#him and he took too long (in my shitty estimation) to message back. so i left him on read. for like a year

[genderfluid-druid]

.

[smol-nevi]

I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.

If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.

Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.

From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.

Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.

Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.

I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.

Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'

Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.

The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.

Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.

I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.

So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.

Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.

Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.

And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:

"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."

"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."

Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.

Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.

[prorevenge]

Boyfriend cheats on me with my step sibling so I get him kicked out and destroy his relationship with his parents

When I was around 17 I started dating a guy (19), I'll call him "Jake" for the sake of this post. Also age of consent where I live is 16 so nothing illegal happening here. We got on well, spent a lot of time together and cared for each other a lot. We even started talking about living together once we both moved out. We were a perfectly happy couple.

Or so I thought.

You see, after we'd been dating for a few months, something in Jake changed. He was getting a lot more distant. Whenever he was with me he'd be checking his phone constantly. we stopped spending as much time together and he started to get really funny about public affection, regarding things like hand holding and stuff. He also seemed to start caring less and less about my feelings. I used to have a bit of a thing for humiliation in the bedroom, nothing too far and we'd spoken about what Jake should and shouldn't say, but he started to get more and more degrading. He'd tell me how no one would ever love me and would pick on my insecurities, I actually broke down crying a few times when this happened. To give him a bit of credit, the first few times he did stop everything he was doing and apologise/cuddle with me until I felt better but eventually that stopped too and he just began rolling his eyes and telling me to grow up. He was like a completely different person.

The insults started to seep into our everyday life. He'd pick on my appearance a lot, bring up my family (I was dealing with a lot of family issues at the time), bring up the fact that I slept around before we started dating (a sort of rebellion caused by the family issues) etc. If got upset by it he'd just leave the room and let me cry by myself. I started to feel like it was my fault our relationship was falling apart, maybe I just wasn't good enough for him.

I knew deep down that he was cheating on me and that was confirmed when I got a message from a guy, "David", on Facebook telling me that he'd been sleeping with Jake. He apologised profusely and told me that he broke things off with Jake as soon as he found out he had a boyfriend. I couldn't be mad at David, it wasn't his fault. We spoke for hours and I reassured David that it wasn't his fault and that he'd done nothing wrong. David also helped me to stop making excuses for Jake's attitude and the way he'd been acting. He was a godsend.

The thing that truly broke me happened not too long after the cheating was discovered. We'd been arguing a hell of a lot more. Then he decided to do something absolutely unforgivable. You see, I had a stained relationship with my father for years. He'd cheat on my mother constantly and eventually, he settled down and had kids with a girl he'd been seeing behind her back. He did try to have some sort of relationship with me till I was about 13/14 ish and then decided that he didn't love me as much as his other kids and we stopped any and all contact. It broke me and it still hurts to think about to this day. Anyway, Jake went out of his way to find on of my step siblings online and slept with them. He bragged about it the next day and my step sibling actually posted online about what had happened and I received a bunch of messages from their friends telling me how I had deserved it. This was probably the lowest point in my life and I hated myself, partly for allowing it to happen and partly because I had started to believe what they were saying.

My only solace during this time was David (I didn't want to burden my friends with my problems and David was one of the only people who knew, first hand what Jake was like). We spoke for a few weeks and eventually talk turned to revenge. I had tried calling things off a couple of months prior due to Jake's awful behaviour but he started with the apologies and telling me he didn't mean it, he'd never do it again. He even spoke to some of my family members who, unknowingly, pressured me to get back together with him as we were "such a sweet couple". I hadn't wanted to tell them the real reason that we'd broken up so I kept the details pretty vague,though I'm pretty sure some of them had seen my step siblings post and knew why I didn't want to be with him.

After weeks of talking and planning, I had finally had enough and decided to do something about it.

My father wasn't exactly a rich man but he worked a pretty well paying job and earned enough money to live fairly comfortably. He had begun spreading rumours around when I was younger (during a custody battle with my mother) that he had set up a trust fund for me and that there was enough money there to get me set up in my own place when I was 18, plus a bit extra. I knew that this was absolute bullshit, he tried to get out of paying child support all the time, of course he'd never set up a trust fund for me. However, Jake didn't.

We'd never spoken about it a lot but he'd heard the rumours and I'd just always say what I told you folks, my father was an appalling parent who grudged paying my mother child support so why the hell would he set up a trust fund. But Jake wouldn't listen, he even did his own research into the type of job my father worked and came up with an estimate of how much he thought my father was earning. Though, to his credit, he did drop the subject whenever I asked him to, for a while anyways.

I decided to use this to my advantage. Jake and I were still dating though I avoided him at any chance I got. Until one night where I sat him down and told him that since I'd be turning eighteen in a couple of weeks, I'd started thinking about us getting our own place. With the trust fund my father had set up for me. He immediately cheered up at this and honestly I think that night was the first time in months that he'd said anything nice to me when we weren't in public or with friends/family. This very nearly made me want to call the whole thing off but I spoke with David later that night and he reminded me that Jake would go back to his usual degrading attitude in no time.

We started looking at flats, though Jake was "kind enough" to let me have the final say and handle the paperwork (because how could he possibly go out and cheat on me if he had to sort out the paperwork for a flat). I was a little surprised by this to be very honest as I'd always thought that he'd want his name on the paperwork and everything so I couldn't kick him out. But by this point he'd slept with my step sibling, degraded me, smashed my self confidence to pieces and cheated on me regularly, I think by now he thought that I wouldn't kick him out no matter what he did.

Anyways, I started taking up extra shifts at work to try and save enough money to actually move out. Not with Jake though, oh no. I was moving in with my friend, Emma. We had both been thinking about moving out for a while anyways and though, why not just be roommates. We found a cute little one bedroom flat that was close to our college and work and started getting stuff sorted to move in. I also didn't want to bring any trouble to my mothers door if Jake started kicking up a fuss, Emma had no issues with clawing the face off him if need be and told me not to worry about him coming to our front door.

Then came the next part of the plan. I waited till a week or so before Jake and I were supposedly moving into our own flat and stole his phone for a few minutes. He'd stopped caring about leaving his phone unattended and would sometimes flat out brag about how lucky he was to be able to sleep with whoever he wanted and come home to "a little bitch" who'd make him dinner. So that day when he went for a shower, he wasn't all too bothered about taking his phone with him. Perfect.

I went onto his phone, deleted my number from his contacts and changed the name of his mm's contact as mine.

Pleased, I went to the kitchen, smashed one of the plates (it was my mother's but it was a cheap one from a local shop and I did replace it as soon as possible). I just needed a reason for him to get pissed off. An, oh boy, did he get pissed off.

His first reaction was to text me, calling me all the disgusting names under the sun. Except it wasn't me he'd texted, it was his mum. I'd texted her in advance and told her that I hoped she'd forgive me but she had to see what her son was really like. She'd never tried to defend him as much as she just hadn't known quite how bad his behaviour was. She'd actually called him out a couple of times where he'd slipped up and been harsh with me when she was there.

She. Went. Apeshit.

I never found out exactly how their argument went as she phoned him to scream at him and call him out for his shitty behaviour, finally seeing how horrible her son was. It didn't help that she'd been sent screenshots of some of the times where he'd admitted to cheating. She was absolutely disgusted by her sons behaviour and phoned me to apologise on Jake's behalf. It wasn't her fault though, he's old enough to know how to act like a damn adult. He wound up telling his mum essentially that her opinion didn't matter as he'd be moving in with me anyways.

Needless to say when he called me on Facebook (after I deleted my number from his phone) I took some satisfaction in telling him that we weren't moving in together, that the trust fund wasn't real (I'd already told him that in the past, he just refused to listen) and that I'd moved in with Emma. I was called all the sluts and whores under the sun, his voice sort of turned into white noise after a while. I told him we were over and hung up. Blocked him on everything.

He had to run back to his mum and dad, his tail between his legs, and they took him back for a little while. Though after a bit, the arguments became too much and his parents kicked him out, he stayed with a couple of friends for a few months before he managed to get his own place. His parents, especially his mother, have not been the same with him since. I still talk to his mum on occasion.

Lastly, David and I took the liberty of sending screenshots of Jake's abuse to as many of the people he'd been hooking up with as possible. A couple of sleepless nights were spent trying to track people down on Facebook. Part of it was to get back at Jake but most of it was just to make sure that none of them got roped into a full on relationship with him and had to deal with all the crap I'd gone through.

So there it is, my little story of pro revenge. I know this is really long so there's a tldr below. I wasn't ever planning on posting my story but I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and one of Jake's new accounts popped up on the People You May Now section. After talking with Emma about it, she suggested posting it here, I hope it fits in this subreddit. Bye :)

TLDR

Boyfriend turns into a cheating asshole and winds up sleeping with one of my step siblings to hurt me, knowing that I do not have contact with my father. I play up to the rumour that my dad has set up a trust fund (he hadn't) trick him into thinking we can move in together and into ruining his relationship with his parents. He winds up getting kicked out, I move in with a friend. Also send screenshots of his abusive texts to all of his partners to ensure they don't make the mistake of dating him.

(source) story by (/u/Mikey_Audrey_Myers)

[mycupoffanfiction]

His Second Chance Part 8

Bucky x Reader

His Second Chance Masterlist

Bucky comes back from Wakanda with Steve, ready to begin his recovery from his days as the Winter Soldier, but there’s one thing he doesn’t take into account - you.

Warnings: Fluff, angst, language.

Word count: Approx 2300

Masterlist

Bucky starts to find out the Reader’s past. Is this part a bit all over the place? Yes. Is this possibly a bit rambly? Yes. But there we go 😅 

Please don’t hesitate to leave suggestions or thoughts! TAG LISTS ARE OPEN! (Permanent list and His Second Chance list) 

IF YOUR TAG ISN’T WORKING PLS MESSAGE OR ASK 💖💖

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“How did it happen?” Bucky asked as he ran alongside Steve. He’d finally felt comfortable enough to start venturing out more often and this morning it was on a run with Steve, while you and Sam trailed far behind on your much slower jog. “The day you found (Y/n).” Bucky clarified. “Oof, that’s a multifaceted story, Buck.” Steve remarked as they rounded a corner. “It was around three years ago, just before we discovered you.” Steve began, not even breathless at the high speed they were running at. “We wanted to find her; Fury was interested in her being on the team with her powers so we tracked her for a couple of years.” Steve explained. “She’s hard to find, as soon as you think you’ve found her, she’s disappeared again.” Bucky glanced over his shoulder at you, giggling away to something Sam was telling you. “What was she running from?” Bucky asked, turning his attention back to Steve. “Mm, it’d be best to hear it from her, not me pal.” Steve shook his head. “Anyway, took us a year to find her, she was living in this shitty basement under a gym. It was damp and cold and dark.” Steve pulled a face that Bucky quickly mirrored.

She lived in a crappy basement? Poor girl.

 “I sorta scared the shit out of her, she came back to her basement to find me in the middle of the room, poor girl freaked out so bad she almost shot me.” Steve sighed. “You have a bad habit of doing that.” Bucky rolled his eyes, remembering when Steve had found him in Bucharest. Steve snorted at his remark before continuing the story. “It didn’t take her long to trust me after she saw the shield and the suit.” Steve went on. “I managed to convince her to come back with me and she stayed in my apartment for a while. We grew so close that she joined me when SHIELD was compromised and we discovered you.” Steve explained. “Then she went away for a while after Ultron, needed some time to put herself back together.” Steve finished.

So that’s why I never met her before I came back from Wakanda. Poor girl’s been through a lot too.

 “Do you- uh- do you like her?” Bucky asked, glancing back at you again, berating Sam as he laughed about something. “Of course I like her, Buck.” Steve said it as if it was the most obvious thing. “No, I mean really like her.” Bucky pressed. “Do I love her?” Steve tried to work out what Bucky was getting at. “Not the same way you do, Buck.” He smirked. What? Excuse me, is it that obvious? Fuck me. It is, isn’t it? “What, you’re surprised? C’mon, we see the way you look at her, the way you always gotta be near her, holding her hand.” Steve looked back at you fondly. “But no, she’s like a sister to me, always has been. I might kiss her goodnight and pick her up and cuddle her and call her sweetheart, but she’s not my girl, not like that.” Steve glanced over at Bucky. “I think she’s into you as well, Buck. I’m pretty sure she’d wait for you her whole life if she had to.” Well, if Steve seems to think so… Then he’s probably right.

 “It’s called a supermarket, I know, wild concept.” Sam teased Bucky in the back seat while Steve drove his sedan into the carpark. Bucky delivered a half-hearted slap to Sam’s chest with the back of his hand as he stared straight ahead.

 You went ahead and got the trolley as the boys caught up with you. Perhaps it was childish, but you quite enjoyed being the trolley pusher, also it was a bit of a get out of jail free card since you didn’t have to do any of the actual work. “We had fuckin’ supermarkets in the forties, Sam.” Bucky frowned at Sam as the three soldiers followed close behind you. “Yeah, but they weren’t this big!” Sam gestured wildly, almost hitting Steve in the face as you all walked through the entrance together.

 Sam leaned in to Bucky’s ear as you immediately coined Steve to help get you some herbs from the top shelf. “Also it’s fun because you get to look at (Y/n) while she struggles to reach things and boss Steve around.” Bucky elbowed Sam in the stomach, winding him a little. “Shut up, would ya?” Bucky growled. Don’t talk about her like that… Wait is it any different than me thinking it? Yes, I admire quietly. “Relax, I’m just trying to wind you up.” Sam chuckled. Steve walked off with the list and Sam started examining what you and Steve had already put in the cart.

 Urgh this guy knows how to get under your skin, don’t let him annoy you, deep breath, count to five. One… Two… Three- Bucky looked up to see you, as Sam had described, struggling to reach something. Oh it was cute. Seeing you stretch up, standing on your tip toes, moving onto one foot to elevate yourself a bit. The little bounce you did- and oh good fucking lord her butt jiggles when she bounces on her toes, only slightly but good god. I’m weak, a weak, weak man. Bucky cleared his throat before walking up behind you, resting his flesh hand on your shoulder as he reached up to grab the item your delicate fingers were trying to grab at. “Here you go, doll.” Bucky hummed into your ear, his voice deep and vibrating through your back as his chest pressed slightly up against you. You practically melted from the name he used for you; god did it make you feel things. But no, you restrained yourself because it wasn’t fair on Bucky and you just shyly giggled, feeling your cheeks burn up as you turned to face him.

Doll, oh Barnes, it’s coming back! Wait, what if she doesn’t like it? Bucky examined your flustered features, the way you almost hid your gaze from him. Oh I think she liked it, either that or she- you smiled up at him sweetly. Nope, no, she liked it.

 “Doll, huh?” Sam was quick to jab Bucky about it as soon as you and Steve paired back up again. “Do you need to have a running commentary?” Bucky groaned, glancing over at Sam who just smiled widely and patted Bucky gently on the shoulder. “You know I only comment on you and her because I like you two together.” Sam gave him a genuine smile before parting with Bucky and moving up to help you out with some of the shopping.

 “Please, sweetheart, it’s just an hour.” Steve practically begged you. “Please.” Steve gripped your hand gently. You let out a huff and glanced over at Bucky who was getting ready to go off to his therapy session. You’d said you’d go with him but now Steve was begging for you to join him with training the new recruits since Nat was having a day off. “But I promised Bucky I’d go with him.” You motioned over at your best friend; he gave you a gentle smile as he slipped on his boots. “It’s alright, I can manage by myself.” Bucky reassured you as he pulled his laces tight. “See, Bucky doesn’t need you.” Steve said, his remark not quite coming out the way he meant it and you pouted a bit. That hit a nerve deep down, but you tried not to let it get to you and breath through it.

 I do need you. Bucky looked on at your disappointed expression and sighed. “Smooth.” Bucky grumbled. “You know what I mean, I’m sorry sweetheart.” Steve gripped your hands. “Please, just one time and I’ll never ask you again.” Steve tried to convince you. “Fine! Fine, I’ll do it, but only if you promise.” You poked him sharply in the chest. “Promise! Captain’s honour.” Steve gave you a lopsided grin and you smiled up at him, defeated. “Alright.” You nodded.

 Steve went down before you to get everything set up and you were left alone with Bucky for a moment while he got his things together. “Just so ya know,” Bucky looked over his shoulder at you as he grabbed his backpack and then turned to face you. “I always need you.” Bucky gave you the sweetest smile and you felt your cheeks burn up. In your flustered state, you weren’t quite sure what to say, but you grinned up at him, completely taken aback by his words. “Oh Buck.” You whispered, walking towards him and wrapping your arms around his middle. Yes! You’re getting some of your confidence back, Barnes. Bucky embraced you for a moment before moving away and running a hand through his hair. “I gotta go, see ya later.” Bucky smiled down at you before turning away and leaving you alone.

 Training with the recruits was taking a lot longer than just an hour and you were starting to get antsy. You were pretty sure Steve had given you a nice sounding time estimate just to convince you into doing it.

Three and a half slow hours passed and training finally ended. You made your way up to your floor, exhausted and about ready to collapse in a heap on the sofa with Bucky to watch something or play a game.

 You walked into an empty living room, Steve trailing behind you. “Buck, we’re back!” Steve called through. Sam popped his head out of his room and looked at you for a moment before pointing at Bucky’s room, pulling a face. You frowned and strode across to Bucky’s bedroom, knocking before letting yourself in. “Bucky?” You asked softly before opening the door wide. There he was, sat on the edge of his bed with a folder in his hand. Your heart leaped into your throat when you see the folder he was holding. Bucky has seen you bare, seen the hard truth of your past in the pieces of paper held between the sickly orange folder.

 “Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked. “You never said you were ex Hydra.” He mumbled. “Buck, I was never Hydra by choice.” You sighed, entering his room and closing the door behind you, Steve looking a bit dejected that you’d just closed the door on his face. “Just like you.” You almost kicked yourself for saying that, but Bucky glanced at you, sadness replacing the bitterness in his eyes and he gave you a guilty look. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you everything if you want.” You offered. Bucky just nodded and you slowly approached his bed and sat down next to him.  

 “My parents were running low on money, really low on money. My mother knew some shady people in the drug trade and she volunteered to have a drug tested for three hundred dollars cash.” You began explaining. Oh god, I can see where this is going already. “So an older guy shows up, Alexander Pierce.” You fiddled with the hem of your top as you spoke. God the fucking bastard hurt you and her. “My mother strapped me down on the dining table and they injected me with a serum. They conned my mother out of the deal and she never got her fucking money. But that serum messed with my DNA, it burned my entire body for hours. It felt like I was on fire, like there was fire in my veins for four hours until I passed out from the pain.” You explained. Bucky looked absolutely disgusted. “Oh god, no doll.” Bucky whispered, taking your hand in his. Why did I have to overreact? This is horrible, she’ll think you blame her for her own pain. “The serum caused my powers. My dad walked out on my mother, but he couldn’t take me with him. I went through a lot of stuff when I was alone with that woman, she would scream at me about how I was worthless and a freak, a waste of space.” You almost choked up when you remembered how she’d hurt you. “You’re not any of those things, doll.” Just wanna hug you better, hug us better. You gave Bucky a watery smile and he saw all of the pain in your eyes, it made his heart break.

