and charcuterie, and a bottle of champagne. But you’ve made the effort to bring proper glasses and plates from the apartment, and you can’t fault the location: watching the river from the Quai Saint-Bernard on the left bank, waving at the people on the big tourist boats - the bateaux-mouches - as they pass. 

“Hell of a view,” Ben muses in between mouthfuls of baguette and Brillat-Savarin cheese. 

You gaze across the river at the Île Saint-Louis and smile contentedly. “It is perfection.”

He chuckles and leans in to kiss you. “I was talking about you. But Paris isn’t too bad, either.”

He looks back at the river, a smile playing on his lips, and you take a moment to admire a perfect view of your own: Ben’s handsome face in profile, hair moving gently in the breeze, the light tan he had acquired after a week of wandering in Parisian spring sunshine complementing the patches of grey-white hair at the hinge of his jaw. 

You can’t help but marvel a little at how fucking gorgeous he is. Well done, Lyd. In that instant, as you take him in, you concentrate on the wonderful feeling of calm and safety that suffuses your body when you’re with him. 

You’d only realised after the abrupt end of your last relationship that you’d spent a decade and a half walking on eggshells, constantly anxious and never wholly comfortable - even with someone who claimed to love you. You feared suggesting the simplest thing: a movie, a dinner, a holiday, lest it prompt a negative reaction or criticism.

With Ben, though? Even with the ongoing uncertainty about where, exactly, your future would be, you had never felt anything other than safe. With a clearer path ahead agreed together, the residual anxiety faded, too. 

It was a new and marvellous feeling. 

As the evening draws in, a little group of musicians set up nearby on the quay, accompanied by a cluster of couples who immediately began to dance to the band. Ben turns and smiles at the spectacle.

“They do this as soon as the weather gets warm here,” you explain, smiling widely as the dancers move around an open area on the quayside. “Sometimes it’s French classics, sometimes American big band, sometimes Latin, sometimes a more contemporary mix, like tonight.”

Ben stands up, dusts off his pants, picks up the picnic basket and extends his hand to you. 

“Would you like to dance, Lyddie?”

How can you refuse, when he’s looking like that and asking you in that voice and smiling at you with such love and affection? 

“I’m not good at this sort of thing, Ben, I warn you.”

He rolls his eyes affectionately. “Bullshit. Now: dance with me, Lyd.”

You get to your feet and he leads you in the direction of the makeshift dancefloor, leaving the picnic basket to one side as he brings you into a dance hold and begins to move, pulling you close to his body as the band and its female lead singer begin a cover of Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine”.

The rest of the city falls away as you dance with him, nuzzling against his neck as his hips sway gently, rhythmically against you in time to the slower tempo of the music. Ben’s lips press softly to the top of your head, and you hum in absolute contentment. 

“I love this song, you know.”

He chuckles. “I do. You sing it very beautifully in the shower, sometimes.”

“I doubt it’s beautiful.”

“Trust me. It’s beautiful.”

You nestle against him and sing along, joining in with the lyric that always made you think of him, of how he had broken through your sturdy defences, smoothing and healing the jagged, broken pieces of your soul: “My baby, here on earth/Showed me what my heart was worth”. 

You sing the words quietly against his chest, feeling the vibrations from your voice meeting the rhythm of his heartbeat in a curious music made of two lovers. As the song draws to a close, Ben tenderly lifts your chin and kisses you, enveloping you in those strong arms. Cologne, coffee, bread, paper, something that is just his: his scent, the scent of love and safety.

His big hands skim appreciatively over your figure in the new black dress as he inhales your own perfume, nose buried in the crook of your neck. “Delicious, gorgeous girl,” he murmurs against your velvet skin. “You look incredible tonight, you know?”

Ben pulls your body even tighter to his and you whine softly, the press of his broad form to yours enough to send a rush of wetness to your core. 

“I think we need to get back to the apartment, my love.”

Ben sits at the end of the bed, wearing his shirt and boxers, watching as you take off your jewellery in front of the bedroom mirror. There’s something fascinating about the ritual: how you take out your earrings and put them in their box; the way you tilt your head forward as you remove your necklace.

He still can’t believe it, sometimes, the kind of love he has with you. He’s been desperate to get you home ever since you danced close and slow on the riverbank. That fucking black dress. Driving him slowly crazy all night, every time he looked at you. It’s the way it hugs your hips, accentuates the ample, full curves of your tits, and reveals just enough of your skin to make him want to ease it off your soft, welcoming body. 

His cock twitches at the thought. 

He stands up and crosses the floor, standing behind you. His hands gently caress you as you smile at the reflection of the two of you in the mirror.

“I love this.”

Ben kisses the top of your arm. “I love this, too.”

His lips find their way along the line of your shoulder until they reach the crook of your neck. A little tug to the zipper of the dress and his mouth moves downwards, kissing and sucking at the back of your neck, hands roaming over your body and grabbing handfuls of you as he goes.

He’s pressed against your back, murmuring your name. The extent of his desire is already very much in evidence.

“Fuck, Lyddie.” His breath is warm and urgent against your neck.

“Mmmm?”

“I’ve wanted to take this off since the minute I saw you in it.”

You chuckle. “Looks that bad, huh?”

Lips still on your neck, he caresses your breasts as he shakes his head. “Looks too good on you.”

Ben licks a stripe up the side of your neck and you whine with pleasure, closing your eyes and reaching to caress his face.

“Can I take it off, my love?” His voice is lower, smokier.

You nod, locking your eyes on his. A frisson of excitement courses through your body as Ben eases down the rest of the zipper and eases you out of your little black dress, letting it pool at your feet. 

“Oh, fuck me. These new?”

When you bought the dress, you’d bought new lingerie, too. A bra in caramel and black lace whose delicacy belied its incredible construction, supporting your breasts perfectly. Matching underwear, high-waisted and full but completely sheer, made out of the same black lace that trimmed your bra.

And of course: the stockings.

You nod and close your eyes, trying to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror. You looked alright in the dress, but you still can’t quite face the body underneath it. Ben’s breath ghosts across your shoulder blades as he fondles your tits and kisses the top of your spine. 

“Open your eyes, Lyd.”

You hesitate.

“Lyd. Open your eyes.”

You obey. But you keep your gaze fixed on him, afraid of your own reflection, of a body that you still cannot believe anyone like him would ever really want. 

“Lyddie, please look.” Ben’s voice is firm but pleading. “Look at your beautiful face. Look at this gorgeous, sexy body.” 

He trails a finger along the contours of your breasts, tracing the lace trim of the bra. He brings his hands to your waist, to your hips, pulling you back against him ever so slightly so that you can feel how hard he is. 

You don’t think you’ll ever love your body. But, watching Ben drinking you in with his eyes, running his fingers over the black Parisian lace that clings to the most sensitive and sensual parts of you, you understand that you love the way he loves your body.

“This is what you do to me, Lyd, and I will tell you every day for the rest of our lives that you are the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” You turn to face him, his hands cupping your face as he kisses you deeply. 

He breaks away and looks into your eyes, dark irises searching yours. There’s a vulnerability there, a hint of doubt, lingering in spite of his words. 

“What is it, Lyd?”

You shrug, fingers lightly caressing the curls and waves that cluster around his ears. “I love that you think I’m beautiful. I… still don’t know if I ever will.”

He kisses you again, softer this time. “Can I at least try to convince you? Show you?”

You smile against his lips and wrap your arms around his neck. “I’d like that. Could… could you, like, take charge? For tonight?”

He quirks an eyebrow and returns your kiss, humming against your mouth. “Take charge?”

You feel embarrassment rising in your throat. You’d never really felt able to just ask for what you needed like this before. Old habits die hard.

“Ben, I never felt safe enough to ask a partner to take the lead like this…not before you.”

His expression softens. “I’d give you anything, Lyd. Anything you want.” He wraps his arms around you and pulls you to him, chin resting on your shoulder. “And I feel safe with you, too.”

You tilt your head to kiss him. “So…?”

“So, I’m going to take charge and show you exactly how fucking beautiful you are, how sexy you are, how fucking happy I am that I get to be with you.” He pauses to kiss you again. “And if I have to, like I said - I’ll do this every day for the rest of time, if necessary, until you see what a perfect goddess you are.”

Another, deeper kiss; the sensation of his broad hands on the soft skin of your tits and belly, pulling you tight to him, the press of his erection against you as he guides you to lean back against the wall and slips his fingers under the crotch of your panties, parting your folds and working your clit and pussy until you’re panting with desire and need. 

For a moment, you think he’s going to fuck you. But then slowly, steadily, Ben sinks to the ground in front of you, mouth and teeth and tongue finding the softest, most yielding parts of your body as he works his way to his knees. 

Ben looks up at you, eyes glittering with lust and adoration. He is a supplicant before you, ready to worship, to seek and give a pleasure as sacred as it is profane. He venerates your body with his mouth. His tongue traces the outline of your hips, his lips kiss the softness of your lower belly, his teeth scrape across the thick flesh of your upper thighs. He tugs the panties down completely, parting your legs and helping you out of the garment. 

“I want you to keep the stockings on, okay?”

You nod your assent. Those perfect dark eyes find yours, a flash of mischief crossing his gaze as he gently pushes a finger inside you before placing both hands firmly on your hips, pressing into your flesh. 

And then he tilts his head, just so, and you cry out as he brings his lips to your wet pussy, mouth and tongue working your entrance as his nose rubs with precision against your clit. You buck slightly against him but he holds you in place, grunting and groaning with pleasure as he goes down on you. The warmth of his breath against your core makes your cunt clench around nothing, desperate for him.

You wind your fingers through the soft waves of his hair, holding him in position and throwing your head back as you revel in every lap of his tongue, every brush of his beard against the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, every nudge of that beautiful nose against your clit. He’s eating you out like you’re his last meal, your moans and writhing body seemingly only serving to spur him on. 

Even so, Ben senses that you’re holding back. The position is incredible, the sight of him, the sound of him, the feel of him making you want to come harder than you’ve ever done before. But you worry about whether your legs will give way - whether you’ll hurt him if you fall forward. 

“I’ve got you, Lyd,” he murmurs, face still buried between your thighs. “Let go. I’ve got you. You’re so close. Come for me. Want you to come like this.”

With his fingers fucking you and his lips sucking and licking at your clit, your body yields and you cry out as you come against his face. 

He stays on his knees as you ride out the orgasm, thumbs rubbing a gentle circle against your hips, before scrambling to his feet and wrapping you in his strong arms. Your legs are still trembling as you lean in and kiss him like your lives depend on it, tasting yourself on his lips. He manoeuvres you to the bed, laying you down with the utmost care. 

You look up at him as he shifts into position above you, the low light catching the traces of your release that glisten across his face and his beautiful eyes flitting greedily over your face and body. You reach up to unbutton his shirt and he shucks off his undervest. An electrical current of desire courses through you as you rake your hands over his broad shoulders and down to that soft tummy you love so much. His eyes are warm and wanting: your darling, your lover, your partner. You are safe in his hands, and you are ready to give yourself entirely to him.  

A little smile quirks at his mouth as he lies down beside you, turning on his side and trailing his long fingers across the velvet skin of your tits, still enclosed in the delicate lace of your bra. 

“Do you know how much I want you, Lyd?” he murmurs, mouth working hot, needy kisses across your breasts. 

“Tell me.”

“Want you all the time.” You can feel his cock hard against you. “Want to have all of you, want to touch and kiss and fuck every last inch of you. I’m going to use my mouth on you now, baby, okay?”

He nips and sucks at the soft flesh of your belly as you moan, pussy aching for him. “And the more I have you, the more I want you.” He finds your soaking folds again and drags two fingers through the slick, bringing them to your lips so you can suck them clean. “I love you. And I can’t get enough of you.”

You let out a half-laugh, half-groan as he pulls you to him and quickly takes off your bra, mouth finding your breasts and tongue swirling over your nipples. You slip a hand between the two of you, tugging down his boxer briefs and wrapping your fingers around his cock as you stroke him, feeling him becoming fully hard under your careful touch.

“Do you think you have another in you, my love?” 

You nod. 

“Use your words, Lyd.”

“Yes. I think so…fuck, yes sir.”

He groans loudly against you and slips his fingers back through your soaking folds, chuckling a little at the whine of pleasure you let out as his warm breath ghosts against your ear. “Fucking hell, Lyd. You look so fucking beautiful. Such a beautiful woman.” He hooks his fingers against the perfect spot inside you and you buck against him, hand still working his dick. “And such a pretty pussy, so tight and so wet for me.”

He eases you into a different position, your back against his chest as his erection nudges against you. First his hands, then - with a shuffle down the bed - his mouth caresses the plump flesh of your ass, lips and teeth scraping over the sensitive skin as you whimper. He shifts your leg up and nestles himself into position.

“Can I have you, darling?”

You whine into the bed, feeling your orgasm building and building. “Please, baby, I need you inside me - fuck, baby, please…”

“I thought I was in charge?” 

His voice is low, honeyed, hot as he whispers in your ear. It tips you closer and closer to the edge. 

“You are… I just want you so fucking much.”

“You want me to fuck you, is that it?”

“Please. Fuck me, my love. Hard as you want to.”

“Fuck, Lyd.” With a groan and some muttered expletives, Ben sinks inside you, pausing for a moment to enjoy the sensation. “Always feels so incredible inside you, baby,” he pants, one arm holding you around your tits and the other against your belly. “Just - oh, fuck - just perfect.” 

It is perfect - perfect angle, perfect feeling of him stretching you, of his hands on you. He drags himself out of your cunt slowly, steadily, making you whimper at the loss of him. A snap of his hips and he’s buried inside you again, beginning a hard rhythm that has you crying his name into the bed as he fucks you, fast and deep, the softness of your ass cushioning his thrusts as he showers you with praise. His good girl. His beautiful woman. His love. 

His. His. Only his. Repeated. Possessive. Perfect.

He shifts his hand from your belly to your pussy, working tight circles over the swollen nub of your clit as you get closer and closer, mouth sucking on the delicate flesh of your neck, never letting up the rhythm until you cry out and come on his cock, the wetness audible as he fucks you through it. 

“Good, baby?” He pulls out as you’re still coming down, easing you onto your back and settling himself on top of you, carefully parting your legs. 

You look up at him, cockdrunk, seeing stars, and with no way to express how you feel other than a satisfied whine as you pull him to you for a hungry, sloppy kiss. Ben smiles and chuckles against your lips as he reaches down to gently hook an arm under your knee as he sinks back into you with a guttural moan. 

He picks up the pace again quickly, taking you harder now, rougher, even, and gripping the headboard of the bed with his free hand. His hair is dishevelled, errant short curls falling over his brow as sweat runs in rivulets over the freckles scattered underneath the hollow of his throat and lips finding yours as you start to babble to him incoherently, surrendering to the sensation. 

He drops his hand from the headboard to find yours, pressing your hand and arm into the mattress as he holds you down while he fucks you. 

“Talk to me, Lyd. Tell me. See how much I want you? Tell me.”

You mutter filthily about how deep he is, how big he is, how you love having him inside of you, how much you want him - need him - to fill you up. But then you look at him - at his beautiful face, screwed up and teeth gritted as he makes love to you - and another urge takes over, displacing the dirty talk with something no less intense, but softer, all the same.

“I fucking love you, Ben - fuck, keep going, that’s so good, fuck…”

He groans and reaches for your breast, groping it as he nears his own release. “You’re mine, Lyddie. All mine.”

“Yours, Ben. Every bit of me. Yours, forever, like you’re fucking mine.”

“My woman…my - oh, fuck - my good fucking girl.” You know he’s really close. “Keep talking, Lyd. Want to hear it.”

“You’re mine, baby - oh god, Ben, that’s so fucking good - all mine. I’ll give you anything. Everything.”

Ben rests his head against your neck, panting and moaning as his rhythm falters. “I’m all yours, Lydia, always - f-fuck, I’m gonna…”

You hold him tight, hands across the breadth of his back. “You’ll never be alone again, baby - fuck, Ben! - gonna take care of you, gonna be our own little family…”

He positively growls as he comes inside you, your head knocking against the headboard as he snaps his hips against yours before collapsing against your body. You hold him tight, gentle, slow, one hand winding through his curls and the other reaching for his hand as you plant soft kisses along his hairline.

He eases himself out of you with a final kiss and flops back onto the mattress beside you, still trying to catch his breath and with the most beautifully blissed-out expression on his face.

“I’m just going to clean up and take these stockings off, my love,” you murmur, shifting your body to the edge of the bed. “You okay?”

Ben grins and giggles to himself as he looks at you. “I am fantastic. Don’t know my name or what year it is, but I am fucking fantastic.”

You pad back from the bathroom as quickly as you can, discarding your stockings and climbing back into bed beside him. He’s reaching for you before you’ve even settled your body on the mattress, broad hands gently rubbing your belly, your hips, the line of your breasts. His breath is steadier now, face and body completely relaxed in the gorgeous afterglow.

“You are such a beautiful man.”

Ben opens one eye and meets your gaze. “Hmmmph?”

“I said, you are such a beautiful man. Don’t dare deny it.” 

He smiles softly, closing his eyes again as your fingertips trace the line of his nose, brush against an errant curl, find the outline of the little bare patches on the side of his jaw. Your thumb swipes gently across his lower lip, fingers seeking out the texture of his moustache. 

You go to speak, and stop yourself. 

“What were you going to say, Lyddie?” His voice is heavy, sleep beckoning him.

“Nothing, I was just - no, it’s stupid.”

“Nothing stupid could ever come out of your pretty mouth.”

You giggle quietly and bring yourself even closer to him, resting your hand on his chest. He reaches up to hold it. 

“It’s just that… I don’t know. When I look at you like this, at all the little things that are just uniquely you, it feels like everything fits. You know?”

He opens his eyes again. “Everything fits?”