 “I ran away, I went to Canada and I was safe for a while, but Hydra caught me.” You cried, tears streaming down your face at this point and Bucky pulled you tightly against his chest. “Shh, doll, I’m sorry, god, I’m so sorry. I should never have brought it up.” Bucky cradled your head against his chest. In truth you were happy to get it all out in the open so that you and Bucky were on the same page. “I never should have assumed you were in Hydra by choice.” Idiot, so stupid, god you were so over dramatic and you should have known. Idiot, idiot, idio-. “Bucky.” You interrupted his self-deprecating thoughts and Bucky turned to look at you. “I’m out. I escaped, I was with them for around six months before I got out and got back to New York and then I moved around for a while before Steve found me.” You finished explaining and Bucky nodded. “Hydra fucked us both over.” You whispered. Bucky held you tighter. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Bucky apologised against the shell of your ear. “I’m not upset at you, if anything, I’m sorry you found out through a piece of damn paper.” You sniffled. “Please don’t cry.” Bucky squeezed you a bit more. “I’m sorry I made you cry.” Bucky practically pulled you onto his lap and buried his face in your shoulder.

 “We can do this together.” Bucky whispered. “You and me, we can heal together, doll.”

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[mari-onberry]

Opening Up

read on ao3

for @helpimbecominganerd for the TodoBakuDeku Winter Exchange! Thanks for the great prompt I always love an excuse to write a coffee shop AU.

***

Shouto woke up freezing. As his dream was quickly slipping from his mind, he found that most of the covers were on the floor. He rolled out of bed, tired from restless sleep, and got ready for work as best as possible while avoiding his family. To add insult to injury, he still had a shift at his father's coffee shop. He dreaded every day his father made him come into work, saying it would give him character and discipline. The only thing it really gave him was more contempt for his father. 

He drove the short distance from home to the coffee shop, idly humming an indistinct melody along the way, trying his best to not fret about the long shift he was going to have. It only marginally worked, since the second he saw his dad through the window, his mood plummeted. He kept his head down as he entered the building, ready to get this over with, put on his uniform, and stationed himself at the cash register. Then, as he scanned the room while trying his best to tune out his dad's lectures, his eyes caught a certain familiar face.

Every weekend morning for the past few weeks, a blonde boy around his age sat in the same place, and it was starting to become the reason Shouto made it through the week. He looked around, and saw that the rest of the shop was fairly empty, so he had a few minutes until he would have to tend to a customer. Shouto walked over to where the blonde was sitting. 

"How are you enjoying your coffee?" He asked, and although it was odd for him to check on customers in such a manner, he hoped it wouldn't seem like he was intruding. 

Soon, it was apparent the blonde saw it that way. "It's fine?" He seemed angrier than the situation called for, but Shouto credited that to his disposition. 

"Good, I'm glad. You can call me over if you need any help." He smiled as wide as he could for that early in the morning, then bailed. He wanted to start up some sort of conversation, but that wasn't exactly his strong suit. He made his way back to the counter, where a customer looked rather annoyed waiting in line. 

Shouto assumed he had failed until the blonde walked up to the counter a few minutes later. "See you next weekend," he said, and handed him a napkin with almost incoherent scribbles written on one side, and then walked away and out the door. 

Heart pounding, Shouto turned the napkin over to read it, and whispered an excited 'yes!' to himself when he saw what was on it-- his number and name.

He immediately put it in his phone as quick as he could before his dad could notice. 

***

Shouto didn't want to seem desperate, even if that word actually did describe him well. He kept typing up drafts of texts to send the blonde, who he had found out was named Bakugou, but none of them sounded right. For a moment, he wanted to just call him, since the humiliation would be over within a matter of seconds, rather than the possible hours waiting for a text back could take. He decided against that almost immediately, though, since he had a tendency to freeze up when talking on the phone, and he knew those odds would be even higher talking to Bakugou. So, he wrote out another text.

Hello, thanks for giving me your number! I've been mildly obsessed with you for the past few weeks and I spend an embarrassing amount of my time at work day staring at you.

It was all truthful, but he would probably never show his face in public again if he actually sent something like that. 

He deleted all of it and opted to type in a simple, hey. It wasn't much, but it was the best he could do without giving himself a heart attack. He hit send before he could back out, then threw his phone to the other side of the bed, not wanting to worry about when Bakugou would answer back. This didn't last long, though, because his phone buzzed, signifying a notification, within a matter of a few seconds. Shouto leapt at his phone and saw the reply. 

Hey, is there a name better than 'Half-and-Half', to put you under in my phone?

Oh. Shouto realized he hadn't really ever introduced himself. He answered immediately with his name and how to spell it, but soon after that the conversation went stale. He set his phone down, a little disappointed that the conversation hadn't lasted that long. A few minutes later, though, his phone buzzed again.

Shouto? Not Todoroki?

He frowned. What kind of question was that? And how did he know his last name?

After not getting an answer, he texted again. The owner of that cafe is your dad, right? Enji Todoroki? 

He didn't really want to talk about his dad. That was probably the worst subject to bring up with him, but he knew there was no way Bakugou knew that. He took a while to text back, and again he got another text before he could answer.

If he's really enough of a dick to renounce his name, I really regret visiting his cafe every week. 

Kirishima sat next to Bakugou, trying his best to pull the phone away.

"Katsuki, what are you even talking about? You shouldn’t ask such personal questions right away."

"Shut up, shitty hair. I know what I'm doing." He didn't. Luckily, neither did Shouto.

You're right, he is a dick. But he pays me, and I don't know if I could make it through the work week without getting to see you. 

Was he coming on too strong? Shouto wondered to himself, and although he was convinced he was, he didn't care. He was resolute to just say what was on his mind, especially if it was a guarantee he would mess up regardless.

"Woah," Kirishima said in awe. How had this completely inappropriate text conversation turned out in Katsuki's favor? Kirishima wanted to know his secret.

Katsuki typed out another message. Well, I'll make sure to tip you well next time, then.

The two of them flawlessly stumbled through awkward flirtatious texts, and despite Kirishima's attempts to help, Katsuki had somehow steered the conversation into asking for a date. Are you free this weekend?

Shouto would've leapt for joy if he didn't rush to get out the next text. I get off work at 11.

So, there it was. Despite everything, they had made a date. Both of them were wildly inexperienced, but they independently resolved to figure this dating thing out together. 

See you then. Bakugou typed out, and Kirishima was proud he hadn't included any strange nicknames or insults. "What are you staring at, Shitty Hair?"

Kirishima sighed. He was acting like his same old angry self, and Kirishima wondered how this Shouto kid would ever be able to deal with Bakugou's strong personality once he learned the truth. "Nothing. Just promise me you won't break his heart."

Bakugou frowned at his best friend, but answered quietly, hesitating. "Why would I ever do that, asshole?"

Well then, maybe he had changed. 

***

That weekend, Kirishima had come over to help Bakugou get ready. It proved fairly difficult, since he was usually very grumpy in the morning, especially before his coffee. 

"No Shitty Hair, I am not wearing that."

Kirishima held up an outfit that was more dressy than Bakugou was used to wearing. "You don't have many choices. It's between this, wearing the same thing you wear every weekend, or borrowing something from my closet."

Bakugou sighed and gave in. He wasn't proud, but when he made it to the cafe, he noticed Shouto looking at him a bit differently. He ordered as nonchalantly as possible, since his dad was standing directly behind him, but still managed a wink when Enji wasn't looking. Shouto blushed, but tried his best to hide it when the next customer ordered.

Bakugou sat in the same seat he always did, but found himself glancing over at the counter where Shouto worked more often than usual. He kept typing out drafts of texts, wanting to talk to Shouto, but deleted them, knowing he couldn't answer while working. 

Finally, he sent, damn it, does time always go so slow around here? It was only a few minutes after 10:30, and he wanted their date to come as quickly as possible.

He heard Shouto's phone vibrate from across the room, and then saw him lift his head and locate Bakugou with his eyes. Bakugou sent another text, trying to test to see if he was brave enough to check his phone again in front of his dad. 

He did look at it after he had helped the last customer in line and typed a reply as quickly as possible, trying to avoid scrutiny from Enji. 

Stop, you're distracting me. Bakugou read it in Shouto's stern voice, although he was fairly certain he meant it more playfully. 

Yeah, that's kinda the point.

Shouto felt his phone buzz again, but before he could respond, Enji snapped at him. "Stop getting distracted by that damn phone or you're done working for the day."

Shouto much preferred the latter option, so he grabbed his phone out of his pocket in an act of defiance. 

Enji took the phone and yelled at his son. "Go home now. You're grounded."

Shouto looked hurt, but not surprised. Everyone in the cafe watched in shock as Shouto quickly did as Enji had told him, and Bakugou followed shortly after.  He caught up to Shouto before he could get to his car. "Wow, you really underplayed how shitty your dad is," he half-joked in an effort to get Shouto's attention. 

"No, it's my fault. I shouldn't have disobeyed."

Bakugou sighed, disappointed to hear Shouto talk about himself like that. "Maybe not, but he shouldn't have acted like that either. And anyway, I was the one distracting you." Bakugou didn't blame himself, but he hoped putting part of the blame on himself would help Shouto realize how ridiculous the situation was. 

"No, I know, it's just," he stopped walking in the middle of the parking lot, not knowing if he should say what was on his mind. "I feel like I ruined our date."

Bakugou laughed, not in a hostile way, but more to tell Shouto that he shouldn't worry so much. "Our date hasn't even started yet. We still have time." He would estimate it was near 11 now.

"But I'm grounded. If he finds out I didn't do what he said, he'll kill me."

"Then let's not let him find out."

Shouto warmed up to the idea as he drove Bakugou away from the cafe (they agreed they could pick up Bakugou’s car later) and off in some unimportant direction. He finally felt free, like he didn't have to worry about what his dad thought anymore. It felt like if he had Bakugou with him, it didn't matter if he got grounded or didn't get to work at the cafe. He drove for a while in silence, not caring if they never had to stop.

Then, Bakugou suggested a place. "Stop here," he commanded simply, pointing to a small restaurant on the right.

Shouto turned off and parked in front, and although they were both hungry, they just sat in the parking lot for a while.

“Thank you.” 

“For what? I didn't do anything. It was all you.”

“You did. You gave me the power to disobey. And even though I’m not really in a position to get caught, it’s still a good feeling. I’m always stuck pretending. Pretending I like my dad, pretending to like my job.”

“Screw everyone else. You’re the only one that matters in your own life.” 

Shouto blushed at this advice, even though he wasn’t sure he completely believed it. It wasn’t surprising that Bakugou did, though. “Well, I’m not sure about that.” He let his hand move an inch towards the passenger seat, overlapping his fingers with Bakugou’s. He wanted to show him some sort of affection so he could understand that he was truly thankful, even if he wasn’t the best at showing his emotions. 

Unfortunately, he apparently did something wrong, because Bakugou jumped at the touch and opened the car door, almost as if he was trying to get away. “Good talk, Half-and-Half, but you should probably get home soon. I’m gonna get some lunch and I’ll call a friend to drive me to my car.” He rushed away from the car and towards the restaurant, and although Shouto would’ve loved to stay and have lunch, Bakugou was right: Enji would be almost done at the cafe, so Shouto would have to get home before he was missed. He drove away without saying goodbye.

***

The next weekend, Bakugou woke up in a pile of blankets and covered in sweat like he did every morning. He would usually say it annoyed him, but he never took any move to rectify it, probably because deep down he knew it served as some sort of replacement for real human contact.

Also every morning, he got out of bed a little too excited to visit his favorite coffee shop. He knew very well why, but he would never say it out loud. He just let the anticipation bubble up inside him as he drove there, waiting to lose even a sliver of his usual loneliness. 

Unfortunately, the object of his excitement, the person who usually alleviates his feelings of solitude, wasn’t there that day. He still ordered his usual drink from someone who didn't have it memorized and sat down at his usual spot, but none of it felt the same. He left with his drink in a matter of minutes. He tried his best to will away the ache in his gut from not seeing that nerd with half-red-half-white hair. 

He took out his phone and typed a message. Taking a sick day? He didn't get a reply. So, he texted again, hurriedly this time, actually a little worried that Shouto was in danger. If you got yourself hurt, dickhead, I swear... He couldn’t finish the text. He didn't know what to say to him, and for a second, he worried it was his fault. 

Then, he remembered what had happened last week: Shouto had been grounded. Not even that, but his dad had taken his phone away, so it must be that he just hadn’t given it back yet. And that might explain Shouto’s absence; he might be grounded from work, too. Bakugou sighed, a little disappointed that Enji had made such a big deal out of it. He remembered a time when he never wanted to get this close to someone. But now, all he wanted to do was find Shouto and apologize for being so flaky the other day, consequences be damned.  

That was what he wanted to do, but not what he did. He buried his face in his phone, trying not to think about anything other than Shouto. He was probably better off, anyway, he thought. He could protect himself. 

He spent the day with distractions, but he couldn’t help but worry. It felt distinctly not like him, and he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. So, after dinner, even though it was starting to get dark out, he snuck out to try and alleviate this feeling, even if that just meant going for a walk. 

He found himself in front of the cafe.

It was the first time Shouto had ever seen him under the moonlight. He was somehow even more radiant, and he felt himself wanting to see him even closer. Instead, he opened the door for him and went back to work cleaning.

Bakugou broke the silence. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“Really? It’s almost 6 PM. We’ve been closed for hours.”

“Well, then, I guess I hoped I’d find you here. I didn’t really know where else I’d go looking.” He looked at his feet, uneasy, as if just this much was hard enough for him to say. 

“Ah, so you were looking for me, then?” 

“Shut up.” He didn't want to say anything further, so he didn't. He just watched Shouto wipe down the same counters he had seen him clean a hundred times before. That led him to another question. “Why are you here so late?” If their shop had closed hours ago, why was he still here? Shouldn’t they have done this job earlier?

Shouto sighed. “Punishment,” he explained briefly, but he thought it was enough to get the point across. He would gladly wipe down these counters until it wore down to the wood as long as it meant he wouldn’t have to spend another second with his dad. 

Bakugou hummed, not knowing how else to respond, but relieved that the worst Shouto’s dad had done to him was overwork him. Still not dad of the year behavior, but not as bad as the millions of scenarios Bakugou had been imagining. “So you’re okay?” The moment the words left his mouth, he knew that it was the question that had been bothering him the entire day, but saying it out loud felt like a mistake. Shouto didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed glad that he had someone worried about him. 

“I’m fine.”

Bakugou believed him. It was easy to see when Shouto was unhappy a lot of the time, since that look was permanently on his face when Enji was around. But in that moment, Bakugou saw something that was rare for Shouto: happiness.

Bakugou made his way around the counter to get closer to Shouto, suddenly needing to let him know the feelings he had just figured out. And although Bakugou initiated the kiss, he had no idea what to do with his hands, and they hovered midair for a second before Shouto wrapped one arm around his neck, tight enough to make him shiver, and one arm around his abdomen. Then magically, Bakugou’s hands fell perfectly into place on Shouto’s hips. He pulled away from the kiss to catch his breath, and suddenly they’re hugging each other, practically falling into each other's arms. 

If it was anyone else, Bakugou would get embarrassed, and probably a little angry. If it was anyone else, he wouldn't melt into it like it made him feel whole. But with Shouto, it seemed like what he had been waiting for ever since the first time he laid eyes on him in that coffee shop on a cold winter morning only a few weeks ago.

"Hey, Bakugou?”

Bakugou looked in his direction, a little embarrassed hearing his name come from Shouto. "You can call me Katsuki," he answered, not exactly sure what to say. He was used to knowing how to do things, and striving to be the best. With Shouto, though, he was starting to be happy with being himself, even if that meant he wasn't the best at everything.

"Do you want a cup of coffee?" Shouto asked, already moving towards the machine.

“Yeah. That sounds nice.”

Shouto started up the coffee pot, hoping his father wouldn't notice a little bit of his stock being gone, and in knowing it was for Bakugou-- no, Katsuki, he stopped caring. He sat down at Katsuki’s usual spot, and he looked down at him, faux-anger on his face. 

"Move your ass, asshole."

"Creative," Shouto mocked, smirking and handing Katsuki his mug.

"Shut up, half-and-half. I'm tired. That's what the coffee's for."

Shouto just laughed, and his heart felt light.

Katsuki sipped his coffee just like he did every morning, content with the feeling of the scolding liquid almost burning his tongue, but this time he felt complete, especially when he felt Shouto’s fingers intertwine with his own under the table. His fingers started to warm up now that they were out of the cold.

[stealinghero]

So I may not get to see my best friend in the world cuz there's a fucking pandemic going around and they live far far away and it seems to become more and more of a possibility that they will just outright forbid people from my country to go there and I am close to crying, so I would like to ask for scenarios with Lupin and Zenigata and an SO in a Long distance relationship to ease the pain. (Ernsthaft? Ich fühle mich als ob mein gesamtes Jahr hin ist und es hat Grad erst angefangen)

Ich hatte den Spaß mal 7 Jahre lang in einer Beziehung. Und das war nichtmal weit weg (Deutschland-Schweiz). Aber es was trotzdem mies wenn es dann mal nicht klappte mit dem Treffen. Ich drücke dir die Daumen, dass es irgendwie klappt. Und wenn, dann wenigstens nach der dämlichen Sperre! Fühl dich gedrückt von mir!!

Long distance relationships or friendships are always hard. And if something happens and you’re not able to meet up... that’s not nice. All there is are calls but that’s not the same.

But I hope Lupin and Zenigata will give you a bit of hope, because in the end friendship will be stronger than any stupid border or a closed airport.

Lupin:

It had been a day too long and too stressful to even lift a finger now. All he wanted to do is come home, let himself fall on the bed and just sleep for the next 4 days or so. Sleep sounded so good right now.

A quick glance at his watch let him stop in his tracks. It wasn’t too late, right? Wait, where was he right now? Damn, was it plus or minus the hours? He had to use his fingers for this simple math and came to a satisfying result. He still had time!

His steps suddenly became more springy, a giddiness had taken over him. He still had enough time to call you!

Just the aspect of hearing your voice gave him new energy he didn’t know he had before. Parting from his friends, he got into his room as quick as possible, already reaching for his cell phone to dial your number. He was a lucky man coming home just in time to call you between work and sleep!

There was a dial tone… come on, pick up!

5 seconds…

10 seconds….

15 seconds….

“Yes?”

His heart stopped beating as soon as he heard your voice. You didn’t seem to have looked at the display before answering, your voice was tired. Or had he disturbed your sleep?! Had he added the hours time difference when he had to subtract them?!

“Arsène?”

“Did I wake you up?” he just had to ask you, already a bad consciousness in the back of his head.

“No. I just came home and I had a shitty day,” you answered, letting him hum.

“Me too. So I just had to call you.”

“Zenigata again?”

You knew what he was doing for a living and still you had chosen to be in a relationship with him. Even if right now you were a few thousand kilometres away from each other. Your voice alone was enough to let his heart race or stop at your will.

“Yeah, and I think Jigen has sprained his ankle.”

You laughed. “He’s getting old.”

He nodded, smiling broad enough to hurt after a time. But he just couldn’t stop. He loves to hear your voice.

“I wish you were here,” you admitted in a small voice. He could hear the sadness and tiredness and just the general feeling of “I hate being away from you.”. And he couldn’t even just hug you and be there.

“Me too.” He blamed the tiredness for the tears in his eyes, knowing that you were ready to cry anytime he called you, missing him. His heart was ripped apart in his chest.

“I read about you in the news today. There was a photo of you. You’ve grown thinner.”

That was so typical of you! Always worrying about him. Sending him texts to remind him to eat something. Or to drink enough. He loved that part of you and knew you were a bit anxious about messaging him too much.

“I know. That’s because you stopped sending texts. I simply forget to eat when planning a heist.”

“Did Goemon and Jigen say nothing?”

“You know them.”

You laughed and his heart skipped a beat, hearing this beautiful sound.