“It’s like, ‘aha. Yes. That.’ Like I was always meant to be looking at this face. Like there was a bit of me that I didn’t even know I was missing and it just was…it was you. Even if I didn’t know it.”

He smiles and leans in for a soft kiss. “And now everything fits.”

He wakes her with coffee and kisses, knowing how much she hates prising herself from the warmth of their shared bed. A little incentive, a way to help her avoid panic later in the morning, one of those tiny acts of love they perform for each other every day. 

She orders a taxi for a couple of hours’ time and strips the bedsheets, casting an eye over their shared luggage waiting for departure as she joins him in the living area. Having put the sheets on a wash-dry cycle, her hands rest lightly on his broad shoulders as she quickly kisses him on the cheek and heads for the bathroom to shower. Instinctively, she gathers all but their essentials - toothbrushes and paste, shower gel - and slips them in a ziploc bag, ready to go into one of their cases. 

Once he’s showered, they continue their seamless little ballet of co-operation and partnership as they prepare to depart: a reminder to empty the trash here, an almost-forgotten phone charger spotted there, last few belongings squished into their hand luggage, and a final check on their passports and tickets. She checks every drawer and cupboard one more time while he places their trash bag in the small communal dumpster in the building’s courtyard. 

It is a banal ritual: unthinking, unrehearsed, instinctive. But there’s something in the way they slot together so neatly, the way they complement each other, the easy, naturalness of it all, that speaks to a sense of partnership that works as well in the routines of everyday life as it does in the bedroom. 

He carries the cases down to the main hallway as she checks the apartment’s small windows and locks up, following him downstairs after she drops off the key to Sophie’s neighbour. 

He’s outside, standing with the bags on the pavement outside the building. The G7 taxi pulls up almost immediately, and he can’t help but smile with pride when he hears her confidently chatting away in French to the driver as they load the trunk with their luggage. 

Her hand finds his in the backseat, head resting against his shoulder. Partners. A team.

As the car heads northwards towards the edge of the city, he casts a glance at his phone. Two new job alerts, for positions at institutions in Europe. 

He resolves to check them out properly once they get home. For now, though, just a squeeze of her hand, a kiss to the top of her head, and a silent resolution that he’d follow her to the ends of the earth. 

*******

Further A/N: I'm going to make a separate post with more details on the music, the locations, and the food in this chapter...

[atlantichurricanes]

Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook issued by the National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL, USA

2024-11-03, 19:00 EST

Active Systems: The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Subtropical Storm Patty, located over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean east of the Azores Islands. The National Hurricane Center has also initiated advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Eighteen, located over the south-central portion of the Caribbean Sea.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...high...near 100 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...high...near 100 percent.

Southwestern Atlantic: An area of disturbed weather could develop from an interaction of moisture with an upper-level trough digging near the northern Leeward Islands around the middle of this week. Some slow subtropical or tropical development of this system is possible after that time as it moves generally westward over the southwestern Atlantic.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

Near the Southeastern Bahamas: A trough of low pressure continues to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms along with gusty winds over the southeastern Bahamas and adjacent waters. This system is expected to be absorbed into Potential Tropical Cyclone Eighteen (AL18) over the Caribbean Sea by late Monday, and development before that time is no longer anticipated. Regardless, locally heavy rains are possible during the next couple of days across the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...near 0 percent.

&& Public Advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Eighteen are issued under WMO header WTNT33 KNHC and under AWIPS header MIATCPAT3. Forecast/Advisories on Potential Tropical Cyclone Eighteen are issued under WMO header WTNT23 KNHC and under AWIPS header MIATCMAT3.

$$ Forecaster Papin

[anghraine]

Hey, if you follow for fic and also use or are thinking about using Dreamwidth—

I'm gradually backing up my fic and fixing typos on a Dreamwidth community (moirharad.dreamwidth.org—you can subscribe but not join, and in any case, there's only one fic up currently, but it's where you'll be able to find them). I made it to function entirely as a fic archive. I've meant to back up my fic for awhile, but it seemed a good time to have it posted somewhere other than AO3, and specifically more reliable/less corporate than Tumblr. I also wanted to be able to f-lock specific fics should I so desire, which DW can do.

Also, it's nice to have some pre-established structure, but with the freedom to choose my own format and tagging system, with the bonus that they won't go into some common site tag. And communities allow for multiple people to post fic to it, should I ever want to do that. And I can use all the icons and perks of my personal account. So if you use/at least know Dreamwidth, I'd recommend doing something similar unless you'd rather build your own site or something like that.

Creating a community is very simple, btw; go to the main dreamwidth.org page and drag your mouse over "Create." The last option is "Create Community."

Some more details:

Once you have a community, you can run your mouse over "Organize" and select "Settings" under your community. Click on the "Privacy" tab. This lets you choose things like if you want to enable comments, only logged-in comments, if you want them to go into a moderation queue, log the IP address, ban specific users from commenting, be indexed by search engines, etc. I chose to put anonymous comments into a queue while allowing all logged-in Dreamwidth accounts to comment should they wish, and to not log IP addresses.

When it comes to choosing the aesthetic of the archive, some styles are pretty dire, but here are some that I like:

Dark Blue by ninetydegrees—the one on my personal blog and the fic community; I've used it forever and find it very soothing.

Simplicity by timeismymeasure—nice and clean.

Too Much Wine by ninetydegrees—mostly for the convenient sidebar.

Atlantic by ninetydegrees—similar design, but more "writerly" in some ways, if you want that vibe.

Prose by timeismymeasure for Five AM—pleasant and elegant. I almost used it, but wanted more contrast.

Právda by rising for Five AM—similar design IIRC, but more vivid. I considered it for Pride month (the coloring looks kind of rainbow-y), but the orange was just a bit much. Fun if you go for that, though.

Pigeon Blue by dancing_serpent for Blanket—I prefer dark text on a light background, but I liked the look of this for the reverse.

Marble IV by dancing_serpent—same issue with the light text/dark background, but I like the design.

Neutral Good by timeasmymeasure for Practicality—another no-frills but pleasant one.

If you have an account and want to post to a community you've made, it's also pretty straightforward. Just go to "Post" from either the Dreamwidth main page or your logged-in header from most anywhere on Dreamwidth. It's the second link under your username.

From the "Post" page, you should see a drop-down list that contains your main blog and all communities you're a member of. You just click on the fic archive community you made and that means your post will go to the community instead of your main blog.

My standard format for fic posts, incidentally, lists the title, the verse (if it's in a series or shared continuity), the story's length, major warnings, the characters, the relationships, a chapter or fic summary, links to previous chapters/sections if any, and a link to any podfic. e.g.:

This is overly detailed for some, and that's fine! But I like to be upfront.

Anyway, if you're thinking of using Dreamwidth to back up fic, I hope that helps!

[alatmosphericcenter]

ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL

TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM

Tropical Weather Outlook

NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL

200 PM EDT Thu Sep 5 2024

For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:

1. Northwest Gulf of Mexico:

A large area of showers and thunderstorms continue in association

with a broad area of low pressure interacting with a weak frontal

boundary located over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Upper-level

winds are expected to become less conducive for development by late

Friday and Saturday as another frontal boundary approaches the

system. Although development is unlikely, heavy rainfall is

expected across portions of the northern Gulf Coast during the next

day or so. Additional information on this system can be found in

products issued by your local National Weather Service Forecast

Office.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

2. Northwestern Atlantic (AL99):

Showers and thunderstorms have become better organized in

association with a non-tropical area of low pressure located a few

hundred miles east of North Carolina, and recent satellite data

indicates the system is producing winds to near gale-force. This

system could acquire some tropical or subtropical characteristics

over the next day or two while it moves generally

north-northeastward, remaining offshore of the northeastern United

States. Once the low moves over cooler waters by early Saturday,

further development is not expected. Additional information on this

system, including gale warnings, can be found in High Seas Forecasts

issued by the National Weather Service.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...30 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...30 percent.

3. Eastern Tropical Atlantic:

An elongated trough of low pressure over the eastern tropical

Atlantic is producing limited shower activity. Development is not

expected through this weekend while the system moves little. Some

slow development appears possible early next week when the

disturbance begins moving slowly northwestward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

4. Northwestern Caribbean Sea and Southwestern Gulf of Mexico:

Shower and thunderstorm activity remains disorganized in

association with a westward-moving tropical wave located over the

western Caribbean Sea. Development is not expected before the

system reaches Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula by early Friday.

Some gradual development is possible late in the weekend into early

next week after the system emerges over the southwestern Gulf of

Mexico.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

5. Central Tropical Atlantic:

Another tropical wave located a few hundred miles east of the

Leeward Islands is producing limited shower and thunderstorm

activity. Strong upper-level winds are expected to inhibit

development of this system during the next few days while it moves

west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph. By early next week,

environmental conditions could become more conducive for some slow

development while the system moves over the southwestern Atlantic

Ocean.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

High Seas Forecasts are issued by the National Weather Service

under AWIPS header NFDHSFAT1 and WMO header FZNT01 KWBC, and online

at ocean.weather.gov/shtml/NFDHSFAT1.php

Forecaster Hagen/Delgado

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by @keltii-tea​

Chapter 7: An Escape starts with E

They were on a fucking boat. Heisenberg figured it out eventually. It wasn't like he had an excess of experience with boats. He'd made a few prototypes to navigate the waterways and rivers that twined through and around the valley, of course, and during a long, cold winter of famine in the village he'd been driven to retrofit an old motorboat into a automatic fishing machine to strip the reservoir of any scabby old trout Moreau had left swimming.