“How long will you be gone?” you asked finally.

“4 more weeks. From here we will go to Singapore, preparations and stuff. And after that Boston. From there I will be coming home.”

“Oh.” He could hear every single emotion in this one word.

“I already have some souvenirs for you,” he said, trying to cheer you up.

“You’ll have to tell me when you are coming. I will try to bake that cake you liked so much.”

He remembered the fluffy cake he had eaten with you and you giving everything to get the recipe from the pastry chef. You had succeeded and promised to make it someday.

“You still there?”

He flinched and grinned a bit. The tiredness took its toll.

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“You should get some rest. We can talk tomorrow.”

You were always so considerate. Another thing he loved about you.

“I will call you,” he promised. Everyday he called you when he had the time.

“I know. Get some rest.”

“I love you.”

He could hear you laugh your happy laughter, getting butterflies in his stomach.

“I love you, too.”

After the call had ended, he pressed the phone to his chest, allowing himself to dream about you.

A message tone brought him back into reality.

Remember to eat something before you go to sleep! XOXO

Hugs and kisses. You sent him hugs and kisses!!

Like a teenager in love, he almost levitated above the floor on his way to the kitchen to follow your orders.

  Zenigata:

He cursed. The dirty truth. It was loud, it was unpleasant and Yata had to cover his ears for the most part.

With a mighty huff he ended his tirade and slumped back down on his seat. Were they kidding him?! He was Inspector at Interpol!! There had to be a stupid plane in this damned country to take him home!

“Sir, please calm down. You are scaring the other passengers,” Yata tried his best. But not now. He was not in the mood to accept anything.

“Scaring?! Maybe I should get scary! Maybe then a fucking plane will appear and bring us home!!”

He was done. Completely.

After having Lupin in handcuffs and him disappearing from his holding cell, Zenigata’s day was bad enough. But when he and Yata had come to the airport only to find all the flights have been cancelled because of some stupid virus, he just had blown.

Estimated time until he could leave this country? Unknown.

There were workers in overalls in the airport, talking to stranded passengers, taking temperatures, making notes on every single human being of this airport.

“Sir, I know…”

“Yata, just shut up.”

He sat down on one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs and crossed his arms. They hadn’t made any exception for them. Not even a helicopter was allowed to start. And after a short call he had learned that he could also give up on taking a boat.

A call! He still hadn’t called you.

“Hello?”

He smiled at the sound of your voice, leaving his assistant speechless facing the sudden mood swing.

“It’s me.”

You stifled a yawn, making him take a look on the clock at the airport.

“Aaah, sorry. I didn’t want to wake you up,” he apologized, realizing the late hour at your place.

“It’s okay. What happened?”

“I can’t come home.”

“You can’t?”

“The airport is closed and every other possibility to leave the country, too.”

You moaned in frustration.

“I had bought your favourite meat.”

His stomach rumbled and he sent Yata with a gesture, to buy something to eat.

“When will you be able to leave there?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell us anything and even ICPO can’t do anything to get me out of here,” he explained his situation. He had tried not to get frustrated at this situation again, but he failed and let out a curse, this time more hushed.

You laughed at the other end.

“I’ll wait for your return. They can’t hold you there forever, right?”

He had to smile at your optimism.

“I will take the next chance to get out of here!” he promised.

“I know. I miss you, Koichi.”

“You still have a few hours to sleep, right?”

“Hmm.”

“Just put me on speaker and close your eyes.”

He waited until he heard rustling of the blankets and you telling him that you were ready to sleep. He wanted to be at least able to do this.

“Are you still tired or should I tell you something of my boring day?”

You laughed. “Tell me something.”

The next hour he just told you everything he had done, the things he saw at the airport and even when you were not responding anymore, he told you everything he had on his mind.

“Sir, she’s asleep.”

“I know.” He pulled the hat a bit deeper in his face.

“You should hang up.”

“I can’t.” Tears welled in his eyes and he had to hold back a sob. He hated this. All the time he was away, working, and you were alone at home, waiting for him.

Carefully, Yata pried the cell phone out of his superior’s fingers and hung up the call, patting his colleague on the back.

“It must be hard,” he imagined aloud.

A nod was his only response.

“We will get out of here, Sir. I promise.”

Sometimes it was good to have a friend around in those times, Zenigata thought and let himself cry on the shoulder of his subordinate, begging any power out there to bring him back to you as fast as they could.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 39: Dog Star Adventure (1979)

The title screen. Note, if you will, the masterful use of negative space.

Before I kick things off, I should mention that I’ve completely redone all the Final Ratings, and converted them to the new RADNESS Index (standing for Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores).  I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out, and I feel like it’s a much better representation of the relative quality of the games I’ve played.  The top games remain mostly unchanged, but there was a lot of shuffling at the bottom that put the worst games where they belong.  Check out the link on the sidebar if you care about my arbitrary ranking scheme.

*  *  *  *  *

About a month ago, I played Battlestar, a game that culminated in a lightsaber duel with a thinly veiled Darth Vader.  No doubt Star Wars was still in the zeitgeist in 1979, because Vader is back in the game I’m writing about today, Dog Star Adventure.

Oh, sorry, it’s not Darth Vader, it’s “General Doom”.  Doom and his Roche Soldiers are preparing an attack on the Forces of Freedom, and they’ve captured Princess Leya and taken her to one of their battle cruisers.  Geez lads, couldn’t you have tried a bit harder?  Obviously, this game is nicked from the middle third of Star Wars (and no, I’m not going to call it A New Hope, I’m using the movie’s real name).  Intellectual property concerns were definitely not a thing in the gaming community in the late 70s.

Dog Star‘s creator was Lance Micklus, who’s been featured on the blog before as the author of Treasure Hunt, currently languishing near the bottom of my RADNESS Index.  That game was more of a mapping exercise in the style of Hunt the Wumpus, with some light adventure game elements based on inventory.  Dog Star is a proper text adventure.  Reading up on Micklus, I’m surprised to see how prolific he was around this time.  Not only did he create the games above, but he also made a bunch of boardgame adaptations, utilities for programmers, financial software, and a port of the Star Trek game that was such a big deal on the mainframes.  The dude’s got a resume.

Dog Star Adventure was released commercially circa March 1979 for the TRS-80.  At about the same time its code was published in SoftSide, in the issue cover dated May 1979.  This is it’s main claim to fame; as the first text adventure to have its code publicly released it served as a reference point for loads of future game creators.  Micklus never made another text adventure after this, but his creative DNA will be seen in a bunch of games as I progress forward in my chronology.

I couldn’t find the cover to the commercial release, so here’s the cover of the SoftSide issue.

The article accompanying the code in SoftSide gives the backstory to the game.  General Doom has captured Princess Leya aboard her spaceship, as I mentioned above.  They also took a chest containing Melidium crystals, which apparently comprise the entire treasury of the Forces of Freedom.  Leya was also wearing a Shinestone necklace, and encoded in one of the stones is the location of the rebel base.  The player takes the role of a character (presumably a member of the Forces of Freedom) who has stowed away on board her ship.  The goal of the game is to rescue the princess from Doom’s battle cruiser, find the two treasures, and escape.  So yeah, it’s another treasure hunt, but at least this one’s wrapped up in a rescue mission.

The game starts with the player inside the ship, aboard the battle cruiser.  For anyone who’s played a Scott Adams adventure, the style and tone here are very familiar.  As usual, I went through my adventure game preparation routine.  First I checked my inventory, and discovered that I was carrying nothing.  Second, I typed SCORE, and learned that there are 215 points to earn before I can beat the game.  I also tested movement, and was surprised that the standard NESW abbreviations weren’t implemented.  To move around I had to type the full words NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UP and DOWN.  Also, I had to use INVEN instead of a simple “I” to check my inventory.  I figured those abbreviations were pretty universal by this point, but not here.  (I also spent a good minute or so wondering why none of my commands were working, until I realised that I had the Caps Lock off.  The game doesn’t register anything unless it’s in all caps.)

User friendliness is big in the future.

There were only two rooms inside the ship: the cockpit and the storage compartment.  The cockpit had a launch button, but pressing it did nothing.  Storage was empty, but I figured that this was where I’d need to bring any treasures I found.  With nothing else to do, I left the ship to explore the battle cruiser.

North and east I found a Vault, but when I tried to enter a voice asked “who goes there?”.  I answered GENERAL DOOM, but apparently I wasn’t fooling anyone because I was swarmed with Roche Soldiers and imprisoned.  That was a game over, but it was worth a crack.

West of the Vault I found a research lab, with a slightly confusing layout (including a room description that simply says “I’m Lost”.  I found a laser gun in one of the labs, and took it with me.

Heading north I passed through a computer room, where a TRS-80 was happily whirring away.  This is fairly consistent with Star Wars, which has a sci-fi setting where the computer displays haven’t progressed past vector graphics.  A message on the monitor read >> CSAVE TAPE <<.  I tried that message as a command and was told that I wasn’t carrying any blank tape, so I made a mental note to try and find some.

Further north was a test laboratory, where I found an ID card, a cloaking device, and something called a “turboencabulator”.  Also in the lab was an “evil-looking” scientist, which is kind of a shitty assumption to make.  Still, he looked evil so I tried to shoot him with the gun I’d found earlier, only to be told “I’m not carrying a BLASTER”.  Dude, I have a LASER, isn’t that good enough?  Apparently not, because while I was trying to pull the trigger the scientist called for the guards, and it was game over once more.

Getting transferred to cell block 1138.

On the next game I tried exploring south, along the flight deck.  I found some anti-matter fuel, as well as a sign that read >> NEEDS TURBO <<; this was probably a reference to the turboencabulator in the test lab.  Exploring east I came to a supply depot, said to contain “all kinds of things”, which I left without exploring too much.  South of that I came to a decontamination room and an interrogation room, where I found Princess Leya’s cape, and the Shinestone necklace, one of the treasures I was looking for.  I’d thought that it would be better guarded, honestly.

My good fortune was short-lived, because I soon stumbled into a strategy room, and a guard who called for help.  Game over number three…  I really needed to find that blaster.

Exploring further I found a lounge, with a McDonald’s hamburger on the table.  I guess “long, long ago” doesn’t apply here.  Nearby was a bathroom with some graffiti, some of which read >> SAY SECURITY <<.

Climbing up from the bathroom led into a maze of pipes, which was really only two areas that looped back on themselves a whole lot, and not at all difficult to navigate.  In one of the rooms I found a map of the battle cruiser which I couldn’t read, apparently because I’m not a cartographer.

Eventually I found my way down from the pipe maze and into the jail.  There were two empty cells, and another that was locked.  Without a key I left the jail and found a security desk manned by an attack robot.  Beyond the robot was an elevator, but he wasn’t letting me past.

I was a little stumped at this point, so I resorted to the HELP command, which gives you hints in various locations.  In this case it said “Did you bring anything to eat?”  I had the hamburger in my possession, so I tried FEED ROBOT.  Sure enough, he took the burger and I was allowed to pass.  I really should have thought of this, because feeding has been one of the most common solutions in these games.  Anyway, the elevator just looped back to the interrogation room, so it seemed that I was out of places to explore.

Wait did I just feed that robot a citizen of Hamberg, North Dakota?

At that point a guard wandered in, and I was captured.  There are randomly occurring guards who pop up occasionally, and if you don’t have the means to kill them it’s a game over.  I generally dislike random elements like these in adventure games, but in this case it’s not so bad once you have the solution.  Before that, it’s a real pain.

I’d pretty much exhausted my options, and it was obvious that I needed to find a blaster so I could kill the various personnel that were blocking my progress.  I thought I’d found the password necessary to get into the vault (SAY SECURITY), and it did get me past the first level of security, but I also discovered the hard way that I needed an ID card.  Once again, I was stuck.

The answer came in the form of the supply depot, which has among its “all kinds of things” a blaster.  I didn’t figure this out on my own; I had to resort to the HELP command once again, which in the supply depot says “How ’bout a BLASTER”.  Type GET BLASTER while you’re in there, and sure enough you’ll find one.  It’s kind of a clever puzzle, but a little irritating as well.

With blaster in hand I stormed around the place shooting everyone in sight.  The evil scientist got it first, and with his ID Card in my possession I was able to access the Vault, where I found Leya’s treasury, the Malidium crystals (the in-game spelling differs from the backstory).

Next I went and vaporised the guard in the strategy room.  There I found some keys, a communicator, and some death ray schematics.  When I picked up the communicator, someone on the other side said “Sesame”.  I replied with the same word, and a voice over the PA announced that the flight deck doors would be opened.

I’ll have some holy smokes. Menthol.

Past the strategy room was the tractor beam room.  There were no guards there, just a sign warning people not to press any buttons.  I’m not on General Doom’s payroll, so I pressed those damn buttons, and the tractor beam was shut off.  I could have escaped at that point, except for one thing: with the flight doors open, there was no oxygen in the flight deck, and no way to get back to the ship.  I couldn’t figure out how to get the flight doors closed again, and I don’t think there’s another way back to the ship, so I had to restart again.

Getting back to where I was didn’t take long though, and with the keys in my possession I was able to open the locked cell in the jail, where I found the princess as expected.  Somewhat amusingly, she’s implemented as an object that you carry in your inventory.  You can’t interact with her in any way, and she doesn’t even react when you enter her cell, or return her to her ship.  Micklus didn’t even code a response to KISS PRINCESS, which is a real failing.

I’m Lewk Skywarker, I’m here to rescue you!

I ran into one last hurdle, though: my blaster ran out of ammunition, and I was captured before I could make it back to the ship.  I had a hunch, and on my next game I went back to the supply depot and typed GET AMMUNITION.  To my delight, I found some, and used it to reload when I thought I was getting low.

I’d rescued the princess, and stashed her necklace and treasury in the ship’s storage.  I also had the fuel and the turboencabulator, as well as as a bunch of other items that were worth some points (the cape, the laser, the cloaking device, the map, the schematics, etc.).  I’d disarmed the tractor beam, and used the communicator to open the flight doors (this time from the safety of my ship).  So I went to the cockpit, hit the launch button, and basked in a victory well-earned.

Well, almost.  I’d struck a blow for the Forces of Freedom, but I was 20 points shy of the full 215.  The only unexplained thing left on the map was the TRS-80, but I hadn’t yet found the blank tape I needed to use with it.  Once again I went to look for it in the supply depot, and once again that room came through.  With blank tape in hand I typed CLOAD TAPE into the computer, and was rewarded with a printout of General Doom’s secret attack plans.  This was the final item I needed, and I was able to complete Dog Star Adventure with full points.

Way to disguise your Very Secret Plans, dude.

We can be HEROS, just for one day

You can end the game without finding everything, though, and the game gives you a congratulatory message even if you just escape from the battle cruiser without the princess or any of the treasures.  Somehow that’s helped the Forces of Freedom defend the galaxy, don’t ask me how!

You get points for depositing various items in the ship’s storage hold.  The point values are as follows:

Anti-Matter Fuel – 5 points

Leya’s Cape – 5 points

Shinestone Necklace – 20 points

Death Ray Schematics – 20 points

Micro Laser Gun – 20 points

Cloaking Device – 20 points

Turboencabulator – 5 points

Malidium Crystals – 30 points

Map of the Ship – 20 points

Secret Attack Plans – 20 points

Princess Leya – 50 points

Finally, here’s my map for the game, created in Trizbort.

Click to enlargenate

I had a decent time playing this game: it’s short, and it doesn’t have any exceptionally frustrating puzzles.  The ones it does have are well covered by the game’s HELP command, which I’m a bit less reluctant to use than an outside walkthrough.  It’s a solid game for the era, and I think it will do okay on the RADNESS Index.

RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: As with other games that have knocked off properties that I love, I have to be careful to rate what’s actually in the game, rather than what I’m bringing to it from those outside influences.  The story amounts to a treasure hunt once you get down to the gameplay, but it has far more context than other games of its type: there are rebels fighting against an evil force, and every one of the treasures you have to find is relevant to that fight.  The setting is novel, with Battlestar being the only other game I’ve played that’s set on a space station.  Still, it’s very sparsely described, and there’s not much in the way of atmosphere.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: We have the guards, the evil scientist, Princess Leya, and the burger-eating robot.  The first two are obstacles and wandering hazards, and the only thing you can do with them is shoot or be captured.  Leya is a literal object.  The robot is memorable, but again you can’t interact with him beyond his one function in the game.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: A TRS-80 text adventure with sparse descriptions and no sound is always going to score low.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Puzzles: Dog Star has one puzzle I’d consider clever, and a bunch of others that are simple (buttons to press, doors to unlock, etc.)  I think I come down on liking the supply depot puzzle, and I’m down with it being used twice as a solution.  Three times might be pushing things, though.  And too many of the game’s obstacles are solved by shooting them.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Mechanics: The game has a very simple parser, that only recognises about 20 verbs.  It does the job, but that’s all it does.  Still, I had very few issues with hunting for the right command.  Movement was annoying, though; abbreviating it to the first letter should be standard practice, even in 1979.  It’s not a gamebreaker, though, and the game does what it does reasonably well.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: Outside of the puzzles, which I’d consider a mild challenge, there are the wandering guards to contend with.  They’re annoying at first, but easily dealt with once you find the blaster.  That’s decent design I feel: things can be frustrating for a short while, just not the entire game.  I’d rate Dog Star as pretty easy, but short enough that it doesn’t matter. By the time you run out of challenges, the game is over.  Rating: 3 out of 7.

Fun: I enjoyed this while it lasted.  It helps that it was short, and I never got stuck for long because of the HELP command.  The guards at the start were annoying, but that just makes it more enjoyable once you get the ability to kill them.  Still, there’s not a lot to this one, and no scope for activities outside of the puzzles required to beat the game.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1.  As the first adventure game to have its source code published, Dog Star does have some influence and a little bit of historical importance.

That gives Dog Star Adventure a RADNESS Index of 29.  Overall that places it equal 21st, and on the chart for adventure games it’s 12th out of 24 games rated so far.  It’s equal in points to Castle, just below Pirate Adventure and above Voyage to Atlantis, squarely in the area of the chart that separates the games I liked from those I didn’t.  Middle of the pack feels about right, I’d say.

PORTS OF CALL:

I also played through the version for the Commodore PET, which was ported in 1980.  The major difference is that it’s even more explicit with its Star Wars connections: General Doom is Darth Vader, Leya is Leia, the ship is the Millennium Falcon, and the guards are stormtroopers.  I’m not sure why IP violation was fine on the PET and not on the TRS-80, but whatever. It mercifully uses the NESW abbreviations, but only recognises TAKE, not GET (my preferred verb).  The blaster isn’t loaded when you first pick it up, you need to also take the ammunition, but it tracks how many shots you have left. The random stormtroopers take potshots at you when they appear, but I never got hit by one.  The most difficult thing for me was that the TRS-80 has been replaced by a generic terminal, and it’s a little harder to figure out the correct command.  It takes 225 points to win, but you don’t need to do anything new, you just get the extra 10 when you escape.  It’s much the same game, and despite a nifty image of Vader on start-up it gets the exact same RADNESS Index. I probably like this one a touch more, simply because it’s explicitly Star Wars.  Still, it’s weirder to treat the princess as a literal object when it’s actually Leia, and not a stand-in.

To be honest, this is a better Darth Vader than most of the artists of Marvel Comics managed in the 80s

At least this version can spell “heroes”

Dog Star was also released by Adventure International, under the title Death Planet: A Dog Star Adventure (although it’s just called Dog Star in the game itself).

This is a much better name

It uses the split-panel style of Scott Adams adventures, with the room descriptions at the top and the player’s commands at the bottom, and is the most technically sound of the three versions I played; it ran really smoothly compared to the others. My major problem with it is that it completely removes the supply depot puzzle: when you enter the room the blaster, ammunition and tape are already out in the open.  It also has a score out of 100 rather than 215, and it explicitly marks the treasures with asterisks.  In terms of RADNESS Index I’d rate it a point higher in Mechanics, but the removal of the supply depot puzzle loses it a point in Puzzles, so it still comes out the same.

Brother, I’ve already finished this thing three times.

NEXT: It’s back to Scott Adams, as I take a look at his fourth effort, Voodoo Castle.  This time his wife Alexis is also involved, so we’ll see how much difference that makes. 

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-39-dog-star-adventure-1979/

[lycanguts]

CALLOUT POST FOR A PAST ABUSER/MANIPULATOR

So this is definitely not my usual type of content, I don’t like causing unnecessary drama but this is inexcusable. It's probably weird seeing this in a fandom tag but these are his main interests and if it could be boosted in this communities it might save some people.

Tumblr user @yucee is a terrible person both in how he acts and how he treats other people, he’s manipulative, quick to deflect blame and never takes responsibility for his actions. As if that wasn’t bad enough he's also a pedophile.

This post will not only contain my testimonial but the testimonials of two others who also met him.

This one is a doozy but I recommend reading it, I want as many people as possible to see his true nature (especially anyone >22 years old).

I would like make it known that he loves to play the victim in any scenario regardless of whose fault it actually is (most of the time it’s his however, he has a real hard time accepting blame for anything).

While my trauma is not as severe as others who have come in contact with him he ruined what was supposed to be a fun weekend with my friends as well as our first meeting which should’ve been something amazing.

Unfortunately I deleted our conversations on Discord as I didn’t think when I did I would be making this type of post, thankfully his tumblr messenger is still open to me as well as a few text messages post-meetup. Most things that revealed his true nature were said during voice chat so most of these messages are only a small glimpse at what an awful person he is.

My Testimonial:

Hello my name is Anthony, I'm 22 years old and I had met yucee three years back when we had a mutual friend. While we didn’t have much in common he seemed like a nice enough guy and someone I’d like to befriend. We had similar tastes in pokemon as well as similar music tastes, and while we had known each other for three years we hadn’t really talked consistently until mid 2017. It was around the latter half of this year that I had developed feelings for him and after a few weeks of hesitation I asked him out and was excited when he said “yes”. Had third been months ago I’d say our relationship was a good one, he accepted me for who I was and I was just happy to find another trans guy with no interest in anything sexual.

However looking back now I realize not only was Yucee extremely self centered but he made sure to link me to his “coping” fic every other day expecting me to read he one sentence he had added while when I would send him my art it was a 50/50 chance I would ever receive good feedback if any at all (his comments were either “cute” or “gay”, sometimes he would just ignore it altogether).

Did I mention he also invited himself to the convention I attended this summer? Around mid March I had planned on asking him as I was going to test the waters and see if by describing my con experiences it would be something he would be interested in attending possibly next year, however as soon as I brought up I was going to a convention he chirped in with “I want to go too!”. He was excited, I was too, and we soon began to make plans to meet each other. During this time let me point out how he would say things like “are we going to be around your friends the entire convention?” and “since you always get to see your friends can I have you to myself?” And “next year, if you still like me then, I want to go to MTAC, just you and me I don’t want your friends there.” And other things of this nature. At first I thought he was just joking around but it became evident to me after the fact that he was becoming extremely possessive of me to the point he was already picking out what costume I would wear for MTAC. Not only this but when he learned me and my friends had already planned a cosplay group he became upset because we were dating so we should’ve had matching costumes. Again this was mid March and the convention was early in early June, I had been working on what costumes I had since December. He was dead set on cosplaying persona characters and while I liked persona I didn’t think I’d have enough time to throw a costume together. Eventually he seemed pleased enough I’d be cosplaying Akira Fudo while he cosplayed Akira from persona, but he still complained that me and my friend were acting more like a couple than he and I were because I had a matching cosplay with her, “we’re boyfriends we should be matching he’d say”. Again, my friends plan our convention going experience well in advance, Yucee had pushed himself into our plans and was upset that nothing was going his way 100%, and that reflected in his behavior at the convention (we’ll get to that shitshow soon enough).

So it’s planning time, we have a few months, I tell him what kinds of things he can buy in the vendor hall and he starts buying his costumes and he estimates he’ll be able to save at least $800 of his SSI checks up to the point, but him being the impulsive man he is he had barely $300. He didn’t even buy his own ticket, he had spent all of his check from May on even more akeshu prints and costume stuff so he didn’t have enough to pay for a preregistration ticket (these closed on may 31st), so I offered to buy his ticket if he paid me back when I came to get him.

When it came to the issue of how he was going to get to my home I of course offered to drive him as long as he helped with gas and such.

Many, many times I assured him I would come and get him, I even had my car worked on just so I could be confident it would make the trip, but every so often he would say things like “I shouldn’t even be planning this, none of my plans ever work out.”

Every time this came up I assured him that it wouldn’t be an issue, while I had never made a trip this long by myself before I was more than willing.

Whenever I picked him up he gave me $50 for gas when he should’ve given me $150 ($100 for gas there and back, $50 for the ticket). But if we wanna get technical he also owed me an extra $50 on top of this, money he said he’d pay me during the convention (he didn’t). I had bought him a pair of shoes for a costume he didn’t wear (because he was too busy wearing my Guzma shoes) and two face products he used twice but stopped using after it didn’t work fast enough for his liking.

The $50 he had given me however was money he had guilted his dad into giving him, his dad couldn’t meet me halfway because he had stomach issues and was worried he wouldn’t be able to make the trip, which I was fine with, but he had told me he would ask his dad for more money from his monthly check because it was “his [dad’s] fault” I would have to drive the whole way. Also when I first was introduced to his father he introduced me as his boyfriend when I had made it VERY clear that I wanted to be introduced as only a friend, so he outted me without even considering my feelings.

For most of the car ride back he complained constantly about the heat, I had warned him my A/C was on the fritz but he continuously brought t up ever few minutes that he was hot. It was a four hour car ride.

As for the convention itself I will condense it to bullets because there’s a LOT to dive into.

June 7th (Day Before Con)

-I had warned him that he would have to come to work with me when he stayed at my house, since he was unaccustomed to waking up early I offered to wake him twenty minutes before I left (8:00 AM). The moment he woke up he didn’t wish me a happy birthday, the first words out of his mouth were “what are we doing for breakfast?” When I offered him one of my protein bars he made he comment how that wouldn’t fill him up and how he needed something with sodium, he then proceeded to try to get me to cook him a can of soup. This was five minutes before I was supposed to leave to pick up my friend/coworker. I made him a peanut butter sandwich because peanut butter is filling and added a bit of salt because salty peanut butter is good. He didn’t even finish the sandwich, handed it back to me with two bites out of it and continued to complain about being hungry until lunch time.

-When my friend was talking about how shitty her parent was Yucee responded with “if that was my dad I would just stand up to him” without realizing that my friend’s parent is verbally and emotionally abusive to her, unlike his dad who I assume just doesn’t coddle him like his mom did. He would say often how his dad was a terrible person and then turn around and say he couldn't wait for his dad to get a settlement (which he intended to give Yucee a good part of). His dad is also accepting of him and supportive of him to the point he even is helping fund his T shots/top surgery. When I told him that my friend's parent was not his father he immediately fired back with "Oh well you can't compare suffering."

You're probably wondering why I referred to my friend's parent as her parent as opposed to her "mother", well about that...

This is in his about. We’ll get into this later.

-We’re short staffed at work, he offered to help. He refused to do litterboxes because of the smell, it took three times of asking him to sweep for me to eventually hand him the broom to sweep, he proceeded to wildly rock the broom back and fourth saying he didn’t know how to sweep, I then asked him to do dishes since he didn’t know how to sweep (he didn’t do the dishes).

-Asked me if he could wear my new pair of shoes because he didn’t have the foresight to pack a comfortable pair of shoes that weren’t for a costume ; whined when I said no because as I said these were my new shoes and a birthday present, continued to complain about how much his feet hurt in my old pair of work shoes I lent him.

-Did I mention he constantly stated that the government pays him to not know anything, and that was one of his many excuses on how he didn’t know how to do even simple tasks like sweep? Other excuses were “I didn’t know that” or “I’m autistic I can’t help it” or “I’ve never done this before.”

-Went into a frenzy when my friends went over a couple of aisles in a very small dollar store, “you guys were going to leave me!” he growled. We assured him we wouldn’t do that countless times after this, this would not be the first occurrence.

-we arrive at my Dad’s house where we would be staying for the convention. Yucee’s frantic squeaking of a toy he had caught the attention of my sister’s lab puppy, thinking Yucee wanted to play he grabbed the toy with his mouth earning a scream followed by a backhand from Yucee. He never apologized. While on the topic of animal abuse: Yucee is extremely neglectful of the three cats he owns. One is covered so badly in flea bites and scabs chunks of his fur are missing and the table on which they eat was covered in vomit and old food, plus they don’t have a litter box so they have to go outside to use the bathroom despite him living near a busy road. Yet he continuously says he wants more cats.

-Whined that his wig didn’t look -exactly- like the picture and proceeded to throw it on the ground, no one noticed him do this as we were busy with our own things. He came out after about a minute and shouted at us “Did no one see me throw my wig down?!” When my friend Seth apologized and pointed out we were all busy he verbally said “sigh”.

June 8th (Day 1 of the con)

-morning time, we’re all getting dressed in our cosplays, Yucee takes the longest despite having the simplest costume and demands that we show him how to apply makeup/put on a wig, after showing him a few times already the night before. he also asks us to do the tasks for him, including putting on his makeup and even partially dressing him (made someone put on his suspenders for him without him even trying beforehand) “I’ve never cosplayed before.” he would say. His outfit was a shirt, pants and a pair of suspenders, he wasn’t even wearing his wig.

-as for my birthday present from him: in the vendor hall he buys me three tiny buttons, $1 each, two buttons that have lgbt+ pride things on them, both of which I can’t wear in my daily life. He also buys me s hat that he didn’t ask if I wanted, especially since the only kind of hats I wear are baseball hats. You might think I’m just mad that I didn’t get presents I wanted, I’m usually the thought that counts type of guy, but he made it quite clear what he wanted for his birthday that was a month away while we were in the vendor hall, he kept making remarks how he wanted a commission done of his favorite persona character, he wanted multiple commissions, and he made it clear he wanted me to buy them. He still hasn’t wished me a happy birthday.

-me and my two friends have had a few pictures of us requested at this point , Yucee gets angry that no one recognizes his Ryuji cosplay and how no one had asked for a picture. Thirty minutes after this exchange someone asks for his picture, he declines saying he’s a “disgusting gross frog man”. Soon after he again complains about this issue.

-complained, constantly, every five minutes it was either asking me when we were going home or how there were no persona cosplayers (there were, plenty) or how he was so nasty and had to go home and shower/wash his clothes (he showered at least three times a day).

-pulled me away from activities with my friends because he wanted me to take him home to shower/wash his clothes (where we were staying was roughly 20 minutes from the convention center and it took him thirty minutes each time).

-straight up insulted cosplayers because they didn’t pick the outfit he liked for the character they were portraying or said he didn’t like the costume because they were acting “too straight”.

-got jealous because me and my friend were “acting more like a couple” than me and him were. My friend and I were Pipimi and Popuko from popteamepic, canonically they are girlfriends and the most my friend and I did was hold hands while skipping and playfully call each other “darling”. I didn’t want to hold hands with Yucee, I didn’t even want to touch him.

-reason I wouldn’t hold hands or even touch Yucee? He had broken many of my boundaries in a short span of time, while it was was wrong of me to not communicate this to him he still continued to push when I was visibly uncomfortable. A ten year friendship had lot less boundaries than a three year friendship/seven month relationship (that I had just met in person two days earlier). Yucee would constantly rub his hands over the back of my neck, he would constantly slap my arm and eventually did it in for me was when he snuck up behind me and angrily slammed his hand on my shoulder because me and my friends had “left” him. I nearly had a panic attack before I realized it was him. He never apologized.

-would go into a frenzy if my group travelled ahead without him, even if we were in sight and only a few feet away he would cry about how we were leaving him behind. Every time I assured him we wouldn’t leave him and he could call me should we get separated.

June 9th (Day 2 of the con)

-Morning routine similar to day one, complete with him still making someone else do his makeup for him

-Said “not all of us having living mothers” rather annoyingly when someone was complaining about their mom. This person didn’t know Yucee had “ptsd” and wasn’t even talking to him but rather to my friend. He sounded more annoyed than about to have a panic attack, he even said what was supposed to be his trigger word.

-Did have a “breakdown” however because we walked a few feet away from him, we were still in eyesight, he didn’t even attempt to keep up with us. Went to the nearest booth where he knew he’d get sympathy, a booth that he knew was run by someone’s MOTHER. Made the comment afterwards that he wished she would adopt him.

-Tried to guilt me should I be thinking about breaking up with him.

-Constantly says that he should’ve never of come and how he just wants to go home, even asks if I or my grandma can drive him home on day three.

So the convention dance party rolls around, which is basically just a clean rave, I’m hyped because this is the first time I’m actually going to break out of my comfort zone and attend it. Yucee wanted to go to as he said he had always wanted to see what a rave was like, the moment we step in he goes to sit in the corner by himself. I told him I’ll come check on him every few minutes, I left my phone with him to prove that would come back for him. A few minutes pass and I go to check on him, he says he’s going outside the door for a second to get some air, so I think nothing of it. I see that they’re selling light up face masks so I had to run to my car to get cash, a trip that’ll take me about ten minutes. I tell my friends where I’m going and that Yucee said he’d be right outside. Halfway on my trip back from the car I’m alerted that my friends can’t find Yucee. I start to panic and practically run back to where the dance party is, I meet up with my friends and we split up to look for him. It doesn’t take me long to find him because I look in the area where he said he was going: outside on the balcony. I look around and there’s a lot of people out there, none Yucee, but upon further inspection I see he’s all the way on the other end of the balcony where no one else is. I lose it because he didn’t tell anyone he was going over there, we all assumed outside on the balcony meant with the rest of the people taking a break, not wedged in a corner out of anyone’s sight line. That’s when I decide it’s time someone has a talking to with him. I ask my friend to tell him why what he did wasn’t okay while I go grab a cup of water, when I return to them my friend makes it clear it’s my turn to talk to him. That’s when I decide to break up with him, not because of his “break down” but because of his disregard of anyone else’s feelings that weekend. While I was considering it I was going to think it over after the convention and make my decision in the future, he twisted my arm for the last time though. 

-Yucee blames my friend Boo for the reason we broke up despite me clarifying that it was 100% my decision

-Also blamed her for being the reason he had a breakdown, because she didn’t coddle him like everyone else. Didn't even bother to apologize for the two breakdowns he had caused her, when I brought it up he would always go through me to do it.

-so after I gave him my two cents I let him stew in a safe space while I tried to enjoy the remainder of the day with my friends (it was 12 am at this point and the con center closed at 1 am). We went to the game room (which I told him about) and not ten minutes go by he’s spamming me with texts and calls to tell me this is why he has “trust issues”.

-We get home and he goes immediately to bed without a word to any of us

June 10th (Final day of the con)

-Stayed in my dad’s basement all day by request, barely paid me half of the convention ticket money he owed me because he had spent it all on merch

I didn't hear from him all day, didn't even acknowledge us when we returned to start packing up.

-when we arrived at my home after leaving my dad’s he locked himself away all night, I didn’t see him until the next morning when I drove him home. (which he didn't provide me gas for, didn't even say one word to me).

I was lucky that my friend Boo tagged along when I took him home because she is one of the best friends I have had or will ever have and despite Yucee's hatred of her he could actually learn a LOT from her about being a good person.

I did have some contact with him post convention which is outlined in most of these messages, but for about the past month I have not contacted him out of one anon (see end of this post).

So just keep in mind that when he says his convention experience was awful that he’s the reason for a good portion of it going bad, he didn’t even bother apologizing to my friends once for ruining their convention, a convention that we all look forward to a year in advance.

Now I believe my friend's deserve to have their voices heard.

Boo’s Testimonial:

(This one’s a bit messy thanks to tumblr’s image limit)

Seth’s Testimonial:

In summary: yucee aka Jamie/Mike McCarver is a lazy, manipulative, self centered man. He’s a 27 year old who acts like he’s a child and plays up his problems for sympathy, he refuses to ever take blame or apologize for anything because how could he do wrong when he’s autistic/disabled. If he ever does apologize he never says it directly to the person, rather he goes for a general apology. He also says he’s learned from his mistakes but it’s obvious that he’s just saying that in an attempt to placate those he’s wronged or save face.

He’s also known to twist words to garner sympathy, what a shocker:

I sent him an anon as bait because I knew he’d twist the words. But I never said he didn’t deserve testosterone, and he knows that’s not what I meant, by not publishing the ask he can twist the words how he likes, which he likes to do a lot.

The anon read “If you paint a piece of shit gold it’s still a piece of shit. I’m not sure what you think you learned from your experience but it doesn’t change that you’re a pedophile. You were old enough to know what you were doing was wrong, in the end you hurt someone and if your not man enough to just issue an apology to them you’re a coward and no amount of testosterone will make you a real man. Your mother and father would be ashamed.”

Oh, and don’t forget about him being a pedophile.

Yucee was/is a sexually aggressive pedophile who refuses to acknowledge that he’s mentally messed up someone so bad that it’s still affecting them to this day and doesn’t even bother to apologize to them because he thinks they’ve traumatized him too. They were 14 years old, he was 22. He seems to have made it his mission to demonize his victim when his victim has not even made contact with him in three years. He says he’s changed but continues to befriend people at least five years younger than him, while they still are legal adults it’s still creepy considering the past he’s had with younger individuals.

And Yucee if you’re reading this: Your victim has not sent you any anons, you know exactly who has because you’ve told me before you know it’s her. 

Please boost this, do NOT interact with this user to send hate, and PLEASE stay safe.

[richie-shepard]

He was my gin gay... || Flashback

When: Late August 2018

Where: Heat Lounge

Summary: After having the most awkward conversation with Flynn and Randall, Richie decided to see for himself if his former best friend / boyfriend was living it up with the Gin Gays...well, that and figure out if he didn’t completely fucking hate his guts. Armed with nothing but Bloody Marys and self pep talk, he crossed the town.

Note: Long.

Richie half-regretted his Bloody Mary bonanza.

His stomach churned with the mixture of nervousness, anticipation, and Vodka. The weight of uncertainty made every step slower than the last one, but he knew where he was headed. He had intel and there was no turning back now; he couldn’t let his teenage self down again. Heart racing and all, Rich didn’t know the exact reason why he had to confirm Eddie’s whereabouts the second there was a hint on them.

Let’s try this, Richmond: You’ve always had him in the back of your head and have felt like a complete douchebag for ruining what was the only real relationship you’ve had in what will probably be your very, very short life.

The little voice in him that often went ignored tried to calm him down.

It’s too good to be true. Besides, after you completely fucking ghosted on him, why would life grant your ass another shot? Hell, why would he?

Alright, maybe deeming his inner voice as self-calming was too much of a courtesy, even for himself.