It was that, or starve. He couldn't exactly eat metal.

And, of course, he'd spent a miserable couple weeks crossing the Atlantic onboard a cargo ship with Rose, smuggling them both from Europe to the sunny shores of the USA. That had been the second time they'd gone on the run from the BSAA, after Chris and company had tracked them down in Glasgow.

Whatever kind of ship he was on was significantly more high-tech than anything he'd been on before, but the slight, queasy pitch and sway of the room around him was the same, and that, plus a certain industrial quality to the architecture of the room, the handwheels that opened and closed the doors, the rumble that emanated from somewhere deep underfoot, told him everything he needed to know.

Mia came in a couple more times to grill him about the village. She would drag up a chair and sit down by the glass, picking away at that stupid tablet. Always, always, Regan and Cal accompanied her, rarely saying more than a few words at a time to Mia, like she wasn't even there.

"Best route of entry?" she asked him.

"Through the northeast pass. Doesn't get so snowed-in and all that."

"Will the lycans congregate there?"

"Lycans congregate wherever there's prey, buttercup. When they catch a whiff of us coming in they'll congregate wherever we are, too."

"Anything in particular that kills them quickly?"

"Lots and lots of bullets."

She'd lifted an eyebrow. "Anything else?"

"Slice off the head, blow a hole through the Cadou in the torso-" He'd awkwardly lifted a harnessed hand to tap the old suture scar running down his sternum, where his own Cadou had been implanted. "-Or the stomach."

He slid his fingers down. Mia followed the movement with her eyes, a slight crease between her dark brows.

"Or you could set 'em on fire," Heisenberg went on, with a shrug. "Or throw some acid on 'em. Or rip 'em to pieces. Whatever cranks your lever."

"You became something of an expert in Cadou implantation. You saw first-hand how a human body reacts to the parasite, didn't you? Studied it during your experiments with mechanizing those corpses?"

"That's right. Glad I have someone who'll acknowledge my fine and scholarly work."

"Do you anticipate the lycans will have developed mutations beyond those which have already been observed?"

"Fuck, Mia, you have all that written down or something?"

"Answer the question."

"Will the lycans have gotten scarier in the past fifteen years, grown more claws and fangs?" Heisenberg translated. "Probably."

Once, when he was a teenager- sort of, anyway; his growth had slowed and sped up in strange, unpredictable spurts- he thought he'd been about thirty at the time- Miranda had taken him down a long, torchlit corkscrew of stairs within the ancient stronghold to the southwest of the village, a Medieval ruin that had been the site of the last stand of a group of boyars against the local 'heretic' population.

He was still her favorite then. He hadn't yet outed himself as a disappointment like pitiful, power-tortured Moreau, or Alcina, with her constant hunger for human flesh. Miranda had realized how interested Heisenberg was in the way things worked, and liked to show off her various experiments to him, hoping, maybe, he might be cowed by her godlike command over the world around her.

At the bottom of the steps, ringed by their leaping shadows, Miranda showed him the pit full of lycans. They were different, though, to the ones she loosed in the woods, that kept the more intrepid villagers from wandering too far from the valley. These were a lot bigger. They'd begun to grow spikes of crystalline armor, extra toes, extra limbs, in some cases. Twisted and misshapen and deadly.

Heisenberg had lifted his eyebrows, impressed, when two began to fight, grappling and snarling until the larger of the two grabbed the other's head and shoulder and simply tore it in half like a wet paper towel. The rest of the pack had descended, ripping hungrily into the dead lycan, eating their fill before the meat began to crystallize.

"Miranda liked to control her monsters," he went on. "Liked to know what she was getting. She suppressed the lycans' mutation so her army wouldn't do anything too...unexpected."

There were exceptions, like Urias, like the varcolac, but they had a part to play in Miranda's army. "Left to their own devices..." He couldn't resist a feral smile. "Who knows what they'll have gotten up to."

Mia had nodded. Heisenberg sensed she wanted to ask more, but she didn't. He guessed she'd gotten to the end of her Ouroboros-sanctioned list.

"Very well," she said at last, finishing her notes. She rose from her chair.

"Mia," Heisenberg had said.

She paused.

"How much longer on the boat?"

"Not long," she'd told him, and then she was gone again.

So they were shipping him to the village. Romania was landlocked except for a pinky finger stuck out into the Black Sea, so they'd have to transfer him to something else to get them all into town. He supposed putting him onboard a ship was lower-risk than transporting him by plane. If he regained even a slight amount of control of his powers while in flight-

Well. Depressurization for everyone, and he'd be sitting pretty in the cockpit, levitating the whole thing down to wherever he wanted. A ship was less easy to take total control over, and if it sank, he drowned just as easy as anyone else.

Heisenberg had had a long time to think about the possibilities. Would he rather drown than lead Ouroboros to the village? To Ethan's remains? To strip-mine the place and the dead man and unleash horrors, all to make a fistful of lei?

At one time or another, he'd have said yes without hesitation. Fuck these fuckers; killing them and himself in a go would be a perfect middle finger to anyone who thought they could meddle with monsters and come out on top.

Now?

He thought of Rose. Her eyes blue-white, reflecting his lightning. The tears streaking silver down her face as she made herself be brave. He remembered her last embrace, monster smashing up everything around them, her hugging him so tight he couldn't breathe and all he could think, over his ingrained bloodlust, over his need to go murder that monster bitch so hard it turned to soup, was that he didn't want her to let go.

Damn you, Karl, he told himself. You're going softer than a corpse in a well.

Guess he was gonna have to get out of this alive or something.

***

The downside, of course, to not flying him to Romania, to keeping him awake so that Mia could interrogate him about the village, was that he could do a lot of thinking. Ouroboros was confident, and for good reason; this harness he was trapped in was a nightmare, a masochist's dream of needles and aching spine, his body forced to stand for days on end.

But he'd spent most of his life in mental captivity. Compared to Miranda controlling his mind, Ouroboros controlling his body was nothing.

He just needed an opportunity.

Now, Mia had been gone for a couple days- by his estimate, anyway. He counted the shift rotations of  researchers in the room, counted his own heartbeats. Every so often the twins, Regan and Cal, entered the room. They never spoke to him, never did more than stand before the enclosure, whispering to one another as they looked him over.

And, of course, there was dinnertime.

He needed his mouth and throat unobscured so he could do his talking. That precluded a feeding tube or some shit. A silent scientist came in twice a day to shove protein supplement, tasteless and textured like spam, down his throat. He'd had worse, and the whole maneuver meant that the enclosure had to unseal. It meant it had to open fairly easily, a panel in the glass sliding down into the dais to allow access.

Don't want to make things too complicated, after all. That wasn't good business.

He'd already had his breakfast spam, so when the unlucky bitch assigned to feed him tonight unlocked the cage with a palm pressed to a scanner on the glass and stepped into the flooding brightness of the enclosure, Heisenberg grinned.

"What's for dinner, sweetheart?" he asked her.

She gave him a flat look from under the visor of her protective headgear, a rebreather situation with the Ouroboros serpent emblazoned on the big, cylindrical filters. A tray in her hands held cakes of the pinkish stuff.

"What do you say you sit down with me, have a nice candlelit chat? Make for a good change of pace. Then I can string you up and gut you and turn you into a soldat. You know what a soldat is, right, sweetheart? Surely you've heard of my little home ec projects from once upon a time..."

"This will all be over a lot faster if you stop talking," the scientist said.

"Yeah, but I'm enjoying getting to know you."

"Do not-"

"Come to think of it, I have a lot I want to say."

"What?" She paused with a spongy little cake of protein supplement in hand, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Where's Mia Winters, anyway? I want to talk to her."

"...Why?"

"I have some information about the village. It's important." He grinned. "Very important."

"And why didn't you relay this before?"

"It's been fifteen years. Mind like a steel trap, but..." He shrugged. "Some of the finer details slip through the teeth."

The researcher dropped the protein supplement back to the tray with a meaty smack. She turned and left the enclosure, sealing the panel back up on her way out.

"Tell her to hurry it up!" Heisenberg yelled after her. "I might forget again!" He half-expected she would never show up. He closed his eyes, trying to slip into a half-doze, trying to get away, for a second, from the ache of the lights in his unprotected eyes.

But then there came the tap of footsteps, and Heisenberg jerked his head up and opened his eyes in time to see Mia hurry up the steps, onto the dais.

"Aw, I didn't wake you up, did I?" he said.

"Cut the bullshit, Heisenberg." Her usually-sleek hair was mussed, her face clean of makeup, exposing the bruised circles under her eyes. Little chance he'd actually woken her. She looked like she hadn't gotten any proper sleep for years. "What is it?"