He was still awe-struck at the amount of information that had been poured on him like a cold shower; one that, frankly, he yet didn’t need. Every single detail the guys had told him about this Louie persona, was way too fitting with the remaining memories he had of Eddie... besides, it’s not as if Berlioz was a completely usual last name. It definitely wasn’t Benji-boy that was being discussed. Also, it would be a blatant lie if Rich didn’t accept he had looked Eddie up years ago; both through social media and the few old friends in common they had that still were willing to talk to him. Richie knew he was in California, but it had never crossed his mind that there could come a day where they’d actually meet each other again. Perhaps it meant-

You still don’t know if you will, stop being dramatic.

Right.

He needed a plan or at least a notion of what he’d do if he managed to see his face and actually speak to him, all this after finding him, of course. Eddie had a really nice face, he’d recognize it even if they were fifty; he too wondered if he was still shorter than him...

Focus, bitch.

Right. 

“Hello, remember me? I used to be your idiot.” Richie breathed out to himself as he crossed the street, hoping he wasn’t making a complete fool out of himself as he tried to keep his steps as straight as he...

Straight? Dude, you’re asking way too much here.

...as sober-looking as he could. He shook his head. “Eds? Is that you? Shit, I don’t think my last messages got through, right? Ha. Ha. How long has it been? Five years already? You haven’t aged a-”

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

“I’ll just wing it, then.” Richie drew his mouth into a thin line, both at the fact that he was completely blowing it before he even got the actual chance to... and to appease the elderly lady that was warily watching him as they waited for the crosswalk light to turn, she was clutching her bag like a lifeline. He ran as fast as his state allowed him to; feeling the alcohol jitters gradually leave him behind along with every annoyed person he accidentally shoved as he tried to make his way down to the bar.

The Sun was setting as he reached the venue, his courage dimming in the same way. If he didn’t know any better, Rich would’ve thought cameras were rolling. He came to a halt as the bouncer greeted him, returning an awkward wave and shooting him a smile that exuded everything but emotional stability.

What are you expecting to find?

He let the question linger in his head as he walked in, eyes slowly getting used to the lively atmosphere of the bar. It was nice. If Richie wasn’t on a mission, he would’ve definitely hit up the bar and drank himself well into the next day.

With all that could go wrong right now, who knows? You just might have to.

He knew he hated himself, but it was getting ridiculous.

Rich shook his head and kept his head down as he walked between the groups of people; the last thing he wanted at the moment was any sort of attention. His eyes scanned the room for any sight of familiarity. He wondered if he looked like a displaced creep, just walking around without actually knowing if Eds was even in the place. After an estimate of fifteen minutes had passed, Richie decided it was probably best if he just got out of there. He had walked through the entire venue...

Oh. Oh shit.

His eyes came to a halt when he turned around; precisely, on a table that hadn’t been occupied just a few minutes before. Richie watched the man and awe-struck wasn’t enough of a word to cover what he was feeling. He felt a flutter in his chest he had long forgotten, a small amount of joy finding its way into his chest as he watched the lonely guy in disbelief. Eddie. It was him.

Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?

Clearing his throat as if he needed its permission for his feet to make the first move, it was now or never. Rich set his sights on the table... and his sights would be as far as he would probably get that night. Without any warning, another guy swiftly sat at Eddie’s side, shamelessly pecking his cheek as if he could just do that without any care in the world. Richie was offended... with no logical reason to support it.

And he’s hot. Great. Fuck me.

Richie glared at the other guy, feeling a wave of disbelief and plain jealousy washing over every fiber of his being. 

Stupid dude ruining everything, I should have the chance to at least fuck it all up myself. It’s the least this shitty day could give me.

Everything looked so natural between them. The way they leaned into each other to talk, the coy touches of their hands and-

Fuck. Ugh. Stop kissing. Get a ro- NO.

He gave his own cheek a quick slap, trying to get as much of his shit together again as he possibly could. Richie fixed his eyes on the scene after a moment, grateful to himself for not having stared at them with his mouth wide-open like the fucking idiot he was. Even from a distance, nothing else was able to draw his attention away from them. Now they were just talking, thankfully... yet, something tugged at his stomach in all the wrong ways. It wasn’t the kissing anymore. Rich focused solely on Eds’ face; there was something off with how Eddie was smiling at the guy... how we was smiling...

Wait.

Eddie looked happy. Genuinely happy. It was a smile he remembered very well, one he still held onto. He once was on the other end of it.

Something in Richie broke and it hit him like a block of ice. He had no right to feel sad and he was now fucking aware of that really obvious fact. Responsibility had never been a friend of his, but even then he knew everything was on him to blame. If things had gone differently... no, if he had acted differently, perhaps it’d be him sitting there with Eds. He stood idly by, hoping his intense staring wouldn’t drive the coup- the men’s attention towards him. 

Rich took a deep breath, feeling like a helpless asshole. Eddie was as close as he had ever been in the past few years, he only had to walk; he only had to put on a smile and fucking walk over th...

“OH MY GOD. IS THAT RICHMOND SHEPARD?”

The screech took him out of his stupor. If it had been any other day, he would’ve graciously accepted both the attention and the blowjob from the guy that was now shamelessly smirking at him, but not tonight. Unwilling to deal with whatever could come next, Richie quickly placed his sunglasses on his face and bolted out of the place.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Hope they didn’t hear that. Shit!

Once outside, he panicked for a second when he realized he couldn’t see anything anymore... he then took his glasses off and realized everything was now dark around him. He chuckled dryly, but he began to feel how his eyes really didn’t follow the same state.

How fucking fitting.

He slowly began to walk towards where he hoped his apartment would eventually find him. The effects of his high waning away as he took deep breaths to clear his head and gaze. Richie could feel himself trembling, angry at himself for having lost... for having screwed up his chances right now and many years before. He came to a stop in a small alley, needing to find some sort of support for his small crisis.

Rich’s back dragged its way down the wall, ending up with him curled into a ball with his face covered by his suddenly cold hands. The sting in his eyes had left him, but the pressure in his chest turned his already irregular breathing into mild panting.

I have no right. Shit. I have no motherfucking right to feel like this. Fucking... I fucked it all up. You stupid, fucking loser.

Richie was unaware if the words were echoing off his mind or the alley, but he didn’t care anymore. He had made careless choices in the past and they were finally catching up to him. He definitely wasn’t expecting for a simple glimpse to take such a toll on him. Of course he missed Eds every fucking day, even if he didn’t allow himself to admit it; he missed their talks and bickering, the way he worried over him and how he could punch his arm but still look at him with the utmost warmth in his eyes... that one hug in Bill’s living room. 

Eddie is happy.

Rich finally got around to figuring his thoughts out, uncovering his face as he did so. His body slowly relaxed until he felt like a rag doll that had been thrown away for charity; he tried sighing himself into composure. This had been the first time in his miserable life that he had actually understood the mistake he had made, that he had truly seen it. If his sorry ass was now feeling everything at once, he couldn’t possibly imagine how much he had hurt Eddie when he had left him behind. He could never make that right again. There was no way.

Eddie had been the only one that ever really saw him, and he had let him down in the worst way.

He won’t ever forgive me. I deserve this.

Richie was finally sober.

[edourado]

Hi there! So I read your first chapter of Ordinary People and let me tell you, it's everything that I didn't know I needed. I absolutely loved it and I hope there's more to come c:

Hello, darling. Thank you, so much, it means a whole lot, it really does. 

Here’s more! I used your ask to post the second chapter, hope you don’t mind. 

To everybody that liked and reblogged and showed me love in the tags: I love you, you guys are awesome ♥

Now, about this one: whenever Jon plays someone giving orders (Shane and Braxton and the dude from The Escape, hi boys) I get the feelings. One scene was shamelessly inspired by the short movie he did for BMW. Kudos if you recognize it.

Here’s Chapter 1, if you need a recap.

As always, love is my fuel.

Ordinary People, Chapter 2

He watches as his team bring the asshole down, all wrapped in his fancy hotel robe, and put him inside the van.

“Miss Allegra was apprehended by the Bravo Team, sir”, one of them men tell him. “I was just notified.”

“Excellent. Was there any trouble upstairs?”

“No, sir. He was not expecting us. The device was on the desk, the safe was empty.”

“Alright, then. Take him in and get ready to go back to home base. Let’s wrap this up.”

The men move to follow his orders and Frank wishes every mission was easy as this one.

Of course, you should never speak too soon.

Their easy target, as it turned out, had a contingency plan in place and tried to pull a Wilson Fisk on them, sending his men to surround the car.

Only Frank’s team was not as unprepared and easily sold as the FBI. They took the hostiles out and secured the device, but Omar managed to escape in a car.

Frank was forced to chase him, the team’s helicopter hovering above the fugitive. Luckily, the small Italian city doesn’t have a lot of places a car can hide from a helicopter. Luckily, it’s a shitty car. Luckily, it’s a shitty driver.

They manage to corner themselves and Frank has to jump down, gun pointing at the man driving the car (who was shaking) and Finnick Omar, with his robe, looking ridiculous on the back seat.

“Step out of the vehicle, asshole”, he ordered after telling the shaking man to kill the engine, hoping Stundner kept the bird steady and  the rope on his belt didn’t tug on him, making him lose his aim.

After the suspect was taken in for questioning (Fury wanted this one personally), Frank and his team got the all clear to go back home. Just in time, too. Karen had called him last night saying that Max was at the vet. Apparently he had eaten something from the ground during their run that morning, and gotten sick. “They’re flushing it out, and she says he’s gonna be ok, but I’m freaking out.”

“I’ll be there soon”, was all he could offer. “He’s gonna be fine.”

“He couldn’t stand up, Frank!” she went on, full on crying. “I had to ask Daniel from downstairs to help me get him in the car, and Max could barely keep his eyes open. I thought he was going to die.”

“Hey, listen. You did the right thing, he’s being taken care of, now. What else did the vet say?”

“He’s gonna have to spend the night here”, she told him, and he wanted to punch something at the sound of her voice, weak and small. “She said it was probably something he ate or drank, but I kept my eyes on him at all times. I don’t know how this happened.”

He went on to assure her that it was not her fault, that dogs eat shit from the street, that’s normal. It was just bad luck that picked something that made him sick. Before they hung up, he promised to call her as soon as he could.

Now, he boarded the company plane, that huge shield plastered everywhere, and took his phone out again.

“He’s ok”, she told him. “I’m getting off work now. The vet says he’s out of danger, but she still wants to keep him one more night, just in case.”

He sighed, relieved.

“That’s good. How are you?”

They talked for a few more minutes before the pilot arrived and they had to take off.

“I’m bringing you some of that coffee you like”, he told her, glad to listen to a chuckle before he hung up.

“How’s the wife?” asked Micro, sitting in front of him.

“She’s fine”, Frank said, distracted, looking at his phone, and then he looked up at his friend. “What?”

The look Micro gave him was a funny one.

“You’re so whipped, man.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“It’s been, what? Nine, ten years? And you’re still with the ‘we’re just friends’ bullshit?”

Frank rolled his eyes and looked out the window, inspecting as the small Italian city kept getting even smaller as they rose higher and higher from the ground.

“Don’t start.”

“You don’t start. Come on, man, let’s be real.” He closed his ever present computer and placed it on the table between them. “You practically live together. You do everything together. You share a freaking dog. You didn’t even flinch when I called her your wife just now.”

Micro has been teasing him about Karen for a few years now. Since he and Maria broke up and he adopted Max, he kept hinting that there was something more between them.

“Don’t tell me you don’t love this woman, it’s obvious to everyone.”

Well, of course he did. Karen was the closest thing he had to a family, it was impossible for him not to love her.

“I keep telling you-”

“Nah, man, don’t tell me she’s your friend. You haven’t had a serious relationship since Maria, and neither has she, since that lawyer guy. Why? Because you already are in one, with each other, you’re both just too dumb to see it.”

Frank didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have any new arguments to use, and because, maybe, Micro was a little bit right.

It has been a month since that kiss she planted on him after his birthday. They haven’t talked about it since, she acted normal the next morning, crawled on the couch and stayed there all day, nursing a hangover, making him close all the curtains in the apartment and kill all the sources of light except the tv. But he had thought about it. It felt natural, that one simple, innocent, PG-13 kiss. It would feel natural, too, for him to keep kissing her, shed their clothes and crawl into bed and under her covers. It would feel so natural that, when he didn’t, he felt heavy.

He had chalked it up to that usual explanation: Karen is a beautiful woman and he is a heterosexual man. Nothing that biology couldn’t explain.

Still. It remained there.

“I’m telling you, man”, Micro went on, opening up his celebrity gossip magazine. “Put a ring on it before someone else does. And believe you me, someone will, sooner rather than later.”

“We’re estimated to arrive in five hours, sir”, said the pilot on the intercom.

“Alright, Duarte, get us home safely”, he told the pilot from his chair.

“Yes, sir”, Duarte replied and Frank killed the line for now.

The rest of their flight was uneventful. Micro read his magazine, typed on his computer, brought him up to date on the situation on the ground (Fury was pleased with their successful capture of Omar and his device), and then dozed off, snoring in his chair.

Frank didn’t regret bringing him along when he was recruited by Shield. He was a handful, but was, without a doubt, the best man he had ever worked with.

His mind went back to Karen when the cabin was silent. And he didn’t even have time to ponder on the question Micro had raised too much. As soon as he pictured her face again, his heart beat a little faster, and the feeling of home that flared up inside him made it clear.

He was in love with her. Had been for a very fucking long time, now. He kept thinking back, trying to decide when was it that it had happened, and he couldn’t, because that feeling was there, since, apparently, always.

He texted her, asking for news on Max, but she didn’t respond. He figured she was either with him at the clinic or already home, maybe asleep.

He kicked Micro’s foot when they were about to land, waking him up, the rest of the team rousing around them..

Before he could call Karen to know where he should meet her, he had to deal with some paper work, some stuff he had to sign.

“Oh, and sir? You got a message earlier, from a… Mr. Gosnell?” his assistance checked while they walked towards his office and Frank almost froze. Micro looked at him, alarmed.

Gosnell had not taken the break up of their team lightly. Frank tried to bring him to Shield along with Micro and two more, but none of them made it pass the screening phase. The other two went back to the army, but Gosnell was discharged. He had been creating some problems for Frank ever since.

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say, just asked when you would be back.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, sir.”

Well. He’ll deal with that later.

It was an hour longer until he was good to go home. Walking out of his office, he pulled his phone from his pocket and called her, feeling strange and excited with the newfound knowledge about his feelings for Karen and her possible mutual feelings for him.

His blood froze inside him when the call was picked up, but it was not her voice that greeted him.

“There he is.”

Gosnell.

“We missed you, Frank”, he said in his ear.

“Where is she?” he asked, his body vibrating already.

“Now, now”, sounded Gosnell’s voice, low and menacing. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He had taken Karen. He had also poisoned Max, so the dog wouldn’t be able to defend her and Frank wouldn’t think too much of it when she didn’t answer his calls.

He wanted Shield to release Omar and the device. As it turned out, Gosnell had joined Hydra after Shield rejected him.

It didn’t take too long. He gave Frank their location and he got there with his team eight minutes later, walking in the building alone, his gun in his holster.

Karen was awake when he got there, but was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She was chained at the wrists, hanging from the ceiling, her knees grazing the floor.  

“Let me promise you this right now”, he said to Gosnell when he saw a drop of blood fall from her chin. “I’m going to kill you.”

Hi former team-mate had laughed, amused, theatrical, almost demented.

After he got from him that the sedative he had injected Karen with was going to fade, no antidote needed, Frank took his gun and shot once, right in the middle of his forehead. The body of his former friend had barely hit the ground when he was on her, lifting her in his arms, and his team was barging in, one of the men rushing to get the chains from her.

“Hey”, he whispered to her and she blinked up at him, groggy, a thin trickle of blood  staining her face from a wound in her hairline. “Hey, it’s ok, it’s over.”

“Frank”, she whispered back.

“I’m here, I’m here, I got you now.”

His hand on her face was warm and shaky, his own breathing coming hard.

Breathing out, she closed her eyes and passed out, her head tumbling back. Before he could panic, the medic Micro had waken up and brought along was there.

“It’s ok, sir. It’s just the sedative. She’s breathing and her heartbeat is ok. Temperature is good.”

Frank breathed a sigh of relief and dropped his face to hers, squeezing his eyes shut, lips against her cheek.

They were gonna be fine.

She woke up in his bed, a few hours later. There hadn’t been any need to take her to the hospital, the car had taken them straight home. There were a few people putting her apartment back together. She had put up a hell of a fight when Gosnell took her.  

“Frank?” she called.

“Hey, I’m here.”

She squeezed his hand weakly and he forgot everything he had been practicing in his head to tell her.

“Are we home?”

“Yes, we’re home, don’t worry, now.”

He had practiced. Decided he was going to give her some space, talk about feelings some other time, when she was better. He couldn’t, though. Getting up from the chair he had placed by the bed, he moved to sit by her, and she closed her eyes again, breathing deep while he caressed her face.

Frank waited until she opened her eyes again to look at him.

“Did you kill him?”

Swallowing, he nodded, wondering how she was going to react to that. Karen blinked and then nodded back.

“He said he was going to take me from you. Make you watch him kill me.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he shushed her, not even wanting to think about that.

With his forehead on hers, he felt as her hand closed around one of his wrists.

“I wasn’t gonna let that happen. I’m never gonna let that happen, you hear me?”

She nodded again and he felt her breath on his lips. Leaning in, he placed another one of those kisses on her, soft and small, but full of everything he didn’t know how to articulate.

When he moved back, she looked up at him and he ran his hand on her face again, now clean from the blood that had staind it earlier.

“Nobody is ever taking you from me.”

She knew him better than he knew himself. She understood him, even when he didn’t say anything. Or when he said it indirectly. They looked at each other, not saying anything, but they both knew.

Slowly, a smile curved her mouth up and he felt it, right there. The change in them.

With that smile on her face, she blinked and said “ok”, as in “ok” to his promise, “ok” to this new change, “ok” to them.

And then a lot of things happened in quick succession. First, right when he leaned into her again, the world seemed intent on cockblocking him.

She was opening up to his kiss, both hands on his face, when there was a knock on his front door.

“Sir?”

Sighing, Frank closed his eyes and well. He figured she still has to rest, anyway.

“I’ll be right back”, he whispered against her mouth, nose bumping on hers sweetly, and she nodded, almost shy.

“Don’t take too long”. And then, with a coy expression and a tint to her cheeks, “Sir.”

Groaning, he got up and went to deal with whatever it was that needed dealing.

“What kind of lock do you want on her door?”

Second, Micro got in his way. For all his talk about him “sealing the deal”, “putting a ring on it” or whatever, he sure had an awful timing.

“Knock knock!” he announced instead of actually knocking. “I got your mutt home!”

They heard the noise of Max’s paws making their way to his bedroom and then he was jumping on the bed, Karen was opening her arms to him, cooing and petting and kissing.

“Hello, ma’am”, Micro said, walking in, catching one of her hands to kiss it. “Quite a scare you gave us. Don’t do that again.”

“I’ll try my best”, she smiled up at him.

“So the doc says the mutt is fine. He does need to have these pills, though, for a week”, he said, sitting down on a chair and tossing a box of them to Frank.

They talked for a while longer, Max enjoying the rare opportunity to be allowed on Frank’s bed, thrown dramatically over Karen’s legs while she caressed him.

Then, they had a fight.

“Oh, that reminds me”, Frank said when the team next door announced that her place was back in order, along with a new alarm system and a more secure set of locks. “I’m gonna put a tracker on your phone.”

“No, you’re not”, she said, immediately.

“Karen”, he said, his voice a warning. “Come on.”

“You come on. You’re not putting a tracker on my phone, Frank.”

“You were just taken, how are you fighting me on this?”