"I have information. About the village? You're gonna want to know this."

She edged closer to the glass. "So tell me."

Heisenberg lowered his voice, tilting his head toward her. "It's about Ethan."

Her mouth trembled. Her fingers curled to her palms.

"So tell me," she said again.

"Do you ever wonder, late at night, exactly how he died?"

Her eyes went cold. She pushed back from the glass. "I climbed all the way up here from ops for this?" she muttered.

"No, no, you'll want to hear what I have to say." He leaned in. "Listen, Mia. I was there. I saw it.   The moment the light left...well, it didn't really leave his eyes, did it, if they turned to crystal- look, you get what I mean."

She did. She'd stopped, and now stood rigid, unblinking.

"Looked like it hurt," Heisenberg went on. "Guess you know that, though, don't you? Why you cracked after I took Rose right from under your nose and you couldn't do a thing to stop me? I could've  eaten that kid for all you could do. They sang that about me back in the village, y'know. Hunter, flesh-eater, blood in the snow. Real gory stuff. When Ethan died- ooh, that wasn't pretty, either. He was already beat-up by Miranda. Soon got worse."

"Wait." She faced the glass again. "Already beat-up by...you mean...he survived fighting against Miranda? He was...he was alive after..."

"Sure." He lowered his voice so it was just him and Mia. "But not for long."

"You killed him," Mia whispered.

She rounded on him, rounded on the glass. Her whole body shook. "You killed him," she repeated. "Didn't you?"

"I don't like loose ends." All he needed was to get her inside the glass. Come on, Winters. Work with me, here. "And Ethan...well. Freak like him, figured it would be best to put him out of his misery-"

Her fist cracked onto the glass. Now the mask was gone, crumbled away. Her face was radiant with rage. The others in the room had stopped; Heisenberg saw a few of them whispering worriedly to one another. One of the doctors hurried from the room, speaking into one of those wrist-mounted control devices.

Shit. He didn't have long.

"You say another word and I'll fry what's left of your brain with necrotoxin," Mia snarled.

"Ah-ah, sweetheart, you do that and those two babysitters of yours won't be happy."

"You're...you're lying about-" Her words got all tangled. He saw her take a breath, try again. "Ethan- he would see right through someone like you- he was good, he was truly good, he would never- he was too smart, too-"

"He was stupid enough to trust me and my bargain. Stupid enough to trust I didn't want little Rose's power all to myself. In the end, he couldn't protect her. And if he couldn't, what makes you think you possibly could?"

He saw her snap. Saw the moment her eyes went blank. She slid her hand over the scanner and shouldered her way through the doorway before it was fully open. An alarm went off; "Winters!" yelled a voice from somewhere in the observation room.

Mia didn't slow; she marched up to Heisenberg, pulling a sleek black pistol from her waistband and jamming it hard into his eye.

Heisenberg laughed. Mia's breath hissed through her teeth; damn, she really did smell amazing. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and wrenched his head back, his spine crackling painfully at his head's special new angle.

"I don't care what they do," Mia snarled. "I don't care- I'll find him myself if it means I can watch the back of your head burst open-"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Heisenberg said. "That'll have to wait."

With a sickening pop, he cracked his thumb free of the joint. Mia's head jerked down at the sound. Too slow. Heisenberg grabbed the necrotoxin injector at his neck and ripped it free, the three-inch needle glistening in the fluorescent light as it exited his jugular vein.

In the same movement he flipped Mia, crushing her back against him and slipping the needle up to her neck. Her gun scraped off his eyeball and went wide before she could so much as fire, leaving what felt like a big 'ol gash in his eye socket on its way out.

With his power, he pulled the weapon from her hand and into his back pocket. Just in case. Could always use some scrap metal in a pinch.

Blood pulsed from the puncture wound on his throat, but the necrotoxin injector was gone, it was fucking gone; his power surged back, wild and heady, crackling through his nerves like it had missed him.

"Nobody fucking move!" he roared at the room, the chaos that had erupted beyond. "Who wants to see what happens when I inject a shitload of necrotoxin into a non-mutated body? I sure as fuck do!"

Mia gave a violent twitch in his arms at the words non-mutated body. Interesting. Heisenberg tightened his grip on her.

"I wouldn't, sweetheart," he told her. With his other hand he tore loose the rest of the harness, ripping the sensors that led under his skin and to his electric organs out with a grimace. "Ugh...my hand might slip, and...oops."

He pushed her from the cell. The darkness of the room beyond fell over him, thick and welcoming as a blanket. The ache in his eyes eased as he strode through the room, researchers scrambling out of the way.

"We have a breach, I repeat, we have a breach," a woman in a lab coat was stammering into a radio. "Iron Horse is out of containment-"

"Iron Horse?" Heisenberg scoffed. "Really?" The radio burst in a spray of plastic and metal. He shoved Mia on.

Outside, the shipboard corridor was alive with the blare of alarms, the white walls floodlit red. The usual. From down one corridor, Heisenberg heard the tromp of heavy boots. With a slash of his hand, pipes tore themselves free from the walls and snaked into a tangle over the corridor, forming a barrier against the oncoming meatheads.

"This place have a helipad?" he asked Mia.

"Fuck- you-"

"Later, sweetheart! That's why we need a helicopter." He yanked her on as bullets rattled against the pipe barrier. The sound they made, the echo of it in the backs of his teeth, the song of metal that was the rhythm of his entire being- it was different, somehow, strange.

Huh.

His inquisitive mind longed to stick around, see what Ouroboros had cooked up for its soldiers, but his rational mind won out.

"Up it is!" he yelled. He scrambled up a narrow ladder toward a hatch-like door above as orders rang down the oncoming hallway. The hatch burst open, its locking mechanism breaking with a twang and spray of lightning; electricity crackled as wind blasted through the narrow doorway, icy and flecked with snow, stinging against Heisenberg's face.

He muscled him and Mia through the door and onto the deck of a ship beyond.

He was right. It was a weighty science vessel, like something polar researchers might bust out to go look at bears in the Arctic or some shit. Rain and snow coursed down in frigid gusts, soaking Heisenberg and Mia; the deck rolled beneath Heisenberg's feet, the entire ship thrown on massive swells, the entire sea storm-gray and seamed with whitecaps. He couldn't even make out the sky; the mist swirled, low and opaque.

Bullets rattled. Mia gave a short scream as Heisenberg ducked and twisted, sheltering her with his body, bringing an arm up to slash the bullets from the air. White slashed across his calf; shit, he'd missed one. He searched the deck amidst the shouts of the approaching Ouroboros commandos. There.

Beautiful.

A small, sleek helicopter was lashed to the upper deck, its blades shedding streams of rain.

You're mine, baby.

Mia gave a sudden, violent twist in his arms, a move he thought for a moment was a desperate, last-ditch hail-Mary effort to get free. Then her leg hooked around his calf, and she threw all her weight down. His boot skidded from the deck; he was off-balance even before she brought her knee up and slammed it hard below the belt.

Heisenberg's vision went white. He doubled over, coughing, eyes streaming. Mia stood over him, her hands in fists.

One blurred; he barely jerked out of the way before it took his jaw off.

"Shit," he panted. "You've got moves-"

"Want to see more?" She lashed out with one foot, a devastating kick that should have knocked him down and let her pummel him bloody. Heisenberg shoved backward. The strike whipped past him. Mia was on her feet and ready to spring again without a second of lost momentum.

"I said I'd kill you," Heisenberg yelled, before she could strike. "And I'll kill you, sure as I'm Karl M Heisenberg."

Mia's look of rage could have sparked a forest fire. "What the fuck," she yelled, her hand already closing into a fist, "does the M stand for?"

"Misdirection!" Heisenberg said.

He flicked his hand as Mia made a scathing sound and geared up to punch his lights out. The gun intercepted her first, a blur of dark metal. It smashed into the side of her head with such force she snapped backward, going down hard to the soaked deck.

"See ya, Mia," Heisenberg said.

He stepped over her body and hurried toward the helicopter. His pace slowed as he neared it.  Those two babysitters of yours won't be happy, he'd said, and meant it.

What would Ouroboros do to Mia if he left her here, with them?

This was her last chance, he understood. She'd fucked up the Embryo project on purpose to give Ouroboros a reason to go after Ethan.

Would they lock her up?

Would they do to her what Miranda had done?

"Fuck," Heisenberg growled.

He turned around and jogged back as a squad of black-suited commandos rushed toward them. Heisenberg glanced up as he ran, then sent a slash of his power skyward.

The radio tower atop the ship's bridge snapped with a screech of breaking metal and came crashing down, felled like a tree.

Shouts filled the air, men scattering like haulers before an explosion. It crashed to the deck with a cataclysmic clangor and broke apart, shards of metal spinning in all directions. Electricity arced over the remains as Heisenberg bent down and heaved Mia over his shoulders in an ungainly fireman's carry. His bullet wound seared; blood spattered the deck, swirling in the rainwater.

"Guess that's not goodbye, after all," he told Mia, then broke out again in a flat-out run toward the helicopter. She jounced against his back. Was she dead? He sort of hoped not, if only to prove his newest hypothesis correct.

He ducked into the helicopter's shadow, flicking the doors open with a jerk of his head. Looked simple enough inside. He'd figure it out on the way.

A gunshot rang through the rain.

Heisenberg stumbled. It had kicked him right in the center back. Right through the Cadou. That meant he had about forty seconds before he started to die.

Well, he thought. Sorry, Rosie.

He blinked; there was no pain.

Ah, fuck, fuck, fuck.

He swung Mia into his arms. A bullet wound gaped in her chest, spurting dark blood. Her eyelids fluttered, her lips parted, her wet hair stuck in mats to her rapidly-paling skin. Heisenberg looked up. Through the rain stood a massive figure, a wisp of smoke curling from his rifle barrel. The light gleamed off his wet blond hair.

Regan.

"Did I get her?" he called. "Sorry about that, Winters. No hard feelings."

He lifted the rifle for another shot.

Heisenberg heaved Mia into the helicopter, then clambered in after her, sliding the doors shut; the rifle shot cratered the door, leaving a massive inverse dent from Heisenberg's perspective. Heisenberg powered up the machine, then sliced his hand down. The cables lashing the chopper onto the deck snapped with a twang as the rotors began to whine.

"Now it's your turn," Heisenberg growled.

The remains of the radio tower rose into the air; he clenched his teeth at the effort, at the pain in his leg blurring his concentration. The helicopter lifted off with a lurch as the metal fragments churned in midair, faster and faster, men diving for cover, Regan a solitary calm figure in the chaos.

The fragments exploded outward, bolts of lightning crackling to meet the surface of the sea. The mist swirled over the ship's deck.

Heisenberg didn't wait around to see what happened. As long as they were all dead, he didn't particularly care.

***

There were some clothes in the back of the helicopter- emergency gear, Heisenberg guessed. Amongst them was a new shirt and, miraculously, a trench coat. Heisenberg pulled it on, then, maintaining a grip on the controls with his power, went to have a look at Mia.

She lay sprawled in the tight seating area at the back of the helicopter. The blood had made a decent-sized pool under her. Regan's bullet hadn't gone all the way through her- no exit wound. Heisenberg crouched by her side and gripped her head by the jaw, lolling it back toward him.

"Are ya dead, Mia?" he made her say, working her jaw like a puppet.

He let her go and straightened.

If she wasn't dead already, she should be soon. That was a lot of blood. Heisenberg sniffed, then got out her gun and ejected the magazine. He gave one of the bullets a little tap. Bigger and heavier than usual, and on each one was engraved a tiny Ouroboros serpent. There seemed to be some kind of liquid inside; he sloshed it next to his ear, listening to the sound.

So Ouroboros had been developing anti-BOW weaponry. Smart, considering where their mission had taken them. Whatever was in these bullets- necrotoxin, silver nitrate, holy water- Heisenberg didn't want them anywhere near him.

He settled back into the pilot's seat, kicking one tanker boot up onto the control panel. Misty clouds whipped at the cockpit window, leaving trails of ice on the thick glass. The temperature in here was glacial; below, Heisenberg glimpsed snowy mountains, great tracts of forest, huge dark lakes.

He was well on his way home. A few War-era charts and maps he'd dug up from the graves of dead soldiers around the junkyard had allowed him to figure out the location of the village, geographically speaking, and he thought he'd managed to steer the helicopter right so far.

Miranda would have punished him if she'd found them, but luckily she didn't seem to have a taste for the War dead, and Heisenberg had been the only ones since their funerals to disturb their graves. He remembered the pre-hauler days when he'd done all his dirty work himself, dowsing for the dead by sending his awareness down into the soil, hunting for fillings or dog tags like a human metal detector.

Like a swine, Alcina had said, languorously exhaling a cloud of blue smoke from her perfect red lips as he trudged back toward the factory. She'd been sitting on her veranda, smoking, sucking on cordials filled not with cherry syrup, but human blood. Rooting in the dirt.

He'd grinned up at her. Looking for truffles. He opened his carrying-sack, showing her the mass of mummified limbs and bones within. Want some?

He ached as much now as he had after long nights of digging, hacking at the frozen earth with shovel and pickax until, like an archaeologist spotting the gleam of gold within the black loam, he'd uncovered the shape of a curled form, sometimes skeletal, sometimes leather-fleshed, preserved by the cold for untold decades.

Such excitement, such a windfall. Until, of course, he'd cottoned on that the more recent dead, enclosed in their village graves, might prove easier pickings and better subjects.

Subjects. Apt. He winced as he prodded at his healing bullet-gash on his leg, then settled back, staring out the windows at the clouds.

Back to the village, huh.

Back to where it all started.

He thought he'd never return. Fuck that place, fuck it into the dirt. And it had gone up in smoke, and in flames, and he'd walked out of there on frozen feet with Rose in tow and now-

Gotta stop 'em, he thought. Get Winters before Ouroboros. Can't let them at him. Maybe murder them all. Yeah, that would show them.

Then-

Go get Rose, and start running again.

It sounded so easy. And it would be easy, he told himself. It was the same thing he'd told himself all the long years of work that ended in Miranda's death. And he'd succeeded then, right? He'd done what he promised. He'd avenged himself, avenged everyone Miranda had hurt. His life had become his own.

But he still couldn't rest.

Rose won't run with you this time, a small voice said. A child's voice, a boy scared of the dark. She'll leave you all alone. Whatever peace you thought you'd buy with Rose, little Karl, died a long, long time ago.

"Fuck that," Heisenberg growled, but nothing answered him.

That is, until a scream split the air, and Mia Winters launched herself from the floor and onto him like a rabid animal.

Metal flashed; something jabbed into Heisenberg's arm. He smacked his elbow into Mia's sternum, flinging her back.

With a groan, Heisenberg rose; an empty needle dangled from his arm.

"What..." he said.

"Misdirection," Mia hissed.

Heisenberg's vision flashed. The world rolled. Necrotoxin? Ah, shit-

"Wha' you do-"

The helicopter lurched under them as his control over it slipped. Mia's eyes sprang wide; she scrambled for the controls as the ground swooped upward.

The last Heisenberg saw before the darkness closed over his vision was her grabbing at the joysticks, her hand slipping off them, torn away by the g-forces of the helicopter beginning its final descent.

***

A small silver helicopter plunged from the clouds, skidded off a mountainside in a spray of gravel and snow, bounced, then plunged again. It hit the treeline hard, rotors screaming through wood and rocks, bent and twisted by the time the helicopter slewed and slowed and came at last to a halt.

A final judder-

Then nothing. The world went still again.

There was a beat.

Then Heisenberg kicked out the windshield. He stared at his surroundings: the snowy mountainside, the trees. Taking a deep breath, he said, with feeling-

"Fuck."

[icarusthelunarguard]

This Week’s Horrible-Scopes

It’s time for this week’s Horrible-Scopes! So for those of you that know your Astrological Signs, cool! If not, just pick one, roll a D12, or just make it up as you go along. It really doesn’t matter. Better yet! Check out “Heart of the Game, Fredonia” and see if they can sell you those D12’s with the symbols on them. Tell them “Shujin Tribble” sentcha. And “Hail, Hail, Fredonia!” Home of the Blue Devil!

It’s been a long time since you’ve read any interesting periodicals, hasn’t it? Like, when was the last time you read any “National Geographic”s? Meaning read it for the articles. It’s been a while, we know. BUT, it’s still being made - and it’s still as heavy as you remember it being: 0.3Kg or 0.66 Pounds. So let's give you a bunch of cover titles and see what you get to learn about this week.

Aries 

Your issue is from September 2003 - and across the top of the front page it says, very proudly, “AOL Keyword: NATGEO”. Really aged like fine milk, huh? Anyway, your big, bold, red letters to get your attention says, “zebras!” And since the picture is of one zebra neck-biting another, calling these guys “Oreo Murder Horses” isn’t too far off. So This Week… Go check out “Casual Geographic” on YouTube. Don’t forget to drink water, hug your mother, and give him all the Thumbs Up. He works so hard on those videos and still has no idea what he’s doing. 

Taurus 

Taking us back to the late 20th Century, and all you Gen-X’ers can stay mad about that term, we’re pulling your issue from October 1998. No website information, no AOL headers, but the main topic is “Population”. Sub-tops are about human migration, feeding the planet, and… Uhm… Perfume. Honestly how that ended up in the mix we have no idea. So This Week… Just be glad there are no perfume sampler pages in that magazine for you to curl your nose at. And if you don’t know what a Perfume Sampler Page in a magazine is, then you’re too young. We’ll explain it when you grow up.

Gemini  

Moving up to March 2004, and yes there’s a web address on the top this time, your main topic is all about “Harp Seals - The Hunt for Balance”. They’re normally found in the cold waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, so why is there a sub-topic called, “A Rain Forest in Rio’s Backyard”? Honestly, it makes so little sense to us too. But the stars always have a reason, right? So This Week… Be on the lookout for various rainforest ants: the Leaf-Cutter and the Bullet Ants are No Joke! Do NOT take them on. You WILL lose! 