“We already had this discussion a year ago!”

“You were not taken a year ago.”

“I don’t care. The answer is still the same.”

They went back and forth with “how am I gonna know where you are?”, “Ask me!” “What if someone takes you again?”, “Oh, come on, what are the odds of that happening?”, “A tracker is happening, Karen”, “If you want to track someone, track Max. He’s a dog. I’m a person” for a while. Neither of them  noticed when Micro rolled his eyes, got up and walked out the door.

“Jesus. Get married already” muttered under his breath when he closed the apartment door behind himself.

She still had to sleep the rest of the sedative off and he had a report to write before they could make their new status as a couple an official thing.

When she woke up, they were all, the three of them, starving.

“What do you feel like having?” he asked, standing up by his bed while she kneeled on the mattress and put her arms around his neck.

“Hmm”, she said, driving him crazy with her lips on his jaw, hands moving around his chest. “Breakfast food.”

He smiled, angling her face to his, kissing her deeply, as if her kisses would be enough to satisfy him.

“Croissants. And cream cheese bagels. Eggs and bacon and a donut for dessert.”

Frank would love to keep this going. Let her lift his shirt off him, lie her back down and lose track of time with her, but his stomach was hurting him, she needed to eat, and Max was complaining, pulling on his pan leg with his teeth (asking to be fed or just trying to keep him from Karen, he didn’t know for sure).

“Why don’t you go get all that”, Karen suggested, hands on his face, now. She liked that and so did he. “While I take a shower, get the ‘kidnapped’ air out of me?”

“Ok”, he agreed, wrapping his arms around her for a bit longer, not yet ready to let go.

“And then we can… I don’t know. Talk, or something.”

He looked at her and she blinked at him that way she did every time she said something she knew he wasn’t going to like.

“Talk?”

Karen nodded.

“Yeah. I think we should. Don’t you?”

It was not exactly the thing he had in mind, but yeah, he figures they should.

“Ok. But you should eat something before your shower, though. Like a cracker, or something.”

He left after she had some saltines with a bit of cheese and was pouring Max’s preferred food on his plate.

Frank flew to every bakery he knew in a three block radius, Whole Foods and whatnot, and walked back home with two bags worth of every baked good he knew she preferred for breakfast. He would have to work on the eggs and bacon himself, since the one place that made her favorites, with nutmeg and low sodium salt was closed at this hour. He took bites off a banana muffin on the way, to get his stomach to quiet down.

When he opened the door again, Max was on his dog bed by the couch, chewing lazily on that meat stick thing he loved, and Karen was sitting on his favorite chair. She got up when he walked in, hair wet and combed back, looking fresh and cozy and beautiful and holy shit, how he managed to go eight years being just her friend was beyond him.   

“I got your croissants”, he said, putting the bags on the kitchen counter while she walked towards him. “Also that yogurt, with the honey and that purple flower? They had it, I thought they-”

He stopped talking when she reached him and supported her hands on his shoulders, jumping up and locking her legs around his waist. His keys fell to the floor when he moved to hold her, his face being pulled up, closing his eyes when she kissed him.

“I thought we were gonna talk?” he said when she stopped to breathe.

“We can do that later”. She ran her lips against his, a hand on his face and another around his shoulders. “Take me to bed, Frank.”

He let go of his wallet, that he still held in his left hand, and took a step towards his bedroom.

“Yes, ma’am.”

.:.

Sex with Karen felt, at the same time, as natural as breathing and mind blowingly amazing. He chalked it up to knowing each other for almost a decade, but it was like they knew what to do, they knew how to move, there was very little “experimental” time. He learned quickly and she learned quickly, and that first time with her left him addicted, like some super drug that made his brain work exclusively to give him pleasure, to give her pleasure.

And that he did.

Karen pulled on his hair and dug her nails on his skin, wrapped her legs around him tightly, moaned against his mouth while he moved inside her, his own head spinning, spinning, his own hands gripping her tightly. Frank had to close his eyes and focus when she responded to his every move and every touch and every word.  

He was pretty good at sex. He knew that. But, really, it was a whole other category when it was the two of them. He couldn’t believe he spent eight years missing out on this.

Later, when he brought her breakfast-dinner to her in bed (not so much because she was still “getting better” but because he felt the sudden need to spoil her), she was wearing one of his sweatpants and a bra.

“You know, just by looking”, he said, setting the tray full of goodies down and settling himself in front of her, each of her legs around him. “You can’t really tell how big these are.”

She laughed out loud when he tugged on the cups of her bra, dropping his face to plant a kiss on the left breast.

“You looked a lot?”

“Not a lot. Just a normal amount.”

They ate their food and he kept intercepting her hand when she moved to sneak little pieces to Max, who had sneaked in and sat by the bed looking absolutely miserable, even when they all knew he had a full stomach.

He couldn’t really say that things changed much between them after that. Other than all the sex and the fact that some PDA was part of their thing, now, it was all pretty much the same. He still picked up her groceries when shopping for himself, she still did his laundry along with hers. She still had shoes in his closet, because they didn’t fit in just hers anymore, he still stole her shampoos and creams. They still shared books.

“Frank”, she called him one day when he was standing in front of the tech team, while they measured him for a new bullet proof vest, that was supposed to be lighter, but more efficient.“I can’t get into my apartment.”

“Why not?” he asked, his arms open while some kid held his phone to his ear.

“Because I can’t remember the stupid password!” she complained. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, ma’am, it’s your apartment.”

She made an angry noise and he heard her pressing the keys again.

“This is ridiculous. I can’t get into my own home because you’re a security freak. I’m going into your place.”

“Ok.”

“Just so you know”, she said, irritated, while her keys clinged together while she opened his door. “I’m eating your chips.”

When he got home, she was sitting on his dinner table, typing away on his computer. He placed the take out dinner he had gotten on the way around her, slowly pushing the computer shut when the table was set.

“You’re done, no more work, come on”, he said softly while she bent to keep looking at the screen, typing faster.

Karen let him close the computer and move it to the couch.

“I’ve been thinking”, he said while she unwrapped the shrimp eggrolls she loved. “It doesn’t really make much sense, to have all this security installed on your place in a building like this.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you”, she nodded, chewing on her food. “These are excellent today.”

“And we’re both making more money, now, right?”

She looked at him.

“Yeah…?”

“And I know you think it’s unnecessary, but I meant what I said that day. No one is ever taking you again, so I still think you should have a good security system in place. Plus a tracker.”

“I’m not getting a fucking tracker, Frank, make your point.”

He sighed, almost amused. He’ll convince her one day.

“Why don’t we take Micro’s program and move it to a better place? Like, maybe in a neighborhood you actually like… Like the Village.”

She swallowed her food and looked at him with those eyes.

“Are you proposing we move in together?”

“We do live together already, don’t we? Only we have two of everything.”

“To the Village?”

“You’re always going on about how nice it is.”

“Frank”, she said, moving her body towards him. “Don’t tease me about the Village.”

He chuckled.

“I’m not teasing you. I’ve been looking at some listings, I think we can afford to move there. If you want.” He looked at her, feeling somewhat nervous, but hopeful. It’s no secret she doesn’t like this place, doesn’t like this building, doesn’t like this neighborhood. And they haven’t sleep in separate beds since that first night.

With a twinkle in her eyes, Karen took another bite of her eggroll and got up from her chair, slowly.

“A place with a bigger closet?”, she mused, moving towards him.

“Sure.”

“And a bathtub that doesn’t gross me out.”

He pushed his chair back when she got close to him, a hand on his shoulder.

“A nice kitchen for you to cook me dinners”, she went on, sitting on one of his legs, arm around his shoulders. “You’re always complaining about the kitchen.”

“I am.”

“What else could we have?” she asked, a hand on his face, pulling it up to hers, placing a kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe an office, so you don’t have to work on the kitchen table.”

“Hmm, good idea.”

“Oh”, he said, dropping his chopsticks to put both his arms around her. “We can even get a king size bed.”

She raised her brows and that playful smile stretched on her lips.

“We could”, she said against his mouth.

“We’re doing it, then?” he asked and she nodded, kissing him sweet and slow, wrapping her arms around him after, and he wrapped his around her, face hidden in her neck.

He heard her sigh and click her tongue.

“Damn. I hate it when my mother is right.”

Here are the deleted scenes for this one. I wrote a bunch of them. These are the ones that didn’t make the cut.

[ellana-ravenwood]

Birthday surprise and Hope - Old Man Logan x Reader

Well first, thanks :-). And second, here’s your request (I’m using the movie version of Old Man Logan), might be a bit long, and again, I feel like I could have written something better, that maybe I didn’t write quite what you were expecting anon’ but...Yeah, that’s all I got right now. Hope you’ll like it anyway (don’t hesitate to drop a message to tell me so) : 

You can find my masterlist here : @ella-ravenwood-archives

_____________________________________________________________________

Before the world all went to shit, before you lost all of your friends but Logan and Charles, before you had to run away to stay safe...you were doing some research about your boyfriend’s past. About where Logan actually came from.

The only information you had was that his real name is “James Howlett”, and that he was born somewhere in Canada, probably in Alberta. Which wasn’t really much. You didn’t even had an estimate of the year he was born in, his healing factor making it impossible to guess his age...The research weren’t easy. 

But, finally, right before Charles had his massive seizure that killed most of the X-men a year ago, you had a lead. You found his birth date, and the place he supposedly grew up in. Everything fitted perfectly, there was no doubt that you found the right date and place...but you never got the occasion to take him to Canada and show him your findings, because of what happened that dreadful day in Westchester county...After the death of almost all of your friends, Logan, Charles and you fled the school, and since then,  you just kept on the move almost all the time. 

Caliban joined in pretty early on, and you finally settled down at the US border near Mexico. Your idea of taking him to his birth place and all, forever buried away...Until she arrived.

Laura. His daughter. He could say whatever he wanted about it, but you considered her his. She looked like him, she was “made” with his DNA, and was born naturally with the help of a Mexican girl that birthed her...She was his daughter, no questions asked. And from the moment she entered your life, everything moved faster than ever. 

You guys lost Caliban. But you didn’t even have time to mourn him, running from Transigen, trying to be as far as them as you could. 

Charles had another dangerous seizure, Logan refused to speak to the kid, who obviously wanted nothing more but to bond with her father, you were tired of all this pain and misery...life wasn’t really the greatest. 

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

It’s early in the morning when you wake up that day. You’re in a shitty motel, Charles and Laura are sleeping in the room next door. Logan’s head is on your chest, one of his legs slumped over your waist, and his arms are clinging to you. Typical. You often wake up to find yourself tangled with him, as when he has nightmare, he holds onto you as if you were his lifeboat. You caressed his hair lovingly, and he groaned. Light sleeper. It breaks your heart to have to disturb his slumber, but you know you gotta go soon. 

You both sit up on your side of the bed, he turns around to look at you, and you do the same. Your eyes lock, and he takes one of your hand in his, brushing his lips lightly on it, before letting go and going to the bathroom. 

You wince at the sight of his scarred naked body, but you don’t say anything. He knows. Feeling your heart heavy with nostalgia and a bit of sadness, you look at your watch and...it’s the day. It’s the fucking day ! 

His birthday. The excitement you suddenly feel however, soon disappear. What are you gonna do ? Buy balloons and shit and throw a surprise party where only you, Laura and Charles will be present ? 

You sigh, and, putting on some clothes you go to the bathroom where Logan is taking a shower. You hesitate to tell him right there and then “happy birthday” and to give him the only gift you have : birthday sex...but you decide not to. This past year, Logan hasn’t been the same, and you weren’t sure how he would react. Sure, you know he loves you, he still tells you, and he shows it to you more than once a day but...all trace of mischief, his sense of humour you liked so much, the way he always mocked himself and the way he smiled at your stupid jokes...All of that was long gone. The death of the X-Men destroyed the man you loved, and he spent more times brooding and drinking than anything else. Back to his old ways, before he met you and the others...he probably didn't want to celebrate his birthday. 

You loved him so much that it made you physically sick to see him like that. But what could you do ? If he knew your thoughts, he would tell you that you were already doing enough, that the only reason he didn’t kill himself so far was because you were there, and that without you, nothing would have much sense...

Feeling your presence, he opened the shower curtain and gestured for you to get in, you smiled weakly at him, but shook your head.

-Sorry babe, I need to...clear my head a bit. Go for a walk on my own before we leave. 

He looked disappointed, but he understood more than anyone the need to be alone. You guys always understood each other so well...Well, up until recently. You hated his behavior towards Laura. 

-Just don’t go too far ok ? I can’t lose you. 

And on those words, he closed the shower curtain once more. It made your heart sing when he said things like that, when he proved he cared about you a great deal...And in that moment, you decided that you were going to throw him some sort of surprise party, that you were going to try and make this day a little bit less bleak and sad. 

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

As you started to walk, you spotted Laura sitting on a picnic table, playing with a bouncing ball. You approached her. When you laid your hand on her shoulder, she turned around so quickly you didn’t see it, and her claws were on your throat. She quickly sheathed them again, and stood up, looking at you with the most apologizing look you ever seen. You see her eyes dart where the door of your room is, and you realize she’s probably terrified at the idea of Logan seeing that she just almost killed you. She might be just a kid who haven’t seen much of the outside world, but she understood pretty quickly what you meant to him, and the last thing she wanted, was to anger him further more... 

You ran your fingers threw her hair, a gesture Logan found soothing when you did it to him, and that was clearly hereditary as Laura relaxed a bit. 

-It’s OK little one, don’t worry. I’m used to it, I sneaked up on your dad a few times, I can’t count on my fingers how many times he almost clawed me haha. 

Laura looked at you as if you were crazy. Understandable, you took the “attack” so lightly...You were a weird one. 

-I’m not afraid of you, or of your father. I understand things more than you think Laura...Do you know what I mean ? 

You stop caressing her hair and she grabs your hand, putting it back on her head. You get the hint, and sit next to her. Imperceptibly, the kid scoots closer to you. Her eyes are fixed on you, curious. 

-I understand how it feels, really. To be you. To be Logan. It’s my power. My curse. I’m a telepath, a bit like Charles, but less powerful. I’m mostly an empath, when I touch people, I just...know things about them. And I understand how they feel. So...Don’t worry Laura. Don’t worry about what I think of you. I know what you went threw. And...About Logan...He’ll come around. He’s just...He went threw a lot too you know ? 

She nods, and as you look into her big brown eyes, an idea hits you. 

-Actually...would you...be up to help me do something special for him ? 

She nods once again, more vigorously this time, and you can’t help but smile at her. She smiles back, and your heart melt. That kid. 

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

You sneakily give Laura money, and she goes to the closest grocery shop to buy the supplies you asked her to get. You tell Charles your plan, and he loves it. When the moment will come, he’ll keep your Wolverine busy. 

That day, you convince Logan to stop earlier in a motel, and because he was never able to resist you, he finds yet another shitty motel and stops. After making sure the car is hidden, and that there is easy exits to leave in case of emergency, he goes to the front desk. Only one room is left, but apparently there’s enough place for four people...And that’s when the ex-professor comes in the picture. He’s brilliant in the role of the “annoying cripple that needs attention” (as he jokingly calls himself sometimes), and he drives Logan crazy by asking him to do many things for him. Logan doesn’t say no of course, because deep down, he’s a softy, and you know it. 

You and Laura run to the room, and she helps you decorate it. She has quite good tastes, as she coordinate the balloons and banderoles’ colors perfectly. 

Your excitement spreads to her, and soon, it’s just smiles and laughs between you too, and you can’t help but feel a deep bond of love starting to be build between you two. You know you’d do anything for that kid, and you were going to do everything to make sure Logan realized how amazing she was, and finally treat her as his daughter. 

You manage to find old CDs of music, mostly bad country but oh well, it will do, and settle the shitty mini-stereo in the room so that it’ll be ready to run. 

Laura helps you putting candles on the cake she bought earlier (his favorite), and she thinks it’s extremely funny that you try to put as much candles on it as you can. It makes the cake looks like a hedgehog with all of the spikes. 

Finally, the two of you look at your work, and it’s pretty good. At least, as good as it’ll get. You’re still feel proud though, because it almost look like you planned things since a long time. 

You hug Laura, and, surprisingly, she hugs you back. Once again, your heart melt. That kid...

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

You let Laura go back out, asking her to bring Logan and Charles in. You light all of the candles, shut the curtains, and, in total darkness, you wait. 

Logan destroy the door by kicking it and enter the room, claws out. 

You look at him, stunned, with the cake lighten, and Charles turn the lights on. 

You and Logan are both confused, and turn to Laura’s laugh. Logan asked :

-What the...What the Hell is going on ? 

-What the Hell indeed ?

-She...She looked panicked and pointed where you were. I thought something happened to you and...I...I ran here and...What...What is all of this ? 

As you realized Laura probably pulled on a show to make it a real surprise, you bursted out laughing. Of course she would. That kid was truly amazing. Yours and Laura’s laughter makes Charles laugh, and Logan just stands there stupidly, claws unsheathed. 

-Babe, it’s alright. Laura and I just wanted to surprise you, that’s all. Maybe she got a bit carried away hahahaha...

Logan looked around, still confused. You walk to him and pecked his lips, instantly, his claws retract. Charles pat the Wolverine on the leg, and wishes him a happy birthday. Laura smiles shyly to him. 

-Happy birthday babe. 

There’s a moment of silence, and your afraid he’s just going to leave. That he’s going to be angry or something...But he just stares at you stunned, and says :

-Wait..it’s not...it’s not my birthday. I think. I don’t know when it actually is...

-Yes it is honey. 

-Are you...are you sure ? 

-Yes baby, I...Before things went all to shit, I did some research. I wanted to...help you know about your past you know ? I wanted to do more for you, because you’ve been nothing but good to me and...I just wanted to help. 

Logan was looking around the room you and Laura decorated, and you could see quite clearly  on his face that he was deeply touched by the gesture. Exactly the reaction you hoped for. He walked slowly to you, and took you in his arms, wrapping you in a tight hug that made you suffocate a bit. 

He finally lets go of you, and turn to Charles :

-You bastard, making me do all of those stuffs just to keep me away while they prepare everything eh ? 

-Guilty as charge. 

You all chuckle, until he turns to Laura, who’s standing next to you. He looks at her intently, not really knowing what to do...he settles on ruffling her hair a bit roughly. 

-Hum...thanks hum...Kid. Appreciate it. 

She smiles, in awe. It’s not exactly what you were expecting, hoping for something a but more, but apparently, it’s enough to make her happy...Which is all you wanted really. Making them both happy. Logan then awkwardly stop ruffling her hair, looks at her a bit more, and abruptly goes toward the cake, blowing on the hundred candles, amused. 

The rest of the day happens splendidly, and you almost forget that all your lives are in danger. 

Charles seems healthier than ever, and eat half the cake almost to himself. 

Laura is more expressive than she’s been so far, smiling a lot, even laughing, and looking at Logan with eyes full of admirations and such. 

Logan just...enjoys himself. Going to the extent of trying to talk and stuffs with Laura. Of course, she doesn’t answer, but at least, he tries to somewhat bond with her. Very awkwardly, but still. 

You have the time of your life, happier than you’ve been for a long time. 

You all dance to the shitty country music you found, devour the cake, laugh and tell stupid jokes, dance some more, sings “happy birthday” songs very badly etc etc...and it almost feels like old times. When things were easier, happier, brighter. It almost feels like your Wolverine is back. It’s a great surprise birthday party, even though the cake was small and you were only four. It’s just great. 