Cancer Moon-Child 

Back to October 2003, and yes, that sad AOL Keyword blurb is back. Your topic is “Kingdom On Edge - Saudi Arabia”. And, again, NatGeo just likes to screw with everyone’s minds because another sub-topic is, “Watery Graves of the Maya”! So This Week… take your pick between political turmoil in a country that’s 95% desert, or water-logged caves in the Yucatan with human skulls in it. Neither topic really works for us, so you’re on your own.

Leo 

Skipping ahead to August 2005, you’ve got a great photo on the cover: two OLD, rusted fuel pumps side-by-side. One says “Aviation” the other says “Ethyl”. Because, you know, you used to be able to just BUY Aviation-grade fuel and put it in your gas can for… whatever. The label says, “After Oil - Powering the Future”, and it’s a good topic, really. Lots of ways to make personal transportation more affordable and ecologically cleaner - and I’ll bet they were sure it’d be a total game changer in the next 20 years, right? So This Week… Do NOT look up how to put out an electric car battery fire. (SPOILERS… you almost can’t.)

Virgo 

Dropping back to November 2004 gives us this great close-up picture of some kind of lizard’s profile. It’s got a cute snout, colourful scales, a stark white background, and big red letters asking, “Was Darwin Wrong?” To NatGeo’s credit, I mean… “Yeah”? He was about a lot of nuance. But his overall idea’s been shown to be pretty much right for over 150 years. So if you want to ask, let’s be fair - the guy died before Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow. So This Week… You’ll be asked questions intended to throw you off your game. Just accept the premise, concede that there’s missing nuance to the question, and watch your questioner get more frustrated.

Libra

Dropping back to August 2004’s issue gives us something curiously titillating. It’s a picture of a human body, from thigh to chest, nude, curled on itself, showing some rolls of skin and a hand popping out with long, stark-red fingernails. The topic is, “The Heavy Cost of Fat”, and it’s a topic that’s highly controversial for good reason. Lots of stories of people who’ve been blown off by the medical practice with the rubber-stamp of, “just lose weight and you’ll get better” without even caring if that’s where the problem really lies. And yet we’ve seen ancient sculptures of human form where there’s some pudge, some curves, something that resembles “modernly obese” - and they were normal people. So This Week… We know you might be self-conscious about your weight. What we want is for you to be happy in your own body - and if you’d like to make a change just remember, it’ll take time. Be patient. You’re worth it. 

Scorpio 

Another drop back, this time to February 2004, and its headliner, “Great Whites of the North”. If you thought it was about sharks, guess again. The cover has two polar bears fighting each other, so it’s gotta be “interesting” to put it mildly. There are reports that they can track prey for a LONG, long time - like… MILES away, by scent. Nevermind that, they have Murder Mittens larger than your FACE! So This Week… Remember the story of how Brian Freekin’ Blessed punched one outside his tent in the Arctic? Yeah, take that story with a grain of salt since in the same story he supposedly spoke with a Yeti. Oh, and do NOT try punching a polar bear. Even if you are able to succeed, you’ll fail shortly after.

Sagittarius 

It’s not common for us to be jealous of any of you in these, but this time some of us are. January 2005’s cover says, “why we love caffeine”, and a picture of a cup of coffee with a foam heart across the top. The idea that NatGeo was tackling the topic of coffee astounds the mind - and SCREW YOU! Yes, you can get caffeine from sources other than coffee, but you know what? There’s nothing more invigorating than downing cup after cup of flaming hot coffee at 7am while waiting for your breakfast burrito to finish in the microwave. So This Week… Coffee does NOT need butter to taste good. Just stop it! Stop it right now!

Capricorn 

March of 2005 has kind of a freaky picture. It’s someone with lots and lots and LOTS of electronic pickups attached to their head and scalp. A veritable forest of these things all across their skin! The topic title says, “what’s in your mind”. The question itself is just so wrong. What’s in your mind is YOU! YOU are your mind! The Mind is what The Brain does. Look, it’s simple: lungs breathe, legs run, and brains MIND, ok? So This Week… If you’d actually paid attention to your philosophy and neuroscience courses at college you’d already understand this. There’s plenty of brush-up courses on YouTube. Go sit down and take an unofficial Night College Course load. 

Aquarius 

The Summer of 2005, specifically July, asks an interesting medical question. “Stem Cells - How Far Will We Go?” It’s a wild idea - using our own stem cells to rebuild entire organs. There was a story some years back about a 3D Printed Trachea that was covered in the patient’s stem cells so it wouldn’t be rejected by the body - and it worked! So this Week… Just because we CAN grow replacement body parts for you doesn’t mean you can just blow out whatever part you like and expect it to be replaced whenever you like. Stop Binge Drinking - you keep claiming to have been knighted “Sir Ossis of Liver” when you’re drunk!

Pisces  

Finally, back to the winter weather in February 2005. The title is “The Great Gray Owl”, with a photo of exactly that owl, face on, in flight, and it’s just so COOL! But here’s where the pedantry comes up - the bird’s spelled “G - R - A - Y” - meaning the American Version of the word. Now far be it for us to be snobs about anything (Yeah, RIGHT) but this makes no sense. Americans dropping the letter “U” from words like “colour” - ok, that was because it was cheaper for the old printing presses to use fewer letters, but come ON! Why switch it from “E” to “A”? It makes no sense at all. So This Week… Try using British English spellings in exchanges and see what kind of reactions you get. We won’t care what it is, but you might find it interesting.

And THOSE are your Horrible-Scopes for this week! Remember if you liked what you got, we’re obviously not working hard enough at these. BUT! If you want a better or nastier one for your own sign or someone else’s, all you need to do to bribe me is just Let Me Know - or check out the Ko-Fi page ( https://ko-fi.com/icarusthelunarguard )! These will be posted online at the end of each week via Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and BLUESKY.

[fagdykevash]

[Image Description:

Image 1: A reddit post on r/mapporncirclejerk by user morelebaks. The header reads "this red line divides the world population in half (I had to balance it out with 13 Latvias, cause my math didn't add up)". Attached is a photo of a map, with one red line drawn through eastern Africa, and including China, Japan, and all of Australia. On the other side of the map are 13 copy-and-pasted maps of Latvia, with most in the Pacific ocean and two in the Atlantic ocean. The post has 20k upvotes and 144 comments.

Image 2: A grapic titled "Flags of Northern European countries". It shows an emoji for each flag and the name for each country. The countries are: U. K., Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia 13 times, and Lithuania.

Image 3: A tag reading: ok but what do you MEAN UK is northern europe

Image 4: A map of europe, highlighting the countries: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The UK has been scribbled out, with text over it reading "Mental illness"

Image 5: A tag reading: in the policy work ive done the uk is considered western europe

End all IDs]

Thinking about 13 Latvias again

[colortheorybyjules]

For my News Header project I choose to create a collage based on The Atlantic article’s picture My Wonderful Description of Flowers, posted in the December 5th 2022 issue. The original photo is of a woman’s side profile, shot from above, against a background of flowers and grass. The image is double exposed, meaning another picture of nature was shot over it (or layered over), to create a ghostly and blurred composition. The photo uses a cool color palette of blues, purples, and teals. With a large variation in value as well with blacks and whites. The figure herself is very pale and lifeless, while the surroundings are dark, which creates a balance in contrast within the composition. For my final collage I started by layering my Color Analysis with the original photo and removing triangles to reveal the background of flowers peeking through the blocks of colors. I then copied that and layered them on top of each other to mirror the blurred effect as created by the double exposure. I wanted a large focus on the figure as well, as what drew me to the image was the contrast. In order to keep the fluid feeling of the original, I chose to cut out circles and overlapped them to draw your eye in to the figure. Overall I wanted to emulate the foggy and dreamlike feeling of the headline photo, while still working with the geometric shapes of the color analysis to create a cohesive piece.

[newhopeatlantic]

fav or credit @halebpotter

[chaoskirin]

What AI Art is NOT

I keep seeing people refuting points from REAL ACTUAL ARTISTS using these talking points. So here’s a sort of FAQ of what I’ve seen.

Q: Isn’t AI Art is just a tool?

A: Tools include grids, perspective lines, rulers, apps like Sketch Up which place assets that are pre-designed and cannot be altered, et cetera. Tools are NOT: apps that draw the whole picture for you. If AI datasets were tools, then artists would also be tools. Artists aren’t tools. 

Q: AI Art isn’t stealing art. It’s just like a collage. 

A: I really want you to think about what a collage is versus the kind of art an AI dataset spits out. Are those things the same? Collages are derivative and generally fall under parody law, so long as the person creating them isn’t taking credit for the parts of the collage they didn’t photograph or draw. You cannot sell a collage of other peoples’ work without express written permission from those people. The elements of a collage are each separate and identifiable as such.

AI art is not a collage. The elements of an AI art piece are not separate and identifiable. They are combined into one single piece, where each piece cannot specifically be traced. AI art does not fit the definition of a derivative or parody work. 