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

You can’t help but smile at the fresh souvenirs of the past evening. How everything felt like a family. How Logan’s face shined with a smile you hadn’t seen in ages. And how Laura seemed happy...How everyone seemed happy. 

When the kid fell asleep on the shitty motel room couch, exhausted, and Charles started dozing off in a corner, you and Logan sneaked out, and he made love to you on the grass of the field nearby, loving you under the stars. His coat thrown over you, you were currently cuddled against him, just enjoying his presence. His hand was caressing your back tenderly, while the other was under his head. You were brushing light fingers on the scars on his chest...

-When all of this is over Logan, let’s go to Canada, OK ? Let’s go where you were born ? Let’s...let’s...try ? 

He’s silent for a few minutes before saying : 

-Try ? 

-Yes. Let’s try to build a life. You, Charles, Laura and I. Like a family. I know it sounds cheesy and you’re not much for that, but let’s do it. We don’t have to go to Canada, it just seems like a safe place that’s all...We can also just get the sun seeker and...

He cuts you off. 

-Yes. 

-Yes ?

-Yes. 

Another silence. 

-When all of this is over, when Laura will be safe, I’d...I’d like doing it. What you just said. 

-Really ? 

-Really. I’m tired (Y/N), tired of running. Tired of surviving more than living. Before everything happened...I had plans. I wanted to marry you. To have kids with you. To...I wanted many things. It didn’t seem possible since...since the death of the X-Men, but now...Now...

He choked on his words, and you knew his throat was tight with too many feelings. Even before, he was never a man to talk about his emotions like that... He kept going. 

-I don’t know what’s going to happen, we’re in constant danger, and I can’t protect you as I used to...But what I know is that I love you. I always have really. And I always will. No matter what happens, I want it to happen with you...I...I...

He couldn’t speak anymore. Brushing soothing hands in his hair, you said :

-I know Logan, I know. I understand. I always understand.

His grip tightens around you, and you slowly drift off to sleep. 

That night, you dream of the future life you were hoping to have. The house, Logan, Laura, Charles, a baby maybe ? And you smile in your sleep, hopeful again for the first time in ages, not knowing that, unfortunately...you will never have any of those things you dreamt about. 

[ramblinganthropologist]

31 Days of Fanfic: Day 2

Rarepair Pairing: Cherche Mahariel x Sten Setting: That Modern Dragon Age AU Summary: Long distance relationships are hard. Thankfully, modern technology helps to bridge the gap. Though Cherche and Sten are apart, his little notes are sometimes all she needs to get through the days until they’re together again. Word count: 1478 Dedicated to @reallyfuckinggay because of a super shitty day. You got this, my friend. <3

---

“I swear by Elgar'nan's balls if I correct their aim one more time, I'm using them for target practice.”

Every bone in Cherche's body ached as she slammed face first onto her bed. Somewhere behind her, Dog was whining and wagging his stumpy tail. He had followed her up from the practice yard, where no doubt four full grown men were still laying on the ground dazed and bruised.

“Why did I agree to help him out with training them?” She rolled onto her face. “Should've stayed in Par Vollen.”

It was warmer there, at least. However, she was a sucker for her son, especially when he sent her gif-filled messages pleading for her help. The Obi Wan Kenobi joke had sealed it for her, and now she regretted it with every step she took.

Damn her love for that brat.

“Dog, let's run away before they know we're gone.” Cherche reached down to pet the massive dog on his head and ran her hand along his soft fur. He barked his assent and started for the door, but she couldn't join him. Her legs weren't going to cooperate and instead begged her for sleep. “Ok... maybe after a nap.”

That required taking off her armor. Groaning, she pulled herself to her feet and started for the armor stand, stripping as she went. By the time she got there, most of it was on the floor and all she had to show for it was the annoyingly heaven warden breastplate. That got chucked on the stand; the rest she'd pick up later.

Before she could head back to bed, the pile of her clothes vibrated. Her back muscles protested, but she bent down to sort through them in order to find her pocket. Inside, her phone screen showed she had a new text message.

From: Kadan

How was your day?

A brief smile flitted across Cherche's face as she sat down on her bed, phone in hand. Her lock screen was the two of them together just after Denerim, dressed for the fight that was to come. Maybe it wasn't the most typical couple's photo, but it wasn't like they were exactly normal either.

“He should be asleep by now, it's after 3 there.”

Fine; go to bed, Sten. You're no good to anyone tired.

Putting her phone aside, she settled into her own bed to catch a few hours of sleep before someone else needed her to save the world. As long as the second coming of the Archdemon didn't arrive during her rest, she would be fine.

Of course, knowing her luck, it would happen.

---

“How about you fucking bite me, Eamon?”

Cherche wasn't known for holding her temper, except when she brandished it like a club to beat somebody over the head. The current Arl of Redcliffe was definitely cruising for a bruising that morning, and he hadn't even had breakfast.

Eamon always had this thing where his lip curled when he spoke with her. She didn't know why – maybe it was because she was an elf, Dalish, or the mother of his soon to be nephew in law. The possibilities were as endless as the ways to kill him, she just had to settle on one.

“I merely suggested - “

“No, you pretty much ordered me to do your dirty work.” She turned on her heel, fire brimming. “Get fucked, shem. You want to talk to Ali, put your name to it.”

It was just like him to try and maneuver from the shadows. This time it was over Alistair's relationship with her son; the time before, over who would stand at the king's side as adviser. Every time, he tried to grab more power for himself, or push things into a neat little package.

As long as she drew breath, it wasn't going to fucking happen.

Still fuming, Cherche stopped outside the front door of the Arl's estate. Her pocket had started to vibrate with news of a new message. Since she was technically on Warden work, that meant it could be important. At any rate, it was better than staring at his wrinkly old ass.

From: Kadan

The quickest way to a man's heart is between his ribs with a properly applied thrusting technique.

Miss you. <3

“He always was a charmer.” Cherche allowed a slight chuckle to grace her lips as she stared down at her screen. Sten did like his emojis, particularly the hearts. She couldn't wait to show him the cookie one she had found, but that would involve some work. Until then, he could be content with his hearts and smily faces.

You can get them just as well with an arrow, you know.

Miss you too, Skype tomorrow?

“Cherche, could we please speak for a moment?”

Teagan's voice drew her attention. He was heading to meet her,  probably to smooth things over and to prevent at least one homicide on the premisis. Her smile turned to a scowl as she returned her phone into her pocket and watched him arrive.

She might've liked him, but damn if he didn't get on her nerves some days.  Oh well, she had a Skype date to look forward to anyway.

---

“Is that a new bruise?”

“A recruit didn't know his ass from his elbow. I'm fine, vhenan.”

The connection was crap thanks to the distance between Par Vollen and Amaranthine, but it held up well enough. She couldn't see the sweat dripping down Sten's brow, but she could imagine it just the same.

“If you cannot help them, they are a lost cause.”

Cherche snorted as she leaned back against the headrest of her bed, laptop on her lap. “Well, I knew that taking the job, doesn't mean I can't have fun doing it.”

Sten's lips twitched briefly. That was as good as a smile coming from him. It wasn't that he didn't like to smile, just that it wasn't a cultural norm for him. She saw no reason to push him on it, especially since there were plenty of other ways to indulge her urges – usually with rope and a few good knots – with him.

“When will you be returning to Par Vollen, kadan?” He looked briefly behind him as someone asked him a question – something about if he would be returning to training. He answered summarily before returning. “It is dull without you.”

Cherche allowed another smile to pass her lips as she kept her laptop steady. “Par Vollen, boring? How did you survive all those years without me?”

“Without a perpetual stiffness in my neck, kadan.” There was a long pause, and for a moment she thought the webcam had froze. However, she could see Sten breathing, weighing out his options. “Among other places.”

The Arishok was right, she was corrupting him.

A quick bark of laughter rang out in the small room as Cherche snickered. “Can't help you with that while I'm here, Sten.”

“That much is obvious.” Maybe it was the light, but she could have sworn he looked a little red around the  tips of his ears. “You still haven't answered my question about your return.”

Always so pushy. Cherche rolled her eyes as she glanced down at the screen of her phone. Earlier that day, she and the other senior Wardens had finally decided on a date for the recruits to take their joining. A cartoonish griffin marked the day, with 'karaoke' penciled in the day after. By her estimation, at least one was going to make it and that was enough for a party in her book.

They just had to get through the twitching first. They were always so twitchy.

“Joining's next week, vhenan. Once the survivors settle in and we're pretty sure they're not going to desert, I can come back.”

“I will meet you at the dock when you arrive.” The voices in the background were growing – someone needed Sten now, probably to deal with some issue. He frowned briefly, before his neutral expression returned. “Time to go.”

Cherche smiled briefly as she pressed her hand to the screen. “Text you later, Sten.”

He nodded, and his hand lined up with hers ever so briefly. Then he was gone, and she was left with the Skype home screen. Sighing, she closed the lid of her laptop and put it aside. There was work to be done, after all. Joinings didn't prepare themselves.

Before she left the room, though, her pocket vibrated once more.

From: Kadan

<3

“Sappy nerd.” And yet she smiled as her fingers slid across the screen in response. It sent long before she returned to deal with the rest of the recruits, a virtual letter to her beloved far away in the sands of Par Vollen.

Nerd.

<3

[lalscreamingintothevoid]

Whew, it’s been a hot minute since I used this second blog, but I’m fucking heated rn. I just recently came to the realization of how toxic one of my friendships is and I’m pissed at myself for not seeing this sooner. If you’re reading this, enjoy all this drama. I know it’s something that is really kind of fun to read, especially if you’re not a part of it, so please, enjoy reading about this toxic friendship.

So basically, I have this friend that I’ve known for literally 6 years now. We decided to be roommates this year (she doesn’t even have a bed here yet and it’s literally almost 3 weeks into the school year. She lives with her boyfriend. She’s been in this apartment maybe 10 times, and that’s a liberal estimate). I’m going to explain what’s been going on for the past few days just to make part of this make sense. So, basically, I want to get a cat. I’ve been telling her I want to get a cat for almost a year know. She’s known that I want a cat. It’s extremely important to me to have a cat because of how much they do for me in terms of relieving stress, especially during school. Cats are also her favorite animal. 

All this led me to believe that she would be fine with it anytime I wanted to go out and get my cat because she always seemed down for it whenever I brought it up. I need (and still need, this situation is not resolved yet) papers signed by both of my roommates saying that I can have a cat. One of my roommates was extremely chill about it and is ready to sign that paper at any time. I texted my other roommate to ask her to come over when she has some free time to sign it. (Keep in mind that she doesn’t even technically live here so having a cat would do literally nothing to affect her). She texts me back saying that she “doesn’t think it’s the right time to get a cat.” This is bullshit for several reasons. First of all, she’s not getting a cat, I’m getting a cat. It’s going to be my cat that I alone am responsible for. I have so much free time on my hands so I could very easily do anything that it needed (cats are extremely independent though so really the time thing does not matter at all). I ask her why and she proceeds to say stuff that a, implies that she would be responsible for the cat and b, implies that I’m not competent enough to take care of a cat. (Just want to put in here that I have 19 years of experience taking care of cats.) She also brings up that her boyfriend is mildly allergic to cats. Which SHOULD NOT matter because he doesn’t live here and doesn’t pay rent. This also implies to me that she thinks an occasional minor inconvenience to him is more important than my mental health and well being which is just a really shitty thing to do. 

So she then ghosts me for over a day and this results in me having an anxiety attack because I felt so hopeless and full of dread that I wouldn’t get my cat. Keep in mind that up to this point, she really has no valid argument to stop me from getting a cat. My mind was literally racing through everything that I had ever done with her trying to figure out where I had hurt her so badly that she would want to hurt me again in this way. And really, I didn’t understand what I had done. It was just her birthday a few days ago and I baked her a cake and bought her presents, but I was convinced that I was in the wrong somehow. 

The next morning (this morning as I’m writing this), I asked her to come over to talk about it in person (this is literally so ridiculous because she kept bringing up the point that “she lives here too” when I literally had to make an appointment to see her). She took her time responding, so much that I thought she wasn’t going to and was just ignoring me. Finally, she responded and came over (like an hour late but she did come). 

We had a discussion about getting a cat and the whole time I’m just trying to tell her how important it is to me that I have this cat. I told her about my anxiety attack - not because I was trying to emotionally manipulate her - but to illustrate the point of how much it means to me to get a cat, and I straight up told her that. Keep this in mind for later. 

She tells me that she plans on moving in this weekend and that she’s going to be here all the time (she’ll probably move in, but she’s definitely not going to spend most nights here), and she tells me that she wants two weeks because she doesn’t want any more change. Now, keep in mind, at this point, the only argument that she’s given me that has any sort of bearing is that her boyfriend has an allergy, which again, should not play any roll in this decision but for some reason seems to be her only hangup. 

Now, I’ve been telling her about this cat for a long ass time. Like she knew that it was something that I wanted. She knew that it was a thing that was potentially coming and I had already been waiting a long ass time to do this so, I didn’t and still don’t want to wait two weeks to get my cat. I tell her that this isn’t really something that I want to do and I ask her why.

She then pulls out the cancer card. Her mom has thyroid cancer, so she does have a right to be worried about her, but really, that should not affect me getting a cat, y’know? She talks about all of these issues that she’s been having and starts crying. This completely stops anything from getting done because you can’t just argue to someone who is crying about their mom having cancer. Keep in mind that this is the first time I’m hearing ANY of this. It feels like if she should have said this from the beginning if this was really the issue. This is straight up emotional manipulation and like you cannot change my mind about that. So I’m forced to agree to this two week thing that she wants because if I argued with her then I would be the asshole. 

This is where we are right now. She hasn’t signed the paper saying that I’m allowed to have a cat and at this point, I’m kind of afraid that she’s going to pull some bullshit and not sign it and that is causing me all kinds of mental distress. Her boyfriend also messaged me after all of this basically telling me that I’m an asshole because I was pushing her. But here’s the thing, she literally fucking cried at me telling her that her arguments were bs and telling her that her comments really fucking hurt me. That does not make any fucking sense, not to mention, why the fuck is he, someone who has no reason to be in this situation, messaging me about it. Like honestly, this whole thing is the shitty move of the year. But anyway, let’s get into a little about how I realized how toxic this relationship is.

So, I’ve been friends with her for 6 years. I’ve done a lot with her, and, over the course of the years, whenever she asks me to do something, I usually respond saying yes. This goes into things that I didn’t necessarily want to do, my reasoning being that I should do some of this stuff because I’m her friend and even if I don’t want to do it, she wants to and I should support her. The most recent example of this was a few weeks ago when she wanted to go swimming at 7am on a day where I didn’t have class until 2. I really didn’t want to go do this, but, I did it anyway because it felt like she really wanted to do it. There are many more examples of this but this is just one. 

She has also pressured me to do drugs and drink. I’m down to drink, but I had a really bad experience with weed (that I’ve told her about) so I really don’t want to do it anymore and she continues to pressure me into doing it with her. There was also a time where she was pressuring me into doing molly with her. If you want to do illegal drugs, then that’s cool, that’s your decision to make and I’m not going to judge you for it, but I don’t want to do anything like that. She then took some and for the rest of the night kept trying to get me to take some too. She told me that she was going to go home that night and, being sober, I decided to wait with her until she was done at the party to make sure she got home okay (this was before we were roommates but we lived in the same dorm building). She told me that she was getting ready to go at around 11 or 12 and I was ready to go long before that because I was really tired. I didn’t get home until 5am that night and she didn’t even walk home with me. She spent the night there. I told her that I was ready to go home and that I was just waiting for her to be ready but she still made me wait 5 hours. 

She’s also stood me up more times than I can count. It’s at the point where I won’t leave anywhere to go meet her until she tells me that she has already left. She just hasn’t come to meet me so many times that if I don’t do that then I’d end up going to a lot of places and just sitting for like an hour waiting for her. This annoys me for two reasons. The first is that I get stood up a lot, which isn’t a good feeling. The second is that it means that she doesn’t think of me as important enough to even text me when she isn’t going to make it somewhere. There have been several times where it happens and she’ll text me later saying something like she got wrapped up in something that she was doing. She knew that she was going to stand me up but didn’t decide to tell me. 

So all of this and then the thing with the cat. This is the one time in our whole relationship where I’ve put my foot down and said “no, this is something that I really want”, and how does she react? She tries to emotionally manipulate me into siding with her. This has been a really shitty day of realizing stuff and I’m at the point where I don’t want to be friends with her anymore. I know that a lot of stuff has happened to her in her past, but this does not excuse her shitty behavior toward me. When I get my cat (and I will literally fucking fight her for it), I really don’t want her to get to have to enjoyment of having an animal around, especially her favorite type of animal. He might just have to live in my bedroom whenever she’s here. I don’t want to do that to that cat, but I also don’t want her touching my cat after all the shit that she’s done to me. Besides, she’s probably not going to be here very often anyway.

[hankeverythingwillbefine]

Thrashed, Lost, and Found

Day 7 hurt as much as every day has. It still started out with a forceful morning workout, my cousin has asked me a couple of times if I’d go with her to her gym in the afternoon but working out is something I have to do alone. I know she can do her routine and I can do mine but even the commute needs to be a separate thing. I was dragged to church, even though it’s Catholic I went and listened to what the priest had to say. I kept getting lost in thought and spent time admiring the architectural brilliance of the church. I wanted to go out by myself, I thought it’s time to shave the beard and needed razors (maybe it was just the only excuse I had). I took the bus and we were robbed, even though I was scared I was still aware of how dangerous the state has become thanks to increasing foreign migration. I don’t mean to sound xenophobic and I’m not even blaming the South American migrants, I’m blaming the people that come from other states to those that had stable security in their endless turf wars or those from the capital that have become so wanted by their local enforcement agencies to flee and do what they’re doing here. Anyhow, this short guy in his mid 20′s comes into the bus and asks to hold on a moment before paying. The bus starts moving at this point because the buses are in a hurry. It’s not too packed which is great for my anxiety and I’m looking out the window because I’m a melancholic fuck that needs serotonin and sunlight helps with that. I see some people in front of me shuffle suddenly and it made me startle and grasp the situation... hey we’re getting robbed. I didn’t notice the guy in the back with the backpack collecting money, phones and jewelry until it was my turn. As confident I am of my self-defense abilities, I’m no match for a guy with a gun. My anxiety manifested in a form of angry annoyance instead of fear. I gave them my broken iphone (which thankfully I only took the spare one that I use as an ipod but also has whatsapp installed and all of my contacts... it’s too long a story to explain now), my wallet with an estimated equivalent of $10 dollars and my wired headphones. I could tell that backpack guy was somewhat disappointed in everything they gathered but what do you expect on a Sunday afternoon in a half empty bus that’s going AWAY from the capital. I applaud your efforts, you sad elementary school dropout but thieving doesn’t give participation trophies or a pat on the back (unless you’re a prison bitch, then I guess it’s more than pats on the back). They quickly pointed the gun at the driver and made him pull over by an empty lot, my mind went to “we’re getting executed” which made me angrier. The one that gets to kill me is ME, that much has always been decided and I don’t even mean that in a suicidal way. If I die because of a mistake I made or an action I knowingly took that sent me to my demise, I’d be okay with that. My point is, they ran away and I wanted to go after them but getting shot is not in my to do list. The bus driver had radioed someone to call the police, they came in what felt like 10 minutes-ish and a forever for their police reports. I told them everything I saw, I gave them all my necessary information and details of the items that were stolen. I didn’t see much point in cooperating since the police are famous for being useless in this country and the four that arrived reeked of incompetence and Sunday laziness. I walked back home after that, it was a 30 minute walk... always has been. I realized I took 2 and a half hours between all of that when I got home. I told my mother I went for a walk and got distracted, went to my room and that’s when everything started sinking in. I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood no matter where I lived, having a gun pointed at was something that’s never going to stop being terrifying but the impact lessens over time. After some time of empty staring, I got the phone my father sent a year ago and activated that one, it has less memory and all I really need is music but it’s the thought that counts. I saw a couple of messages from you asking if I’m there and looks like you wanted to talk. I told you I got robbed, you didn’t believe me but this isn’t one of those things to lie about. There’s nothing impressive about getting robbed at gunpoint. My anxiety didn’t go off the rails despite the lack of Xanax in my system, it was a strange feeling and did not know how to rationalize it. I tried to pass it off as being okay, talking to you makes everything easier. You told me you’re redoing the house and talking about your self-worth. Telling me to tell my therapist how strong you are and how beautiful you are and how you’ve shouldered everything for the past year. How fucking dare you, of course I have but I’ve also talked about how controlling you’ve been and the thing I don’t want to do is go from patient to psychologist trying to compare results based on notes and observations about you. Therapy is where I make me about me, it’s step one on a healthy dose of selfishness. So we talked about how you’re Marie Kondoing and suggested I do the same, I told you that I’m not in a head space where assessing joy is a good idea. We talked about how we both need the man I used to be, how tired you are and the things you deserve. I mentioned that my stepdad finally got himself together and I was very surprised, these past 10 years haven’t been very kind to us and he got lazy and complacent and irresponsible. After having been dumped by my mom was when he went back to being hardworking and providing for her and my brother. He’s been incredibly supportive of whatever this thing I’m going through is. We spoke in a way that can only be described like we needed to cheer each other on, and then another “I don’t believe you got robbed” stab. As much as I would like your support yet not seeking it because I’m respecting your space, I really don’t need your doubt. I told you I was looking forward to our monthly in-person meet, which you forgot and it hurt. That was probably the most crushing moment of our whole conversation but powered through it. Sometimes I think I should just divorce you because you’re too much of a coward to ask for it because that is what you really want and I want to work on this but won’t get the chance to get there. We had a nice conversation and cut it short, sleep was calling to me. I woke up late at night and saw that you texted again, I don’t know if you were battling with loneliness again and wanted to talk to me. A part of me wants to tell you to fuck off and seek solace in the Facebook friends you arduously ignored me for but I think you’re doing that and it’s not working as well as you’d hoped. I think we’re both fighting that codependency we have for each other, leading to struggles with our own loneliness. I can’t really speak for you and can only assume. I just told you I went for my late night drink of water. We texted a little on Day 8, sent you a funny ad I got on a website while working. I’m still worried that you’re not eating well and haven’t found someone to pay to cook for you or deliver a healthy meal to you. I spent all of Day 8 hating myself out loud because I had the house to myself and trying not to text you. I also spent it playing GTA 5 and watching how Michael lost his family and is slowly getting them back in their own organically dysfunctional way while having Chicago’s “if you leave me now” playing on the radio station of the car he got in. Rockstar, you’re not fair to me right now. After so many years and changing availability, I still haven’t finished the game but it’s hitting so many sore spots for me right now. Great job, me, you’ve replaced your dependency from Xanax to video games and enjoy neither. I’ve helped my stepdad clean his car during the weekend, Hank sees me near the car and he behaves like we’re going back home. He scratches my leg, getting permission to get in but doesn’t see that it’s just to clean it and not to make a 2 hour trip back to a place we thought everyone was happy in. You sent me a philosophical quote about healing, I looked it up and thanked you for it. I went on to spend my night playing mindlessly, reading on and off about endogenous depression because I stumbled upon a paper I was reading about it in my closet here. Grad school B paper, no easy feat. I spent my night torturing myself internally. Weening off Xanax to help me sleep has not been kind, I’m down to a quarter a day again.

Day 9. I’m proud of myself for not reactivating my Facebook to stalk you since Friday-ish or Thursday. I needed one of the links I had saved and checked your posts since I was already there. Still, I need to stop. I’m getting everything out in a public way while maintaining myself anonymous and you’re getting everything out in a more “everybody, this marriage has been so shitty despite having my husband change jobs and work outside the house in order to pay for everything”. Yes you did the housewife thing and you did it great, I just needed you great and not a clean house or a highly elaborate meal but that’s what I came home to and a wife that had just enough energy to kinda eat. Your mother and my father did come to our rescue one too many times before we got married and while I started my new job. When you said you were told about Stratus, I encouraged you and said I wanted you happy but whatever floats your boat. Day 9 is just starting with sarcastic clients and a very annoyed me. If parting is such sweet sorrow, I don’t have many assets but I’m still meeting an attorney this Friday to set up a will. Just in case.

[the-reborn-galaxy484]

(07-01/2019) Here We Go Again...

This is Jack. Y’know, Panic Disorder mess boy. I figure I should say that first because this is gonna get angsty.

Someone sent us an anonymous tell asking if we’ve ever hurt someone. Honestly, we answered that yes, some personalities (esp. Davide with the shitty timing) have hurt people but we are actively working with those alters trying to prevent this from happening again, because...y’know, we have DID and god forbid we acknowledge it. Within an hour, one of our children Will (a friend we symbolically adopted because he needs more love) had blocked us on the social media platform we shared it onto.

...I don’t know what we were supposed to say. We’re actively working on preventing recurrences of that.

This is a continuation of the story from June 11th, I believe, with our friends snapping at us over Davide’s shitty timing saying that we were having a panic attack because Mom had spent half an hour screaming at us about how much technology we use and said we were “addicted” despite the fact that tech is how you adult & also we weren’t always on it but she wasn’t always in our room to see that. The person who was speaking and assumed offense blocked us on Instagram & unfriended us on Facebook (we had been friends on both), and shortly after the others from that group (save our crush, thank god) stopped talking to us. Now Will blocked us, our crush agreed with Will & his girlfriend that we talked “too much” about our issues, and we’re a mess.

See, we mentioned into the group chat now and again if Mom was being insane because this group helped us to recognize that Mom was actually crazy & not just ‘sort of weird’. We would mention when we just got a small (1 measuring cup) bowl of plain pot-popped popcorn for a meal, we’d mention if we were anxious, stuff like that.

We were just trying to express, y’know, “hey, we’re overwhelmed, please chill.” Instead, apparently, this was interpreted as manipulative “help me I’m broken” behavior, and they assumed me to be saying “I can’t do anything ever because I have so many issues”. We grew up with an ADD family (I have ADHD) so I was told to never use my issues as an excuse to not try. We beat ourself up for not being good enough. Our parents don’t know we have multiple personalities because we’re afraid they’ll tell us we haven’t suffered enough to ever split (even once, let alone 56 times which seems to be our estimation of how many we have right now).

Our friends didn’t know because of our anxiety, because, y’know, people don’t exactly take too kindly to someone who’s physically a 19 year old female saying they’re a 5 year old boy named Henry or they’re a Panic Disorder mess who’s, like, 17 at the moment? People either think you’re insane or you’re lying for attention. It took until we’d been screamed into tears & had 7 panic attacks from this group to tell them that we had multiple personalities, so we could explain that Davide has no concept of timing (he’s super anxious about it, we’re trying to teach him) and that our intention was never to hurt this group of people we loved so much. We always viewed them as worth more than us because we’re such a mess and we have bad coping mechanisms. We told them as much, but they viewed that as manipulative & controlling & bad and it just made everything worse.

We had just started to emotionally recover from this dump of crap in our lap based on a misunderstanding & some shitty timing (& admittedly shitty wording too). We were starting to be okay again. We weren’t good, but we were okay. We could breathe. We weren’t in pain. But now one of the children we poured love into & gave our time & energy to & took thousands of photos of has blocked us, and though it’s stupid we are in pain. We are shaky and panicky. We thought of talking to his girlfriend (who hasn’t yet blocked us & is still marked as dating him) but she was the worst person screaming at us & hating on us & we apologised to her the most. There really is no saving this situation. The entire group is against us. We have no other close friends to vent to. Mom Teacher isn’t texting us back. Mom is no help; she’d just tell us she already knew they were toxic & had issues.

We’re not looking for advice, just venting because we have nowhere else to turn. It would be nice to hear from someone we aren’t a bad person, whether in private message or an ask or something, but we’d never directly ask for that. We’re gonna go write an angsty gay story & try to breathe. We have an hour long Alec Benjamin compilation full of angsty songs playing & we’re trying to breathe.

If we’re gone for a bit, this is why. We’re full of anxiety.

[closetofanxiety]

Show Review: XWA Wrestlution 17

It’s like a revolution ... but with WRESTLING.

Where: Meehan Auditorium at Brown University, Providence, R.I.

When: Sunday, July 16, 2017

Who: Me and my friend Mike T, plus a crowd I saw estimated various places at about 1,000 or so

What: The annual supercard show from the Rhode Island promotion that is not Beyond Wrestling

Buff Inc. vs. Alpha Males vs. Tough Guy Inc.

This is your Student Preshow Match. XWA runs a training school in West Warwick, and every Thursday night they have shows, mostly with their students, but occasionally with better known indie wrestlers. These are students from the school, and a vocal contingent of Thursday night fans was on hand for this match, which was what you’d expect from a three-way tag match consisting of people still learning to wrestle. Buff Inc. are a father-and-son duo, or so the very talkative wrestling fan in front of us said. He kept turning around to fill us in on gossip about wrestlers, which was both informative and slightly irritating. Also, every time I’d say something to Mike T, this guy would turn around and respond, as if I were talking to him. It got to the point where Mike T and I had to communicate via text message. Rating: I’m not going to rate this match, that’s not what you do with these things.

Ladder Match for the XWA Firebrand Championship: Flip Gordon vs. Vinny Marseglia vs. Donovan Dijak vs. Kyle the Beast vs. Maxwell Jacob Friedman vs. Mike Orlando vs. Tessa Blanchard

The Firebrand Championship is a new title named in honor of Brian Fury. This was originally going to be a six-way match, but Tessa (”She’s Ricochet’s girlfriend,” the guy in front of us noted) was a surprise last-minute addition, and when she was announced the crowd went crackers. I mean, people lost it. There were four or five young girls sitting behind us who just SHRIEKED, like it was 1963 and Tessa Blanchard was four mop-topped lads from Liverpool strumming guitars. Crazy. Tessa Blanchard is over, at least in Rhode Island.

The other thing I want to point out is Marseglia’s entrance. It started with half a dozen guys in Jason Voorhees masks coming out amidst fog and spooky music. And then a woman crawled out from the back, seemingly in fear for her life. Soon, she was followed by a guy dressed like Freddie Krueger. As the woman stumbled backwards down the ramp and Freddie was about to pounce, Vinny Marseglia came from the back and beat Freddie up. I ... loved this. This was so preposterous it immediately made me a Vinny Marseglia fan.

Anyway, the match is a ladder match, and proceeds like most ladder matches proceed: lots of high spots, because these are all talented wrestlers, and everyone “gets their shit in,” as it were. Blanchard took a horrifying-looking suplex from Orlando, Friedman (”He changed it from ‘Feinstein’ ‘cause he didn’t want to be associated with Rob Feinstein,” Talkative Wrestling Fan informed us) got massive heat for slapping Blanchard around, Dijak flung guys all over the place, spears from the cables holding the title above the ring, dives to the outside, etc. Flip Gordon took one of the craziest dives I’ve ever seen, going from the top of one of the pillars holding the title belt in place to the floor, a drop of maybe 18 feet. 

Marseglia wins after scaring Friedman away from the ladder, and the crowd, which was insanely hot for the match, is exhausted. 

Rating: Three and a half Freddie Kruegers.

Crusade for Change (TJ Marconi & Anthony Gangone) vs. The Amazing Graysons vs. The Fraternity

This was ... an odd booking decision. With the crowd cooling down from a crazy seven-way ladder match, having a crazy six-way tag match is a recipe for exhaustion, and that’s what happened. This wasn’t bad or anything, but it was your standard indie tag highlight reel. It was also weird to have two heel teams, the Crusade and the Fraternity, who didn’t join forces to try and smite the plucky babyfaces. Anyway, it was fine, it was just a bit much on top of the ladder match. It struck me that jerky college guy gimmicks like The Fraternity don’t get over as well in audiences where lots of people don’t have much direct experience with college. But boy would those guys get heat from the Brown student body. 

Rating: Two and a half Freddie Kruegers.

At this point, Brian Fury came out to a nice ovation and interviewed, for some reason, the bass player for Killswitch Engage, who was seated ringside. One of the best developments in indie wrestling over the last couple of years has been the adoption of corny ‘80s pop-rock songs as entrance music, slowly crowding out the metalcore and rap-rock that dominated the field for so long. Metal and hardcore shouldn’t mix. I realize this is controversial, but it’s like wrestling and MMA to me: I just have no interest in one, even though I recognize the similarities.

Mike Verna vs. Richard Holliday [sic]

Richard Holliday does the arrogant New Yorker thing, which always gets decent heat in New England. He reminds me a little bit of Maxwell Jacob Friedman, maybe more than a little, now that I think of it. This is a good, snugly worked match between two young, capable guys that gets done in less than 10 minutes. Matches like this used to make up the bulk of weekly wrestling TV before the MONDAY NIGHT WARS introduced hotshot booking and terrible “cinematic” angles and all the other stuff that people claim to fondly remember. 

Rating: Three Freddie Kruegers.

XWA Tag Team Championship: LAX (Santana and Ortiz) vs. New Gore Order (Josh Briggs and Mike Graca) vs. Take Me Home Tonight (Ace Romero and Anthony Greene)

This started out as a match between LAX/EYFBO and New Gore Order, but then it turned out that the latter had cheated at a Thursday night show to get this match, so their unjustly vanquished opponents, Romero and Greene, were back in the mix. This is our second three-way tag match of the night. Indie shows love to pack as many people on the card as possible, brother.

LAX/EYFBO (whenever I put up pictures of these guys I have to use like 30 hash tags) are maybe my favorite current tag team, just two insanely talented guys who mesh perfectly together, right on the cusp of breaking out. I mean, yes, they’re currently the TNA tag champs, Impact tag champs, GFW tag champs, Nick Gulas Promotions tag champs, etc. but that’s not really “breaking out” anymore. These dudes would tear a hole in the roof of that shitty building where PWG runs shows.

Take Me Home Tonight are great exemplars of my point about ‘80s pop songs, and are two fun, young, up and coming guys. New Gore Order are also young and up and coming, but they have a further distances to travel than Romero and Greene.

This, again, is what you’d expect, some high-level indie tag action with LAX working at about two-thirds of their capacity, willing to let the greener guys get a chance to shine. Josh Briggs is being touted as the new Dijak, but, uh, he is not there yet. There were a couple of moments, like when he caught Mike Draztik (sorry, “Santana,” whatever) on a dive where he very nearly screwed up in a potentially serious way. He’ll be fine, he’s got lots of natural talent, he just doesn’t need bookers putting him in spots where he has to carry a whole match yet. 

Take Me Home Tonight win, and are the first-ever XWA tag team champs. 

Rating: Three Freddie Kreugers.

Keith Lee vs. Jeff Cobb

SPEAKING OF PWG. The current indie hoss dream matchup comes to Rhode Island, and the crowd was pumped for this. Keith Lee has gone from being an obscure Texas wrestler to a dude who can get a thousand people in Rhode Island chanting his name in just over a year, and it’s spectacular. This match was the expected demonstration of the strength and truly shocking agility of both big men, and was a lot of fun, although maybe just a smidge too long, at 14 minutes or so. That’s the temptation of the indies. It’s a bit like workshopping. After the match, Cobb and Lee shook hands in the now-standard Indie Show of Mutual Respect, and I booed. I’m so tired of that. 

Rating: Three and a half Freddie Kreugers. 

JT Dunn vs. John Morrison

Johnny Mundo was billed as John Morrison, maybe because of all the troubles with AAA, maybe because that’s how this crowd would know him, but in any event, they were very excited to see him. This was a terrific matchup between two guys who don’t really fit into easy categories - they aren’t high-flyers, but they can do aerial stuff; they aren’t grapplefucksmen, though they can do scientific stuff; and they aren’t strikers, but they can strike with the best of them. Matt Striker was on commentary for the whole show, and I wonder if it was weird to see so many of his former Lucha Underground colleagues in the ring. Also, he’s kind of a choad.

Both guys looked fantastic here, going hold for hold and switching back and forth between different styles with total fluid ease. The term “wrestling clinic” gets overused, but that’s what this felt like. When Dunn got the surprise win, the crowd legitimately gasped in shock, which turned into cheers. A nice, spontaneous reaction because they didn’t telegraph the finish, it didn’t come after umpteen kickouts from finishers, and because, if anything, the match felt a little short. There’s a lesson to be learned here! 

Rating: Four Freddie Kreugers.

David Starr vs. Anthony Henry vs. Paul London

I am not, in 2017, here for Paul London’s bullshit. His entrance lasted something like 10 minutes, as he walked through the entire building to shake hands and take pictures with practically the entire crowd. At least he uses the Handsome Family as entrance music, so I didn’t have to endure metalcore for 10 minutes. He’s an odd guy, all the talent in the world but seemingly never committed to wrestling in the way that would make him a real star. Someone like Johnny Gargano, for instance, who doesn’t have the same effortless talent as London, is a person who visibly throws himself into wrestling with a kind of abandon. It’s the commitment of the artist as opposed to the talent of the artisan. London always seems a step or two removed from whatever he’s doing. It’s hard to ever believe he really cares about the outcome of a match.

He was good in this, though, breaking out some of his high-flying offense, hitting two crazily fast shooting star presses on David Starr and generally serving as a sort of wild card in the match. Starr and Henry seem like they could have a tremendous feud together. They’re well-matched in a way that’s pure natural chemistry rather than labored storyline matchmaking. All three guys looked terrific, and Henry, the XWA champion, retained. 

Rating: Three Freddie Kreugers.

Jason Blade vs. Kenny Dykstra

This was cut short by what looked like a legitimate shoulder injury to Dykstra. Hope he’s doing OK.

Student Battle Royal

Are there any words more thrilling to the wrestling fan’s soul than “previously unannounced student battle royal”? The chance to see 20 or so people at various levels of not-ready-yet sluggishly pretend to punch each other inside a wrestling ring - ah, it transports the spectator to the plains of paradise!

Look, I’m not dumb. I understand that if you have 20 locals in a battle royal, that’s ticket sales to the family members and friends of those 20 locals. And, in fairness, they did not overly try our patience with this. Pretty quickly we got down to the final three, which was Buff Inc., the father and son duo, versus giant man-mountain Wrecking Ball Legursky, who easily won.

Rating: This is not a thing to be rated.

Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Ricochet

A rematch of their Lucha Underground showdown from season 2, the crowd was very excited for Rey. It’s weird to think he’s been doing this for as long as he has, and he’s still pretty good. He’s not the kid who in the 1990s was the most exciting wrestler I had ever seen in my life anymore, but he’s not in the phase where he needs to totally reinvent himself on character work a la Matt Hardy, or to be propped up by his disciples, either. If Rey’s matches have been honed to a staple of familiar crowd-pleasers, well, the Rolling Stones play “Satisfaction” whenever they tour, too.

It may be impossible for these two to have a bad match, and this was a very good match. It had teacher vs. student undertones, but ultimately it was about two high-flyers trying to somehow find an edge to get the win. When Ricochet blocked the 619 and countered with the Benadryller for the win, it was surprising and fitting at the same time, almost a passing of the torch moment. 

Rating: Four Freddie Kreugers.