Q: If someone puts their art on the internet, it’s fair game. 

A: Copyright law specifically disagrees with you on this point. 

Q: If it’s not a collage and one can’t see the pieces of the art, doesn’t that make it an original work, and therefore, it’s not theft? 

A: AI isn’t generating a new image. It’s taking pieces from many originals and “claiming” to make a new original piece. However, AI cannot generate these things without knowing what they are (IE skimming tags and allowing users to tell the AI what’s in the picture) Without the input of original artists, an AI would not be able to create anything, which is why most datasets include millions of pieces of art “scraped” (AKA stolen) from the internet. Currently, these pieces AI makes are being sold, and the owners of the datasets are charging for their use. This means that people who did not actually create the art are being paid, whereas the original artists are not. 

Q: AI art can’t replace real artists. You’re fearmongering. 

A: AI art has already replaced real artists. Shortly after Kim Jung Ji died, someone fed all his artwork into a dataset and “created” several new pieces that were almost identical to his style. Cosmopolitan magazine released a cover “drawn” by an AI and blatantly stated on the cover “and it only took 20 seconds to make.” A magazine article in The Atlantic used AI art to generate a photo of Alex Jones surrounded by papers. Someone submitted AI generated art to an art contest and won. Several anecdotal stories (not verified, but reliable) on Twitter state that small companies have fired their graphic designers or cut their work force. Commissioned artists have reported dropping sales numbers. 

Corporations (and most people) will ALWAYS favor a cheaper option. If it’s good enough, it’s usable. The Cosmo magazine cover and the article header image were TERRIBLE, and they still went to print. Everyone should know by now that corporations will ALWAYS screw people over when they’re able to. If AI art becomes acceptable and commonplace, in-house artists will be replaced. This isn’t theoretical. It is already happening. 

Q: It’s going to happen anyway. You can either embrace it or reject it. (Yes, this is real. Someone actually said this to me.) 

A: Yes... Exactly. I’m rejecting it. Without laws to protect artists, I will fight AI art whenever and wherever I can. It might be fun and convenient for you, a non-artist, but it is terrifying and heartbreaking for artists. Websites like Deviantart and Clip Studio Paint who said “well it’s going to happen anyway” should have been the first line of defense against the creep of AI art, but they failed. It can only take over if people let it. Stop letting it.

[97ify]

♡ . . .⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ROCKSTAR!CHOSO! ❜

CHOSO KAMO x FEM READER ✶ .ᐟ

❝ choso kamo as your rockstar boyfriend. ❞

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀˖ ࣪⭑

❪⠀ᥫ᭡⠀❫ featuring : choso kamo !

❪⠀ᥫ᭡⠀❫ contents : MDNI. fluff . suggestive !

❪⠀ᥫ᭡⠀❫ requested by : @chosoguapo !

❪⠀ᥫ᭡⠀❫ song playing : slow down — chase atlantic !

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who makes sure that you're front and center at every single one of his gigs, never failing to stare at you the entire time, or mentioning the fact that you're there to the audience.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO that will practice his songs at your apartment and ask for your opinion, completely entranced by anything and everything you have to offer, even if it's constructive criticism, he makes sure to listen to every word.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who enjoys helping you learn how to play the electric guitar if you don't know how. the glint that flickers in your eyes lighting up his entire day.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO that shows you off anywhere you two go. you could be going to the store and he'd somehow make it all about you by mentioning to the fans that bombard you about how stunning you look that day, wearing whatever outfit your heart desired.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO is like the gomez to your morticia addams, quite literally kissing the very ground you walk on simply because he'd do anything, and i mean anything, for you. whatever you wanted, he'd have it before you could even ask because he'd immediately know exactly what you want.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who is a sub all the way, allowing you to take the lead in bed all the time. he goes absolutely insane for your dom side, whimpering and begging for you to do whatever you pleased with him, as long as you felt good he didn't care.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who will gladly let you ride his face and pull on his man buns any day, enjoying how you look towering over him.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO that will sneak you into any conversation he’s having with anyone. it doesn’t matter the topic, he’ll bring you up regardless just to do so.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO is the light of your life, making sure that at the end of the day you are happy, no matter what.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who pays attention to little details about things you do. you love cooking? he’ll buy you your favorite chef’s cook book. you like sewing? he’ll make sure you’re fully stocked in all of the materials you need.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who centers every last one of his songs about you. whether it be your love, face, personality, body, intimacy. all of his lyricism comes from just the thought of you.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO that loves when you ride him like you own him (which you basically do /hj) he absolutely dies for gripping your waist, nails curling into your skin from how great you make him feel.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO who marks you up to make sure everyone and anyone that approaches you knows who you’re dating, even if you find it slightly embarrassing.

♡♥ ROCKSTAR!CHOSO that whimpers and moans just for you, simply because you make him feel that good.

97IFY :: if you would like a part two, please do not be shy to ask through my inbox! i'm always happy to accept requests !!

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$$. 000 ll header edit creds. @//bajislv on tt.

← back to jjk masterlist — 97IFY. do not steal my work. all rights reserved. likes and reblogs appreciated !!

[screamsinsilver]

Max is feeling mopey because his travel plans fell through. Lando’s feeling mopey because he’s sick, he DNF’d, and he didn’t get to see Max on his birthday. Max flies out to Abu Dhabi to surprise him when he lands.

ooh! okay!

fic beneath the cut!

lando knows it's selfish to want to spend a day in the uk before abu dhabi, knows it's unlikely for the team to shoehorn something so irrelevant in before the last race of the season, a 15 hour flight seperating the locations of that final double header. he knows it'll be a nightmare for logistics but perhaps some max time can help him feel slightly more human so he's at least a little more prepared for the time changes and climate changes and cuisine changes from latin america to the middle east.

the last few days have been exhausting for him, even slightly painful at times, from his stomach attempting to evict whatever's inside - even if it's just water - from whatever means available, to the tiny impact of the crash with charles, to the pain of retiring in the midst of the battle with alpine.

he needs a break.

one now, before this last race.

and even though he knows it's entirely possible, he doesn't ask. he just trudges along behind the wave of papaya onto the direct flight to the emirates.

fifteen hours is a long time to be stuck in a cabin with the same faces, daniel's grin absent when lando does consider killing time with some conversation, scaring him away from the aussie. he resorts to his phone, more than willing to pay for internet connectivity flying over the atlantic, opens the group chat for the first time this weekend.

he can't really tell who started the conversation (tom, probably) but it's hit something in max, a waterfall of whatsapp messages from his man cascading meters down the screen. he's upset. lando can tell that much. he's also bored, annoyed at theo, missing lala.

it looks like he's in one of his moods, where he usually goes straight to lando demanding to be held and comforted and spoken to, something to ground him from the hurricane in his brain, only this time lando's on a different part of the planet, far and unavailable, too busy for max to distract.

as if max is a distraction to him.

lando doesn't really know what to do now. he's past the uk, and there's no way the team would let him take the seven hour flight from the uae after they land. he looks at flights for max, but what if he doesn't even want to come? he's already spoken about how much he hates the constant reminder that his dreams of racing are over, how he can only get back behind a wheel for content creating.

sometimes all he needs with max is better communication. which is bullshit becuase he's the only one he actually communicates with anyway.

so he sits, alone, in a slump, hoping that there is another way to get through the next week alone.

as it turns out, he doesn't have to.

landing at the airport, he's very sure he's seeing things, like a man just smaller than he is, bundled up in lando's own sweats (in the dubai heat, really?), a smile breaking out on his beardless face.

"idiot." lando smiles into the crook of max's neck, breathing in his so familiar scent, max's arms finding their way into the grooves of lando's body where they belong.

somehow, lando feels as if this has changed max slightly, too, a long sigh let out from the depths of his lungs and thoughts, finally finding peace.

[atlantichurricanes]

Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook issued by the National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL, USA

2024-09-28, 08:00 EDT

Active Systems: The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Hurricane Isaac, located several hundred miles east of the Azores, and on Tropical Storm Joyce, located over the central tropical Atlantic Ocean. The Weather Prediction Center is issuing advisories on Post-Tropical Cyclone Helene, located inland over the Ohio River Valley.

Eastern and Central Tropical Atlantic: A broad and elongated area of low pressure, associated with a tropical wave, is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms near and to the west of the Cabo Verde Islands. Environmental conditions appear conducive for gradual development of this system, and a tropical depression could form during the early or middle part of next week while the system moves toward the west and then northwest across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...20 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...medium...60 percent.

Western Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico: An area of low pressure could form over the western Caribbean Sea in a few days. Environmental conditions are expected to be conducive for additional development thereafter while the system moves generally northwestward, and a tropical depression could form during the middle to latter part of next week as the system enters the Gulf of Mexico.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...medium...40 percent.

&& Public Advisories on Tropical Storm Joyce are issued under WMO header WTNT31 KNHC and under AWIPS header MIATCPAT1. Forecast/Advisories on Tropical Storm Joyce are issued under WMO header WTNT21 KNHC and under AWIPS header MIATCMAT1.

$$ Forecaster Cangialosi/Konarik